Butler takes us back to better times

No one will deny that the Butler Bulldogs could have won the National Championship in college basketball, just as Duke did. It was a fair match every step of the way. Gordon Hayward’s 4-second jump shot and 1-second half-court heave were the only difference between victory and defeat. The Bulldogs made a magnificent run for the title. We love to root for David over Goliath. We seem to always like the little guy…and the team from Indy was something to admire all season long.

Butler University’s story has given new life to one of the greatest legends in sports history. The small town Milan Indians (pictured above) defeated the far-superior Muncie Central Bearcats for the Indiana State High School Championship in a game that even my grandmother could describe in minute detail. The victory was the inspiration for the award-winning movie “Hoosiers” and, although the back story of the principal characters was fictional, the final game was played out with pain-staking accuracy in the film.

I’ve got Hoosier blood in me. Both my parents were born and raised in Indiana. While I was growing up and moving from base to base every year with my military father, my summers were spent on the family farm in Indiana and whenever the chores were done, I was shooting hoops…or fishing.

My uncle was a high school basketball coach, which if you’re successful, gets you any other job you want in Indiana. He coached in the same state tournament that Milan won and, although I didn’t know the significance then, he took me to that final game as a grade schooler.

Butler Fieldhouse was mecca for high school basketball in those days. And it made the same impression on me as it did on the players in the movie “Hoosiers”. It was HUGE and the packed crowd was almost scary. High School players looked like giants to me then and the Muncie team dwarfed the Milan crew. Bobby Plump was the star that day and he’s one of those people who can never get past that one big moment in their lives. Like Bobby, nothing else that Jim Whittaker has done in his lifetime will ever make him more than the first American to climb Mt. Everest. When I met Bobby Plump at a family wedding a few years ago, he held court all day long talking about THE game. It’s been 50 years!!

But I digress…Milan’s coach was from Butler and had only been coaching for two years. He was 26-years-old. That was old to me then, but now, I realize that he was just a kid himself. He found a way to control the game and keep the bigger, more physical Bearcats from running and shooting. It’s called “the stall”…just hold on to the ball, don’t take a shot until you absolutely have to or want to, then get it back as quickly as you can and keep stalling. With a minute to go in the game, the score was tied 30-30. Bobby Plump held the ball for the last four minutes without ever making a pass. Remember, the rules were different in those days. There was no shot clock and Milan made it to the finals in a single-elimination tournament with every high school in the state participating…there were over 750 of them.

With 18-seconds left, Bobby dribbled to the right side of the key and shot a jump shot that touched nothing but the net. 32-30 Milan wins! I remember being engulfed by fans streaming onto the floor to celebrate. I kept my eye on my uncle who went straight over to congratulate the Milan coach. As the story goes, when the team drove back home to southeastern Indiana, over 40,000 people lined the road to greet them. All the players from the team went to college because of that game and Bobby Plump played for Butler and in a professional league before becoming a life insurance salesman in Milan where he is today.

Thirty years later, the whole state of Indiana rallied around the making of the movie “Hoosiers”. My uncle was asked to be the basketball consultant for the film and he even got a cameo as one of the opposing coaches. In the Director’s Commentary on the 10th anniversary edition of the DVD, Uncle Tom gets some real props from the filmmakers.

In Texas, it’s football. In Indiana, it’s basketball and always will be. Many of the game’s greatest players have learned the fundamentals there. I know I did during my two tours in and out of the state while I was in high school…we moved twice and I went to three different high schools during my four years. But I learned that basketball was king and playing the game made you proud…and got you a free haircut on Saturday, after a win.

The Butler University team will be an inspiration to an untold number of youngsters who are growing up in school now and joining in athletics. Basketball teaches a lot about skills, conditioning and teamwork. You gain respect for others while playing the game and you learn a lot about yourself and what motivates you. Last night’s championship game will be remembered as one of the greatest college basketball games ever played. And the most beautiful thing is…nobody lost.

April 5...the day after

Haze is never far away in Washington, DC. It happens in both the weather and the government. Big fluctuations in temperature, especially in the spring time, bring that murky air down over the city like a blanket.

The weather was hazy at 3pm on Friday, April 5, 1968 as I was driving back into the city from NIH (DC-acronym-speak for the National Institutes of Health) in Bethesda, Maryland. My meetings there were mercifully over early so that I had time to get to my office on Capitol Hill, close up and be there to pick-up my fiancé Jane when she arrived at National Airport (now Reagan) on spring break.

We were all shocked the night before with the news of Martin Luther King’s assassination in Memphis. The world-changing series of events from 1968 that began with the Vietnam War’s Tet Offensive in January was continuing. Just 5 days before on March 31,President Johnson had announced that he would not seek reelection when he said, “There is division in the American house now. There is a divisiveness among us all tonight.” Civil Rights and the Vietnam War were putting unbelievable pressure on our democracy and everyone could feel it.

I was driving my parent's new Camaro convertible and listening to dialogues about the assassination on public radio when I noticed lots of kids on the street. School had just let out and it was the start of spring vacation so I really wasn’t paying much attention to the groups on the sidewalks. Then two young kids both picked up huge pieces of cement from a street repair project and hurled them through a business window. I knew something serious was going on and it would be best to move on quickly. I obeyed the traffic light and stopped a block or so down the street before I realized how vulnerable I was. A pack of kids came running at the car. I saw the brick coming at the windshield and just hoped it didn’t completely shatter. The safety glass worked and just as the angry gang reached the car, I sped off leaving them in my exhaust.

Working my way to the Hill, I saw pockets of unrest but I kept moving. Then, as I turned east on Florida Avenue towards the Capitol, I could see plumes of black smoke billowing up from Hecht & Company (DC’s Nordstrom) and several other tall buildings. The streets were beginning to be closed off. No cell phones, remember. I wanted to stop at a pay phone to call my office and my parents but I didn’t want to chance getting out of the car.

It took more than an hour but I reached the Rayburn Office Building and found my colleagues gathered in an office listening and watching the news. How could this be happening in America? In our nation’s Capitol, for that matter! In true government fashion, all the workers in the District were told to go home at the same time. Normally, work schedules were “time-released” beginning at about 2pm to prevent congestion. Everyone was now on the road at once and nothing could move an inch.

When officials realized what they had done, all the bridges out of town were closed and a curfew was imposed on the city. Geez, this sounded like Moscow, not Washington. I reached my father at the Pentagon and he told me he had been able to send a car to the airport to pick-up Jane and take her home. He suggested I stay put. Being a military man, he was already knee-deep in the operation in the District.

I went to a friend’s apartment nearby the office and we sat on his balcony feeling somewhat frightened and helplessly watching the city burn. The curfew was dropped at about 11pm and I got out of the city by midnight. Our suburban Virginia home felt really good that night. But it was another one of those life-changing days that occurred so frequently in 1968 and made me look on our government and our country in a very different way.

Several days later, I ventured into the city with Jane for a respite and a look at the spring flowers and cherry blossoms. I took a photo that shows Jane and flowers but in the background is a truck full of armed troops that was an ever-present sign of what martial law really feels like.

Martin Luther King Jr’s tragic death made our country take an even closer look at what we were doing to each other and at the perilous path we were headed down. I never miss a Martin Luther King Day celebration. His words, deeds and life had a profound effect on the person I have become. President Johnson went on in his March 31 speech to say, ”I cannot disregard the peril to the American people and the hope and prospect of peace for all people.” None of us can and may we never come that close to the edge of uncertainty again.