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St. John Arena
Following their defeat of Linden-McKinley, East High’s reward was a Thursday night Central Region semi-final match at the Fairgrounds Coliseum against the Zanesville High School Blue Devils. Before the regional finals games took place, reps from all four teams—East, Newark, Zanesville, and Portsmouth—gathered at the Fort Hayes Hotel in downtown Columbus to discuss the tournament.
Both Newark and Zanesville, co-winners of the Central Ohio League, had traditionally fielded good, solid basketball teams. They were the only high schools in their immediate rural surroundings, and, therefore, they were large schools with a wide swath of students. Each school automatically drew the best athletes from their area. A section of Franklin County—where the Columbus schools were located—might have three high schools in one section of the city. The good players were dispersed among them. To play against Zanesville or Newark High was like playing against an all-star team from each of those respective districts.
Zanesville had beaten Bellaire St. John, 72–52, to get this far. Bellaire had one of the most prolific scorers in the state, Allan Hornyak, who averaged 38 points per game, and Zanesville held him to just 14 points by playing stellar defense. “Zanesville does a lot of things well,” Bob Hart noted. “They’re methodical and very well disciplined.” As had long been his habit, Hart sought out gritty teams to scrimmage with before the start of each season. Before the current season had gotten under way, he had taken his team to Newark. “And we were pretty even,” he remembered.
By this time, East had played more than enough games during its undefeated season for any team to get a good scouting report outlining their strengths and weaknesses. The Zanesville coaches were well aware that Linden-McKinley had often collapsed on the inside against the Tigers when Ratleff or Conner had the ball, believing the duo had only one outlet if they didn’t shoot and that was to kick the ball back out to Bo-Pete Lamar. The implication was that the Tigers didn’t have a player who could destroy an opponent from long range aside from Lamar.
Grady Smith (no relation to the team’s Kevin Smith) had not seen a lot of action during the season. He was an able player and possessed a very sweet outside jump shot. There were those among the student body who imagined his basketball fortunes had been stymied by Lamar’s transfer to the school. The feeling was that if Lamar hadn’t joined the East team, Grady Smith would have started alongside Larry Walker. Grady Smith was a senior experiencing his last hurrah on the high school court. Bob Hart had a motto—and accompanying thoughts—that he had shared with his team and coaches: “Good team spirit and morale, one for all, all for one, is the most important asset of a winning team. So I believe the solution to the problem of morale is very simple—all you have to do is win and your squad morale will be good.” The Tigers were winning; Grady Smith didn’t whine about his lack of playing time. And now, thick in the tournament, Bob Hart, knowing his team had been scouted in depth, just might need Grady Smith’s outside shooting at some point.
High school gyms tended to be small and rather intimate, so the canyon-like space of the Coliseum was a bewildering environment that most teams had to get used to. But to East High, the Coliseum was as comfortable as a home court; they had played eleven games there thus far in their season. Don Stahl, the Zanesville coach, complained to the Ohio High School Athletic Association that East High had an advantage because it had played so many games there. Coliseum officials huddled and decided to give Stahl’s team extra practice time on the Coliseum floor. When Stahl’s team arrived for practice, they shivered in the locker room. It was chilly. Perhaps the custodians hadn’t turned on the heat for the locker rooms just yet? Surely the court would be much warmer. It wasn’t. The Coliseum was always a drafty place, the temperature sometimes hovering around 40 degrees. Players were blowing their warm breaths into their hands. Stahl cut the practice short after just fifteen minutes. Hart challenged the grumbling from coaches about his team having an advantage at the Coliseum. In his mind, the fact that a brand-new floor had been installed at the beginning of the season neutralized any advantage his team might have had. “That new floor is a big difference now,” he opined in early February, trying to quiet the complaints. “It’s completely neutral to any team in the tournament, and that includes East.” The coach was being a bit disingenuous. The Tigers did indeed have an advantage at the arena.
At East, a day before the game, Hart put his Tigers through a ninety-minute workout. Mostly it consisted of shooting drills. He didn’t want to hear any Tiger player talking about the last time they had played Zanesville, in a regional tournament matchup a year earlier that East won, 83–51. The Zanesville team this year was vastly superior to the squad from a year ago. They had proven they had better balance and more outside shooting power.
Bob Hart sat and watched as the Blue Devils of Zanesville High raced up and down the court with genuine confidence at the game’s outset. It was a savvy and all-senior starting lineup. They hit their first two shots, then hit three more. That sent a buzz through the crowd, and the buzz kept up as Zanesville, astonishingly, fired in three more consecutive shots. Eight for eight. Hart didn’t panic but his eyes widened. There was a reason Zanesville was currently ranked No. 4 in the state. Hart called a timeout. He saw that Zanesville was completely ignoring his point guard, Larry Walker—who had an anemic outside shot—and crowding their defense down low against Ratleff and Conner. Play resumed, and minutes later the buzzer sounded, bringing the first quarter to a close. The Tiger faithful saw something they were absolutely unaccustomed to seeing on the scoreboard: An opponent was leading their Tigers, 19–14. The Zanesville High followers, crowded onto their side of the Coliseum, were ecstatic. Hart looked over at Grady Smith and motioned for him to check in to the game at the start of the second quarter. Then he drew up plans for either Eddie Rat or Roy Hickman to handle the ball and scoop it over to Smith when he rounded the perimeter. “East knew it was in for a tough night” is how local reporter Lou Berliner put it.
Seizing on his moment, as if sent straight from central casting, Grady Smith started shooting, and scoring. His first jump shot went in, as did his second. He was feeling it. So he shot again, and it went in. Yet another shot. And it also went in. The East crowd rose up out of their seats. As the half drew to a close, East had reclaimed the lead, 37–33, the last points the result of a lovely lob pass from Conner to Eddie Rat, who scored. It was not a comfortable lead, but it gave the tired Tiger players a burst of needed confidence as they made their way to the locker room. The Zanesville coaches were fairly content. Their 2-1-2 zone, principally designed to stifle outside shooting by the opponent, had been working perfectly, and their senior leadership was beyond being rattled against a tough opponent.
Midway through the third quarter, Zanesville was up again, 43–41. Conner quickly tied the score with a basket. (Conner scored only 3 points in the first half; he’d produce 14 points in the second half.) By the end of the quarter, East had a 56–49 lead that seemed more fragile than a 7-point spread should have been. In the fourth quarter, Hart called for a semi-stall, slowing the momentum of the game with his team holding on to the ball as long as possible before taking a shot. They cut two minutes off the clock on a couple of possessions, frustrating Zanesville. With six minutes left, the East High lead was 60–52. With 3:55 left, Eddie Rat broke loose for a score, then Conner did the same thing. East was now leading 66–54. The East bench players, leaning onto the court and displaying wild exuberance, got called for a technical foul. It mattered little as Zanesville couldn’t catch the Tigers now. The game ended—and none too soon for Bob Hart—with a score of 72–65. Ratleff had 16 points, Conner 17 points, and Lamar 23 points. And East outrebounded Zanesville, 35–26. But it was the unsung Grady Smith—who had come off the bench and deposited 12 points at a crucial time in the game that most impressed Hart. “You’ve got to throw all kinds of bouquets in Grady Smith’s direction,” Hart allowed after the game. “We worked all week with Hickman out on the point to set up Grady.“
With all of the City League teams from Columbus eliminated from the tournament save East High, the city, and especially the inner-city denizens, began turning its attention and support toward the Tigers. Fans who had railed against the East High juggernaut during the season when the fate of their own teams was at stake were now coming out to root for the Tigers. It was city pride. The outpouring of black Tiger fan support quadrupled. Given the continuing turmoil over the King assassination, law enforcement in the city sensed a potential for urban mayhem at the Coliseum, a feared clash between white and black. It meant extra pressure on Jack Gibbs: If any unrest was ignited, he knew East High would bear the brunt of the blame. He had told his students as much. Whether it was the presence of extra security, or Gibbs’s warnings about unrest, there had been nary a problem thus far. The unique ball skills of East High’s team had tamped down all those murmurings of disorder. Jack Gibbs swelled with pride. Local whites began rooting for the Tigers.
After the victory against Zanesville High, the small restaurants and burger joints up and down Mount Vernon Avenue filled up with East High fans. They bounded into the Chesapeake Bar and Grill to order the pork chop sandwiches. They sidled up to the counter at Sandy’s, the hamburger joint on the avenue, and ordered fries and burgers and milkshakes. The coolest of the cool stood around on the corner in front of neon-lit Sandy’s in their leather jackets wolfing their burgers down, talking about what Eddie Rat, Bo-Pete, and Grady Smith (“Gradeee!”) had just done against Zanesville. In the cold and winning night, everyone was happy.
With their defeat of Zanesville, East High had won one of the two regional final games. Next they needed to get into the final of the state tournament. But first they had to face Newark High, which also had a mighty basketball pedigree. Those who wanted to be nostalgic might mention that the school had won three state basketball titles, one in 1936, another in 1938, and a final one in 1943. Many years separated the present team from such glory. The team, however, was talented, physical, and, because of their state title drought, hungry.
Despite some nifty defensive efforts against them by double teaming Ratleff so often, it would have done opposing coaches well to remember that East High’s current team was averaging a school record 84 points a game. They were capable of exploding at any moment in a game. Earlier in the season, Fred Heischman, the West High coach, had said that East could certainly be beaten, but everything would have to be “on your side,” meaning the team that would beat the Tigers would have to have some luck.
Of all the teams he had faced thus far in the tournament, Bob Hart admitted that Newark gave him the most concern. They were a physical team with enviable height and crafty veterans. “Newark could have the strength to challenge the Tigers inside, along with a size advantage at three of five positions,” noted The Columbus Dispatch sportswriter Dick Otte. Newark’s front line—the players who would be grappling with East’s Conner and Ratleff—consisted of six-foot-five Dennis Odle; six-foot-four Gary Carter; and six-foot-three Bruce Kibler. Otte wrote that that trio possessed an “ability to get out and move on offense, or block shots defensively while retaining the muscle to contend for rebounds at either end of the court.” John Daniels, at six foot four, was an aggressive guard known for his shot-blocking abilities. (He also had been one of the state’s finest quarterbacks.) Newark’s other guard was five-foot-ten John Snow.
Newark coach Dick Schenk’s plan to beat East was to slow the ball down. He and his assistant coaches figured the best chance for their team to win was to play a very methodical game. And that is exactly what Newark did in front of the noisy crowd during the first quarter. East’s scoring was anemic; Nick Conner didn’t score a single point the entire first quarter. When the buzzer sounded, Newark led, 14–8. Eight points represented East’s lowest first-quarter scoring all season. It became evident in the second quarter that East was having a hard time containing the Newark trio of Snow, Odle, and Carter, all of whom were on their way to double-digit scoring nights. At one point during the second period, Newark jumped out to a 12-point lead, large enough to be alarming to the East partisans. Even the Tiger cheerleaders looked worried. On defense, Newark employed their stingy 2-3 zone, the players’ claw-like hands smothering East’s outside shooters during the limited occasions when they were touching the ball. When the buzzer sounded for halftime, Newark was leading, 25–19. East had managed to cut Newark’s 12-point lead in half. Perhaps just as significantly, Newark’s Dennis Odle committed his fourth foul, this one involving Roy Hickman; he had one foul left before fouling out of the game. Walking to the locker room, Bob Hart was already strategizing about the second half. He realized he would have to make some quick changes to upset Newark’s potent scheme.
The shifty Wildcats of Newark had a unique ability to adapt to any team they were playing, a tactic that had bewildered their opponents. When they had played rival Zanesville earlier in the season, Newark got stomped, 74–43. The rematch was a different story: Newark took Zanesville into double overtime and won the game, 44–42, using, once again, their slow-down game plan. In the current East game, East, which prided itself on its rebound prowess, had already been outrebounded, 23–18.
When Hart and his Tigers emerged from the locker room after the first half, they had a new game plan in place. Hickman, the more physical player, replaced Larry Walker at the point guard position running the Tiger offense. Kevin Smith, the six-foot-five forward, started in place of Hickman. The chess moves by Hart were to counter Newark’s height and physical play. Both Ratleff and Conner were having an off night offensively, constantly pestered by the tall Newark players. That problem showed again early in the second half when Conner got into a scuffle with a couple of Newark players. The refs jumped in quickly as crowds from both sides of the Coliseum started grumbling. The Tigers were in need of a scoring lift. It was time for Bo-Pete Lamar to start shooting—and he did. He hit two well-timed, long-range jump shots. East finally took a 1-point lead as the third quarter came to a close. Newark’s Odle had returned in the third, but East’s taller lineup had neutralized him. In the final five minutes of the fourth quarter, the game remained tight, and the lead change was seesawing back and forth. Fans on both sides were wild with emotion. When the clock got down to thirty seconds, East had the ball. It was in the hands of Lamar, who did what he was accustomed to doing: He shot it. When he missed, the ball bounced right back to him, and he shot again, missing. Hart grimaced on the bench as Newark raced up the court. Newark took one shot close to the basket—with the crowd on its feet—then another, and a third, all close in, missing all three. East got the ball back, and Newark, now desperate, fouled Eddie Rat. He connected on both free throws, making the score 55–50. The seconds ticked away, dooming Newark until the clock ran out of time, sending East High’s sweating Tigers off the court with a nerve-racking victory. They were drowned in wild applause. Their coaches were grinning; Jack Gibbs was looking for someone to bear-hug. The Tigers were bound for the four-team state tournament. “It was a great game,” conceded Newark coach Dick Schenk. “And it should have been the state finals.” Eddie Rat, who was once again headed to the state finals, had been held to 9 points, his lowest total all season. He was sanguine about it. “They wouldn’t go in, but we won. That’s more important,” he said. Bob Hart singled out Kevin Smith, and Bo Lamar—who finished with 20 points—for special praise.
It was a testament to the preparedness of Jack Gibbs that he was ready to answer any and all questions about tickets for the next game. He had mimeographed the guidelines on a piece of paper and distributed them to reporters. “Tell the folks that the East High students and the faculty will be given first crack at our tickets,” he said, amid the hullabaloo. “Students can buy their tickets Monday and Tuesday in their classrooms.”
The stage was now set. Four teams had punched their way to the state championship finals. They were Toledo Libbey, Canton McKinley, Dayton Chaminade, and East High. The games would be played at St. John Arena, the venerable arena that sat on the edge of the Ohio State campus.
The Tigers of East High were defending state champions. They would be going against the tide of history as no Columbus team had ever won back-to-back state basketball titles.
Coaches Bob Hart and Paul Pennell with three Tigers who played on both the basketball and baseball teams during that historic season. The players, left to right: Kenny Mizelle, Eddie Ratleff, and Larry Mann.
When it came to basketball, Ohio carved up its statewide AA teams—the largest schools in the state—into four regions. The Columbus coaches—with their eye on making it to the regional competition—were long accustomed to facing unforgiving competition within their own City League: Three Columbus schools (South, Linden-McKinley, and East) had taken state championships between the years 1965 and 1968. The toughest teams in the state’s history seemed to emerge from the schools of Columbus, Cleveland, and Toledo and their immediate areas. Cleveland East Tech won back-to-back state championships in 1958 and 1959. Middletown High School, ninety miles from Columbus, won back-to-back titles in 1956 and 1957 when they were led by future Hall of Famer Jerry Lucas. During the 1968–69 season, it was easy to spotlight the very good schools away from Columbus—Cleveland East Tech, Canton McKinley, Toledo Libbey—because they were all in the state finals alongside East. If there was one team that was haunted by its past and seeking redemption in the 1969 tournament, it was Toledo Libbey, East’s upcoming foe.
Burt Spice, the Libbey coach, had grown up dying to play organized basketball. He practiced every chance he got. In high school he got cut from the team the first two years he went out for it. But his senior year, 1950, when he had sprouted to six foot three, he finally convinced the coach he had something to offer. His grit and spirit were rewarded with playing time. He ended up scoring double figures often, and his DeVilbiss High School team won the city title. He became a confident basketball player. In 1954, he was on a University of Toledo team that won the conference title. That was the year of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education case. Spice found the decision long overdue and told himself if ever the moment came, he intended to land on the right side of civil rights.
After college, Spice played a little professional basketball for the Toledo Mercurys, one of those midwestern teams that served as a comical foil for the touring Harlem Globetrotters. It was slapstick, but he was still in the game that he loved. Eventually, he made his way into teaching. In 1961, Toledo Libbey had a head coaching vacancy, and Spice got the job. He was a quiet-voiced man who showed concern for his players and their lives off the court as well as on. When he told the team that year that the best five players would comprise the starting five, he meant it. Well, the best five, anyone could see in practice, were black. So when the season started, five black players were introduced to the community as Libbey’s starters. Blacks in Toledo were proud; many whites were disappointed. A short while later, Spice was summoned before a group of school officials who oversaw athletic programs. They criticized Spice about his all-black starting lineup. Racial slurs were bandied about in the room and Spice recoiled, expressing his displeasure at hearing such language. The council members would not tolerate hearing such dissension, so they fired him, on the spot. Spice drove home, furious, and told his family all about it. Everyone was shocked and saddened. But as soon as Philo Dunsmore, the public schools superintendent, heard about the firing, he reinstalled Spice as head coach. Spice had stood his ground, and members of the black community were proud of him.
In 1966, Spice and his Libbey team found themselves in the state’s AA title basketball game, pitted against Dayton Chaminade. In the third quarter, Libbey had a 15-point lead and seemed on their way to the school’s first ever basketball title. But Chaminade kept scoring, cutting into the Libbey lead. Many thought Spice would call a timeout, if only to slow Chaminade down, but he did not. He imagined his senior lineup would stop Chaminade, but the Dayton team’s comeback was unstoppable. He explained his decision not to call a timeout by saying, “I didn’t want to split up my senior group because they had really good chemistry.” Chaminade ended up defeating Toledo by 6 points, denying Libbey a first ever state basketball crown; the defeat haunted Burt Spice. But in 1969 he was back. And he had two senior players, guard Ed Trail and second team All-State guard-forward Abe Steward, who were two of the most gifted players he’d ever had. Spice believed Steward was “the best basketball player in the state of Ohio.” He added: “What do you have to do to convince people?” It was all a rebuke of Eddie Rat’s fame. Spice thought Steward could stop Eddie Rat, or at least stop him from having a wildly productive night.
Joe Ungvary, coach of Cleveland John Adams, had faced off against Spice’s Libbey team earlier in the same tournament. His team took a 72–51 thrashing. Ungvary was going around telling folks he thought Libbey had a real good chance to beat Bob Hart’s Tigers. Spice himself issued a warning: East High, he wanted folks to know, had never faced a defense the likes of which his Libbey team was about to show them. Hart had a scouting report on Libbey. “They’re real physical,” he said. “One of their biggest items is going to the boards so well and taking the ball from the opponent.”
Mayor Jack Sensenbrenner was a big East High booster. But neighborhood and school segregation worsened during his years in City Hall.
The night before the game, the East High Tigers were encamped at a hotel near the OSU campus. Jack Gibbs took the team and coaches out to a buffet dinner. When they returned to the hotel, Pop James knew exactly what Nick Conner wanted—he had made a request out of the earshot of Gibbs and the coaches: “He said, ‘Hey Mr. James, bring us that record player!’ ” So Pop scooted out to his car and quietly retrieved it. And after the coaches went to their rooms, the players crowded into Nick Conner’s hotel room to listen to soul music on the little turntable. Pop James thought the players were relaxed, and that made him feel good.
On game day at St. John Arena, the two marquee games that would lead to the state title game—heralding the end of a long season—once again brought the politicos out. Gov. James Rhodes entered with his security staff. Mayor Sensenbrenner, grinning like a game show host, showed up wearing his orange-and-black East High sweatshirt and waving pom-poms. The East and Libbey players, gliding about the arena with all their fierce high school pride, had a chance to watch a bit of the first game, in which Canton McKinley spanked Dayton Chaminade, 78–46. So the winner of the East-Libbey matchup would face Canton McKinley in the state final. Canton McKinley player Nick Weatherspoon (bound for the University of Illinois on a scholarship) had gotten nearly as much newspaper coverage as Eddie Rat throughout the season. He flummoxed Dayton Chaminade with a cool 28 points. More worrisome for Canton McKinley’s upcoming opponent was the fact that the players had made more than 50 percent (.525 ) of their field goal attempts. Canton McKinley boasted sharpshooters.
Inside the arena that Friday night, March 21, more than fourteen thousand spectators were in attendance. East and Libbey took the floor shortly after 9 p.m. The respective cheerleading contingents danced and shimmied about. Thirty minutes later the refs blew the whistle and the starting lineups were announced. For Libbey, it was Abe Steward, Ed Trail—each trotting out to center court followed by cascading Toledo applause—John Houston, Carl Ham, and Dexter Holloway. Burt Spice had already announced he was leaving the school after the season in hopes of landing a college coaching position. His Libbey players—the team had one white player on its roster, and he was not among the starters—had a fierce determination both to whip the East High Tigers and to give their coach a fitting farewell.
Because the game was being played in their hometown, the East High fans were raucous and loose, heightening the noise and wild waving. The starting Tiger lineup was introduced: Ed Ratleff, Nick Conner, Roy Hickman, Larry Walker, and Bo-Pete Lamar. Hart, looking stoical on the bench in his thick spectacles, with the countenance of a small-town pharmacist, had refused to tell the press that Conner had come down with strep throat, requiring two shots of penicillin the night before. With the impenetrable ardor of youth on his side—and his having slept with sweet soul music humming in his ears—Conner was above complaining about anything as it related to the game.
By the end of the fast-moving first quarter, East held a 6-point lead, 21–15. Unlike with Newark, there would be no slowing down of anything in this game. At the end of the first half, it was East, 35, Libbey, 30. But there was something about Libbey that caught the eyes of the reporters: They appeared quite poised; they did not seem at all rattled. Libbey had not made a single substitution during the first half of play, displaying an iron-like stamina. “Libbey looked every bit a 23–1 team, if not better,” one reporter on the scene said. In the third quarter, Libbey’s star player, Abe Steward (on his way to 25 points), was having his way with the Tigers, scoring inside and out. As the third quarter drew to a close, the East fans grew restless; Libbey was furiously nipping at the small Tiger lead. With five minutes left in the quarter, the game was tied, 40–40. When the buzzer sounded, the Libbey fans sprang up from their seats in jubilation: Their team had overtaken East High with a 48–46 lead. In the huddle, Spice, the Libbey coach, asked if any of his players needed a rest. Not a single one said they did. That was what he wanted to hear. They were all seniors, players he had known and coached for a long time. He was going to let them stay on the court until they ran East High into the ground, or off the court, whichever came first. He had gotten oh-so-close to a championship title back in 1966; he damn sure didn’t want this game to get away from his team.
In the fourth quarter, the lead seesawed. East High’s Hickman went up for a shot, was fouled, and his shot went in. Sent to the free throw line, Hickman made the shot, and the score was now East 61, Libbey 57. Mayor Sensenbrenner was beside himself, whooping and hollering amid the Tiger fans. He had enough sense to know what everyone seemed to know: This game was going down to the wire. Ed Trail, the Libbey guard, got fouled. He slipped in a free throw. Then two Libbey players, Steward and Houston, scored two points apiece, and Libbey was suddenly back in the lead, 62–61. East’s Bo-Pete Lamar told himself he had to do something; as soon as he got the ball again and saw an opening, he was going to shoot. He did. And missed. Libbey grabbed the rebound. The Libby coach immediately yelled for a timeout. With 1:40 left in the game and Libbey up by a single point, Tiger fans could barely breathe. As play resumed, many imagined Libbey would try to get the ball to Abe Steward, its star, which was exactly the plan their coach had outlined during the timeout. But East’s dangerously quick Larry Walker stole the inbound pass. He caught sight of Bo-Pete Lamar and scooped the ball over to him. Lamar bolted for the basket, lofted a shot, scored—and was fouled. Tiger fans and their cheerleaders erupted. Lamar stepped to the free throw line and calmly sank the shot. The score was 64–62, East. Libbey got the ball but was called for traveling, so the ball was turned over to the Tigers. Hart called a timeout. There was 1:11 on the clock. In the huddle, Eddie Rat asked the coach if they should shoot the ball or simply hold on to it. Hart told him to shoot. But as soon as play resumed, East was called for a dribbling violation, which returned the ball to Libbey. Steward, of Libbey, badly wanted the ball and screamed to a teammate to pass it to him. When he got it, he shot, missed, but was fouled. Tiger groans cascaded. Steward—one of the greatest players in the history of Libbey basketball—stepped to the free throw line. There were 49 seconds left. He could tie the score by making his two free throws. He missed the first one, made the second. East, 64, Libby, 63. East got the ball. The final seconds ticked off the clock. Eddie Rat went into the lane and tossed up a soft hook; he missed. The ball, suddenly and surprisingly, was back in Toledo Libbey’s hands. The East players paid particular attention to Steward and Trail, believing one of them had to take the final shot.
Instead, guard Carl Ham drove down the middle into the forest of East High players.
The forest got the best of him; his shot was deflected.
Steward got the ball—with 9 seconds on the clock—and shot for the victory.
His shot went up. And the Libbey star missed. The ball caromed along the left baseline, the noise palpable as a buffalo herd. Libbey’s Dexter Holloway sprung and grabbed it.
With only 3 seconds left, Holloway threw up a shot. It was soft. It rolled around the rim, as if preparing to make up its own mind.
Some fans covered their eyes; most did not.
Bob Hart was in a sudden nightmare. “That one will haunt me for a while,” he later recalled of Holloway’s shot.
The ball toyed along the inside-outside edges of the rim, twisting the hearts of both sets of fans by the millisecond. Finally, the ball rolled off. No basket. Eddie Rat reached for it like a fireman for a baby tossed from a high window. The clock showed one second. Then none. It was all over. But there was silence among the East High followers in the stands, as if they were suspending their belief until they were absolutely sure. Their eyes raced to the clock. Then the scoreboard. They had their proof: Columbus East, 64, Toledo Libbey, 63. Still alive by virtue of a single point. There was pandemonium. The Tiger bench players erupted. They rushed onto the court. The Afro-wearing Bo-Pete Lamar grinned wildly and was embraced by his teammates.
A heartbreak averted.
The Tigers were going to the state championship game.
The Libbey coaches and players were crushed. Spice was furious. “Why didn’t they call a foul when Carl Ham took that hook shot?” he asked. “He got hit on the arm. You could hear the slap.”
Hart had very little time to be haunted by Libbey’s last shot. “I can still see it sitting on the rim,” he was confessing after the game. But he knew he had another game to prepare for. “We did a good job of forcing them into the shots that they didn’t want to take,” Hart allowed. “We denied Abe Steward and Ed Trail.”
It would be different for Spice, the Libbey coach: “Two inches,” he would repeat over and over, “that’s the margin Holloway missed the last shot.”
Next up: Canton McKinley High.
All those around the state who had been hoping for the dream matchup between the two most decorated players in Ohio—Canton’s Nick Weatherspoon and East’s Ed Ratleff—had their wish. Jim Turvene, the Dayton Chaminade coach whose team had just been whipped by Weatherspoon and Canton McKinley, certainly sounded as if he were siding with Canton McKinley in the matchup: “The way [the Canton McKinley team members are] playing now, they’re going to be a tough team to beat in the finals.” Spice, the Libbey coach, announced his own feelings about the potency of the Canton McKinley team and the upcoming game. “It’ll probably go right down to the wire, much like this one did. East has a great basketball team,” he offered, “but McKinley has an excellent team, too.”
And so it would be that eleven months after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., the black kids from East High would be going to the state championship game. It gave King’s old friend Rev. Phale Hale a reason to smile. The team gave East High principal Jack Gibbs a reason to smile. As he left the arena, Gibbs thought to himself how beautiful it would be if all the mothers of the East High players could come to the state championship game the next night. These were the mothers who had feared so much for these boys. These were the mothers who couldn’t get to the games because they were working on their hands and knees. They were fixing meals and ironing clothes for white kids. They were emptying trash cans for white families. They were the mothers who had left thank-you notes for the white families they worked for when they were given hand-me-down clothes for their own children to wear. They hadn’t gotten to many of the games because they didn’t have cars. Jack Gibbs knew some of the mothers worked on weekends out in Bexley and Upper Arlington. He couldn’t stop thinking about Lucy Lamar, how she had uprooted herself just so her son could keep his Afro, his pride, and play basketball.
Jack Gibbs went home that night and told his wife, Ruth, that he was going to start making phone calls right away. He was going to get the mothers of the boys to the state championship game.
For the teams that were advancing in the state finals, the back-to-back tournament games were grueling. Just twenty-four hours to regroup, twenty-four hours to plot how to keep another team from shattering East High’s dream. The Tigers were back at the arena a day later to face Bob Rupert’s Canton McKinley team. Like the East High team, the Bulldogs of Canton had a pristine record and some awe-inspiring, intimidating scores. They had whipped Columbus North by 41, Kent Roosevelt by 35, and Cleveland John F. Kennedy by 40. They didn’t let up when it came tournament time, destroying West Branch by 35, Massillon Washington by 38, and Cleveland St. Joseph by 45. Their only loss—the third game of their season—was to Farrell High School, a powerful Pennsylvania team that was the eventual winner of their own state basketball tournament. So the McKinley partisans could brag that their team was—just like East High—undefeated inside the borders of Ohio. On Fridays and Saturdays during basketball season in Canton, the McKinley games would habitually be sold out. “We had five thousand people at every game,” recalls Stan Rubin, McKinley’s starting guard that season.
For away games, McKinley’s fans hit the road, chartered buses, and traveled in caravans of cars rolling across snow-swept Ohio. “Our fans traveled everywhere,” says Rubin.
They came in slowly, dressed beautifully, and some of them seemed in awe of the huge surroundings and the attendant pageantry. Not all of them had been sure they were going to make it, and they were fussing with nervousness up to the last minute. It was a combination of things that had gotten the mothers of the Tiger players to the Coliseum: The game fell on a Saturday, and those who worked domestic jobs—as most did—often had Saturdays off. Jack Gibbs had made absolutely sure they’d have transportation to the game if they needed it. They could be forgiven if they were dressed as if they were going to church on Easter Sunday. They wore hats and silks and tweeds and precious jewelry. They had hard lives, living from paycheck to paycheck. Time and time again, America had baffled them. They had been grieving about the loss of Dr. King for months now. They needed something wonderful to grasp on to. They were so very proud of what their sons had already accomplished. Inside St. John Arena, they took their seats, all but anonymous except for a few Tiger fans who knew them from their neighborhood.
Bob Hart had made plans to deploy his players so that they would meet the challenge of such a strong opponent. He assigned Eddie Rat to guard Nick Weatherspoon, the great McKinley player. If one wanted to see how the sorrows of black impoverished family life so often traveled across America, one need only look at Ruby Weatherspoon and her son Nick, the McKinley star. Ruby hailed from Emmett Till−haunted Mississippi. She had left Greenwood for Canton, Ohio, to make a better life for herself and her family. She worked just as hard as the mothers of the East High players did; Ruby Weatherspoon, on hands and knees, bent over a washing machine, sunup to sundown, also worked as a maid. At McKinley High, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., a group of black students—they were outnumbered by whites in the school—staged a walkout in protest. Their parents supported them.
In addition to the fourteen thousand people who flocked to St. John Arena for Saturday’s game, there were TV cameras because the game was going to be televised statewide.
The McKinley coaching staff knew what to expect from Ratleff and Conner. There was one player who really worried them, however. “We were concerned about Bo-Pete Lamar,” recalls Rubin, who had played against Lamar a year earlier when McKinley had hosted Columbus North High School, Lamar’s former school. “Lamar had thirty against us.”
The East-McKinley matchup was the game many imagined the basketball gods had ordained. East High was ranked No. 1 in the state by the AP poll, and McKinley No. 1 by UPI. On five previous occasions, McKinley had reached the state final championship game, coming away runner-up each time. Now boasting a twenty-three-game winning streak, they felt they had undeniable momentum. East High’s Eddie Rat, though, was undaunted, telling teammates that McKinley was a one-man team. Hart’s directive to Ratleff about guarding Weatherspoon was simple and direct—“keep a hand in his face and keep him off the boards.”
Bob Hart kept remarking to his assistant, Paul Pennell, that he felt good about Nick Conner because he had devoured such a good, hearty breakfast that morning.
As the game got under way, Hart could sense the confidence of the McKinley team. The first quarter was extremely physical. Midway through the quarter, Hart thought a McKinley player was a little too physical and the coach complained loudly to the refs. Pennell cautioned him about being so vocal. Hart ignored him, kept complaining, and got whistled for a technical foul. The Tiger fans’ boos swelled inside St. John Arena. McKinley made the free throw, got the ball back, and scored again. They were up, 18–12. At the end of the quarter, McKinley still held the lead, 21–17. The Bulldogs averaged 80 points per game during the season; a 21-point first quarter score was on par with that average. They had confidence. Weatherspoon connected on several smooth jump shots. Bo-Pete kept missing. Hart wondered if the exhausting Libbey matchup the night before had taxed him. When the buzzer sounded ending the first half, East High held a 1-point edge, 34–33. It was enough to get Mayor Sensenbrenner up out of his seat and dancing his patented “Tiger Rag,” something between a vaudeville shuffle and a goofy two-step.
Neither coach had a sense of comfort back in the locker rooms. McKinley’s players reminded themselves they had scrimmaged with East High before the season got under way, and they left the court sensing they had just as much talent as the Tigers did. (In Cleveland, the bookies who were taking bets on the East-McKinley matchup liked McKinley to win by 9 points.)
In the East High locker room, Lamar showed frustration about his missed shots, and his coach could sense it. “We told him he just had to keep putting it up there,” Hart recalled.
In the second half, Nick Conner—quiet thus far in the contest—came alive. He started blocking shots. He seemed to put extra viciousness into blocking Weatherspoon. The Tigers were also getting more shots at the basket than McKinley was—“two shots to our one,” McKinley’s coach Rupert realized. Midway through the third quarter and at a 42–42 tie, the Tigers exploded: They connected for 8 points, a blur of action involving Ratleff, Conner, Lamar, and Kevin Smith. A cascade of foot stomping seemed to envelope a large part of the stands. When the third period ended, the Tigers were ahead, 52–44.
The foot stomping—many fans now standing—didn’t let up until the fourth quarter got under way. And as soon as the last quarter began, Lamar fired from long range connecting on a dagger-like shot. The score was now 54–44, and McKinley looked confused. During a pause in the action, Eddie Rat went up to each of his teammates and hit him on the rump. “We gotta win,” he said. “We’re ten points up and we gotta win.” Conner heard his teammate’s admonition loud and clear and began snatching McKinley’s missed shots off the rim with the impatience of a man needing to escape the arena and catch a plane. If McKinley had a chance, they realized they now had to stop Eddie Rat. They couldn’t.
The thousands and thousands of Tiger fans began leaning forward in their seats, then rising up, as if they were ready to bolt onto the floor, past the state troopers who were the last line of defense between the fans and the court. Eddie Rat’s teammates had tired of hearing Nick Weatherspoon being trumpeted as the best player in the state. So they started passing Eddie Rat the ball as often as they could, imploring him to score, and he did—lovely jump shots, the ball dropping into the net like an olive being dropped into a martini. The East High lead grew to 11 points. The clock was ticking now toward game’s end. Here’s to you, Mr. Weatherspoon. The lead grew to 13 points. Hart started clearing his bench players, allowing his stars to exit to standing ovations. Hart’s daughters began making their way toward their dad down on the floor. Mayor Sensenbrenner was doing his awkward Tiger Rag jig again in the stands, drawing guffaws from all around. Jack Gibbs, a man both tough and emotional, was smiling. Down on the court, the McKinley players looked dejected. On the Tiger bench, Eddie Rat was trying to say something to Nick Conner, and Roy Hickman was trying to say something to Larry Walker. Everyone’s words were getting drowned out by the noise. Then there were 20 seconds left, and when those seconds vanished from the clock, Bob Hart and his band of Tigers had achieved something historic, something no other Columbus high school had ever done: They had won back-to-back state basketball titles. The score, 71–56. But this one was different, and everyone knew it. This one had come in the aftermath of Dr. King’s assassination. This one had come with the school feeling its very soul was on the line. This one had come amid so much pain.
The players from both teams walked toward one another for the traditional handshakes. The Tiger cheerleaders were sashaying and teary-eyed. Athletic officials made their way to the center of the court to present the championship trophy. Mayor Sensenbrenner was excitedly looking for the City Hall photographer to make sure he got lots and lots of pictures! Flashbulbs were popping. Bo-Pete Lamar—the rebel, the transfer student—had stood his ground in honor of his beloved Afro, and now he was on a state championship team. His mother, Lucy, up in the stands, had forgotten all about her pounding migraines. Eddie Rat—the golden boy of the golden moment—had dropped in 31 points against McKinley. He was clipping down the nets and raising them above his head for everyone to see.
The Tiger players began circling their trophy to get a better look.
Bob Rupert, the McKinley coach, had his own opinion about what Bob Hart’s Tigers had just accomplished inside St. John Arena: “This team is of a different era,” he said.
When the big gleaming trophy was finally handed over to the Tiger players, another round of roaring erupted inside the arena.
Someone handed Eddie Rat the microphone. He talked about sportsmanship and thanked the McKinley players for theirs. He thanked the fans of East High. Then he instructed his teammates to go find their mothers in the stands and escort them onto the court. And a short while later the Tiger mothers were there: Mildred Mizelle, escorted by her son Kenny; Erma Wright, escorted by her son, Robert; Barbara Crump, escorted by her son Eddie Rat; Lucy Lamar—in a beautifully printed hat—escorted by her son Bo-Pete; Beatrice Conner, escorted by her son, Nick; Barbara Sawyer, escorted by her son Kevin Smith; and on and on they came, until all the players and their mothers were at center court. And there they stood, the kleig lights upon them, sons and proud mothers for all the world to see.
Anticipating victory, Jack Gibbs had hatched a plan requiring the help of Kirk Bishop, the East High student who was the youngest deejay in the city. James Brown, the messianic soul singer, was appearing in Columbus at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium that same night. Brown had been riding a crest of favorable publicity for months because of his actions in Boston the day after the King assassination. He did not cancel a planned Boston Garden concert in the city; he told city officials he certainly believed—as they imagined—that his charisma and stage presence could help the city stay calm. (Brown’s song, “Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud,” had been released just as the school doors were about to open at East High in the fall of 1968, and it had resonated as a kind of black anthem throughout the country.) Brown spoke from the stage in Boston that night in tones both defiant and soothing. Even when some aggrieved youths tried to storm the stage to disrupt the concert, he kept them back, sounding like a cross between a storefront preacher and a high school principal. Boston was one of the few big American cities that didn’t explode after King was murdered, and Brown received much of the credit.
As soon as the game ended Gibbs and his student co-conspirator, Kirk Bishop, hurriedly made phone calls from inside the arena to Brown’s downtown venue. They sent word for the players to shower quickly and hustle along. The players and cheerleaders couldn’t believe it. They were going to a James Brown concert! Upon arriving at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium they were escorted in through a side door. Brown had just finished his concert—though not the encore. The singer had a notorious reputation for being moody and unpredictable. But when an aide told him that local East High had just won the state basketball championship game less than ninety minutes ago and wanted to meet him, Brown nodded his approval. In his juvenile delinquent days, Brown had been crazy about sports. He had even dreamed about playing professional baseball. In his presence, the Tigers all but stood agog. “James had on a blanket,” remembers basketball player Kevin Smith. “He was soaking wet. Our mouths were wide open.” There was something that really impressed basketball player Larry Walker: “I finally met someone shorter than me.” Cynthia Chapman, the cheerleader, looked down at Brown’s footwear. “He was wearing lifts in his shoes,” she says.
Kirk Bishop rushed out to the stage area and got permission to bring the victorious team onstage and introduce them. Brown had congratulated the team and was going to leave, but when he started hearing Bishop’s commentary—about the long, hard year and how the school had stuck together—he couldn’t resist. He walked back out onstage; the audience erupted. He took the microphone. “Look at them,” he said, his voice gravelly and sweet with respect. “They champions.”
Shiny convertibles rolled down East Broad Street in the basketball parade.
On the morning of March 23, a phalanx of convertibles lined up on East Broad Street in front of East High School, ready to take the Tigers slowly rolling along the street where they would be saluted by the community. The usual cast of city officials and politicians was on hand amid the throng of seven thousand mostly black residents of the city. “You brought a great honor to the city of Columbus and to the state of Ohio with your behavior,” Gov. Jim Rhodes said. The next morning’s headline in The Columbus Dispatch read: “Rhodes Salutes Ohio’s Champions.” Above it stretched a much more somber headline: “Battles Rage Across S. Vietnam—Allies Lose Six, 225 Reds Killed.”
Five days later, Governor Rhodes summoned the cheerleaders and players—and also the players’ girlfriends—to the parlor room of the Governor’s Mansion. The governor identified with the team because he had attended Ohio State University with the hope of playing basketball. He wasn’t, however, one for keeping his head in the books. He dropped out before the end of his first year. He went into business and opened Jim’s Place, a convenience store near the campus, where he sold a hodgepodge of items. Among his inventory were stag (porn) films, a fact he’d chuckle away whenever it was brought up during campaigns. Rhodes presented the Tigers with specially designed mugs and cuff links. The girlfriends received corsages, which the players delicately pinned on them. After the governor had presented the players and girlfriends with their gifts, he looked around the parlor. His mind whirred to his own joyful high school days. He motioned for Eddie Rat, Nick Conner, and some other players to come closer to him. He asked them to help him move some of the furniture into an adjacent room. Of course his aides rushed to help. And when the furniture was moved out of the way, the governor told the players and their girlfriends it was a good time to have a dance! An aide ran off and returned with a stereo player. And just like that, the dancing began.
Jack Gibbs, in the auto on the left, leads the celebration with the school’s soul-strutting marching band.
“Say it loud—I’m black and I’m proud!”
Their fathers were mostly absent. Many of their mothers worked as maids. But no one could deny their ability to emerge as basketball champions.
In the days immediately after the East High basketball championship victory, students strolling by the gymnasium could hear, then see, two boys inside. One was tall and rangy. He was throwing fast pitches to another player about ninety feet away. That player was crouched, catching the balls being thrown to him. The balls were coming at a blazing speed. The pitcher was Eddie Rat. The catcher was Garnett Barney Davis. They were getting ready for baseball season.
The East High students never really paid much attention to their baseball team. Students told themselves they had plenty of other things to do during springtime besides trouping over to the old, ill-attended Harley baseball diamond located blocks from the school.
Still, Eddie Rat had always told everyone his favorite sport was baseball. No one believed him.