Pittsburgh Sports Firsts

By Alliance of Esteemed Duquesne Scribes

Countless groundbreaking moments in the nation's sports history were made on the gridirons, courts, fields, ice rinks and ballparks of Pittsburgh. Duquesne's Chuck Cooper was the first African American player drafted by the NBA. Beloved local radio station KDKA produced the first-ever broadcast of a Major League Baseball game. The Pittsburgh Stars were the first NFL champions in 1902. The first nighttime World Series game was played in the Steel City, and the only game seven World Series walk-off homerun happened there too. The city boasts compelling claims as the birthplace of pro hockey, pro football and college basketball. Some of the most preeminent authors and sports historians of Western Pennsylvania capture the vivid moments that make Pittsburgh a city of historic sports firsts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Mar 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781439672136

Alliance of Esteemed Duquesne Scribes

The Alliance of Esteemed Duquesne Scribes includes some of the most preeminent authors and sports historians of Western Pennsylvania, such as David Finoli, Tom Rooney, Josh Taylor, Chris Fletcher, Gary Kinn, Bill Ranier, John Franko, Robert Healy III, Jim Lachimia, Chuck Cooper III and Douglas Cavanaugh.

Book preview

appreciated.

INTRODUCTION

Fans of sports in the Steel City mostly focus on the memorable championships and players that they’ve celebrated in the history of the various colleges and professional teams that have represented this city so well. If that was the whole story, it would be magnificent indeed. But there’s so much more. There were many times when western Pennsylvania was at the forefront of sports: the only man to be elected to both the Basketball and the Baseball Halls of Fame; the only Game 7 walk-off home run in World Series history; the greatest winning streaks in NHL history, both in the regular season and the postseason. More important, many barriers broken in race relations point to the city: the first African American quarterback to play in the Rose Bowl; the first lineup of color in major-league history; and the first African American drafted into the National Basketball Association, Chuck Cooper—the Jackie Robinson of the NBA, if you will.

It’s a cavalcade of incredible stories that exemplify the history of sports in this part of the country, often stories that supersede the banners that hang in various locations throughout the Pittsburgh metropolitan area.

Quite a few of the tales told in this book have been locked away for several decades, stories that were told seemingly without the proper research to back them up.

Was Pitt the first team to wear numbers on their college football uniforms? Or was it Washington and Jefferson, a supposed fact that both W&J and the NCAA acknowledge?

Was Greenlee Field the first African American–owned stadium in the Negro Leagues? Or were others built earlier and became lost to time?

Is Geneva College truly the birthplace of college basketball? Or does Vanderbilt’s claim make the title theirs?

Did the U.S. Olympic Hockey team really originate in Pittsburgh?

We do the research here, and the answers to these questions and so many more are provided by the exceptional group of writers and historians, the name of which appears on the cover of this book.

If that was just the best part, it would have been worth the price, but there is so much more. Even in one example of firsts that we all know about— the Steelers becoming the first team to win three, four and then six Super Bowls—we learn some of the reasons why they went from the NFL’s most embarrassing franchise to one of its greatest. We even find out that, as great as they became, they weren’t the first NFL champion to call Pittsburgh home. We find out just how significant KDKA radio was in sports history (it was pretty damn important) and that the football program at Waynesburg College was part of the first collegiate televised contest.

We know that the Civic Arena was the first facility to be able to open its roof—and why that wasn’t always a good thing. We proudly tout the area as being the birthplace of professional football but see that the designation made one area historian irate. And we also get to experience Babe Ruth’s final three home runs at Forbes Field (one of which was the first to clear the right-field roof at the famed stadium) through the eyes of Chris Fletcher’s grandfather Vince Golletti in a touching story. In addition, Chuck Cooper’s son relives his dad’s long-awaited journey to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

This and so much more are all here in a book that will explain parts of the rich history of sports in western Pennsylvania that readers did not know.

The authors included in these pages are also proud to donate a percentage of their royalties to the Chuck Cooper Foundation, an organization that does exceptional things in furthering the education of young African American students in the area.

And now the Alliance of Esteemed Duquesne Scribes presents Pittsburgh Sports Firsts.

CHAPTER 1

CHUCK COOPER

FATHER TIME VERSUS MY FATHER’S TIME

TOM ROONEY AND CHUCK COOPER III

I was probably eleven years old. Late summer afternoon, East Hills Playground, Pittsburgh, early 1970s. A place in Pittsburgh famous for basketball, where the Connie Hawkins League once held its games.

A bunch of us neighborhood kids were playing at the far basket, a little half-court three-on-three, shirts versus skins.

Chuckie, I heard my dad call from the other end of the court. He was home from work from Pittsburgh National Bank, where he was one of the company’s first African American executives and the man in charge of what was called Urban Affairs, which meant representing a major corporation to some of the most hardworking and opportunity-challenged communities in the metropolitan area.

Well, I was surprised to see my dad. It must’ve been later than I thought.

Chuckie, come here for a minute.

Charles Chuck Cooper, retired many years from professional basketball, still looked the part, long and lean.

My dad took off his suit coat and loosened his tie. He handed me the coat and nodded to me to toss him a basketball. He walked toward where the other kids had taken a break to watch our encounter. Pacing around the court, he got to where he estimated the three-quarter-length line might be, some sixty feet. The longest shot I ever made in a game was about this far, he said.

Who knows how long ago he had even held a basketball?

When he left Duquesne University after the 1949–50 season, Chuck Cooper was the second one-thousand-point scorer in school history and a First Team All-American. What was special about Cooper’s basketball career, though, occurred on April 25, 1950, when he became the first African American to be selected in the NBA draft. Courtesy of Duquesne Athletics.

He rolled it in his hands, found the most even grip on the well-worn leather ball and launched it skyward to that opposite goal. Swish! Nothing but nylon. A four-point shot à la the Harlem Globetrotters (for whom he once played) if there ever was one.

The other kids glanced at one another with a voiceless Wow, did you see that?

Now the second-longest shot I ever made was right here, he continued, moving up to half-court. One of the kids tossed him another ball.

He measured it, lifted the ball eye high and…swish. All you heard was air and the sound of a net being cleanly filled until the Spalding slapped the hot asphalt under the hoop.

Chuckie, make this game your last, your mom doesn’t like stragglers at dinner. I handed him back the suit jacket, and he headed home, just a short walk away.

The other kids gathered around me. Who knew, Chuckie, who knew? they asked one after another.

Yes, who knew? It was a long time before everyone would know—2019, to be exact, when my dad was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, an honor many of his supporters had been waiting for, for what seemed the longest time. It was so long that many were too young or may have forgotten about the man who was arguably the Jackie Robinson of Pro Basketball.

All that time to get that recognition. But Father Time could not deny my father’s time.

FROM THE HOUSE TO THE HALL

It’s some four hundred miles from my dad’s childhood home on Whittier Street in Pittsburgh’s East Liberty neighborhood to Springfield and that Hall of Fame Induction Weekend in September 2019. For my dad, it was a trip he didn’t make in person due to his early passing at age fifty-seven, struck down by cancer. I pledged to my family that I would someday make that trip for him and get him his rightful recognition. My three sisters, Carolyn, Catherine and Cheryl, and I were sad that my beautiful mother, Irva Lee Cooper, and my dad’s lovely wife of twenty-seven years didn’t quite make it either, having passed a few years before. I like to think they watched together from a lofty spot in heaven overlooking the exciting and fulfilling three days of activities. It sure seemed justifiable, considering his accomplishments. Justice took a decade, though.

My dad’s Pittsburgh growing up neighborhood was its own microcosm of a melting pot, parts African American and Italian American heritages. My dad said families lived in such proximity on these narrow streets that you could hear popular radio shows broadcasting in stereo on hot summer nights through screen doors and wide-open windows.

Dad had been a multisport star at famed Westinghouse High, where the genes that enriched his DNA were shared by an older brother, Cornell, who was a world-class sprinter and high jumper and would race against Jesse Owens. Cornell was fifteen years older and set records in high school that lasted decades. One of my dad’s favorite memories was at the movies when, unexpectedly, in the opening newsreel, Cornell popped up winning a national track meet somewhere.

Son of the man who may have been the city’s first African American mail carrier, Charles Chuck Cooper started his college career at West Virginia State College before stepping away, as countless men and women did, to serve his country in the navy in World War II. Returning home after the conflict, he was recruited by hometown Duquesne University, not that far down Centre Avenue from S’Liberty—as locals slanged it—to a campus overlooking the city that they called The Bluff. (I got a little of that gene magic, too, and it translated to a full basketball scholarship ride and my own proudly earned college degree, this after being on the 1978 Schenley High School state championship team.)

The Duquesne men’s basketball program of my dad’s era was the real deal in the late 1940s and ’50s, and the Dukes just a few years after my dad graduated won the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) at New York’s Madison Square Garden. It was an event at least coequal with the National Collegiate Athletic Association Tournament, which was often held simultaneously. In fact, my dad would argue that in his playing days the NIT had the most significance, given its location in the Big Apple and its being held at the prestigious Garden. Both would crown National Champions, and the Dukes’ Big Apple win in 1955 allowed them to make—and still make—that claim.

Dad led the Dukes in those pre-championship years and was the leading scorer in his junior year. His Duquesne career included two trips to New York for the NIT, and he was voted team captain his senior year, extremely rare for a team made up of mostly Caucasian kids. He earned multiple All-American honors, including First Team with the eminent Look magazine designation. Duquesne was an awesome 78-19 in my dad’s years with the Dukes.

Being an African American and having the skills and talent to play college ball were no problem in Pittsburgh, because at Duquesne University there was already an environment of acceptance of all races and creeds. The Holy Ghost Fathers held serve there, and they treated African American students with dignity and respect.

And Pittsburgh had spawned many diverse athletes, especially in boxing and baseball. Even though Major League Baseball had just recently integrated with Jackie Robinson a few years before, in 1947, Pittsburgh rightfully boasted two of the most famous Negro League teams: the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Homestead Grays. The two shared championships in a league that was almost countrywide as easy as extended families shared a Thanksgiving turkey.

It was my dad’s Duquesne teammate and close friend, John Red Manning, who would coach the Dukes in the 1960s and early ’70s. The Dukes had great success as an independent team perennially competing for a dance—to make the NCAA Tournament each spring.

Duquesne and my dad shared a special bond between them that I feel even today. In 1946, even before Jackie Robinson, the university went to great lengths to support him. And it turned out that the University of Tennessee went a great distance to test that resolve. News reports from that time show that Tennessee had informed Duquesne by letter that if Cooper or any other colored player was in the lineup when they came to Pittsburgh, they would not take the court. The Duquesne players took a team vote, unanimously supporting my dad. No Chuck Cooper, no game. Tennessee went home with a loss without even changing into their uniforms.

STRIPED OR PLAID OR POLKA DOT

Despite being one of the nation’s great seniors at Duquesne, my dad wasn’t all that confident that an NBA team would draft him in the spring of 1950. After all, no African American had ever been drafted, signed or worked out by the pro league, which had completed only its own fourth year of existence. Subsequently, my dad did what every great player of color would have to do if he wanted to continue playing basketball after college graduation: he signed with Abe Saperstein and the world-famous Harlem Globetrotters and toured with them. This arguably was the greatest feat of all; you had to be one of the ten best African American players in the nation. It was ultracompetitive to make the Trotters.

But come that fateful April 25, the NBA owners had their annual congress, this year in Chicago. Part of the proceedings included the player-entry draft. With the thirteenth pick overall, in the second round, Boston Celtics owner Walter Brown announced, The Boston Celtics select Chuck Cooper of Duquesne.

Through the blue haze of cigar smoke in the room, another owner exclaimed, Walter, you can’t pick Chuck Cooper, he’s colored!

Brown shot back, I don’t care if he’s striped or plaid or polka dot, the Boston Celtics take Chuck Cooper!

Professional basketball, like pro football, was just getting its footings in those years. College football and basketball were much more popular and accepted by the public. Only baseball stood out as a professional team sport with any real popularity.

Thus, the ripples from Chuck Cooper’s selection by the Celtics were widely felt and, for the NBA owners, potentially perilous. Those owners counted on doubleheader games the Globetrotters conducted with an NBA regular-season game to spike the average attendance. Drafting a player already under contract to the Globetrotters was sure to bring retribution from Saperstein in the form of canceling those doubleheaders. Saperstein had a monopoly on colored players. The NBA owners were less concerned about black and white and more concerned about green.

THREE’S COMPANY

While my dad was the first African American to be drafted by an NBA team, two other men rightfully share some piece of the groundbreaking and barrier-breaking 1950–51 NBA season. Nat Sweetwater Clifton was a twenty-seven-year-old undrafted player with the Harlem Globetrotters. His rights were sold by Saperstein to the New York Knicks just after the 1950 draft. He immediately signed with the Knicks, making him the first African American to put pen to paper and actually play for an NBA team. Earl Lloyd, who came out of West Virginia State, was drafted in the ninth round of the 1950 draft by the Washington Capitols. Their opener that fall happened to take place one day ahead of my dad’s season opener with the Celtics. All three are now in the Naismith Hall of Fame.

My dad played four years for the Celtics and was then traded to the Milwaukee Hawks before his sixth and final season in the NBA as a member of the Fort Wayne Pistons. He scored 2,725 points in 409 games and had almost as many rebounds (2,431). He was known as a great defender and rebounder but somewhat of a reluctant scorer. My dad told me he felt he could have been more of an offensive threat, but the league was not quite ready to have an African American player be a star.

Years later, he was on the wrong end of a gunshot from somewhere outside of Three Rivers Stadium while sitting in the stands at a Pittsburgh Steelers preseason game. A pundit told Pittsburgh Press columnist Roy McHugh that Chuck Cooper was still blocking shots after all these years.

LIFE AFTER BASKETBALL

My sisters and I are as proud of what my dad achieved after basketball as we are with his college and professional career. He returned to college and got a master’s degree from the University of Minnesota and then achieved two more breakthrough moments. He became the City of Pittsburgh’s first African American department head under Mayor Pete Flaherty and then moved on to Pittsburgh National Bank (PNC these days) as its first urban affairs director. He helped create that department to get his employer involved in the community. He worked alongside PNC’s top executives, who credited my dad with creating a community banking model that was groundbreaking in the Pittsburgh market.

As I mentioned, my dad passed away at just fifty-seven years of age. The cancer came quick, and the chemo drained him. It was tough for family and friends to witness his weight loss and declining health. Getting him into the Hall of Fame was something deserved and overdue, but the timing was exquisite in one way. It happened the same year that Duquesne announced its new basketball arena would be named the UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse, a premier facility named for a deserving and iconic individual in the annals of the university’s history.

Dad was a modest man but proud of his heritage and place in history. He valued family, hard work and the empowerment a good education can deliver and the opportunities it can bring as keys to success. He loved and was loved by his community. People still stop me today and tell me how he helped them with the city of Pittsburgh and with financial, employment and other challenges.

He would be most proud I think of the Chuck Cooper Foundation, which generates scholarships for African Americans seeking graduate degrees and also provides leadership training and mentor relationships between scholars and successful professionals. A great group of volunteers and board members joined me in the creation and development of the foundation—this I believe he wouldn’t trade for all of the other honors. He was blessed with skills and talent to succeed off and on the hardwood, and he knew the gifts like the ones he was blessed with should always be shared with others.

Who knew? asked my boyhood friends on East Hills Playground.

I always knew. Now the world knows about Chuck Cooper!

CHAPTER 2