"All the Yiddished mamas": The story of Eddie Gottlieb

Brooklyn Times Union, 1935-8-14

It is no surprise that so many fine daughters of Yiddished [sic] mamas were flung before Eddie Gottlieb, for he was a great man indeed; perhaps the most powerful man in Philadelphia and New York in respect to semi-pro and Negro League baseball for many years, and elected to the National Basketball Hall of Fame in 1972. 

Eddie Gottlieb

Gottlieb was born in Kiev, Ukraine, in 1898, as Isadore Gottlieb, the only son of Morris Gottlieb. His father owned a candy store. His family moved to Philadelphia when he was ten, and he soon changed his name to the more gentile moniker of Edward. After just a few years in Philadelphia his father died, and Edward became the man of the house. Gottlieb played basketball and semipro baseball while attending the South Philadelphia High School, and after his graduation he founded a semipro basketball/baseball team, along with his friends Harry "Chick" Passon and Hugh Black. 

The team was soon titled the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association club, but they were usually called the SPHAs. The SPHAs would later become one of the leading basketball teams in the country under Gottlieb's leadership, winning three straight Eastern Basketball League titles (1929-30 to 1931-32) and a total of seven American Basketball League titles between 1933-34 and 1944-45. He was their coach until 1946. 

In the early 1920s they were just a local team, playing in the Philadelphia League, but those were the club's best years in baseball. 

The SPHAs peaked on the diamond in 1921 and 1922 under Gottlieb's management. They were solid in 1921, beating the Cressona Tigers, Cuban Stars, Hilldale, Indianapolis ABCs, Parkesburg Iron, American Chain, Camden, Bridesburg, House of David, and Lincoln Giants, according to the Wilmington Morning News. (1921-9-03, p. 11)

A game-used 1920s SPHAs baseball warm-up jacket. Note the Hebraic lettering, which spells SPHA from right to left. This picture is taken from the auction house Mile High Card Company.

 In September 1921, they played a well-attended series against the Old Timers for the championship of South Philadelphia. All games were held at the corner of Thirteenth and Johnson, the field the SPHAs shared with the Old Timers. Managed by Jack Hines, the Old Timers were a decent team. Their center fielder and lead-off batter was Johnny Castle, a 41-year-old who played in three games for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1910 and spent 1920 with the Wilson Bugs of the class B Virginia League. One of their pitchers, Bill McKenty, won 15 games with a 3.28 ERA for New Haven of the Eastern League in 1925.
 

The Old Timers won the first game 4-3 on September 2nd, in front of "the largest crowd that ever witnessed a game in South Philadelphia." The game ended in a most frustrating manner. The SPHAs had scored two runs with only one out in the top of the 8th to take the lead 5-4, but the game was called and the score reverted to 4-3. Eddie Gottlieb was not happy. He, quite understandably, believed the first game should not have been counted a loss for the SPHAs, and said the teams should have appointed an arbitration committee to settle disputes like that. "He does not object to his team losing, but says so much money should never have changed hands on the way the game ended." (The Evening Public Ledger, 1921-9-05, p. 12) I guess there was plenty of betting. 

 The SPHAs won the second game 10-5, September 5 before an equally large crowd, but the Old Timers came back to win the third and fourth games 6-4 and 8-1 (September 10 and 24.)

Wid Conroy joined the Old Timers at third base for the third and fourth games. Conroy had been a regular in the American League from 1901 to 1911 with the Brewers, Pirates, Highlanders and Senators, but was 44 by 1921. 38-year-old Gabby Street, Walter Johnson's former catcher, caught for the Old Timers in the 3rd game -- the team truly deserved its title. 

Box score of the third game, displaying the antediluvian line-up of the Old Timers.

The SPHAs won the fifth game of the series, but the series fizzled out after that: the SPHAs wanted to play further, as was "virtually agreed upon," and fight for the series which had been essentially stolen from them by the unjust calling off the first game, but the Old Timers were content with their 3-2 lead. It doesn't seem like any more games were played in the series. 

In 1922 the SPHAs joined the new-born but competitive Philadelphia Baseball Association, assigned to the Southern Division. Gottlieb put together a strong team, and they were successful from the start.

On May 1, opening day, before a huge crowd of about 10,000 fans, the SPHAs beat Hilldale 6-4 on the strength of a five-run sixth inning. Hilldale had Hall of Famers Judy Johnson at third, Louis Santop at catcher, and other solid Negro League players such as George Johnson, Otto Briggs, Phil Cockrell, and Harry Kenyon. The SPHAs had exactly zero players you would have heard of before reading this. 

The SPHAs would go on to beat Hilldale 8 to 6 (July 12), 5 to 4 (July 27), and 6 to 5 (June 21), when Lefty Vann threw a 2-hitter but walked a number of batters. Hilldale did beat the SPHAs at least once (I don't have a complete list of the games played by either team), when on June 13, before almost 10,000 fans, they demolished the SPHAs 9 to 3. 

According to the York Record (1924-2-12 p. 8), Elwood Krepps beat Hilldale four times in 1922. If that's correct, the SPHAs beat Hilldale at least two more times, because two of the SPHA-Hilldale wins came from Rube Chambers and Lefty Vann. 

The SPHAs also played a series with the Atlantic City Bacharach Giants, who were managed by future Negro League star Dick Lundy, then only 23 years old. As of August 9th, the SPHAs were up five games to one in their series. 

Thus, the 1922 SPHAs had a combined (probably incomplete) record of 9-2 against two teams who the next year would combine for a 60-46 record in the "Major League" Eastern Colored League. The comparison isn't quite fair, as both teams improved their rosters in 1923; Hilldale added HOF super-stars Biz Mackey and John Henry Lloyd, and the Bacharach Giants added a few semi-stars. It's still an impressive testimony, both to the quality of the 1922 SPHAs and the possible over-rated status of the Negro Leagues. 

1922 SPHAs

Elwood Krepps, 1922. 

The SPHAs had a very impressive pitching staff, primarily consisting of Elwood Krepps, Lefty Vann, and Chick Passon. Passon was co-founder of the SPHAs, while Krepps and Vann were hired guns. Elwood Krepps had pitched for the Raleigh Red Birds of the Piedmont League in 1920 and 1921, and would be fairly successful in the New York - Pennsylvania League and New England League from 1924 to 1929. 

On June 29th, Krepps no-hit Camden City in a 3-0 win. 

Arnold "Lefty" Vann, who had a 4-10 record in the NYPL in 1924, was probably the worst of the staff. He often played first base.

Harry "Chick" Passon

Pitcher Chick Passon was also the star of the basketball SPHAs, scoring 17.7 points per game in 1925-26, second in the Eastern Basketball League. But his days with the SPHAs were numbered. Gottlieb, who must not have been particularly sentimental, traded him to the Washington Palace-Five club in 1927-28. In his baseball career, Passon would pitch for Medford of the Burlington County League in 1923, and the semi-legendary Doherty Silk Sox from 1924 to 1926. The Silk Sox' second baseman, Bennie Borgmann, was likewise a basketball star in the winter - and not just any star, but the top scorer of the time. He led 15 leagues in scoring in 12 years, and was inducted to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1961. 

Passon also made his mark in black baseball. By 1923, he was managing two minor black teams, the Texas Eagles and Philadelphia Giants. In 1931, he founded a new team called the Bacharach Giants. The Atlantic City Bacharach Giants, the team he had played against with the SPHAs, had folded after 1929, so he borrowed the name for recognition. The Philadelphia Bacharach Giants mostly played independently; in their sole year in the Negro Leagues, 1934, they won 5 games and lost 20. They would play until 1942, and were Roy Campanella's first team. Sadly, Passon shot himself in 1954. Source: https://sabr.org/journal/article/harry-passon-philadelphia-baseball-entrepreneur/

The elimination contest of the Philadelphia Baseball Association began in late August. The SPHAs were lined up against the other Southern Division teams in a kind of round-robin; I'm not sure what the exact logic of it was, or whether it reached any conclusion, but it is fun to read about. 

In their first game, August 28, Elwood Krepps shut out Fleisher Yarn on two hits for a 2-0 SPHA win. Nearly 5,000 fans were in attendance. The SPHAs won their second game by another two-hit shut-out, this one dealt by Chick Passon to the South Phillies, great rivals of the SPHAs. The game was played at Shetzline Park, the South Phils' home park, and attracted more than 10,000 fans. 

The South Phillies were an extremely strong team made of Philadelphia semi-pro legends such as Dick Spalding, a soccer star who would hit .296 as the Philadelphia Phillies regular outfielder in 1927, when he was 33; Buck Lai, a Chinese-Hawaiian 3rd baseman who spent four years in the Eastern League and played for the Brooklyn Bushwicks for many years; Howard Lohr, who played briefly in the majors in 1914 and 1916 and starred for many years in the semi-pros; Mike Pasquella, first baseman who in 1919 played one game for the Phillies and one game for the Cardinals; Pepper Peploski, short stop, who went 2 for 4 for the Detroit Tigers in 1913; and long-time pitcher-outfielder-first baseman Herb Steen, who had a .455 SLG in 33 games for the AA Syracuse Stars in 1922. 

In their return match with Fleisher Yarn, September 5th, the SPHAs were defeated 6-3 before 8,000 fans. On September 7th, due to bad weather, a mere 6,000 showed up to watch the SPHAs get shutout 4-0 by Jeff Tesreau, former New York Giants pitching star, in a rematch with the South Phillies. 

And that was it for the Philadelphia Baseball Association that year, as far I know. Hopefully it won't be long before I can update this with something definite. 

In 1923, Gottlieb focused on the basketball team, and the baseball team was consigned to mediocrity. It ceased to play after 1925, but was revived in 1933, and played for three more years before finally quitting. During this team, as has been summarized earlier, the basketball SPHAs became one of the top teams in America. 

But Gottlieb didn't abandon baseball. 

 In 1920, Passon, Gottlieb, and Black had opened a sporting good stores creatively called PGB Sports.

Ad placed in Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, 1921-9-30, p. 21

After a few years Gottlieb, along with Black, sold out to Passon. but he put the connections with Negro League baseball he had made through the store to use. As his SABR bio states, "He became the leading booking agent for all Philadelphia sports, black and white." He was also the eastern booking agent for the Negro Leagues. 

And in the early 1930s, together with Ed Bolden, former owner of Hilldale, Gottlieb founded a Negro League team of his own: the Philadelphia Stars. The Stars joined the New National League in 1934, won 39 games and lost 18 in the regular season, and beat the Chicago American Giants 4-3-1 in a play-off to win the pennant. They never won another pennant, though they played through 1952. 

Basketball went major league with the founding of the Basketball Association of America in 1946, and Gottlieb was one of the founding fathers. He coached the Philadelphia Warriors to the 1946-47 championship, becoming the first champions in NBA history. (The NBA was created by the merging of the BAA with the NBL in 1949. Gottlieb played a significant part in the merger, and the NBA considers the BAA as part of its own history.)

He was the coach of the Warriors through 1954-55, and their general manager until 1964. 

According to Wikipedia, (I feel no shame in using Wikipedia as a source for basketball history),

"Gottlieb was behind the NBA's "territorial draft" rule, which gave teams the right to claim a local college or high school player in exchange for giving up their first-round draft pick. The rule was particularly advantageous for Philadelphia, which landed Overbrook High School's Wilt Chamberlain in 1959 after his stints with the University of Kansas and the Harlem Globetrotters."

Not bad.

Wilt The Stilt after his 100-point game

Gottlieb bought the Warriors in 1952 for $25,000, and sold them in 1962 for a reported $625,000 to investors in San Francisco, where the team would become the Golden State Warriors. 

No "Yiddished mama" ever snared him with a daughter, and Gottlieb was a bachelor to the end of his days. 

He headed the NBA Rules Committee for 25 years, and was the league's only schedule-maker for over 30 years, until the year of his death in 1979. 

Pure Wikipedia again:

"I probably was responsible for more rule changes in pro basketball than any other man," Gottlieb told the Associated Press late in his life. "They call me in now because I’m the only one left who can connect things to the past, who knows why this rule was put in or why that one was thrown out."

He was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1972, and the NBA Rookie of the Year award is still named after him. 

I'll close with this: (Man, copying from Wikipedia is a relief after digging through 1920s Philadelphia newspapers all afternoon.)

 "Eddie Gottlieb was one of the real pioneers of professional round ball," Red Smith wrote in The New York Times. Wrote Lupica, "Eddie Gottlieb loved basketball. Maybe no one ever loved basketball quite the way he did."

Fellow Hall of Famer Harry Litwack stated: "Gottlieb was about as important to the game of basketball as the basketball."