Quick now, Sun City sports fans, what is the only sport that is truly and totally American?
According to sports author Dave Anderson, all but one of our sports are offshoots of games developed elsewhere.
âBaseball evolved from rounders, a British game,â he said. âFootball was developed from soccer and rugby, other British games. Golf is believed to have been developed by Scottish shepherds, tennis by French clerics, hockey by Canadian soldiers. Horse racing, track and field, swimming, and boxing are as old as mankind.â
But there is one dramatic exception to all this, as recorded in âThe Sports 100, Brad Herzog’s list of the 100 most important people in the history of American Sports.â
It is basketball.
Unlike other sports, basketball is considered to be the purest American sport, âinvented in America for Americans,â Anderson said.
Morgan completed studies at Springfield and became physical instructor at Holyoke YMCA in Massachusetts. He was teaching basketball to a class of middle-aged men, but he believed the game was more suited to younger men and he looked for something âfor the older ones not quite so rough and severe.â
He combined elements of baseball, basketball, tennis, handball, and badminton into a new game and called it âmintonette.â The sport today is played by millions of people of all ages, and is now calledâvolleyball.
Consider this â almost everyone knows what March Madness is. We are right in the middle of it now. It is one of America’s greatest and most popular sports celebrations. About 127 years after its invention in Springfield, Massachusetts, dropping a large round ball into a net hanging 10 feet off the floor has become one of the most popular pastimes in the world, not just the U.S.
Herzog says, âMore than 250 million people worldwide play basketball. The basketball hoop is the centerpiece of the inner-city playground, the focus of the farmland, and a staple of every high school gymnasium.â
Basketball was invented in Massachusetts by a Canadian-born clergyman whose only connection to sports was that he was a physical education instructor in a YMCA.
James Naismith was born on November 6, 1861, in Almonte, Ontario. He was orphaned at age eight, dropped out of high school for four years before graduating in 1883, and then decided to become a minister. He studied at McGill University in Montreal, where he was named âoutstanding all-around athlete.â He earned a theology degree from Presbyterian College in 1890 and then set out to promote Christianity through physical education.
He moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, where, by late 1891, he was a PE instructor at the School for Christian Workers, which eventually became Springfield College.
Naismith taught swimming, canoeing, boxing, and wrestling in warm weather, but he and other instructors were pressured by students to develop a game for the winter months, when the only indoor activities were calisthenics, gymnastics, and children’s games. The school’s director gave Naismith two weeks to come up with a game that would interest and satisfy the instructors and put the winter âphys-ed class from hellâ to an end, so the story goes.
Naismith had to âfitâ the game inside a 30 x 50 foot gymnasium. He decided to use a large ball, challenge players to throw it into boxes attached to a raised, above-ground goal at each end of the playing area, and require players to pass the ball, so it wouldn’t become a running game.
Naismith not only invented this new game, he documented it. On December 21, 1891, he posted 13 rules. They didn’t include dribbling, backboards, or free throws. Amazingly, he said nine men per team was an optimum number, but he said any number from 3 to 40 (!) was acceptable. A legend that grew out of the first game was that the school’s superintendent of buildings couldn’t find any boxes so he scrounged up a pair of peach baskets, which Naismith nailed to the balcony surrounding the gym. He tossed up a soccer ball to start things off, and launched a new chapter of sports history.
Naismith himself said, âInvention of the game of basketball was not an accident. It was developed to meet a need.â
The game was an instant success.
The instructors loved it. The first public basketball game was played on January 15, 1892, in the same YMCA gym. The sport quickly spread to schools all over the East and Midwest. The first officially recorded basketball game was played at Hamline University, in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1895.
Naismith also was active in bringing women into the sport. Senda Berenson, director of physical training at Smith College in Massachusetts, organized the first women’s college game in late 1892.
Naismith moved to Colorado in 1895 and earned a medical degree, but continued his participation in sports. He coached the University of Kansas team for nine years. Naismith pursued a university teaching career and remained a Kansas faculty member until his retirement in 1937. He died in 1939, but lived to see basketball become a permanent sport in high schools and colleges throughout the nation. Three years before his death, the first television broadcast of a basketball game occurred.
How are all of you Sun City hoops fans doing on your bracketology?
