Mr. Heater talks with Dr. James A. Naismith, 77, who invented basketball in the winter of 1891 at Springfield College. Trapped indoors by a blizzard, he nailed two peach baskets to the gym walls, grabbed a soccer ball, and divided students into teams of nine to play the first game.
Tomorrow night, 15,000 cheering fans will pack Madison Square Garden in New York City to witness a giant basketball doubleheader. In that cheering crowd, sitting in row C, seat 11, will be a modest 77-year-old man. Those fans won't know that he made possible the game they're watching. You're going to meet him now. Bank of Coffee has brought him here tonight all the way from Lawrence, Kansas. Dr. James A. Naismith, the inventor of basketball. Basketball. Dr. Naismith, how did you happen to invent basketball?
Well, Mr. Heater, it was in the winter of 1891 when I was physical instructor at Springfield College in Massachusetts. We had a real New England blizzard. For days, the students couldn't go outdoors, so they began roughhousing in the halls. We tried everything to keep them quiet. We tried playing a modified form of football in the gymnasium, but they got bored with that. Something had to be done. One day I had an idea. I called the boys to the gym, divided them up into teams of 9, and gave them an old soccer ball. I showed them 2 peach baskets I'd nailed up at each end of the gym. I told them the idea was to throw the ball into the opposing team's peach basket. I blew a whistle and the first game of basketball began.
And what rules did you have for your new game, Dr. Nathan?
Well, I didn't have enough, and that's where I made my big mistake. The boys began tackling. Kicking and punching in the trenches. They ended up in a free-for-all in the middle of the gym floor. Before I could pull them apart, one boy was knocked out, several of them had black eyes, and one had a dislocated shoulder. It certainly was murder. Well, after that first match, I was afraid they'd kill each other, but they kept nagging me to let them play again. So I made up some more rules. The most important one was that there should be no running with the ball. That stopped tackling and slugging. We tried out the game with those rules, and we didn't have one casualty. We had a fine, clean sport.
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