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paul nielsen
12-27-2007, 04:15 PM
An earlier thread asked for memories of several pre-K players, and although the original post mentioned Dick Groat, I was struck by how few people were able to say they saw him play. I did, and that thread caused the memories to come flooding back irresistibly. His playing years, 1950 through 1952, coincided with my own years of early adolescence, and so these are some of my most emotionally kept memories. They are not very detailed about his abilities, however, and when I speak of his feats, I expect that they may be wrong in fact and emphasis. Maybe the historians on this board can correct me as needed.

These are the recollections of a young kid who made Duke athletes his heroes, who played basketball (awkwardly) in Durham outdoors on many winter afternoons. We had to remember to avoid the roots near the top of the key, and the low spot near the left baseline, since it dried up last. It was quite rare that we got to play on hardwood. The time I remember best was when we managed to get into the Indoor Stadium for a while. Man, we were in heaven, shouting and dribbling and shooting, and we probably even managed to get the lights on. Then Ace Parker showed up; he was (a) one of the assistant football coaches and (b) a legendary Duke football runner from the 30s. (Old-timers on the Duke maintenance crews liked to say he could not be tackled -- that he refused to go down and carried tacklers on his back.) So there we were, face to face with this legend. The shouting and dribbling stopped, we held the balls, and just sort of stood there, staring. He said something like, “You boys aren’t supposed to be in here, you know.” Answer, “No sir.” No one moved to go, though. He smiled, said something like, “Well, keep it down and turn out the lights when you go,” turned and walked away, an even bigger legend.

Dick Groat was the top scorer in the country one year. Was that 1951? 1952? Didn’t he average 25 points? Total of 851? Or was that 821? Wasn’t that a record? We were so proud. See, geographical distances mattered a lot more back then, sports on TV was extremely rare, and college probably wasn’t even covered. People knew about Duke and Groat because of what they read via the Associated Press, largely. Sportswriters ranked the teams without seeing them often, I assume. So what people knew about Duke and Durham and us was what Dick Groat did. Or so we thought.

State was the top dog back then. They won the Southern Conference tournament every year, it seemed. The tournament champion was the only team that kept playing, of course, so in both Groat’s junior and senior years, he didn’t get a chance to go on to the NCAA tournament. Tears in the pillow, boys, bitter tears, from this kid.

Groat was the scorer, the shooting 6-0 guard, on a team that included a tall, gangly center, Red Kulpan, and a 6-1 forward named Corren (Ceep) Youmans, whom my older brother admired for doing so much at such a short height, and another shooting guard name Fred Shabel. Shabel usually came off the bench, I think, and scrambled like a madman. It always caused a buzz when he came in. He had a big shock of dark hair he was forever shoving out of his eyes, and he was a really streaky shooter. I remember he would start hitting and just go crazy -- start shooting from all over, and set the building on fire. (If you saw Vinnie Johnson play for the Detroit Pistons in their championship years, you have an idea of what it was like.)

Groat was hard to guard. For one thing, he shot jumpers, and I believe it was a rather new technique then. He had incredibly good hands, of course, and preternatural hand-eye coordination. Oh, and very good range -- a lot of his jumpers would be 3-pointers now. I don’t think he was especially fast, but he was quick -- he had an excellent first step. He had excellent balance and usually had his feet under him. He could get open for a shot against most defenders. He was also fiercely competitive, and he kept his head in the game. He stole three straight inbounds passes for three quick goals against Temple. (So I’m told; wasn’t there; may have it wrong.) In those days Temple was a national power; they had a great player named Bill Mlkvy (pronounced milk-vee), the Owl Without a Vowel.

The loudest I ever heard the Indoor Stadium was on Groat’s last home game. He had hit for 46 the preceding home game, so expectations were high for the last one. Plus, it was UNC, and the national press would be there, and the whole country would take note. Well, he was incandescent. They couldn’t stop him. Bang. Bang. Bang. That ball owned that net. As soon as he came across half court with the ball, you knew there was going to be another one. It was heaven. As soon as he’d get set, you’d hear that intake of breath from the whole house, and then the sound of 7,000 deeply interested and seriously involved sports fans shifting forward to their feet. And the ball is up, and the roar begins, and the net ripples, and the roar turns into a monster. And there’s that kid, jumping up and down next to my old man, waving some crazy rubber knife. (Give the kid a break, all right? We all need magic at 10 or 11. Right?) No one -- no one -- is beating him tonight. He had 48 points, and the shots fell from all over the court. That was the school record for a long time. I think Danny Ferry was the one who finally beat it.

When the game was over and the players and many of the students had left the court, the totals were announced over the P.A. system. When the record was announced, a big cheer went up. While the house cleared out and people walked to their cars, there was that enormous buzz of a crowd still talking in amazement about what they had just seen. I was in Carr Junior High by then, and when I spotted the principal of my old elementary school, Lakewood, I shouted to her, “He was hot tonight!” Mrs. Hale answered, with a big smile, “He sure was.” My ears stayed warm for hours, I guess from the percussive effect of the crowd’s roars.

Oh, yes, I saw Dick Groat play.

(more to come in a second post)

paul nielsen
12-27-2007, 04:18 PM
(second part of my memories of groat)


Oh, yes, I saw Dick Groat play.

Then there was the time that he came to speak to our Cub Scout pack. I have a vivid memory of surprising him with a cheer. To understand the starry-eyed adulation of this, you need to know two things. One, some of the fans of other teams liked to try to rattle him with a rhyming chant about Groat being a goat. Not very imaginative, I know, but that was the best they could do. Second, State’s great scorer at the time was Sam Ranzino. So one of my pals suggested that we wait outside the Cub Scout meeting and surprise him. The pack meetings were held near downtown in the basement of Duke Memorial Methodist Church, and the approach to the rear doors was heavily shadowed, where we could wait without being seen. When Groat and another player walked up, the three of us stepped up and chanted, “Yay, Groat. Boo Ranzino, the old billy goat.” No kidding. I swear. They took it in good spirit. They looked surprised but not upset, pleased if a little non-plussed. If they didn’t know before that, they knew then that they were heroes.

A number of people who posted in that earlier thread who knew Groat from his pro baseball years said they thought he was better in basketball than in baseball. I can’t say one way or the other, but I can say that was not what the older kids told us younger kids. They said he was even better at baseball. Now, baseball didn’t get anywhere near the attention that basketball did, so by his junior year of basketball, I had hardly noticed the baseball team. The bigger kids all knew they could show off by saying this. Well, some of the writers said much the same thing, so we started going to baseball games that spring. We could hardly believe it. It was like national sports had come to Durham, and we were just finding out.

I can’t say which sport he played better, but he sure was good at college baseball. He made all-American twice, but in his last year, there were so many top shortstops that he made it at third base. Harvey Kuenn at Wisconsin made it at short. As I recall, he had great hands, strong arm, great balance, was quick to the ball, went laterally very well. I seem to recall an odd batting stance; I think he held his bat high and had a chopping downward warmup stroke. The team may have been Duke’s most outstanding. Three all-Americans, if you can believe it. It attracted a lot of national attention, since so many of the players were expected to be bonus babies. A pitcher, Joe Lewis, and the first baseman, Bill Werber Jr., were the other all-Americans. Werber’s dad played at Duke and in the pros.

Groat’s last year playing baseball may have also been the last year for the legendary coach, Jack Coombs. That may also be why that team attracted so much attention. Life magazine, I think it was, did a spread on the team headlined “The $100,000 team.” I have a vivid memory of attending a Meet the Team day, where the public could get to chat with the players before a game. You could get them to autograph your baseball, but I never had a new ball unless I stole one of the foul balls, and if I did have a new one, I was going to use it, not leave it on the souvenir shelf with that rubber knife. Anyway, we kids were swarming around and I overheard one of the players say to another, with some rueful amusement, “Yeah, it’s great. You think you’re really important, until you see the crowd around one of the stars.”

One more memory. It’s a charming story that Fred Shabel apparently used to tell about the experience of playing with Groat. Now, I never knew Shabel, understand. I heard this from somebody else in the locker room of the gym in Philadelphia where I worked out every day. The time would be the early 80s. By then, Shabel was an executive of the company that ran or maybe owned the Spectrum, where the Sixers and the Flyers played. Spectacor? That the name? Shabel’s dad came to see him play, and just to make this a great story, let’s assume it was Groat’s tumultuous last game. When Shabel came in, Groat was coming out for the Last Time, so the place was going wild, naturally. Just as naturally, Shabel’s dad thought all the excitement was for his boy. And, according to what I was told, Shabel never could tell him different.

Gee. I sure hope Shabel’s dad isn’t reading this. If he is, don’t worry, sir. Your boy could flat play, and he lit up the house plenty in the next couple years.

In the years after Groat, We had a couple of really amazing guard-forward combinations. There was Rudy D’Emelio and Bernie Janicki, and then Joe Belmont and Ronnie Mayer. Mayer was an amazing leaper -- he was looking down at the rim a time or two. I never saw David Thomson, so Mayer gets my vote for the best college leaper I ever saw play. A football coach told me a track coach was trying to get Mayer to join his team, too. Somebody should post their memories of those guys.

Memories? You want to hear about the Big Fight, Art Heyman and Larry Brown, and how I made a fool of myself? (I always thought Heyman’s antagonist was Doug Moe, but people say otherwise.) You want to hear about Dave Sime, the fastest man in the world for one wonderful spring and summer? Maybe some day.

Once upon a time, Durham was a paradise.

Indoor66
12-27-2007, 04:19 PM
An earlier thread asked for memories of several pre-K players, and although the original post mentioned Dick Groat, I was struck by how few people were able to say they saw him play. I did, and that thread caused the memories to come flooding back irresistibly. His playing years, 1950 through 1952, coincided with my own years of early adolescence, and so these are some of my most emotionally kept memories. They are not very detailed about his abilities, however, and when I speak of his feats, I expect that they may be wrong in fact and emphasis. Maybe the historians on this board can correct me as needed.

These are the recollections of a young kid who made Duke athletes his heroes, who played basketball (awkwardly) in Durham outdoors on many winter afternoons. We had to remember to avoid the roots near the top of the key, and the low spot near the left baseline, since it dried up last. It was quite rare that we got to play on hardwood. The time I remember best was when we managed to get into the Indoor Stadium for a while. Man, we were in heaven, shouting and dribbling and shooting, and we probably even managed to get the lights on. Then Ace Parker showed up; he was (a) one of the assistant football coaches and (b) a legendary Duke football runner from the 30s. (Old-timers on the Duke maintenance crews liked to say he could not be tackled -- that he refused to go down and carried tacklers on his back.) So there we were, face to face with this legend. The shouting and dribbling stopped, we held the balls, and just sort of stood there, staring. He said something like, “You boys aren’t supposed to be in here, you know.” Answer, “No sir.” No one moved to go, though. He smiled, said something like, “Well, keep it down and turn out the lights when you go,” turned and walked away, an even bigger legend.

Dick Groat was the top scorer in the country one year. Was that 1951? 1952? Didn’t he average 25 points? Total of 851? Or was that 821? Wasn’t that a record? We were so proud. See, geographical distances mattered a lot more back then, sports on TV was extremely rare, and college probably wasn’t even covered. People knew about Duke and Groat because of what they read via the Associated Press, largely. Sportswriters ranked the teams without seeing them often, I assume. So what people knew about Duke and Durham and us was what Dick Groat did. Or so we thought.

State was the top dog back then. They won the Southern Conference tournament every year, it seemed. The tournament champion was the only team that kept playing, of course, so in both Groat’s junior and senior years, he didn’t get a chance to go on to the NCAA tournament. Tears in the pillow, boys, bitter tears, from this kid.

Groat was the scorer, the shooting 6-0 guard, on a team that included a tall, gangly center, Red Kulpan, and a 6-1 forward named Corren (Ceep) Youmans, whom my older brother admired for doing so much at such a short height, and another shooting guard name Fred Shabel. Shabel usually came off the bench, I think, and scrambled like a madman. It always caused a buzz when he came in. He had a big shock of dark hair he was forever shoving out of his eyes, and he was a really streaky shooter. I remember he would start hitting and just go crazy -- start shooting from all over, and set the building on fire. (If you saw Vinnie Johnson play for the Detroit Pistons in their championship years, you have an idea of what it was like.)

Groat was hard to guard. For one thing, he shot jumpers, and I believe it was a rather new technique then. He had incredibly good hands, of course, and preternatural hand-eye coordination. Oh, and very good range -- a lot of his jumpers would be 3-pointers now. I don’t think he was especially fast, but he was quick -- he had an excellent first step. He had excellent balance and usually had his feet under him. He could get open for a shot against most defenders. He was also fiercely competitive, and he kept his head in the game. He stole three straight inbounds passes for three quick goals against Temple. (So I’m told; wasn’t there; may have it wrong.) In those days Temple was a national power; they had a great player named Bill Mlkvy (pronounced milk-vee), the Owl Without a Vowel.

The loudest I ever heard the Indoor Stadium was on Groat’s last home game. He had hit for 46 the preceding home game, so expectations were high for the last one. Plus, it was UNC, and the national press would be there, and the whole country would take note. Well, he was incandescent. They couldn’t stop him. Bang. Bang. Bang. That ball owned that net. As soon as he came across half court with the ball, you knew there was going to be another one. It was heaven. As soon as he’d get set, you’d hear that intake of breath from the whole house, and then the sound of 7,000 deeply interested and seriously involved sports fans shifting forward to their feet. And the ball is up, and the roar begins, and the net ripples, and the roar turns into a monster. And there’s that kid, jumping up and down next to my old man, waving some crazy rubber knife. (Give the kid a break, all right? We all need magic at 10 or 11. Right?) No one -- no one -- is beating him tonight. He had 48 points, and the shots fell from all over the court. That was the school record for a long time. I think Danny Ferry was the one who finally beat it.

When the game was over and the players and many of the students had left the court, the totals were announced over the P.A. system. When the record was announced, a big cheer went up. While the house cleared out and people walked to their cars, there was that enormous buzz of a crowd still talking in amazement about what they had just seen. I was in Carr Junior High by then, and when I spotted the principal of my old elementary school, Lakewood, I shouted to her, “He was hot tonight!” Mrs. Hale answered, with a big smile, “He sure was.” My ears stayed warm for hours, I guess from the percussive effect of the crowd’s roars.

Oh, yes, I saw Dick Groat play.

(more to come in a second post)

Thanks - that was great. As an aside, Fred Schabel became coach at UConn:
http://uconnhooplegends.com/menslegends/ShabelFred.html

OZZIE4DUKE
12-27-2007, 04:23 PM
Great first (and second) post, Paul, and welcome to the board.

Dick Groat was introduced at half time of the Pitt game in MSG last week. Dick does the radio broadcast for Pitt and has for years. The PA announcer at the Garden went through a litany of Groat's accomplishments at Duke and in the major leagues, for both Pittsburgh and St. Louis. Groat got about 3 or 4 minutes of face time on the video boards in the Garden, and a rousing standing O from all the fans. He looked pleased, and probably a little embarrassed by all the attention, but he deserved it.

BlueDevilBaby
12-27-2007, 04:37 PM
Didn't he actually say during that interview that he liked and was better at basketball?

Devil in the Blue Dress
12-27-2007, 05:07 PM
I remember hearing that after Dick Groat's number was retired, many fans believed no more numbers would be retired at Duke because Groat was so great that no one could possibly come close...... and no one did until 1959 when the next new era began.

From my own memories and reading about Duke basketball, Doug Moe was an antagonist of Art Heyman's. According to Artie, Moe spat at Artie's face every time he shot.

I love reading posts like the two from Paul Nielsen. Duke basketball has been special for a long, long time. But the same was true for Duke football BD (before the decline). I look forward to the day when both programs enjoy the levels of excellence so many of the great stories are based upon.

TillyGalore
12-27-2007, 05:13 PM
Paul,
Those posts were AWESOME and remind me of why I moved to this area 9 years ago.

Please post more stories, I love reading about days gone by. And, you did such a great job writing them too. I felt like I was there experiencing everything with you.

Thanks,
Tilly

killerleft
12-27-2007, 07:45 PM
Excellent, Paul! More, more!

Uncle Drew
12-27-2007, 08:05 PM
Paul those were a couple of the best posts I have ever read on here. Truth be told even though I knew of Groats basketball greatness I knew more about his baseball greatness. My fathers college baseball career was interrupted by WWII. After the war my dad went back and finished school then played for the local Burlington Indians for several years. My dad actually scrimmaged against Groats team in baseball a couple of games. They were both playing short stop and my dad said it was the hardest he'd ever played in his life to make sure a ball didn't get past him for a hit.

dukepsy1963
12-27-2007, 11:51 PM
thanks from me too!