Unwilted by Time: Chamberlain Scores 100

Fifty years ago today in Hershey, Penn., Wilt Chamberlain poured in 36 field goals (on 63 shots!) and 28 free throws (against four misses) for a total of 100 points in 48 minutes in the Philadelphia Warriors’ 169-147 victory over the New York Knicks. The game was not televised and no tape is extant. In fact, the performance was seen by just the 4,124 fans in attendance at the Hershey Sports Arena (although many more later claimed to have been eyewitnesses).

Former New York Giants GM Ernie Accorsi grew up in Hershey. During a conversation several years ago, I asked him if he happened to be in the crowd for Wilt’s big game.

“No, I was a junior at Wake Forest [at the time],” Accorsi said. “I had been to the ACC tournament semifinal that night at Raleigh and was driving back to Winston-Salem with my fraternity brothers. We were listening to rock music on the car radio, and they broke in with the news. When I heard Hershey, I figured there was a fire or explosion at the chocolate factory. Why else would Hershey command such national news?”

What did he think when he learned the reason for the news bulletin?

“My first thought then was, well... I missed it. My second thought was of my father, who went to all those games. And he was the all-time leave-early-to-beat-the-traffic guy, which was ridiculous. In Hershey, Pennsylvania!

“When I got back to the dorm, I called my parents. My mother answered the phone and immediately asked, ‘What happened?’

“I said, ‘I just want to know: Did he stay?’ And for once, he did. I had this vision that he walked out when Wilt scored his 90th point to beat the crowd.”

What about all the people who later professed to have been in the stands?

“A lot more people than were present for the game claim to have been there,” he said. “Oh, 25,000 did [claim that]. They played a couple of games [in the Hershey Sports Arena] every year, and they would draw 4,000. Very rarely did they draw 4,000 in Philadelphia. They did for the Celtics, maybe, but otherwise drew 3,800 or 4,000. The [Warriors] trained in Hershey, so they would play games there. I even saw NBA double-headers there. The NBA wasn’t what it is today.” 

Indeed the NBA today celebrates a player for recording a double-double. That is, at least 10 points and 10 rebounds in a single game. In the 1961-62 season, Chamberlain averaged over 50 points and 25 rebounds per game. Even better, that same year, Oscar Robertson of the Cincinnati Royals became the only player in NBA history to average a triple-double (30.8 points, 12.5 rebounds, and 11.4 assists) for a season.

Not Mean Enough

Happy belated birthday to Roger Staubach, born 70 years ago Sunday. The updated Mean Joe Greene Coke commercial in Sunday’s Super Bowl was a reminder that Staubach, the Heisman trophy winner in 1963 and the Super Bowl MVP in 1972, was the original choice for the role in that 1979 Coke commercial.

“Somebody asked me about that and said that I turned it down,” Staubach told me, “but that’s not the case. I would have loved to do it. Some creative guy must have evaluated the concept and said, ‘Hey, we need a mean guy. It would be better to have Joe Greene than Staubach because Staubach’s a nice guy.’ 

“It probably made more sense, gave a more cuddly feeling to it, to have this big old tough football player give his jersey to this little boy. It turned out, I guess, it was the right decision, but I would have loved to do it.”

The Innocents Aboard

Just before I administered a spelling test to the second grade, one enterprising little boy told me that because he had trouble remembering how to spell two of the words, he helpfully wrote both of them on the inside of his privacy folder (which stands upright on his desk to prevent peeking by other students during the test). How’s that for self help?

Later that day, one of his classmates wasted so much time during a reading comprehension exercise that I told her to put it in her backpack and finish it as homework. She tried to hand it back to me, saying, “My mom told me that I can’t be taking school work home.”

The Tedium Is the Message

With the Super Bowl just one week away, already the tedious conversations have started about what is sure to be another round of witless shilling before, during, and after the game. Spare me from those who breathlessly anticipate, and then evaluate—with a straight face, no less—the crass commercial messages.

The Super Bowl ads are why the TV remote was invented. If I'm not leaving the room while the game pauses for advertisers to use flatulent monkeys or unbelievably dim-witted males to sell more weak beer, then I'm changing the channel or just hitting the mute button. I take a small pleasure in refusing to be either a part of the live (or should that be comatose?) audience for the smarmy scripts or a participant afterward in the dull discussions of them. If only there were a way for Nielsen to measure the number of viewers indifferent to the small fortune paid for the time between live action on the field.

In the 1967 film “Bedazzled,” Peter Cook, as the devil, laments that he has not done anything really evil since he introduced advertising into the world. And the Super Bowl commercials dramatize how banal that evil is.

Boomer Esiason’s Super Bowl Memory

The highlight of Boomer Esiason’s NFL career was being named league MVP in 1988 and taking the Cincinnati Bengals to the Super Bowl that season. Things were looking up for the Bengals late in that game vs. the San Francisco 49ers. They had kicked a field goal to break a 13-13 tie with about three minutes remaining, and Esiason was mentally preparing his post-game lines.

“I was supposed to do the Disney World commercial,” he said. “The group that was shooting it surrounded me on the sidelines and kept asking me if I knew what my lines were. For that entire three-minute period, I’m sitting there going, ‘I’m going to Disney World. I’m going to Disney World.’

“When [the 49ers’] John Taylor scored the winning touchdown, I dropped my head into my hands. Before I could even lift it up and say, ‘I’m not going to Disney World,’ [the group was] running directly across the field looking for Jerry Rice. That is my lasting memory of Super Bowl XXIII.”

Esiason has made a lasting mark off the field. After 14 years in pro football, he hung up his helmet and threw his hat into the media ring as broadcaster and talk-show host. In 1993 he established the Boomer Esiason Foundation after his son, Gunnar, was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. Esiason has helped raise millions of dollars to battle the disease.

“Gunnar is living, breathing proof that you can live with cystic fibrosis and have a very good teenage life,” Esiason has said of his son, who played football, lacrosse, and hockey in high school. “To me, that’s probably the biggest accomplishment—that we make people realize that it’s not the end of the world.”