ONE day you’re young, too soon you’re old.
Each summer in the early to mid ’70s, my family’s nesting place was the Jersey Shore; my weekend habitat was Harlem, 155th and Eighth, Rucker Playground to you. Ahhh, those were the days. And the nights weren’t too bad, either.
The welcome mat was always out and it covered a lot of turf. When the afternoon games were over, hospitalities began. One particularly fine day, I found myself in the company of an elderly man named Bob Douglas. I knew nothing about him other than he’d coached an all black team in the ’30s and ’40s called the New York Rens that was said to be pretty good.
It wasn’t until years later I learned just how good: Barnstorming across America the Rens compiled a 2,588-529 record. In the 1948 World Professional Championship, before a mobbed-up Chicago Stadium sellout, Pop Gates, Sweetwater Clifton, George Crowe, Dolly King, Eddie Younger and Co. barely lost, 75-71, to George Mikan’s and Jim Pollard’s Minneapolis Lakers.
Strangely enough, I don’t recall Douglas so much as mentioning the Rens that day, and if he did, it didn’t grab my attention. Our conversation centered instead on race relations and how things had changed of late for the worst.
“What was Harlem like when you were growing up?” I wondered at some point.
Douglas shot me the same sad glance I’d seen many times before on the faces of teachers. “Son, when I was growing up, there was no Harlem,” he harrumphed.
Thirty-something years later, I’m still more at home in Harlem than anywhere and still in touch with many of its people. Only there aren’t as many anymore. Just as I can’t remember the last time anyone called me son. My education regarding the Rens never stops, though.
At a recent lunch at the apartment of host Carl Green (a Globetrotter when Abe Saperstein’s players were still competitive enough to hold their own against college’s stellar seniors), the guests of honor were John Isaacs and Hank DeZonie, two of three surviving Rens (Crowe, who later starred for the Cincinnati Reds, was the third).
I’ve known about John Isaacs forever, seen him around at almost every basketball function, but never talked to him at length. If he scored as much in games as does on his verbals he must have been impossible to handle. Ask him a question about the distant past and he’ll break down the answer into fractural details. His memory is astonishing, glides versus walks, continues to work six days a week with troubled boys in The Bronx as he’s been doing for 42 years, and his serrated edge remains un-blunted at a mere 88.
“I still have scratches all over my back thanks to him,” insists Fuzzy Levane, 84, a six-year pro with Rochester and Milwaukee.
Isaacs isn’t so sure traveling around the country back then, especially in the South, was a learning experience, but concedes it was definitely an experience. He recalls trying to buy a train ticket in South Carolina and being staggered when asked, “What you want, boy?”
“I want to be an adult like you,” Isaacs retorted.
“You must be from out of town,” bristled the man behind the counter. “If you want a ticket you gotta go in the back of the station where they serve your kind. By God, we do things different around here.”
“Well, by God, you ought to change,” Isaacs snapped, understanding he was risking life and limb by being so aggressive.
“You know how we are,” he said with a twinkle. “I was just talkin’ that New York stupid stuff.”
DeZonie, 82, grew up adulating Isaacs. “This is what I wanted to do. I aspired to be a basketball player or a lifeguard. I’d still rather go to the beach than anywhere.”
After the Rens scattered, DeZonie played briefly for Tri-Cities. It was the ’50-’51 season, the same season Sweetwater Clifton (first to sign), Earl Lloyd (first to play) and Chuck Cooper (played the next night) integrated the NBA, yet his name consistently goes unmentioned as part of the group.
Fact is, were it not for a money dispute and some bad information, DeZonie might’ve beaten all of the above into the league. It seems the Washington Bears, fielding many of the Rens players, won a tournament in ’43 but were never paid. The $1,000 in question was being held in escrow, they were told.
Four years later, they committed to participate in another all-star game in Chicago, Issacs explained. “The place was packed, 23,000 or so. We said, ‘You pay or we don’t play.’ We wound up getting about 4G, including the grand they owed us. They accused us of sticking up a charity.”
Some of those accusers eventually became NBA owners. And, guess what? They got even. Anyone who took part in the “holdup” was barred from playing in the league. In ’49, Red Auerbach offered DeZonie a tryout with Tri- Cities. However, when he showed up he was quickly brushed off. The owner found him guilty by association because he’d played for the Rens, but he was not part of the “stickup” team.
The following year, renowned Red Sarachek interceded and got DeZonie a job with Tri- Cities, but he quit after five games. “I was staying in some old rooming house run by some old woman and the coach didn’t know night from day. I lived better than that. Once the days in the bus were over, it was more fun playing in the schoolyard.” Retired years ago from the restaurant business, DeZonie, 6-foot-4, was one of the first players to dunk. “I got up pretty good,” he shrugged. “I’d go get it, keep it and do what I wanted with it.”
That is, he thought he got up pretty good until he went west one year and went up against incredibly conditioned Jackie Robinson at San Francisco’s sold-out Cow Palace. “We’d flown all day and played soon after landing,” DeZonie said. “He got the best of me. I got plenty of rest for the rematch a day or two later. The second game was no better than the first.
“Robinson, Pollard, Mikan, all of ’em gave me trouble,” DeZonie volunteered. “Yao and Shaq give each other trouble, right?
“You talk about good players, you walk over nobody.”