The year was 1947, and my team from Bar Kochbian AZA #335 was playing the Caissons for the championship of the Center. We were ahead by one point with just a few seconds left on the time clock.
One of our players, Stanley Prussack, had the ball at half court. Thinking the clock had run out, he threw the ball straight up into the air as a way of celebrating. But unfortunately, it made contact with one of the ropes hanging from the ceiling, which stopped the clock immediately, leaving about a second and a half on the clock.
The official timekeeper at the time was a young man named Clarence Darrah, who was unquestionably the finest athlete the Kansas City area had ever produced.
The Caissons took the ball out at half court and threw it in to their star left-handed shooter named Eddie Silverman, who, with one sweeping motion, turned and let go a half-court shot that (SWOOSH!) hit nothing but net and went in.
Everyone began screaming like mad thinking the Caissons had won. But that was not to be the case. According to Clarence, time had run out before the ball left Eddie’s hands and the basket did not count. Pandemonium broke out! Our Bar Kochbian AZA #335 team had won the championship game!
In the years that followed, I kept up with Clarence’s progress as an athlete. I recall he was a walk-on basketball player at Oklahoma A&M (which, today, is Oklahoma State.) The head coach at the time, Hank Iba, recognized raw talent when he saw it and offered Clarence a full scholarship to play for them.
Clarence accepted, but after just one year, dropped out of school and signed a contract with the New York Yankees to play center field for them. He was assigned to their Joplin, Missouri, farm club where he batted clean-up (a young player named Mickey Mantle batted third) and it appeared Clarence was on his way to fame and fortune.
But there was just one problem. Clarence insisted on catching fly balls in center field with just his gloved hand, something that just wasn’t done in those days. Clarence refused to change his ways, and before long he and the Yankees parted ways. I often wonder what might have been.
Marvin Fremerman
Springfield, Missouri