Free Stuff + Free Time

Free Stuff Friday will be back again tomorrow - and you can thank Jon from A Penny Sleeve for your Thoughts, for giving me the inspiration to start my own Free Stuff series. Al Smith, a member of the ABA Utah Stars, is a guy I know nothing about, but I did like the photo. I can thank Jon for this card, too, because he offered it in one of his recent Free Stuff posts. I don't have much of a basketball collection, and it's mostly due to my own ignorance. I don't know many of the players before the 1980s. With baseball, I have many points of reference to the past, having been surrounded by books and documentary films about baseball from its early days up to the present day.

I am looking to change that imbalance, and now that we all seem to have a lot more time to kill at home, what better way to spend it than reading some books? Terry Pluto's Loose Balls is considered to be one of the few substantial books about the ABA, however it is also thought of by many fans of basketball history to be high on anecdotes and low on factual research. If nothing else, reading the introduction sheds light on the author's obvious enthusiasm for the defunct league and the stories that it gave birth to.

Bob Kuska's book Hot Potato goes way back to the early 1900s and traces the game of basketball from colleges in the Northeast to the cities of New York and Washington, D.C. Kuska's interest in the way the sport was embraced by the African-American communities and how it came to have the popularity it enjoys today. Thumbing through this volume I notice that there is a baseball connection as well -- Pittsburgh's dynastic all-black basketball team in the 1920s featured Cumberland Posey, who later gained fame as the principal owner of the Homestead Grays. Posey is enshrined in both the Baseball and Basketball Halls of Fame. A section of this books details the fierce rivalry between Posey's team and the New York  and D.C. teams that could not beat him.

A little bit on the lighter side, I picked this one up based on the tag line alone. I have been a long time fan of "inside baseball" books like Ball Four and the series of books written by Dirk Hayhurst, so I sought out a basketball analog. I vaguely remember Paul Shirley as a guy on the end of the Bulls bench, and maybe even something about his promotion for this book, but I have a feeling most of what I will read here will be new to me. 

On the other end of the spectrum, this book chronicles the life of Pete Maravich. My knowledge of him begins and ends with some grainy YouTube highlights and various older mentions of him as a great player. No spoilers, please, but I also am just barely aware that Maravich's story has a tragic ending. I don't recall any of the details, so I am only preparing myself to see a modern day tragedy play itself out over the course of this book.

I closed it out with a classic. David Halberstam is very familiar to me for his baseball writing, so I look forward to reading his take on basketball in the late 70s. All of this will hopefully kindle some more familiarity and interest for me in basketball beyond Bird/Magic/Shaq/Kevin Garnett.

The second card I claimed from Jon's post was this 1960 Leaf of Brooks Lawrence. Lawrence is from my dad's hometown of Springfield, OH - and I think I am going to take the plunge and add more Springfield, OH players as player collections. I was actually surprised to find quite a few players from the area.

The following people from Springfield, OH played Major League baseball:

Brooks Lawrence
Jiggs Donahue 1900-09
Pat Donahue 1908-10
Joe Dunn 1908-09
Adam Eaton (OF) 2012- current (?)
Tyler Green (P) 1993-98
Dick Harley 1905
Dustin Hermanson 1995-06
Jimmy Journell 2003-05
Ray Lucas 1929-34
John Malarkey 1894-1903
Will McEnaney 1974-79
Cotton Minahan 1907
Mike Mitchell 1907-14
Otto Neu 1917
Danny Shay 1901-07
Chappie Snodgrass (!!) 1901
Rick White (P) 1994-07

NFL:
Braxton Miller WR 2016-17
Jabbar Threats (!!) DE 1997-98
Mike Davis (DB) 1994-95
Joey Howard OT 1989
Ron Burton HB 1960-65
Bob Myers DT 1955
Bob Hanlon HB 1948-49
Jim McDonald B 1938-39
Bob Haas B 1929
Herb Dieter G 1922
Jerry Zeller WB 1921

NBA:
Butch Carter 1981-86
Jason Collier 2001-05
Wayne Embry 1959-69
Fred Foster 1969-77

NHL:
None!