High School Basketball in Illinois. - La84

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main title of the book, by the way, refers to four great high school players from Illinois, namely Sweet ... DelaSalle and St. Patrick programs. Other lamentable ...
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BELL, TAYLOR H. A. Sweet Charlie, Dike, Cazzie, and Bobby Joe: High School Basketball in Illinois. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004. Pp. 248. Appendices, interview and printed sources, photos, and index. $40.00 cb, $19.95 pb. Taylor Bell for more than three decades was one of Chicago’s best journalists on the high school beat, first working for the Chicago Daily News and then the Chicago Sun-Times. In his first book, Sweet Charlie, however, he shows that you can take the journalist out of the newspaper, but you can’t take the newspaper out of the journalist. Essentially, what Bell has done is to write fifty-nine newspaper stories and put them into a bookbinding; one sees the requisite short paragraphing and almost sole dependence on interviews. The book does not exhibit the usual narrative form and research procedures of standard history. The main title of the book, by the way, refers to four great high school players from Illinois, namely Sweet Charlie Brown (DuSable), Dike Eddleman (Centralia), Cazzie Russell (Carver), and Bobby Joe Mason (Centralia). Notwithstanding Bell’s newspaper approach, this is a book of considerable value. Bell did not take the lazy way out by doing a few interviews, and rely on mostly old newspaper clippings and his memory to tell his stories. He interviewed a staggering 370 people and developed some terrific profiles, which discussed not only the schools themselves but also the communities from which they got their support. As for the profiles—once one gets past the assumption that a high school basketball history would be a linear chronological story—they work. He takes as a starting point a school or an athlete who had particularly stellar success (say Centralia in the 1940s) then gives the history of the school’s program over several decades. There are a number of chapters that go beyond the mere reciting of athletic glory. One such chapter tells of the end of segregation in the state tournament relating to the legally segregated black schools in the southern part of the state known as Egypt. The schools were integrated into the state tournament in 1946, but they could not play their regionals and sectionals in Egypt because of opposition by the white schools. They were forced to play on the rim of Egypt, until the integration in 1952 allowed the black schools to finally compete in Egypt. However, Bell relied on only interviews and neglected to consult the excellent chapter on the subject in Charles W. Whitten’s Interscholastics (1950) on the issue involving the officials of the Illinois High School Association. Thus, he missed an opportunity to add a little more depth to the story. Another excellent Bell chapter is on the struggle for the adoption of the two-class system in the state tournament, which was adopted in the 1971-1972 season. Bell’s quick-takes on the Illinois basketball communities are sometimes simplistic. Yes, the towns of Egypt had a history of legal segregation and prejudice against Catholics, Jews, and blacks, but to describe them as being settled by “Southern Baptists and rednecks” sounds merely derogatory rather than explanatory. The residents of these towns were certainly wrong in their racial views, but they should not have their religions brought into the discussion and be called crude names. In two places in the book, he claims the communities of Pekin (p. 85) and Johnson City (p. 41) during the 1930s and 1940s sported a sign Fall 2004

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JOURNAL OF SPORT HISTORY on the outskirts that read, “Nigger, don’t let the sun set on your head in this town.” Was racism that overt? Maybe so, but this story suggests a bit of urban legend. “Googling” the phrase, I found stories on the exact same sign in Georgia and Texas. Bell rightly illuminates an embarrassing part of Illinois basketball history—and his reporting is extensive on the extent of racism both in the areas of legal segregation and in the integrated schools— but he needs to be more judicious in how he discusses social issues. The book’s coverage of its subject is a bit askew. The reader does not need three Peoria chapters (actually four if you count the chapter on the triple overtime game against East St. Louis Lincoln in 1989), which not only is needlessly repetitive but also does not allow room for some needed chapters on programs that should be covered in this kind of book. Bell short-changed Catholic programs, and while it is laudable that he included chapters on St. Elizabeth and St. Joseph (via Isiah Thomas), he should have also included chapters on the DelaSalle and St. Patrick programs. Other lamentable omissions are chapters on Toluca and Lockport, two schools that had legendary success in basketball for several decades. This reviewer noticed only a few factual mistakes, but one is particularly egregious. Bell wrongly claims that the 1954 DuSable team was the first all-black team to play in the finals of the state tournament (p. 3), which is not the case. The school, under the name New Phillips, went to the state finals in 1936, where they were eliminated in the first round. It is surprising that Bell would make this incorrect assertion, because a few years earlier he had written a profile on the 1936 team while working for the Chicago Sun-Times. The book’s marketing tagline is unfortunate—“The first comprehensive history of high school basketball in Illinois.” How comprehensive can the book be when it begins in 1943, fifty years after Morgan Park Academy first played basketball in Illinois? How comprehensive can it be when Bell completely ignores the girls’ game? Throughout the book, basketball is written about as being equivalent to the boys’ game alone. The appendices section, called “Overtime,” is fan stuff, including Bell’s picks of all-time best players, top teams, top coaches, top games, and the like. A table of the Class AA and Class A annual top-four finishers in the tourney should have been added as a helpful guide to the reader. The book also includes an impressive list of interview sources and a useful bibliography, which includes every book written on Illinois high school basketball. Despite the deficiencies of Sweet Charlie, Bell deserves plaudits. His work will serve as a resource for both high school basketball fans, who will enjoy the wonderful stories, but also for the sport historian, especially those historians who are interested in racial issues relating to sport. He conducted valuable new research to come up with a book that adds considerable literature to high school basketball in Illinois. —ROBERT PRUTER Lewis University

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Volume 31, Number 3