Seattle’s First Basketball Craze Was a Bruising, Nine-Man Battle

Basket ball is the craze of the day for the winter months and has been steadily gaining favor with the athletes of Seattle until they are now looking forward with feverish interest to the great final contest of the season between the Young Men’s Christian Association and the Seattle Athletic Club, which is to be played at the indoor meet of the Y.M.C.A. at the Armory next Friday.

Week after week the church teams in the Y.M.C.A. have battled for supremacy, while the S.A.C. men have had some fierce contests at their rooms.

The ball is thrown into baskets, which are the goals, eighteen inches wide and placed ten feet above the floor level, one at each end of the room. Every goal counts three points, and no other points are counted. The game according to rules must be played entirely with the hands and the ball; fouls are called by the umpire for tackling, pushing, kicking the ball, striking it with the fist, running with the ball, holding it in any way except by the hands, needless rough play, striking or tripping an opponent, addressing the umpire or referee except by captains. For each foul a free throw to the basket is allowed for the side of the foulee. It should in a strict sense therefore be almost a “pass” game, but there are many tricks in it which make it otherwise.

How the Game Is Played. The forming of the men on the floor is peculiar to the game itself. For nine men to each team three play guard, three center, three as goal throwers. Each side has liberty to play in any part of the territory, so that every man closely guards, and in turn is closely guarded by, one man of the other side. This would seem to eliminate opportunity for team play, but in practice it does not—it compels the prettier maneuvering. Primarily the object of the guards is to prevent the goal throwers of the opposing team from throwing at all; of the centers to play aggressive and get the ball forward, and of the goal throwers to get the ball directly in the basket. Beyond this the scheme of the play is complicated; it involves so many tactics. Apparently there are no tactics whatever, but though in the melee men tumble over like skittles and are jumbled up in an inconceivable way that seems to involve no more science proper than a railroad accident, tactics are there just the same.

Suddenly the ball shoots on some apparently aimless message, but it lands right in the hands of a goal thrower who, as luck would have it, is all alone, deserted, and before you know it “our” side is yelling “goal.” Or a center man has made a lunge as the ball came flying by, and dribbling it along on the floor with his hands is in a fair way to throw for goal before his guard overtakes him; the guard is behind, however, coming after him like a cyclone; center sees him and, calculating swiftly how many thousand feet per second this fellow is traveling, just in the nick of time drops on his knees and over goes the other fellow neatly tripped and he is now involved, and he has now two clear seconds to get within distance and clear of all obstruction, to make a deliberate throw at the basket above him. Or he may play “team” and, seducing someone of the opposition to tackle his progress, with a quick feint and a sure throw almost at the same instant will have avoided the threatened danger and have passed the ball to his partner, who has been left unguarded.

Basket ball, in fact, is a pretty piece of team play all through, and a team that is not trained with this idea will lose the laurels always. One of the favorite tricks is for a center or forward to make a flying trip all around the field with the ball, enticing the other side out in chase, when, swift as a dart, the ball has reached the hands of one of his friends standing in some vacant spot, and swifter still it is in goal. This is nice pass work, but it is the team generalship before the pass is made that gives merit to the result. Get the ball in the hands of a player thirty feet from goal and six feet from his guard and the goal is almost won.

Individual Work Essential. It will be seen, however, that individual work is a sine qua non to the game. The players in every station have the satisfaction of knowing at the end of a contest that that goal was partly his fault. Individually, the first requisite is staying power. It is not a sprinting match, nor a wrestling match, nor a five-mile run, but simply a combination of all—star and bear on every faculty and nerve for two twenty-minute halves, with but a ten-minute rest between. In Seattle the first five minutes of the play every man feels as porous as a sponge, and, no matter what his condition, is dripping with perspiration. It is a severe strain to the muscle for supremacy. Black blows, bruises of every imaginable kind, pass unnoticed, as though they were no more inconvenient than the balmy breath of our present spring time. “Play till you drop” is the motto of every man on the floor, and though his lungs may weaken as twenty minutes die by, he must think them blacksmiths’ bellows and keep on imbibing oxygen till time is called.

It Is the Athletes’ Winter Fad. This is the new game that is now the winter fad of most indoor gymnasiums, and the bait that seduces the wayward young man of the outer world within the social and hospitable walls of our athletic associations. It is more than a game, however. It is an enchanting recreation; it is exercise, a liver squeezer, a kidney cleaner, a stomach reducer, an anti-fat process. It is even more than a Turkish bath, for your very teeth seem to perspire as the play waxes warm. And afterwards? You never knew the true enjoyment of the luxurious divan except in the aftermath of a basket ball game.

Seattle will soon witness the grim efforts and effects of this basket ball for itself, however, and in the contest next Friday its chivalry will see how vividly real is this indoor battle. They who do not witness it will have missed what promises to be the noblest fought contest in the history of this city’s sport. Both the Y.M.C.A. and the S.A.C. have the same ideal in view until then—they both mean to win.