Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

On November 1st my Uncle Brent left his wasted body on this earth and graduated to the next stop on his journey to immortality. He was a smiling, loving, and truly kind man who embraced my widowed aunt’s family as his own; he also, it seems, was on a basketball team dubbed the “Mormon Yankees” during his mission to Australia in the 1950s. (They played the Australian Olympic Basketball Team–and won.) Today was his funeral, and it seems like the perfect day to review Scott Ellsworth’s The Secret Game: A Wartime Story of Courage, Change, and Basketball’s Lost Triumph.

Of course, if you know me you know that what I know about basketball might most charitably be characterized as “more than I know about football” and “far more than I know about soccer.” Ellworth’s book, however, tells a story that I doubt many fans know. It is at once the story of a single game between two incredible but largely forgotten teams and the story of the early years of what was then frequently segregated basketball. (Learning that North Carolina teams and schools were rigidly segregated in the 1940s did not surprise me. Learning that Kansas and Indiana teams and schools were often segregated as well, did.) It was the kind of book that had me “did you know-“ing to friends, family, and the young women I worth with at church; it was also the kind of book that had me thinking about racial injustice in this country and how we can build bridges of understanding in what ought to be our continual quest to eradicate it.

It’s the kind of book that would be helpful for more people to read right now.

(It’s also the kind of book that notes Uruguay’s attempt to disqualify players over 5’8″ in the first Olympics in which basketball was an official sport. You’ve got to admire the chutzpah.)

This is a book worth reading, friends–whoever you are. The story of North Carolina College for Negroes’ basketball team and the team from Duke Medical school (NOT Duke’s actual basketball team–the med students beat them) playing behind locked doors for safety a decade before the Civil Rights Movement got firmly off the ground is both a dramatic and an important one, one that ought to be known. If you’ve got $20 to spare, buy it. (Unless you’re my adult nephew in Florida, who really shouldn’t be buying such things less than two months before Christmas.) If not, look for it at your local library. Either way–enjoy.*

*If you enjoyed The Boys in the Boat, you should definitely not miss this. It’s even the same Olympics!