DR. —- THE MAN

Stories and anecdotes about the man who gave to the world

A Paper Presented at the NCPEAM Convention Portland, Oregon December, 1970

By

Henry A. Shenk The Lawrence, Kansas DR. JAMES NAISMITH 1861 - 1939

Doctor of Medicine Ordained Minister Professor of Inventor of Basketball Preface

Dr. James Naismith, inventor of the game of basketball, was a professor

of Physical Education at the University of Kansas from 1898 until his death

in 1939. The author of this article was one of Dr. Naismith's students from

1924 until 1928, and assisted Naismith with giving incoming freshmen men

their physical examinations in the fall of 1927. Many of the stories in this

paper are either from memory or are anecdotes related by others.

I wish to express my deepest appreciation to Mr. Jack Hammlg, one of our

former students who graciously gave his permission to use such material as

I wished from his unpublished Master's thesis. I am also indebted to

Mr. Duke D'Ambra, Lawrence photographer, and to my colleagues, Dr. Joie

Stapleton, Professor Don Henry, Dr. Forrest C. Allen and Dr. Ed Elbel. I am particularly indebted to Dr. Elbel, a colleague of Dr. Naismith for many years, who gave invaluable help and whose sketch of Dr. Naismith is included with the paper.

It is my hope that, through this effort, a glimpse at the character and personality of Dr. Naismith may be handed down, and that some of the

Naismith story, heretofore untold, will be saved for posterity. Perhaps his basic philosophy of clean living through athletics will be an inspiration to young people entering the physical education profession as it has been to me.

Henry A. Shenk Lawrence, Kansas December, 1970 DR. JAMES NAISMITH — THE MAN

Stories and anecdotes about the man who gave basketball to the world

The little town of Almonte, , was destined to give to the

physical education profession two of its greatest leaders. The one, James

Naismith, was born November 6, 1861. He gave basketball to the world--one of

the few instances where a man has deliberately set out to invent a new game and

was successful. The magnificent gymnasia, field houses, and basketball courts

to be found in every civilized country in the world are fitting monuments to

Naismith and his game.

The other leader, R. Taite McKenzie, was born in Almonte on May 26, 1867,

more than six years after Naismith's birth. McKenzie not only was a leading

physical educator, orthopedist, physician and educator whose book, Exercise in

Education and Medicine is a collector's item but he was also one of the world's

great sculptors, who specialized in sculpturing athletes in action.

Naismith and McKenzie had many things in common besides having been born

and growing to manhood in the same Canadian town. They were each of Scotch

ancestry; they each lost their parents at an early age; each was a Presbyterian;

each attended and was graduated from McGill University, where McKenzie succeeded

Naismith as Director of "Gymnasium"; each became an M.D.; each was a fine

athlete and leading physical educator; each made a significant and lasting

contribution to the life and culture of the world.

Naismith had a childhood filled with grief and frustration. Three days

before his ninth birthday, his father died. On his birthday he lost his mother.

After the death of his parents he went to live with his maternal grandmother

and an unmarried uncle, Peter Young. After about three years his grandmother died and Jim, his sister and brother were reared by the uncle. 2.

Jim started his education in high school while working in lumber camps in the winter and helping his uncle on the farm in the summer. Then he felt that he should help his uncle more so he dropped out of high school and worked. After two years at the insistence of his uncle, he decided to go back to high school so that he might finish up and go to college. He skipped a grade, took the

Latin and Greek examinations required for college entrance and, in 1884 entered

McGill University.

His work on the farm and lumber camps had given young Jim a strong body.

He was attracted to athletics and became a member of the rugby football team.

He played rugby for three years. He also played soccer and . At the same time, he had certain ideas on the way a man ought to live his life. And then an incident occurred which created the focus of his entire career.

One day during football practice at McGill, something went wrong, and the guard next to Naismith, who had gained respect for Jim's ideals, let loose a stream of profanity. Suddenly the player stopped and exclaimed, "Excuse me, Jim I'm sorry". Naismith suddenly realized that here was the way to connect the two, clean living through athletics.

With these ideas in the back of his mind, Naismith was graduated from McGill in 1887 and was ordained a minister in the Presbyterian church. He stayed at

McGill three years after graduation and preached in a small local church. On one occasion in a bruising game of football on Saturday, he received two very black eyes and presented a shocking appearance to his congregation when he appeared in the pulpit the next day.

Still imbued with the idea that he could develop clean living through sport, in 1890 Naismith entered what was then known as the School for Christian

Workers in Springfield, Massachusetts. Here he also taught Physical Education to a class of prospective Y.M.C.A. secretaries. The story of how Naismith, after promptings from Dr. Luther Gulick, then head of the Physical Training

Department of the college, invented the game of basketball, has been often 3.

repeated. But few know that we might be playing box-ball today, if the janitor, whom Naismith had dispatched to find two boxes, had been able to find them

instead of coming back with two peach baskets and wondering if they would do.

Naismith accepted them reluctantly and so we have been playing basketball

instead of box-ball ever since.

The height of the baskets, too, was determined more or less by chance. The running track, which circled the college gym, was approximately 10 feet in height and that is where Naismith hung the first baskets, so that is the height they have remained ever since. He had considered setting the baskets on the floor at either end of the gym, but then he reasoned that a guard could sit on the basket and thus effectively prevent all scoring!

Graduates of took Naismith's game of basketball with them to all parts of the country. It caught on immediately but was for a time considered something of a sissy game. Within five years time the girls were playing the game on an intercollegiate level. From Naismith's scrapbook comes this interesting item:

The first intercollegiate basketball game between two women's teams was held between Stanford and California in 1896. Only women were allowed as spectators. The participants wore middies, bloomers and long black hose.

Midway in the first half, one of the goals came down. A male janitor came in to fix it. The California girls ran for cover but the brazen Stanfords hussies strutted about the court while the janitor was putting the goal up.

At Springfield, Naismith was credited not only with developing the game of basketball, but also with a lesser known achievement of inventing the first head gear for football. It came about in this manner.

He was the regular on 's "Stubby Christians", the

Springfield football team organized in the fall of 1890 from the 57 students then in attendance at the college.-' Stagg was the one player who had played 4.

American football but Naismith and another student had played rugby in Canada.

The entire squad had only fifteen players and usually the eleven starters had

to play the entire game. The name "Stubby Christians" was the admiring appellation given the Springfield team by New York sports writers after a game with Yale in Madison Square Garden in the fall of 1890. Yale was a powerhouse in Eastern football circles and the ferocious battle that Stagg's men waged, as Springfield outplayed Yale in the first half, won the hearts of the Eastern writers.

Naismith played center on the team. On one occasion, years later, he told his class about how he came to develop the head gear. As a center his head was getting sore and he was beginning to develop a cauliflower ear. In order to protect his head and ears, he took an old rugby football and cut it in two. He pulled one end of the ball over his head and ears and tied the two flaps under his chin. When young Naismith appeared on the practice field in this contraption,

Stagg snorted, "What are you going to do, butt like a goat?" Naismith's reply has been lost. However, a picture of Naismith wearing this first head gear is to be found in the collection of Mr. Duke D'Ambra, a Lawrence photographer.

Helmets have been an important part of the protective equipment of football for years and unless someone can successfully refute the claim, Naismith must be given credit for inventing the as well as the game of basketball.

Following four years at Springfield, Naismith became Physical Training

Director of the Y.M.C.A. in , Colorado in 1895. While working there in the "Y"i he attended Gross Medical College. He was awarded the Degree of

Doctor of Medicine in 1898.

In that same year, Chancellor Snow of the University of Kansas was looking for someone to head up the Physical Education program and also to lead prayer in chapel. Chapel was a daily occurrence and attendance was required. Snow contacted Amos Alonzo Stagg who recommended his good friend Jim Naismith. His 5.

ministerial background made leading prayer easy, but Naismith's main interests

lay in physical education and athletics for it was in these areas where he hoped to be of real service to young men. His first appointment was as

"associated" professor. He was advanced to full professor in 1907. He remained

Chairman of the Department of Physical Education and Athletics until Dr. Forrest

C. Allen, the famed "Phog" Allen of great basketball tradition at Kansas, replaced him in 1920. Naismith continued as a popular professor until his retire­ ment in 1937.

In 1907 while a student at K.U., Allen had been employed by nearby Baker

University, as Basketball Coach. When Allen told Naismith of his new job, the latter remonstrated, "Forrest, you don't coach basketball, you just play it!"

It wasn't until years later when Allen and his Kansas teams became famous and

Allen was President of the Basketball Coaches Association of America that

Naismith conceded that maybe Allen could coach the game.

His former students tell many stories of Naismith's teaching. One of his duties was to teach a required class of hygiene once a week to Freshmen men.

On this particular occasion in the Spring of 1925, the class was being held in a second floor classroom in old Robinson Gym. The day was warm and the 60 freshmen crowded into the room were being given a lesson on venerial disease.

The room was even warmer because the shades over the windows, which were the only source of ventilation had to be drawn to darken the room to show a series of slides. These slides had been developed by the Army for use in their social hygiene program in World War I. The slides were horrible showing the most advanced cases of syphilis and designed, no doubt, to scare the recruits of 1917 so badly that they would take no chances.

As the lecture went on, the air became hotter and muggier. Suddenly there was a thump! A boy had fainted. Naismith called out "let him lay", and went ahead with the lecture. Then there was another thump. Another had fainted. Two 6. or three more passed out during the period, and were allowed to stay on the floor. Naismith explained that fainting was nature's way of getting the blood back to a persons' head by getting the head as low or lower than the heart.

In a short time each student recovered and sheepishly regained his chair. The class learned two lessons that day.

On another occasion Doc was teaching a tumbling class. Students were diving over a horse onto a pile of mats. A football player with little tumbling experience asked, "Doc, how do I land?" Doc's reply was "Gravity will take care of that". No one laughed harder than Naismith when the student hit on his head and got up ruefully rubbing his neck.

Doc always managed to keep the class interesting, no matter what the subject. Toward the end of the semester in his Kinesiology class he announced that we would have a picnic at the next class period. One of the class members, who lived on a farm at the edge of town, provided some baked chickens for the occasion. All class members were served a generous piece of chicken. The catch was that each person receiving a piece of chicken had to identify the major muscles and their origin, insertion and blood supply before eating his piece of chicken. Many class members have never liked chicken as well since that affair.

Being an M.D., Doc was always intrigued with research on athletes. One time he became interested in finding the effects of drinking alcoholic beverages upon athletic performance. However, he knew that in Carrie Nation's Dry Kansas, there would be trouble if students were used as subjects for such an experiment.

He decided to be the subject himself and let someone else record his performance after imbibing various amounts of alcohol. He developed a target of concentric rings of metal applied on wood with a "bull's-eye" in the middle and wired it up with electricity. The idea was that he would lunge at the target with a fencing foil a certain number of times and a light would flash each time he succeeded in 7.

scoring a bull's-eye. The performance was to be repeated several times after

the consumption of increasing amounts of alcohol before each trial.

History does not record the results of this noble experiment but there Is

no doubt that there would be many volunteers from the present student body to

act as subjects were they given the opportunity.

Along the same lines, Doc served as team physician and often told the

story of a bottle of brandy in his medical kit for medicinal purposes.

He discovered that whenever his medical kit was out of his sight for a while,

the level of the contents of the brandy bottle would be suspiciously lower. He

solved the problem by labeling the brandy "Spiritus Frumentum". Since the

tipplers' ability in Latin did not match their thirst, his brandy was undisturbed alter that.

Naismith also gave the physical examinations to all entering freshmen.

Influenced no doubt by Hitchcock and Sargent he used a complicated system to chart each person's anthropometrical measurements. Each male freshman was measured from head to toe, forwards and backwards and the measurements plotted on a chart. Not only should a person be we11-developed but he should be symmetrical in build. Since symmetry was a goal, if one arm or one leg was larger in circum­ ference than the other, a student was advised to spend long hours with pulley weights, the nautical wheel, rowing machines, and other devices designed to increase the size of the part in question. Today we recognize that most people have one side of the body larger than the other but this was considered a grave defect at that time.

One of the results of the examinations was the selection of the most perfectly proportioned man out of each year's freshman class. Naismith contended that since a good big man was always better than a good little man, his 100% man physically should be about 6*1" tall, weigh approximately 190 lbs., be perfectly symmetrical and possess fine muscular development. While seldom did a freshman man meet Doc's exact specification, he always selected the most

perfect physical specimen from each new class. The campus newspaper dubbed

this individual, "the answer to a maiden's prayer" and he became something of

a campus celebrity.

One of the stories Doc liked to tell with a chuckle was about the miraculous football prospect he discovered while giving the physical examinations

in the fall of 1899. His "find" was a large, raw-boned, green, country boy with huge hands and feet. He looked like a prime prospect to Naismith, who told Fielding H. "Hurry Up" Yost, the Kansas Coach who later went to Michigan, that he thought the young man might, with practice, shape up into a pretty good football player. Yost rather dubiously agreed to let the young man, whose name was Krebs, try out for the team. The boy's progress was unbelieveable.

Within three weeks he was on . Each game he got better. By the time of the Nebraska game late in the season he almost single-handedly whipped the Cornhuskers. After the all-victorious season was over, Krebs disappeared.

It wasn't until years later that a story leaked out about Naismith's "find".

According to the story Krebs had been an All-American player at an Eastern

College who was induced by Yost to come to Kansas and help him out for the season. Naismith's eyes twinkled when he recalled his ability to judge football players.

Doc not only brought basketball to Kansas but also Lacrosse and Fencing.

He taught , track, boxing, soccer, tumbling, and such gymnastic exercises as wands, dumbbells and Indian club swinging in addition to his many other duties.

As the years passed, basketball changed and developed and Naismith voiced his opinion of some of the changes. For instance, he always felt that the "stall" did not belong in basketball. When the University of Missouri stalled for 9.

eight minutes in a game against the University of Kansas, Doc insisted that it

was against all rules of good sportsmanship. One of his suggested solutions

was to let either team shoot at either basket thus spreading the players all

over the floor. This was too revolutionary for the rule makers who Instead

introduced the center line which had to be crossed in 10 seconds.

Largely through the efforts of , who was first President of the

National Basketball Coaches Association, basketball was included for the first

time in the 1936 Olympic games in . Dr. Allen also sponsored a campaign

to raise money to send Dr. Naismith and his wife to Berlin for the games. Each

high school and college in America was asked to send one penny from each

admission to one basketball game to provide the expense money. Not only was the

response enough to pay for the Naismith's trip, but enough money was left over

to pay off the mortgage on their home.

Unfortunately Mrs. Naismith suffered a heart attack on the Sunday before

Dr. Naismith was scheduled to leave. The Doctors assured Dr. Naismith that his

wife would be all right but could not make the trip. He left the following

Tuesday and was received with great respect and honor in Berlin. It was entirely

fitting that the man who had invented basketball should be present when It was

first played in the Olympics. It was while at the Olympics and later when

visiting many of the major cities in Europe that Dr. Naismith became aware of

the tremendous Impact that his game had made on the world.

Naismith was physically a strong, and robust man whose sturdiness showed

the effects of his hard work in the lumber camps and on the farm in his early days in Canada as well as his athletic participation. He was five feet ten

Inches tall and stocky. He'd fit in to the scene today for he always wore a mustache. He had no middle initial but some writers persisted in inserting an

A in his name. When asked what it stood for Doc replied, "anonymous". 10.

In his teaching, Doc was sometimes not as scientific as he might have

been but he was always stimulating and challenging. He imbued his students

with a love of physical education and athletics. He in turn was beloved by

all of his students. Not only was he popular with the students but he was

highly respected by his colleagues on the University faculty.

Naismith was a religious man, a Sunday School Superintendent, and an Elder

In the Presbyterian Church in Lawrence, which he attended regularly. One person

who knew Naismith well said he had never seen Naismith with a basketball in his

hands but had often seen him holding a Bible.

He was never interested in amassing a fortune or making large sums of money

by endorsing products In advertisements, although he did allow one sporting

goods company to sell a basketball bearing his name. Typical of his character

was his remark upon learning of the contributions to his Olympic trip, "Do not

be afraid to serve humanity and wait for your reward."

James Naismith was an Inventor, author, educator, innovator, athlete and

Christian gentleman. He was an ordained minister and a physician. He gave up

both of these latter professions because he felt he could be of greater service

to young men through physical education and athletics than through either medicine or theology. When one thinks of the millions of young men playing his

game of basketball, his life time goal of "clean living through sport" would

seem to have been realized. FOOTNOTES

Fred Leonard and George Affleck, The History of Physical Education (Philadelphia: Lea and Febiger, 1947), pp. 465-476.

Jack G. Hammig, A Historical Sketch of Doctor James Naismith, Unpublished M.A. Thesis, University of Kansas, 1962, p. 2.

^William H. Ball, "The Stubby Christians," The Springfield College Bulletin, XLIV (May, 1970), 13.