A broadcast halftime guest to remember

Detroit, December 28-29, 1976, the Motor City Classic ...

Dick Vitale
(photo by Matt Cashore, USA Today sports)

     A few years before he became the World's
Ambassador of Basketball, he was the halftime guest interview on the Centenary College broadcast.

     We knew this could be interesting.

     We had seen his "act" the previous night when he coached the best basketball team the University of Detroit had ever had to a close victory against our team, the Centenary Gentlemen. He was, well, a wild man, frantically -- obsessively -- directing his Titans. 

     The next night, as our guys played a consolation -- third-place -- game, he came to our radio-broadcast position to talk at halftime. His team would play the championship game about an hour later.

     All Jim Hawthorne, Centenary's play-by-play broadcaster on KWKH-Shreveport (1130 AM on the radio) in the late 1970s, had to do was ask one question. Dick Vitale -- yes, the omnipresent basketball guru -- took it from there.

 You might have seen him, and especially heard him, a time or two over the past 40 years. 

     Of course, he talked and talked and talked. He was intense, excitable, enthusiastic, loud, funny, crazy. Pick an adjective.

     It was unforgettable. And to think that then, 1976, not many people outside of, say, New Jersey (where he grew up and first coached) and Detroit knew of this blind-in-one-eye, balding, babbling nut case.

     Dickie V., baby.

     A footnote to this lead-in: A couple of hours later, after his U. of Detroit team had struggled to edge a less-than-.500 Kent State team in overtime, Vitale -- did we say intense? -- and Kent State coach Rex Hughes engaged in a shoving match that had to be broken up. Hughes wasn't happy with the game's outcome; Vitale wasn't happy with his team's subpar effort.

     Saw it happen. Not a good scene. But here is a fact: Both Vitale and Hughes were basketball lifers, and both were head coaches for a short time in the NBA. One little skirmish didn't matter.

      We did appreciate Vitale coming on our halftime show. What Hawthorne -- who would go on to be LSU athletics' "Voice of the Tigers" for three decades -- remembers is telling.

      "He was sitting with me in a press booth at the top of the arena [Detroit's Calihan Hall]," Jim recalls, "and he told me, 'I just get so nervous.' "

       If Dick Vitale was nervous -- and maybe that's what took him out of coaching for good only a couple of years later -- think about how many TV viewers he made nervous over the next 40 years.

---

     He was, and still can be, outrageously colorful -- dancing with cheerleaders, being the object of crowd-surfing, wearing goofy wigs, using his Vitale terminology ("diaper dandy," "PTPer," etc. ... here is the list -- https://dickvitaleonline.com/about/dick-vitales-dictionary)
     He also is outrageously positive and popular -- an emotional, wonderful friend of coaches, players, and the world. A charitable human being, always promoting good causes. The University of Detroit named its basketball court for him; he's been inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.     

     To listen to Vitale as the color announcer on TV basketball games, mostly college games but also a couple of years of NBA games, required patience and a good set of ears. Many people -- confession, I am one -- took it small doses, or not at all. Here is where the "mute" button came in.

     (My Dad loved basketball, but not Vit-al-ee, as he pronounced it in his broken Dutch/English. He always turned off the sound on Dickie V.'s games.)          

     Now, though, "mute" is not a happy word when we consider Mr. Vitale. This has been a tough time for the 82-year-old longtime Florida resident -- first melanoma, then lymphoma, chemo for months, and now vocal cords damaged to where surgery is required. He can't talk, and this week ESPN announced that he won't be back on the air for the rest of this basketball season.  

     It is no time for jokes about his voice.

     You know the sports world is rooting for him, and his full recovery.

---

    We saw him, and he did that radio interview, in his greatest season as a coach. It was his fourth year as the University of Detroit coach, and his 1976-77 Titans went 25-4 (and one loss, to Minnesota, was reversed by forfeit).

      They won 21 games in a row -- Centenary was No. 6 in that streak -- and the last of those was a 64-63 upset (on a last-second shot) of No. 7-ranked Marquette in Milwaukee. Oh, Marquette went on to win the NCAA championship.

     Here is a funny Vitale moment: His dance at midcourt after that victory at Marquette: https://twitter.com/dickiev/status/804121343553925120

     Detroit made the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 15 years, and won one game, then lost in the Sweet Sixteen to state rival Michigan.

     That team included three future NBA players -- guards John Long and Terry Duerod, and forward/center Terry Tyler. 

      Earl Cureton, a 12-year NBA player, came to Detroit as a transfer while Vitale was the coach (and then athletic director for a year). When the 1977 team had a 40-year reunion, and Vitale attended, Cureton said this:  

    "Bringing back Dick Vitale is huge. Usually, when you talk Titans basketball, you talk Dick Vitale. His name always comes up. I had a great deal of respect for what Dick did during his career, not only in basketball, but what did for us out of basketball.

      "He taught us about the game of life. He prepared us for life after basketball and how important it was for us to get an education and go from boys to men. He kept us on the straight and narrow and was definitely a role model. Just to show there was a lot of respect for Dick, all of them coming back 40 years later to see him. There's going to be a lot of excitement for him coming back in the building.

      "For a mid-major ... to create that type of excitement and to create the group of young men he created, I think, was amazing. What he did at U-D was just phenomenal."

---

     Charlie Vincent was a transplanted Texan who wrote sports for the Detroit Free Press for three decades and was the beat writer for U. of Detroit basketball in 1976-77 (later covered the Detroit Pistons and then became a popular, crafty columnist for years). He could be tough, though. Here is what he wrote after Vitale's team barely beat Kent State:

     By the end of that season, Vincent was a bit more complimentary of Vitale's work.

     Joe Falls was a Detroit sportswriting legend, covering 50 years, the Free Press' lead sports columnist during Vitale's U. of Detroit time (and one of my favorite writers on baseball). Here is what he wrote about Vitale's influence:

      That crusader, that non-stop talker, that entertainer came into our personal vision in 1976, and had us shaking our heads (and covering our ears). So much fun, so endearing. 

       We wish him well, and when he gets back to television, we might even turn up the sound. Because he is Dickie V., baby.

Thanks, NCAA ... your timing is absurd

Robert Parish at Centenary
(The Shreveport Times photo)

     The top part here was written by John James Marshall for the designatedwriters.com web site (check it out), with the headline: "Out of record book? Parish the thought!"

---

     It is not often -- ever? -- that "Centenary basketball" and "Son of Sam" gets used in the same sentence. There you have it!

     This is all due to the recent announcement that the NCAA will now officially recognize Robert Parish's statistics while he played for the Gents in the 1970s. As David Berkowitz -- 1970s serial killer in New York City known as "Son of Sam" -- said when they came to arrest him, "What took you so long?"

     The beginning and the end to this story defy description as far as absurdity is concerned. To make a very long story short, back in 1972 when Parish was about to enter  Centenary, the NCAA used a formula based on high school grades and standardized tests to predict a player's GPA, which needed to equate to at least a 1.600. But Parish didn't take the SAT, so Centenary converted his score from the ACT and used that for the NCAA formula. Centenary had done this for the previous two years and nary a peep. But when the No. 1 recruit in the nation showed up, the NCAA took notice and told Centenary that the move was "illegal." (Parish wasn't the only Gents player who this had been applied to.) 
     So the NCAA dropped six years on probation on the Gents -- unless they yanked the scholarships of Parish and four others. Centenary told the NCAA to go jump in the lake.
     (One questions remains more than 45 years later:  Why didn't Parish and the others just take the SAT? It's not like they have to achieve a Harvard-like score.)
     Eventually the NCAA did away with the formula (called the 1.6 rule), but still stuck the hammer to Centenary. There is the favorite (and often misquoted) line by famed coach Jerry Tarkanian, who often said (kind of): "Every time the NCAA gets mad at (UCLA/Kentucky/other big guys), they add another two years' probation to (Centenary/Cleveland State/other little guys). Tarkanian filled in whatever blanks he needed to fit the audience, but the message was clear -- Centenary was getting hosed.
     Parish and others could have gone anywhere else and been instantly eligible, but they stayed on Kings Highway and had a memorable four-year run.
     When it was over, he had 2,334 points and 1,820 rebounds, but you'd never know it because the NCAA did not recognize his stats in its record book. Only two players in the history of college basketball have more points AND rebounds than Parish's totals.
     So what happened? Did someone wake up at the NCAA one day last week and say, "OK, it's been 40 years. Enough's enough?" Were there protest marches outside the NCAA office and they were worried about the PR hit they were taking?
     Actually, to Centenary's credit, the school made an appeal last year to the NCAA seeking "reinstatement." After they woke up the guy in charge of such things, the appeal was granted. And then the NCAA turned around and slapped Louisville around by denying its appeal of the vacated 2013 championship.
     Somewhere out there, Jerry Tarkanian is smiling.
 ---      

     My take (as a sportswriter who wrote about Parish's high school and college careers in Shreveport):

     Surprised by this, but I am not thrilled about it. It's OK.

      It was so long ago, and the NCAA's "banishment" of the Parish statistics did not hurt his fabulous Basketball Hall of Fame career at all. 

      Don't see that it makes a lot of difference now, except for the principle that the NCAA -- after 42 to 46 years -- is admitting how petty it was in 1973-76.

      Centenary benefited greatly from Parish being in school there, Robert and his family benefited greatly, and so did the basketball fans of Shreveport-Bossier and North Louisiana.

      Can't tell you that Centenary did not break rules in admitting Robert to school. LSU (Dale Brown) and Indiana (Bob Knight) gladly would have taken him in their program, but were clear to Parish's high school coach (Ken Ivy) that he would not qualify academically.

      Still, what the NCAA did to Centenary was best captured by then-Gents athletic director/head basketball coach Larry Little's remark that Centenary was given a death-penalty sentence for a speeding ticket.

      Parish, in those years, got enough publicity to be known in many parts of the nation; I know this because I was the Centenary sports information director his senior season and set up several interviews with writers from other areas.

      Plus, we sent out a flier touting Robert's accomplishments to most major newspapers and college/pro basketball sources in the country, and each week the NCAA statistics came out, we made sure to note where Robert would have ranked in points, rebounds, shooting percentage, etc.

      Centenary showed up regularly in the Associated Press national Top Twenty or Top 25 polls because Jerry Byrd of the Shreveport Journal was on the voting panel in Parish's last couple of seasons and would vote the Gents No. 2 or 3 each week, giving them enough points to wind up in the Nos. 17-20 positions. (For some reason, Byrd's vote was taken away after that last season.)

      Where the NCAA six-year penalty hurt Centenary most -- my opinion -- was not Parish himself, but the team not being eligible for postseason play.

      It is highly unlikely that Centenary had a good enough record and enough victories over prominent opponents to have been selected for the NCAA Tournament, which then had a 32-team field (but no more than one team per conference). But the NIT (16-team field) would have been a strong possibility -- a likely spot, because of Robert's presence -- for Centenary.

      The example is this: In the 1975-76 season (Robert's senior year), one of the teams chosen for the NIT was U. North Carolina-Charlotte (UNCC), featuring Cedric Maxwell and Lew Massey and coached by Lee Rose. That season Centenary beat UNCC in Shreveport and lost by one point at Charlotte in the season's next-to-last game (and Centenary missed a wide-open last-second shot).

      UNCC finished second in the NIT, in Madison Square Garden (lost to Kentucky). 

      The next season UNCC made the NCAA Tournament, and went all the way to the Final Four (lost to eventual champion Marquette, by two points). 

      Maxwell would go on to be a teammate of Robert Parish with the Boston Celtics and be the MVP of the 1981 NBA Finals. Lee Rose would move from UNCC to coach at Purdue, and was back in the Final Four with a Joe Barry Carroll-led team in 1980.

       (Small-world department: The Golden State Warriors made Joe Barry Carroll the No. 1 pick in the 1980 NBA Draft and their starting center, and traded their previous starter. That was ... Robert Parish, who made the most out of being sent to Boston. First year: NBA champions.)

       But, of course, Parish then was still persona non grata to the NCAA, and remained that way through this last week. Yes, a 7-footer who could not be seen.

       We saw him. People in Shreveport and North Louisiana saw him. People all over the country, and the world, saw him -- after he got to the NBA. 

       And now we can even see where he ranked -- officially -- in the NCAA statistics. Like it matters a lot now. 

       If the NCAA had done this anywhere from 1973 to 1976, it would have been a lot more appealing to me. 

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http://www.designatedwriters.com/daily-happen/record-book-parish-thought/

Irving Zeidman: sports broadcaster

      (Part 2 of 4)
      I first "met" Irv Zeidman -- play-by-play broadcaster of the 1950s-early 1960s Shreveport Sports -- on radio. 
      He was a fabric of the baseball teams of my youth, the  main connection through radio. Same with the basketball-playing Centenary Gents, for me from 1958 to 1965.
      He was, for those familiar with sports broadcasting in North Louisiana, the forerunner to two future legends: Jim Hawthorne (Centenary, then LSU) and Dave Nitz (Shreveport Captains and Louisiana Tech athletics).
       They were good. They were not IZ.
       My IZ experience began with -- I might have written about it previously --  our first radio in the United States.
       We did not have a television yet; we had never had one in The Netherlands. Radio was how I first connected with sports (Dutch soccer). So when Dad came home with a radio early in 1956, only a month or two after we arrived in Shreveport, it was unique.
       It was in the shape of a microphone with large letters on it: KENT.
       Bill McIntyre's Shreveport Times column on Irv in November 1975 reminded me: "... The station used to give away, or sell, small radio sets. The only station you could get on it was KENT."
       Yes, one station. 
       Hardly knew anything about baseball, but we went to a game early that season -- Texas League Park was within walking distance from where we lived -- and I learned that the games were broadcast on ... KENT.
       Perfect.
       IZ taught me a lot that memorable season (it was the year Ken Guettler hit a Texas League-record 62 home runs for the not-so-hot, seventh-place Sports).
       Speaking of home runs, I recall Irv's call: "It's going ... going ... going ... and (drawing it out) theeeerrrreee she goes." (The reason I recall it is because in the early 1970s, I wrote a column in The Times mentioning that, only I messed it up -- as Irv pointed out to me a few days later.)

Irv Zeidman, second from right, taking part in a mid-1950s Shreveport
Sports baseball promotion; that is majority team owner/operator
Bonneau Peters (white hair, crew cut)

       Here is what else those Sports listeners remember: "IZ for 5D." Cities Service was the main sponsor for the broadcasts; 5D was its premium gasoline, and Irv was doing the commercials. 
       From 1959 to '61, when the Sports were in the Southern Association and one of the broadcast sponsors was Jett Drilling (George Jett was one of the team investors, with general managing partner Bonneau Peters), Irv's slogan became "IZ for JD."
       He was the "voice" from Texas League Park-turned-SPAR Stadium and from the road-game "re-creations" done from a radio studio via wire-ticker play-by-play.
       "He was masterful at that," his daughter Susan recalled. "He had all the sound effects, and he could tell a good story [to fill the time.]"
       To a young listener not exactly aware of that, he could have fooled me ... and did. I thought he was always on the scene ... in Birmingham or Atlanta, Chattanooga, Memphis, New Orleans, Fort Worth, Dallas, wherever. 
       I thought Irv as a baseball broadcaster was as good as any I'd heard. In Shreveport, we had St. Louis Cardinals' games -- as in much of North Louisiana -- and later the Houston Colt 45s/Astros and, for a time in the mid-1960s, the Chicago White Sox, and later the Texas Rangers. Irv Zeidman was as interesting, as professional, as any of the broadcasters.
       And maybe he was even better at college basketball. Any chance I had to listen to him do Centenary games, I tuned in (these were my junior high and high school days). Heard him do Gents' games from our Hirsch Youth Center to Philadelphia to Arizona and throughout the South.
       He was not impartial. OK, Irv was a "homer," no question he was taking the side of the Sports or the Gents. If he disagreed with umpire or officials' calls (and that was often), you knew. And Jerry Byrd wrote in a 1975 Shreveport Journal column, baseball official scorers' decision were not exempt. 
       McIntyre's column tells several stories of how the Centenary delegation, on road trips, made life an adventure for Irv -- and vice versa. 
       One story: "He was such a good sport," said then-Centenary athletic director/head basketball coach Orvis Sigler. "He loved those boys and we had a lot of good times. Irv never met a stranger. He used to like being recognized wherever he went and once, in Richmond, Don Ensley paid a little shoeshine boy to go up to him and say, 'Hey, aren't you Irv Zeidman.' "
       Here is what else Coach Sigler said then, and what I remember:
       "I always thought he was a great broadcaster because he got so excited and involved. He lived and died with those boys. And I used to say he inhaled and didn't chew his food so he wouldn't miss a word."
       For a couple of years, KSLA-TV (Channel 12) in Shreveport showed Centenary home games on a delayed basis late at night, following the 10 o'clock news, with Irv doing the play-by-play. I watched those, often rushing home if the team I was keeping stats for also played that night.
       Centenary dropped its broadcasts in the mid-1960s (not enough sponsors), but Irv didn't drop the Gents. He was an avid fan. 
       At a game in Ruston, maybe 1968, IZ was upset at a string of officials' calls that went against Centenary (we, Louisiana Tech, won the game) and he came out of the stands and headed for the floor toward those officials. He was, thankfully, stopped short.
       Both McIntyre and Byrd's columns mention that, but I didn't need the reminder; I distinctly remember it. By now I was a Tech student and sports information assistant/statistician reluctantly rooting against Centenary. So I had to laugh. Tough luck, IZ.
       By then, he had become a chartered life underwriter for Prudential Insurance, but he never lost his love for the games and his teams.
       In the early 1970s, during the Robert Parish era, Irv had a couple of heart attacks and was warned not to get too excited. So he would go to Centenary games, but when they got close near the end, he would head to the Gold Dome foyer and wait it out. 
       His broadcasting career in Shreveport began in 1954 when he was hired by KENT, primarily to do Sports games. 
       He was a good-luck charm.
       That season, 1954, was the only time from Shreveport's recorded pro baseball history through 1986 -- so, roughly 65 seasons -- that Shreveport finished first in its league in the regular season.
       McIntyre's column: " 'We came in the same year together,' remembers [team manager] Mel McGaha, going back to 1954. 'Every tie he introduced me from then on -- we won the Texas League pennant that first year -- he always took credit for it and passed it on down the line ... IZ as 5D, and he brought us in No. 1.' "
        The next year the Sports won the Texas League playoffs and played in the Dixie Series (vs. the Southern Association champions). The following year was the Guettler season. 
        And Irving darned near brought in the 1960 Sports as Southern Association regular-season champs. Missed by a half-game.
        Couple of other memories: 
        One I remembered, and used in that Times column -- Irv said he was in Yankee Stadium on October 8, 1956, when Don Larsen pitched his World Series perfect game (Game 5 vs. the Brooklyn Dodgers. (Irv, having lived in Brooklyn as a kid, was rooting for the Dodgers.)
        The other: Susan's clippings showed that, in 1961-62, Irv did a weeknight sportscast on KTBS, Channel 3 ... as far as I know, the first TV sportscast in Shreveport. (Bob Griffin on KSLA-12 came along a couple of years later.)
        IZ's broadcast career, and his baseball broadcasts,  actually began in Monroe, La. In fact, his life in Louisiana began there. It was a long road. That's a story in itself.
        Next: Hitting the road         

IZ: broadcaster, actor, singer ... legendary character

     (Part I of 4)    

      There was a young man named Irving
      Who to sing was always right willing
       He burst into song
       At the sound of the gong
       And to hear him was always right thrilling.
                            -- Alice Thomsen

Irving Zeidman ("IZ") at home
in Shreveport's old ballpark.

      Irving Zeidman -- the memorable and legendary IZ in Shreveport -- was a magnetic personality, a center-stage character.
      Center stage, figuratively and literally.
      He was, to those of us who knew him first as a sports broadcaster, our introduction and early education to baseball (Shreveport Sports, 1954-61) and college basketball (Centenary College, late 1950s through mid-1960s).
      After that, through the end of his too-short life, he was most remembered as "Tevye," the milkman/narrator of Fiddler on the Roof, and he starred in the summers of 1971 and '72 in one of the Shreveport Little Theater's most popular productions ever (to this day, I would guess).
      Irv was Tevye -- his Jewish roots showing, his beautiful baritone voice (he really could sing) booming, his large sense of humor ever-present.
      He was a big man (6-foot-4, 200-plus pounds), an athlete once and forever (in his mind), a funny, loud story-telling, room-dominating presence. If the situation presented itself, he would sing ... anywhere, any time.
      He was not -- obviously -- bashful. He was not, at times, humble, and not often soft-spoken. But he was genuine. 
      Long before Fiddler, as a younger man, he participated -- and sang, naturally -- in other plays and even an opera. In the first half of the 1970s, he became a Little Theater regular; among his roles, Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha.
      His dream "trilogy" of roles: Tevye, Don Quixote and Zorba The Greek. But Zorba was his impossible dream. He never got the chance.
      We lost Irv on November 6, 1975, heart disease (arteries). He was only 57. It was, apparently, hereditary; each of his parents also died of heart troubles at about the same age.
      Born too soon. A few years later, and maybe the medical developments that soon came to be -- bypasses, stents, etc. -- might have given IZ more time. 

Young Irving, left, with his father Abraham, mother
Sena, younger brother Morris, in Boonton, N.J.

      Only 57. As we grow older, as society grows older, we realize now his was a relatively short life. But he packed so much into it, and he had so much fun, gave pleasure to so many.
      In his lifetime, he was a good son, brother, football player and discus thrower, a husband, father and grandfather ("Zeda"), a soldier, a radio personality (morning show), a baseball-basketball-football announcer, insurance salesman, community theater actor who might have gone big-time. 
      If you knew Irv -- and that became my privilege as a young sportswriter -- he was (obviously as I write this) unforgettable. 
      He knew my parents, knew their story and, because he'd grown up Jewish -- his parents were immigrants from Europe --  and he'd been in the U.S. Army in World War II, he could relate.
      We would see him around town, and he always spoke. His visits to The Shreveport Times sports department (early 1970s), mostly to see sports editor/columnist (and friend) Bill McIntyre -- who wrote about the Sports and Centenary -- were always interesting. Irv, as noted, took over the room, always with stories and opinions.
      He had grown up in Boonton, N.J., close to New York City (where he was born) and his boast for years was he was "the greatest athlete to ever come out of Boonton." The reply would be: Was there any competition?
---
      This year, as I again researched professional baseball in Shreveport and touched on the first "golden age" of the Shreveport Sports (in the early 1950s), I thought of Irv often.
      Knew he was a native New Yorker, transplanted Southerner. But when and how had he come to Shreveport?
       Remembered his youngest son, Danny, from athletics in the early 1960s and at Byrd High School. Remember Irv's wife (Hazel) with a strawberry-blonde complexion; Danny favored her. Knew of Irv's sports and stage connections.
       But what else? Wanted to write about him.
       So through Internet and then Facebook searches, I found a grandson, who led me to the two Zeidman daughters -- Barbara and Susan -- who survive. The two sons, David (Susan's twin) and Danny, died too soon.
        Susan, as it turns out, has resided in this area (Fort Worth-Dallas) for years. She now lives in Frisco; we corresponded by Facebook, and then met recently, where we perused a large stack of newspaper clippings/stories about IZ, and photos, too.
        Some of what I am writing is taken from those clippings, especially the columns done by McIntyre (The Times) and Jerry Byrd (Shreveport Journal) a day or two after Irving's death, recounting his life and contributions. Some are Susan's recollections.
         Some are mine. Because he was a significant part of my early days in this country and Shreveport.
         Next: IZ, the sports broadcaster

Saying "well done" to Coach Sigler

        I want to thank Coach Orvis Sigler's daughters and his widow, Joanne, for asking me to speak at his memorial service Saturday in Shreveport.
        To be honest, I was not a close family friend or even that close to Coach Sigler. But I was a longtime admirer, I certainly appreciated what he did for athletics and other areas in Shreveport-Bossier and beyond, and perhaps because of what I wrote on the blog about him last April, I was asked to be part of the tribute to him.
         It is always an honor to be asked to do a eulogy, and it's never easy.
         I want to share a couple of thoughts by Taylor Moore, the former Shreveport Captains president and a partner in the sporting goods business with Coach Sigler.
         "Will Rogers said he never met a man he didn't like," Taylor told me Saturday before the memorial service. "Well, Orvis never met a [basketball] referee he liked."
         I remember a couple of antagonistic situations involving Centenary basketball -- and thus Coach Sigler: (1) the rivalry with Oklahoma City University teams coached by smart-aleck Abe Lemons that a couple of times erupted into free-for-alls; and (2) the refereeing of one Bill Valentine, then a controversial American League baseball umpire who also worked basketball in the Missouri Valley Conference, from which Centenary got its officials for home games.
         Saturday evening, Taylor sent me a note, saying, "I  remember Orvis telling about the days at Hirsch [Youth Center] when the player benches were on the end of the court, under the basket, and how that gave him a better opportunity to work the officials every time they passed in front of him.
        "It was a shame that Bill Valentine passed away a couple of years ago because they had some real battles. ... I am not sure both of them are in the same place for the afterlife, but if they are, I bet Valentine has already teed him up."
         Before I share my speech with readers -- it will be a recap for those who attended -- I think back to the Sigler coaching days and if you had told me then that I would be one of the people speaking at his memorial service, I would not have believed it. But repeating, it was an honor.
---
COACH SIGLER memorial speech – Jan. 7, 2017
      To begin, I attended Oklahoma at TCU basketball game Tuesday night. TCU has a beautiful new coliseum on the site of its old coliseum, and I was reading about the history of the old place, Daniel-Meyer Coliseum. The first game there was in 1961, and TCU beat the Centenary Gents 63-61. And I  know who the Centenary coach was that night. So it’s a small-world connection to today.
       Today we pay respect to Coach Sigler and his family, and when we talk about Coach, respect is the appropriate word.       

Coach Sigler, with daughters Sally and Susan

     I think all of us here feel as if we were blessed to have this man as part of our lives, and that Shreveport-Bossier was fortunate that he chose to make this his permanent home – and that we had him for so long.
       He already was a well-traveled coach (as many of them are) when he arrived in the spring of 1958. The man from Missouri, by way of the U.S. Navy and later the U.S. Military Academy (where he was head basketball coach for four seasons and an assistant football coach on a staff that included two legendary names, Col. Earl “Red” Blaik and Paul Dietzel), became a Shreveporter. And almost 59 years later, here we are to honor him.
         We don’t get to Shreveport-Bossier much these days, except for Holocaust Remembrance events and, unfortunately, memorial services, and that is where we saw Coach Sigler and Joanne in the past couple of years. Always good to see them, and to know that even as his physical strength declined, Coach was still super sharp. And so it was a pleasure to talk with him and then write about him on my blog last April because as I wrote, he was one of the most valuable people in Shreveport-Bossier and ­– to stretch it, Louisiana – in athletics, and in the community, over the past six decades.
          He proved to be so much more than just a very capable basketball coach.  He was a diligent, convincing recruiter, and he was as good or maybe better a promoter of the sport and of athletics than he was a coach.
          He was so wise, so knowledgeable, so well-connected in basketball and athletics all over the country, and he was a pleasant person to be around. Well, mostly pleasant. I mean, five technical fouls in one game? That will get you kicked out of 2½ games these days.
         And he was such a contributor.
         In Shreveport, you have to start with his influence in taking Centenary basketball from a strong small-college program to NCAA Division I a year after he arrived. He took the Gents to a competitive, big-time level, a challenge even though it was such a small school. He started, I believe, the first basketball camp for kids in this area. One of his biggest achievements was in 1961 helping start the state high school basketball tournament, the Top Twenty as it became known, and he was its guiding director the first several years when it became an established and popular event, which Shreveport was proud to have. It’s now about to be 57 years old and still going.
        You know, of course, about his great interest and involvement with the Independence Bowl. Others will talk about that.
        He was the Centenary athletic director who oversaw the building and opening of the Gold Dome, an impressive monument of sorts to him. You could say Robert Parish played there, but also say it is the house that Coach Orvis Sigler built.
         You think about Centenary College basketball, and that’s where so many of us first met him. It was a job that – as oldest daughter Susan told me --  Paul Dietzel recommended to him and also recommended him for it. I think you’ll agree that for the 10 seasons he coached the Gents and five more that he was the athletic director, they took on some big-name schools and helped give Shreveport a lot of big-time basketball.
     Just as with Army, it was a challenge for its coach because of limitations in size, but the Gents were competitive, they were tough, and what I remember most is they were fun to watch and to follow.
       For us kids in Shreveport-Bossier in the late 1950s and into the 1960s, Centenary was our basketball team. Dad, who was a great basketball fan, and I went games at Hirsch Youth Center many times – but not often enough for me – and I listened to IZ (Irv Zeidman) doing Centenary games on radio, home and away, as often as I could. And how about those late-night TV rebroadcasts on Channel 12 in the early 1960s? Stayed up for most of those.
       Actually, as I was thinking about this, I realized I was a Centenary basketball fan before I was a fan of LSU or Louisiana Tech (but not before the Shreveport Sports and New York Yankees, thank you).
         And so I quickly want to give you some names – my Coach Sigler-era Centenary basketball favorites, and I apologize for the dozens I can’t get to: Gerald “Tooley” Martello, Jackie Crawford, Leon Shaw, Don “Dusty” Ensley, Dale Van Bibber (Dad loved him because of the Dutch name and then we got to know him when he helped Ken Ivy coach Woodlawn to a state championship), the best-known redhead in Shreveport and the only Sigler player eventually to also be the Centenary coach and athletic director – Riley Wallace, Willard “Soup” Moore, Stan McAfoos, Jerry Butcher, “The Ringgold Rifle” from my wife’s high school -- Barrie Haynie, Larry Shoemaker, Larry Ward and John Blankenship (have to mention them together), and three Shreveport-Bossier guys (Jimmy Williams from Byrd, Andy Fullerton from Fair Park, and one of Centenary’s greatest athletes, a very good basketball player but better in baseball, Cecil Upshaw of Bossier).
         And one more name: Tom Kerwin. Captain Hook. Yes, we all loved watching Robert Parish play at Centenary, but I’m telling you that watching Tom and that fabulous hook shot is one of my favorite basketball memories.
          Kerwin’s greatest game? I was there, as a freshman basketball statistician for Louisiana Tech. I can tell you that it was very hard for me personally to pull against Centenary; I really had mixed emotions for four years at Tech. But in late February 1966, near the end of Tom’s senior season, we came to Hirsch and we had a good team, an improving team. That night we “held” Kerwin to 47 points (which set the Centenary school record; Barrie had scored 46 a few games earlier). Funny thing is, we – Tech -- won the game in overtime. That’s a story in itself, and some of you remember it.
           Coach Sigler always said that was one of his most painful basketball losses. But basketball is one thing; painful losses come in life, too. And here were some great lessons Coach Sigler taught us: You keep going; you persevere.
           Job-wise, after 15 years at Centenary, it was time to move on. He did quickly, helping start a very successful sporting goods business. Later he went into specialty advertising, and he ran the Shreveport Sports Authority. He was deeply involved in the Independence Bowl. He found new worlds.
         But real losses, painful losses: A spouse of 25 years and later his only son.  And yet he found another new world, and a whole new family.      

Coach and Joanne (photo by Roger S. Braniff Sr.)

     Coach and Joanne were blessed to find   each other and marry in 1970. Two families joined into one. A good pairing, don’t you think? Yes, Coach could be just plain-spoken, exacting and tough, but Joanne was a match – that’s an understatement -- and in this community, there were outgoing and omnipresent.
        Joanne, as many of you know, took her turn in the media world, writing columns for The Shreveport Times. After 7½ years, her last column – in early December 2014 – was probably her best, about World War II servicemen and in particular about her hero, a Navy bomber pilot from Missouri named Orvis Sigler Jr.
         And from my media standpoint, here is what I liked about Coach Sigler – no matter what the subject, but especially Centenary basketball and the Independence Bowl, he was going to address it with an honest, studied evaluation. He was going to do and say what he felt was best for Centenary or Shreveport or Louisiana.  
         After I wrote my blog last year, I laughed when Missy Parker Setters, director of the Independence Bowl, said that Coach and Joanne were still part of the scene and that he was still “feisty.”
          Yes, he was. And as daughter Sally noted last week, in his final days and the final decline, Coach could still be “strong as an ox” when he wanted something.
           We think of how good a family man he was, how good a friend, how dedicated a coach, recruiter, administrator and promoter, and how big a role he played in so many ways. We thank his family for sharing him with us.
           Mostly, thank you, Coach Sigler. We respect what you gave us.
  

Tom Kerwin: the terrific "Captain Hook"

     He is 71, a retired teacher, a widower with two grown children and his first grandchild born recently, and he has lived in Pine Knoll Shores, N.C. -- a tiny place on the Atlantic Ocean coast -- since 2000.

Tom Kerwin, Centenary's "Captain Hook"

    My attempts to find out "whatever happened to" Tom Kerwin didn't work out entirely because he didn't answer repeated calls or reply to messages.
     But I can tell you this: He was one of my favorite basketball players ever. He is a legend for those of us from North Louisiana who remember him.
    Tom Kerwin was "Captain Hook." Still is to me.
    He had a unique talent -- the hook shot.
   Wherever the Centenary College Gentlemen played from 1963 to 1966, but especially in Shreveport, fans got to see the sweetest hook shot of any player I've seen, and that's 60 years worth.
   The 6-foot-7 center/forward from Long Branch, N.J., would go on to play a little pro basketball. He wasn't a great jumper, he wasn't fast, and he was thin, so he was overmatched in the pros and his game didn't excel after college.
    But I know many fans from our area and that era will agree, he was a memorable college player ... because of that hook shot.
   This was a real hook shot -- the wide, sweeping, up-and-over motion, not the "baby" hook shots you see in today's game. Yeah, Kerwin's hooks were a throwback to the 1940s and '50s; they were old-timey, even in the mid-1960s. Today, it is ancient.
   Tom also was called, if I recall correctly, "Tom Terrific" after the cartoon character created in the late 1950s. He was terrific; undoubtedly Centenary's best player before Robert Parish (1973-76).
    In fact, Kerwin was a better scorer at the small private college than the future Basketball Hall of Famer. It's true.
    Parish only once in four seasons topped Kerwin's three season scoring averages (25.2, 24.2, 27.9) at Centenary (in Division I at the time, Kerwin wasn't eligible for varsity play as a freshman). Parish had 30 points or more in 15 games; Kerwin did it 24 times.
    Even now, his career scoring average (25.8) is the best ever at Centenary, which is now in Division III athletics.
    When Parish set the school single-game record with 50 points early in his freshman year, the record he broke was Kerwin's 47. Even after Parish's sensational four years, Kerwin had six of the top eight single-game point totals (five 40 or more).
    Impressed yet? If you had seen him play, you'd know.
    Because he didn't score that often on easy stuff (dunks or layups or second-chance rebounds). He did it most often with that devastating hook shot.
    He'd set up mostly on the low right side of the lane, take the entry pass, maneuver, and -- swoop -- deliver on the hook. He was so accurate with it.
    For instance, in his greatest games, he was 20-for-26, 19-for-31, 17-for-24, 15-for-25, 12-for-16, 17-for-30. In many games, "Captain Hook" -- "Tom Terrific" -- was unstoppable.
---
    He wasn't the first Kerwin in his family to play college basketball in Louisiana. Oldest brother Jim, three years before Tom, came from South New Jersey to be a three-time All-Southeastern Conference guard, leading scorer in the SEC, for Tulane.
    But Jim, a longtime coach now retired and living in Norman, Okla., vouches for "little" brother (Jim was a guard, five inches shorter than Tom).
    "In all my years of coaching and playing, he was as good or better at hook shots than anyone I've seen," said Jim. "He was a great player."
     This is a common view.
     "A super guy, the best hook shot I ever saw or played against," said Barrie Haynie, Kerwin's four-year teammate at Centenary, the "Ringgold (La.) Rifle," as he was called. "We roomed together on [road-game] trips. We had a lot of fun on those trips."
      (When Kerwin set the Centenary record with 47 points in an overtime loss to Louisiana Tech in February 1966 -- the infamous "Donny Henry punch" game I've written about previously -- it was only two weeks after Haynie's record 46 points against nationally ranked Houston.)
       Orvis Sigler was Kerwin's coach at Centenary and recruited him after seeing him play once at Long Branch High School. Tom's coach there, Frank Millner, was the recruiting contact.
       "He had that shooting touch," Sigler said recently. "He could shoot the ball as well as anyone I'd seen, especially that hook shot.
       "He could turn his head to see the basket; he had the peripheral vision to line up the shot, and he was turned away so he could keep it away from the defender. He was so adept at it. He had worked on that hook shot for years."
       But he also kept working while he was at Centenary, and Sigler -- now 93 -- admits that even he and assistant Doug Mooty had little idea that Kerwin would be as proficient a scorer as he became.
       I asked Coach Sigler, "Did you think he would be as great as he was when you recruited him?"
       "Not quite," he replied. "We thought he'd be a good one, a very good one, knew he'd give us some height under the basket. But he really developed his shooting, especially as a sophomore. ... Wish he could have played all four years (on the varsity)."
      Kerwin's game wasn't all hook shots, Sigler pointed out. "He could turn and face the basket, and make the jump shot, or he'd duck under [the defender] and make a move toward the rim, but mostly he went to the hook ... played with his back to the basket mostly."
    Like Parish, Kerwin was drafted in the NBA by the San Francisco [later Golden State] Warriors -- third pick, fifth round, 43rd overall, 1966. He chose instead to play semipro ball, with the Phillips 66 Oilers (Bartlesville, Okla.), where Jim Kerwin had gone after Tulane and was still on the team.
      "He was our highest-paid player," Jim recalled. "A two-year contract at $17,000 a year; that was big time for that league."
     That low-post presence also was noted, Jim Kerwin recalled, by the Phillips 66 coach, Gary Thompson. "He told me," said Jim, "that of all the players he coached, Tom posted up better than anyone."
    But a broken ankle, placed in a cast, sidelined Tom for 3-4 months and the next season, the semipro league began fading with many of its top players, especially the big men, heading for the new American Basketball Association. Tom was among them.
     He went to the Pittsburgh Pipers, but played only 13 games, 68 minutes, with 14 points and 20 rebounds. It was a championship team that first ABA season, led by Basketball Hall of Fame forward Connie Hawkins.
     What Sigler appreciated most about Tom Kerwin, other than being the scoring leader of probably the best team Orvis had in his 10 years as Centenary coach (16-8 against a competitive D-I schedule in 1963-64), was Tom's attitude.
     "He was a good kid," Sigler said. "He did what you asked him to do; he worked hard. I stayed on him pretty hard sometimes, but he responded to it well. I couldn't have asked for a better person to coach."
     Haynie remembered something else.
     "He liked to sleep," he said of his road roomie. "He didn't like to get up early. I'd get up and get going, but Tom, he'd stay in bed another five hours. ... He liked to read, and he was a good student. All of us could have done better [in school] probably, but he had no problems."
---     
     Jim Kerwin probably was the first to see the Tom Kerwin hook shot ... when they were kids in Long Branch.
     "He wasn't strong enough [early on] to shoot a jump shot, so he would shoot hooks," Jim recalled.
     And then he joked, "Anytime he tried to shoot jump shots against me, I would block them."
     They lived in an area with plenty of future athletes, on a block with only four homes together, next to a Catholic school with a playground and basketball goals and also next to an alleyway with a goal that was in much use, even with a spotlight hung for night practice. How many hooks shots did Tom fire up there?
     There were six kids in the James and Margaret Kerwin family, all achievers and eventually recipients of college scholarships. They were an Irish family -- all four of the kids' grandparents were immigrants from Ireland (Tom has made a number of trips to that country) -- and they were sports-minded.

Tom, as a high school player
(from the Asbury Park Press)

     Both parents were athletes as youngsters (the mother was a high school basketball player) and their sports interests carried on.
     From the Internet: "The Margaret M. and James J. Kerwin awards are given each year to the outstanding male and female basketball players in the Jersey Shore. These prestigious awards have been a Shore fixture since 1974 and are given in honor of two great Jersey Shore sports legends."
       Jim and Tom would become legends, too, in basketball. Earlier this year when the Asbury Park Press had a series on the Jersey Shore's top players (by decades), the Kerwins were among the stars of the late 1950s/early 1960s.
       Jim was the big shot in high school, averaging a state-record 40 points a game as a junior and then more than 36 a game as a senior when he led Croydon Hall, a private school in nearby Middletown to the independent school New Jersey state championship in 1959.
      They were teammates that season, Tom as a freshman. Jim Sr., a prosecutor in Newark, N.J., until a heart problem forced him to change professions, was the Croydon Hall athletic director.
      Tom eventually went to public school (Long Branch High) and kept growing ... and shooting hook shots. He was a high 20s points-per-game scorer and first-team All-State, all classes, just as Jim had been.
      Heavily recruited ("we got tired of talking to people on the phone," he said), Jim originally signed with West Virginia, where Jerry West had just finished his college career and the team lost the NCAA title game by one point to California. But in those days, players could sign multiple conference letters of intent, and Jim's final destination was the SEC and the Deep South (Tulane).
      And there he scored 1,462 career points (22.2 per game) and was second in the nation in scoring in 1963.
      By then Tom was also in the Deep South, a freshman at Centenary.
      In the spring of his senior year in high school (1962), Tom had interest in Miami, and St. John's, and -- as Sigler recalled -- was thinking of going to Cincinnati, the reigning two-time NCAA champion ('61 and '62).
      But "we worked on his dad," Sigler said, and Papa Kerwin convinced Tom that Centenary, a small school playing a big, challenging schedule, was the right place for him.
      A Centenary player at the time -- and future assistant coach, then head coach and athletic director there -- was a factor, too.
      "Riley Wallace had a big influence on Tom," Jim Jr. recalled. "He helped recruit him. He was a senior when Tom was a freshman."
       "I thought [Tom] would be a very good player," Jim Jr. said, "but he needed more strength. If they'd had weightlifting, strength programs like they do today, he would have really benefited.
      "He was a really good competitor."
      And Tom was a really good college rebounder, not with power or leaping ability but because of smarts and finesse. His 748 rebounds (10.1 per game) remain among the best in Centenary history.
       But it was his scoring, his shot, that people remember.
---
       The second Kerwin brother, Billy -- a year older than Tom -- followed Jim to Tulane, but as a track athlete. (He died last July.)  A younger sister, Marie, followed Tom to Centenary and graduated there. 
       Basketball became Jim's career. Drafted by an NBA team (New York Knicks), he wound up with the Phillips 66 Oilers for four years and then embarked on a long coaching career, much of it in Oklahoma.
       He was the top assistant coach to Billy Tubbs at University of Oklahoma in the 1987-88 season when a great Sooners team rolled to the NCAA championship game, only to be upset by Big Eight rival Kansas.
       In 1992, he began an 11-year stay as head coach at Western Illinois. That included five consecutive winning seasons before a decline.
        Meanwhile, Tom was out of basketball after the brief ABA stay, but he found a home, a teaching job -- and a wife -- in Pittsburgh.
       Gwen Grant was a University of Pittsburgh graduate and teaching public school when she met Tom. They soon married, and their two kids grew to be college basketball players -- Kevin, a four-year letterman at Holy Cross, and Bridget -- known as Bree -- for a year at the Naval Academy.
       Kevin now is a film producer/director based in Cleveland. Bree is a sustainability specialist for the City of Kernersville, N.C., and a recent new mother.
       Tom and Gwen were married for 43 years until her death in early September 2011. In 2000, Gwen -- lover of the ocean, according to her obituary -- must have convinced Tom to make their home near the Atlantic in North Carolina. 
---
     Jim Pruett, a very good shooter of the basketball who starred at guard for Fair Park High's 1963 Class AAA state champions and then at Louisiana Tech University, saw Kerwin play for Centenary -- up close -- and here is what he remembers:
     "Tom Kerwin was just terrific. That hook shot was a thing of beauty. Never understood how anyone could make that thing, but he definitely could."
      As Pruett noted, "After he shot, all we did was take the ball out of the net."
      No question, as basketball fans, Tom Kerwin had us all hooked. He was our Captain Hook.