Posted on April 19, 2013
Last week here at HoopsU.com a CENTAUR SEASONS post proffered “Six Degrees of Refereeing,” about the longtime and well-respected basketball official Jody Silvester. Jody whistled some of our home games at Billera Hall in Center Valley, Pennsylvania, but eventually he worked the big rooms – Madison Square Garden, the Palestra, two NCAA championship games – as a ref in the Atlantic 10, Big East and BIG 10.
Today here on HoopsU.com CENTAUR SEASONS’ six degrees is Michael Bantom. Philadelphia kid. Legendary early seventies Hawk at St. Joseph’s College, in his home town. Solid nine-year NBA veteran; seven-year Italian League player. Long-time NBA league executive.
And for our purposes, a member of the ill-fated 1972 U.S. Men’s Olympic basketball team that apparently won, then apparently won again, but then ultimately and irretrievably lost the gold medal game to the Soviet Union at those equally ill-fated Summer Games.
(Wait: “Ill-fated” barely describes those Olympics. These next three posts have been in the works for a few weeks now. Coincidentally or not, they conjure the Munich Games and the tragedy of the 11 Israeli coaches and athletes killed at that Quadrennial, in the first terror attack that targeted sports. Now, this week, terror has again intruded on the games we play.)
ESPN recently posted on Grantland.com‘s “30 for 30 Short Film Series” a 12-minute documentary called “Silver Reunion” by the director Rory Karpf and First Row Films. It is the quickly told tale of that U.S. Olympic team when it gathered, in the summer of 2012, to discuss the controversial game and then vote on whether at long last to accept (or not) the silver medals they had together walked away from forty years ago.
Watching the film I remembered that in May 1973, at the end of my junior year at Allentown College of St. Francis De Sales and our 6-and-9 basketball season, Mike Bantom (of all people) was the guest speaker at the Centaurs’ end-of-year varsity- and intramural-sports banquet.
This was a big, big deal. Mike Bantom of St. Joe’s and the U.S. Olympic team – and, perhaps more important, a high school Philadelphia Catholic League and college Big 5 player who’d run the hallowed floor of the Palestra! – here on our floor, right here in Billera Hall in nowhere Center Valley, Pennsylvania.
I remember everything about his visit.
I wonder if Mike Bantom remembers any of it.
Actually, he wasn’t supposed to be there. Jimmy Lynam, the St. Joe’s coach, was the scheduled speaker, but he begged off and sent his star player instead.
Mike was dressed in navy-blue blazer, double-breasted, gray pants and turtle neck. His afro was very early seventies, of the moment, making a statement. At 6-foot-9 (and close to seven with the afro) he had to duck to get through the Billera doors.
He listened to the invocation from Fr. Bob Devine, the Oblate of St. Francis de Sales priest who had started for three years at Notre Dame in the late 1950s and was on a team that had finished ranked No. 7 in the country. (Making Fr. D the ONLY person in Billera who was Mike Bantom’s athletic equal.)
Together with the rest of us Mike Bantom stood in line with paper plate in hand at the “banquet” buffet – glorified cafeteria stuff.
He sat through the awarding of plaques to eight intramural-sports champions and six varsity-sports teams, watching as each player, when called by name, walked up individually to collect his or her memento. This was a small school, this Allentown College of the Cornfields, proudly demonstrating one of its great and valued educational benefits (and I mean that sincerely and with affection).
He then waited as the most valuable players in each varsity sports were announced. (In men’s basketball, Dennis Ramella, the school’s first ever 1,000 point man.) He listened as each varsity coach recapped the season, each one a more-losses-than-wins campaign. He shook hands with the outstanding intramural athlete of the year and with the outstanding varsity athlete (Dennis Ramella, again), then posed for pictures with everybody.
Next he listened to remarks by Coach John Compardo, the athletic director and sole proprietor of the school’s athletic department. Coach Compardo was beloved at the college from the moment he walked into the place. But as a public speaker he could be longwinded and digressive.
Finally, he waited as Chris Cashman, senior co-captain of the basketball team and emcee for the night, introduced our guest speaker. And with that Michael Bantom took the microphone.
I will never forget what happened next.
Mike Bantom was the same age as an Allentown College senior and a Baby Boomer college contemporary to the rest of us. Heck, any kid at the college who went to Roman Catholic High School in Philadelphia had four years before been his classmate. There was nothing about him that suggested “Sports Banquet Guest Speaker.” Such personages are, at minimum, supposed to be much much older than the audience.
But here he was anyway.
He was at least an inch taller, and probably more, than the tallest person (me) sitting at any table. He was likely the only African American among the 250-or-so present. (I say likely: in my years at AC I recall their being three African American students, one man and two women.)
Mike Bantom did have some things in common with us. He’d gone to a Catholic high school in Philadelphia, no small connecting rod. Our own Dave Glielmi, who had emerged as our best player this past season, had played at St. Joe’s Prep. He and Mike may have squared off agaisnt each other.
But in virtually every other way, Mike Bantom had grown out of and then into a completely different set of life and athletic experiences from anything we at Allentown College could realistically imagine. He had come to us from a different world — we knew it; surely he did, too — and he was on his way to another different world. He would be taken No. 8 overall by the Phoenix Suns in the upcoming player draft; his NBA career would total nine years at 12.1 points and 6.4 rebounds per game. I mean, geez.
So Michael Bantom, Olympian, All-American, Big 5 Legend, stood there for a long moment holding the microphone, looking out at all of us with our expectant faces. And then he said, as if in summation:
This has been the most unusual experience of my entire life.
Perhaps he said “most interesting” or maybe “most intriguing.”
In any event, he had nailed it — on purpose or by accident doesn’t matter. The best comedy, they say, tells the truth.
There were first some nervous titters of disbelief, but followed by growing-louder guffaws of understanding, and finally full-on laughter and applause of appreciation.
Yo! Mike Bantom! Here in Billera Hall!
In Part 2 of “Six Degrees of Mike Bantom” the St. Joe’s star and 1972 Olympian answers questions about the gold medal he did not receive and the silver medal he does not want. And in Part 3, a long look at the ESPN short documentary at Grantland.com, “Silver Reunion,” directed by Rory Karpf for First Row Films.
CENTAUR SEASONS can also be found at www.centaurseasons.com. The centerpiece will be the posting in "real time" of the diary that Steve kept of his 1972-1973 junior-year season, beginning on November 30. Prior to that (and after), Steve will be posting regularly about his freshman, sophomore and senior seasons, as well as about what it was like to be there at the beginning to help get a struggling college basketball program off the ground.
Steve was the original writer of The Wall Street Journal's popular sports blog, "The Daily Fix" in 2001-2002, and was even dubbed "The Unwitting Father of the Sports Blog" by Gelf Magazine, the online publication of the "Varsity Letters Reading Series. Steve was the Journal's sports editor for its original Weekend sport section and was involved in all of the Journal's Olympics coverage, Winter and Summer, from 1996 through 2008.
He is the author of three books, most recently "My Father's Heart: A Son's Reckoning With the Legacy of Heart Disease," which he is adapting as a one-man show. For his first book, "The Call of the Game," Steve traveled the country in search of sports events -- including the famous N.C. State Wolfpack victory over "Phi Slamma Jamma" of the University of Houston. For his second book, COACH, among the 150+ coaches Steve interviewed are/were college basketball coaches John Wooden (UCLA), Pat Summitt (Tennessee), Frank Layden (Niagara), Bobby Cremins (Georgia Tech), P.J. Carlesimo (Seton Hall), Bill Guthridge (North Carolina), Abe Lemons (Texas), Stan Morrison (USC), Kathy Rush (Immaculata), Jim Satalin (Duquesne), Charlie Thomas (San Francisco State), Butch Van Bredda Koff (Princeton), Bill Whitmore (Vermont) and LaDonna Wilson (Austin Peay).
For more, you can click on www.steve-mckee.com, where you can find a TODAY show appearance and an NPR interview.
- CENTAUR SEASONS: A new Inductee to the DeSales University Hall of Fame recognizes the contributions of the school’s orginal athletes … - September 18, 2013
- CENTAUR (OFF) SEASONS: A dozen ways to read the 97 posts in the scorebook thus far — until a new roster begins taking the floor in the fall - June 13, 2013
- CENTAUR SEASONS: In a ‘Carnival of Opportunity,’ One of Our Own Shines in an All-Star Game - May 14, 2013
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