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 DOLPH SCHAYES ...in his glory days |
Former NBA star lends class
to sports festival in Israel
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All his colleagues at TheColumnists.com congratulate Maury Allen on receiving the Pillar of Achievement award at a recent ceremony at the Wingate Institute in Natanya, Israel, during the Jewish Olympics-style event known as the Maccabiah Games. The award is made to individuals who have made significant contributions to sports or to the world community through sports. We are proud to be the venue where the columns of Maury Allen are read today. |
of TheColumnists.com
He lent class to
the event just by sitting in the audience at the Wingate Institute
in Natanya, Israel, just outside of Tel Aviv, during a break
at the Maccabiah Games, the Jewish Olympics being contested by
64 countries.
Dolph Schayes, 81, was an historic New York sports figure going
back to 1944 as a 16-year-old NYU basketball freshman playing
on those great Violet teams of Howard Cann alongside Sid Tanenbaum,
Don Forman, Frank Mangiapane and a guy who gained more fame later
in baseball named Ralph Branca.
Schayes is 6-8, a bit over the 220 pounds he played at, but still
a commanding figure in any group on or off a basketball court.
He had a brilliant NBA career from 1948 through 1964, leaving
the game as the league’s top scorer and being named to the
pro basketball Hall of Fame in 1973.
“They recently had a poll of the NBA’s greatest players,”
Schayes laughed. “I finished 29th but I was still ahead
of LeBron James.”
Schayes was in Israel from his home in Syracuse, New York as
part of the Maccabiah games (he coached a team there in 1977)
and to attend the induction ceremonies for the International
Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
A dozen former athletes and sports personalities, including this
writer and Ira Berkow, Pulitzer Prize winner from The New
York Times, were honored by the event at Wingate, a sports
center that provides recreation daily for more than 5,000 children
and adults.
The athletes included Jason Lezak, the swimmer who gave the U.S.
the win in the Olympics relay last year in which Michael Phelps
gained his record eighth gold medal; famed Olympics gymnast Mitch
Gaylord; Donald Spero, the world rowing champion in 1966 and
Elias Katz, a 1924 Olympic Gold Medalist from Finland.
Schayes said his Jewish identity was forged when he came to Israel
for the first time to coach the U.S. basketball team after his
NBA coaching days ended.
“In Jewish life I wasn’t very tall,” Schayes said.
“I was stunted.”
Participating in the Games and seeing Jewish athletes from around
the world excel in so many sports gave Schayes a sense of cultural
pride he has worn proudly ever since.
“I almost made it to Israel in the 1960s when the U.S. State
Department sent our champion Syracuse team to the Middle East
on a goodwill tour,” Schayes said. “We played in Lebanon,
Iran and Egypt. I wanted our team to go into Israel but we couldn’t
cross the border from any of those countries.”
Schayes said he was walking down a Tehran street with some of
his teammates when a local Iranian asked who they were. Schayes
said they were the best basketball team in the world after winning
the NBA title.
“No, you’re not,” the Iranian insisted, “the
Harlem Globetrotters are.”
Schayes said he has come back every four years to the games and
is thrilled that he has been able to watch two more generations
of Schayes athletes participate in the games, including son Danny,
three volleyball playing granddaughters and a track star grandson.
“The Maccabiah Games is such a stirring event when you see
all the old clichés about Jews being so weak and unathletic
destroyed by world class performances,” he said.
Schayes recalls that he attended the Pan Am Maccabiah Games in
Santiago, Chile in 2001. A photo was shown of an Israeli athlete
slain at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
“The athlete was pictured with his baby daughter,”
Schayes said. “Then a 29-year-old girl walked on the stage
in Chile. It was that daughter. That brought tears to my eyes.”
Wives and relatives of other slain Israelis from the Munich tragedy
were introduced at the Hall of Fame induction. There was hardly
a dry eye in the Wingate auditorium.
“My motto for these games would be to be part of these games
and grow up. I know I did,” Schayes said.
Each of the newly inducted living Hall of Famers and relatives
of those lost legends spoke briefly before an enthusiastic crowd.
Ira Berkow reminded the audience, many of whom were traveling
Americans, that he is working on a film to be released next year
about Jews in baseball.
He spoke of the great Jewish lefthander from Brooklyn, Hall of
Famer Sandy Koufax.
I reminded the crowd that Koufax skipped the 1965 opener because
the game fell on the highest Jewish Holy Day, Yom Kippur. Don
Drysdale was the starter. The Minnesota Twins slugged him for
seven runs. When Manager Walter Alston came to take Drysdale
out of the game he said, “I wish you were Jewish.”
Dolph Schayes laughed heartily. He wears his Jewish identity
proudly.
©2009 by Maury Allen.
The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This
column first posted July 27, 2009.
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