MONDAY, APRIL 25 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU D7
from misbehaving during the
long, cold winter, it was Basloe
in the early part of the 20th cen-
tury who understood that it was
an entertainment product and
that promotion and more of-
fense — and gambling, too —
would be key to its growth.
Herkimer and Springfield
aren’t alone in their quests to be
known as basketball’s birth-
place. St. Stephen, a small town
in Canada’s New Brunswick, has
been fighting to be recognized
as the home of the oldest basket-
ball court in the world, precisely
because words such as “first”
and “inventor” are how history
is consumed. Holyoke, a small
town in Massachusetts, has
made claims that basketball was
invented there.
“I hope Herkimer gets some-
thing out of this because they
deserve it,” Antonucci said. “If I
could wave wands, I would say
there could be multiple basket-
ball Hall of Fames because there
are multiple histories.”A home for the Originals
On a snowy afternoon last
month, Flansburg was at lunch
at the Waterfront Grille, a res-
taurant that overlooks the Erie
Canal. He was joined by one of
Herkimer’s business leaders, Re-
nee Scialdo-Shevat, the owner of
a local mine where a special type
of quartz known as a Herkimer
diamond is found. There is a
Herkimer diamond, Scialdo-
Shevat noted, on display at the
Smithsonian in Washington, not
far from the Hope Diamond.
She was ticking off the area’s
attractions as she painted a
vision for what Herkimer could
be: Cooperstown is 20 miles to
the south; the boxing Hall of
Fame is in Canastota, 40 miles
east of town; the southern Ad-
irondacks are a 30-minute drive
away.
“Main Street was beautiful
until the 1970s,” she said. “We
went to movies. We had parks.”
Renderings from the website
of the Herkimer 9, a foundation
that Flansburg started to sup-
port the downtown renewal,
show a basketball museum, a
STEM center for kids and a
basketball arena. At the site of
the old YMCA is a rendering of a
gazebo topped with a giant
decorative basketball — the
largest in the world, Flansburg
said — to mark the game’s
invention.
“If we prove our story, they
might have to move the Hall of
Fame to Herkimer,” Flansburg
mused.
But there are residents in
town who have begun to wonder
about Flansburg’s vision. Bob
Basloe, a grandson of Frank
Basloe and a member of the
Herkimer 9 board, worried
there had been next to no prog-
ress despite Flansburg’s fund-
raising from local residents and
businesses. Carroll said the Her-
kimer 9 group already has spent
some $300,000 on the project,
including around $100,000 on
research for the book, a large
part of that trying to authenti-
cate the old “91-92” photograph.
“Scott has asked for more
money, and he should have
clarified how he’s going about
this,” Bob Basloe said. “He
should have already put the
basketball downtown, for exam-
ple. It’s a powerful story and the
history is important, but at this
point I am wondering if it’s
better to scale the project back
because I don’t know if there is
the money to do what Scott is
still proposing.”
Both Bob Basloe and Baruth,
the great-grandson of Will, said
they were less interested in
attacking the Naismith legacy
than in securing a place for their
ancestors in basketball history.
Both said they would like to see,
above all, a downtown museum
to honor Basloe and Will.
Flansburg, who said he has
not taken any salary from the
Herkimer 9, argued that proving
the Herkimer basketball origin
story is worth every penny he
has spent because it is the key to
the downtown development.
Asked where more funding will
come from, he said the power of
the basketball origin narrative
will capture the imagination of
both public entities and private
donors. (Netti, the mayor, said
most funding would have to
come from private donations.)
In the meantime, Flansburg is
focused on another basketball
team. He founded a new semi-
pro squad from the American
Basketball Association in Her-
kimer last season and named it
the Originals. They play at the
local community college, and
Flansburg invited members of
the Will family to the home
games. At one game, the team
held a pregame ceremony to
honor the family and Will’s
contributions to basketball.
Mayor Netti announced that
every Feb. 7 would be Lambert
Will Day, in honor of the first
basketball game. When the fam-
ily was presented a key to the
city, Flansburg said, he saw tears
in their eyes.they spent a lot of money,” he
said. “But I don’t know how that
invalidates the rest of Nai-
smith’s story.”
Zeysing also wondered about
the authenticity of the 13 rules
document: “It’s come up many
times why it’s scratched out, and
I have no idea,” he said, adding,
“Maybe they aren’t the original
rules.”
Regardless, Monseau ex-
plained, the most important
historical accountings are pri-
mary sources. The first dissemi-
nation of basketball’s rules are
in a YMCA newsletter early in
1892, sent from Springfield. And
there is a story in a Springfield
newspaper of the March 11
game. Herkimer’s evidence is
based on recollections and news
reports that look back on the
game’s origins. The photo with
“91-92” scratched into the ball
isn’t irrefutable, either, because
the numbers were added to the
photograph’s negative at some
point.
That may be more murky than
definitive, but history often is.
When Michael Antonucci, a his-
tory and literature professor,
came across the dusty Basloe
manuscript in the stacks of the
University of Illinois Chicago
library in 2001, it had been out
of print for decades. Fascinated
by what he read, he helped
republish it — not because it
invalidated Naismith but be-
cause it helped better under-
stand how history really works.
“What we’re talking about is
power and aura and representa-
tional claims,” he said. “This
whole thing raises the question
of what we want from history
and the desire for verification
and documentation versus how
things actually play out in life.
There’s never going to be a
smoking gun, because these
things aren’t ‘invented’ as we
want to cleanly understand the
meaning of that word. We’re
looking at something collabora-
tive.”
Antonucci also believed Her-
kimer’s greatest contribution to
basketball was bigger than an
argument over its so-called in-
vention. Will, along others in
the Mohawk Valley, helped de-
velop the game. And while Nai-
smith thought the sport’s utility
was to keep incorrigible boysthe 1990s, a group of Will’s
descendants was invited to
Springfield to dedicate a small
exhibit to Will as an innovator of
basketball. The family donated
several items that had been
passed down through the gener-
ations.
The experience was surreal,
two of Will’s descendants said.
They were told not to invite any
media members, and one re-
called a disagreement with a
museum official over the year of
Will’s first team. Phil Baruth,
Will’s great-grandson and now a
state senator in Vermont, said a
friend visited the Hall of Fame
afterward and reported to him
that the exhibit was no longer
on display. Baruth said he has
tried to collect the memorabilia
from the Hall of Fame but no
one will respond to him.
“What are they hiding?”
asked Lawrence Will, a grand-
son of Lambert.A history lesson
When the Herkimer group
approached the Hall of Fame
about its research project, Zey-
sing, the museum’s historian
and curator, spoke to co-work-
ers and wondered whether they
would need to address the Nai-
smith origin story. Baseball’s
Hall of Fame had long told the
story of Abner Doubleday as the
sport’s inventor, only to have
historians unearth evidence
that he couldn’t have invented
the game.
A few weeks ago, Zeysing
received his copy of “Nais-
MYTH.” He skimmed the book
but came away unimpressed.
“They told us they were going to
have all of this new evidence,
but I didn’t see it,” Zeysing said.
He said no one had ever spoken
to him about the missing Will
items.
Springfield College archivist
Jeffrey Monseau also met with
the Herkimer group and even
assisted its efforts. He found no
evidence of any correspondence
between Will and Naismith, he
said. He acknowledged he was
skeptical that the rules hanging
in Kansas were the same that
Naismith once posted, saying
there were probably multiple
copies that were handed out in
those early days. “Don’t tell the
people in Kansas that becausegreat deal of pleasure.”‘What are they hiding?’
After his book was published
in 1952, Basloe spoke to the
Kiwanis Club in Cooperstown,
N.Y., home of baseball’s Hall of
Fame, and proclaimed he
“would hate to see them put the
basketball Hall of Fame in the
wrong spot.” It was the begin-
ning of a campaign to put the
Hall of Fame in Herkimer that
included threatening to sue
Springfield.
The controversy became na-
tional news, leading to a public
debate between the towns. Will
and Basloe traveled to Spring-
field to plead their case. “A
five-hour debate here yesterday
between supporters of Herkim-
er and Springfield College as
regards the true birthplace of
basketball failed to settle the
issue,” the Associated Press re-
ported. Springfield eventually
raised the money to build the
first physical Hall of Fame in the
1960s.
The Fosty brothers believe a
fair accounting of basketball’s
origin must also question Nai-
smith’s story, beginning with
those famous 13 rules. Look
closely at the rules that are
hanging at Kansas and the
handwritten date “Dec 1891.”
The “D” is clearly written over a
scratched-out “F” and other let-
ters and numbers underneath.
In the image of the rules that
were published in Naismith’s
1941 autobiography, they are
clearly dated “Feb 1892.”
“Why is it changed?” George
Fosty asked. “And if that date
isn’t right, how can you believe
anything in his story?”
Fosty has other questions,
too. The rules are supposed to
have been posted Dec. 21, 1891,
but he believes it was likely that
Springfield College was already
on Christmas break by then. He
said Naismith also at various
points in his life described his
inspiration for the rules differ-
ently, sometimes describing
them as spontaneous inspira-
tion and other times as being
the product of trial and error.
Then there’s the way the Hall
of Fame has responded to Her-
kimer through the years. There
is no mention of Will or Basloe
in the Hall of Fame today, but inter that Naismith was said to
have invented it. The book also
credited Will with creating the
sport’s first rim, backboard and
net, which was sewed by his
mother.
Flansburg spent most of his
adult life in Arizona, but he
discovered the Basloe book
when he was home for his
father’s funeral in 2019. Fasci-
nated by the story and imagin-
ing what it could mean for
Herkimer, he set out to try to
prove the book’s case. Along
with Brion Carroll, a technology
consultant from Herkimer, he
reached out to sports historians
George and Darril Fosty to write
“Nais-MYTH.” The brothers run
a publishing company in New
York and are the authors of
“Black Ice,” a 2004 book that
tells the forgotten story of a
Black hockey league in Canada
that is now cited in the develop-
ment of the game. While history
books have been dismissive of
Herkimer’s claims, the Fostys
believed Herkimer’s basketball
story could be another instance
of overlooked history.
The historians, combing
through archives, discovered
correspondence between Basloe
and his publisher that showed
Basloe had wanted to publish a
revision with even grander
claims for Herkimer. It was Will,
Basloe wrote, who actually sent
his rules east to Springfield, not
the other way around. The pub-
lisher, though, never issued the
revision.
The writers found other evi-
dence they believe bolstered
Basloe’s case, including an 1898
article from the Syracuse Herald
that reported on the success of
Herkimer’s early basketball
team, which it said had been
playing since the fall of 1891.
“Herkimer Crack Players have
lost but two of thirty-five
games,” it declared. A 1940 arti-
cle in Little Falls, a neighboring
town, noted a celebration of the
50th anniversary of basketball
with Will as grand chairman.
Basloe reported that he asked
Will why he had never sought
credit for his invention. “I am
not looking for any glory for
what I did for basketball,” Will
reportedly said. “I am thankful
to think a head of cabbage gave
so many people and myself aFlansburg said as he gestured
along Main Street, because just
look around. The area used to be
dotted with humming factories.
Nearby Standard Furniture
manufactured tables that were
used at a U.N. summit, accord-
ing to one town history. The
Quackenbush building, a grand
Victorian brick structure that
once churned out air rifles and
nutcrackers, now sits con-
demned.
Herkimer, with a population
of around 7,000, is tucked in
central New York’s Mohawk Val-
ley, halfway between Syracuse
and Albany. It has been gutted in
recent years by the deindustrial-
ization of the Rust Belt and the
opioid epidemic. Herkimer
County is among the poorest in
the state; four years ago, Sen.
Charles E. Schumer (D) chose
the Herkimer courthouse for a
news conference to announce
new initiatives to battle drug
use in the state.
Flansburg talked of ambitious
plans to redevelop downtown,
and a group he founded bought
the Quackenbush building. He
has dreams of a museum dedi-
cated to Will’s innovations and a
basketball arena to host the
Herkimer Originals, the semi-
pro basketball team he just
started, and to attract youth
tournaments.
He has receipts, Flansburg
and others said, after working
with two sports historians who
published a book this year called
“Nais-MYTH” that purports to
prove Herkimer is the true
birthplace of basketball. That,
Flansburg said, is the linchpin
for the rest of his plans.
“If I had $100 million, I
couldn’t fix downtown and
make it last two years,” Flans-
burg said. “But if this story is
true, Herkimer could be like
Cooperstown.”
Those in Springfield are less
impressed. “Count me on the
side of this is nuts,” said Matt
Zeysing, the Naismith Memorial
Basketball Hall of Fame’s histo-
rian.
Even in Herkimer, there are
plenty of divisions over what
their story is worth, how to tell it
and whether Flansburg is the
right person to lead the town’s
revitalization efforts.
“I’ve had people call him the
Music Man,” said Herkimer
Mayor Mark Netti, referencing
the famous musical character
who arrived in a small town
planning to take advantage of
naive residents’ hopes for a new
band only to turn out to be a
good guy in the end. “I’ve also
had people call him a con man.
But I believe in him. This could
be a game-changer for the vil-
lage.”
Flansburg is undeterred.
“How much do they owe us for
stealing basketball for
100 years?” he asked.
Power of the peach basket
Naismith, pictured in famous
photos with his mustache and
peach basket, holds not just the
title of basketball’s inventor but
a permanent place in the sport’s
lore. The Hall of Fame in Spring-
field bears his name; his origi-
nal 13 rules are on display at the
University of Kansas, where he
coached, after a group paid
more than $4 million for them a
decade ago. The rules are re-
printed on the jerseys of the
national champion Jayhawks,
too.
Naismith, the long-accepted
story goes, was an instructor at
the YMCA International Train-
ing School in Springfield when
his boss asked him to develop a
new game to keep rambunctious
boys occupied in the winter.
Naismith puzzled out the new
rules and posted them in the
gymnasium during the winter of
1891; the first public game was
played March 11 the next year.
In Herkimer, though, a coun-
ternarrative has circulated
among residents for years, in
large part because of “I Grew Up
with Basketball,” a 1952 memoir
by Frank J. Basloe. Basloe, a
Hungarian Jewish immigrant
and early basketball promoter,
organized a team around the
turn of the 20th century in
Herkimer called the Globe Trot-
ters, 20 years before the world-
famous Harlem team adopted
the name, and barnstormed
around the Northeast.
Basloe’s book credited Will
with devising many of the rules
of the game, including the open-
ing jump ball, after receiving a
rudimentary pamphlet from Na-
ismith through the YMCA net-
work in 1890. After some trial
and error, according to Basloe,
Herkimer hosted its first game,
between a group from the Y and
a team of local businessmen, on
Feb. 7, 1891 — a full year before
the first game in Springfield.
The book included an old sepia
photograph of a Herkimer bas-
ketball team with “91-92”
scratched into the ball, suggest-
ing there was a team playing
basketball during the same win-
HERKIMER FROM D1
Herkimer, N.Y., makes its caseas real birthplace of basketballPHOTOS BY JONATHAN NEWTON/THE WASHINGTON POSTHerkimer, N.Y., has seen its better days. Scott Flansburg, above left with Brion Carroll, wants the Quackenbush building to become
a museum dedicated to Lambert Will’s basketball innovations and dreams of an arena for the semipro Originals, above right.