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This is Elgin Baylor of the Minneapolis Lakers. In a few moments I'll tell you about my greatest sports thrill.
This is Harry Wismer. What you're about to hear is a transcribed story of one of pro basketball's
outstanding players and an event our special guest, Elgin Baylor, considers his greatest sports thrill.
And Elgin himself is here to tell us all about it. But first, here is Bill Ratick with a message of interest from your United States Air Force.
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Become an aviation cadet now. Now back to Harry Wismer.
People who should know are saying that Elgin Baylor can't miss becoming the greatest basketball player who ever tore up and down a hardwood floor.
In fact, his coach at Seattle University called Elgin Baylor the finest basketball player he had ever seen in his life.
This lavish statement was made while Baylor was still a sophomore at Seattle, mind you.
Today, he is a professional with the Minneapolis Lakers of the National Basketball Association.
An excellent rebounder, ball handler, dribbler, passer, and shooter, Elgin Baylor moves well with or without the ball and boxes out under both boards.
Along with this wealth of talent, he has the confidence and poise of a player that belongs.
In his first ten games in the NBA against the outstanding players in the league, Elgin Baylor proved beyond doubt that he is no ordinary rookie.
His average of 24 points per game attested to that.
After he had scored 34 points in a game against Syracuse, the net Seydolf Shays shook his head in disbelief and said,
He makes every shot in the book.
Considering that Shays has quite a repertoire himself, that's quite a compliment.
Standing 6'6", weighing 225 pounds, and being able to move with the effortless grace and precision of a well-oiled piece of machinery,
Elgin Baylor likes to take a jump shot from the outside, but he can drive like a small man and get the ball in from every conceivable angle.
Some of his shots have to be seen to be believed.
Seattle University fans got their biggest thrill watching him tear down the court on a fast break and dunk the ball into the basket.
In the opinion of most experts, Elgin Baylor was a far better basketball player in college than the more publicized and taller Wilt the Stilt Chamberlain.
Although 5 inches shorter than Wilt, Baylor outscored him in each of their two years in college.
Elgin Baylor is not perfect. He has his bad days too, just as he did in the 1957 National Invitation Tournament in Madison Square Garden.
Against St. Bonaventure, he played what was probably his worst game.
He passed badly and had the ball stolen away from him by the alert ball-hawking Bonneys.
His New York debut before 10,469 fans was a great big bust.
Yet, at his worst, he still managed to score 23 points and grab 25 rebounds, both figures high for each team.
Elgin Baylor first attracted attention while in high school in Washington, D.C.
There he scored 2,000 points in high school play and was named to the Helms High School All-America team.
Naturally, dozens of bright-eyed college coaches had their eyes on him, and he began to receive the attractive scholarship offers which come to every schoolboy phenom.
Schools like Seton Hall, Michigan, LaSalle, and Notre Dame were anxious to have him.
In the summer of 1954, Baylor was set to enter the service when he received a telephone call from Sammy Vokes, a coach at the College of Idaho.
Groundwork for the call had been laid out by a friend of Elgin's who played on the College of Idaho basketball team.
This small school was embarking on an ambitious athletic program and succeeded in getting Baylor.
When Elgin Baylor arrived at the College of Idaho, he found a fantastically talented bunch of playmates waiting.
This group included R.C. Owens, a great basketball player who now catches football passes for the San Francisco 49ers.
He also discovered a one-armed wizard named Gary Mays, plus several other top drawer players.
Together, this bunch set the Northwest Small Colleges on their ears.
Baylor averaged 31 points a game as a varsity freshman, and College of Idaho ran up a 24-3 record.
Baylor made the Small College All-America team.
At this point, College of Idaho started to de-emphasize the fact that it did not go unnoticed in Seattle.
A prosperous automobile dealer, an Arden Seattle Booster, wrote Baylor a letter inviting him to Seattle.
The plan called for Elgin to stay out of competition a year, as required by NCAA transfer rules, and play for an AAU basketball team.
Elgin Baylor averaged 33 points a game for the AAU club, coached by another Seattle All-American, Johnny O'Brien.
Some of his gymnastics that season are still the talk of the Northwest.
In one game, training by six points with a minute and a half to go, Baylor stole the ball cleanly four times in that minute and a half,
and won the game with a clutch basket as the final gun went off.
The fans in Seattle were well acquainted with Elgin Baylor's talents before he ever played a game with the college team.
There were, of course, skeptics.
Seattle's schedule was not considered particularly warlike, including, as it did, several small schools with below-average cage teams.
But two contests with Pacific Coast Conference schools converted the unbelievers.
In one of these, Baylor dunked in 33 points, and Seattle won 76 to 73.
In the other, he scored 22 points in the first half and 32 points in the last 20 minutes for a 54-point game total, breaking by three points,
the school record set by Johnny O'Brien in 1953.
Elgin Baylor made several All-American teams as a sophomore at Seattle, led the nation in rebounds with 538,
and finished with a scoring average of 29.7, third best in the country.
In his junior year, he went right ahead and improved on his sophomore record.
He was the country's second leading scorer.
Seattle proved a big surprise in the 1957-58 NCAA tourney, knocking off four rival colleges to advance to the finals against the mighty Kentucky Wildcats.
In the payoff game, Seattle led at the half, 39 to 36, but Baylor was lured into committing his fourth foul three minutes after the intermission and had to be careful thereafter.
Even so, he scored 13 points in the second half and finished with 25.
Johnny Cox of Kentucky, however, scored 30, and the Wildcats won 84 to 72.
Baylor snared 19 rebounds in the game, high for both teams.
In the five tournament games, Elgin Baylor accounted for 135 points, a 27-point average which easily topped the entire field.
He was unanimously chosen on the NCAA All-Star team and selected as the tourney's most valuable performer.
Today, Elgin Baylor is doing everything in the NBA that his followers said he had been doing while in college and would do with the pros.
There's no question about it, Elgin Baylor is quite a basketball player.
And now before you meet our special guest, Elgin Baylor in person, and hear about his greatest sports thrill, here is a message of interest to all young men with an eye on the future.
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Now back to Harry Wismer.
Elgin Baylor, what was your greatest sports thrill?
Well Harry, I think my greatest sports thrill was when I was in college at Seattle University.
It was the year of 1957-58 NCAA Far Western Regionals.
CLU was playing the University of San Francisco, and fortunate for us, we won the game.
And by winning the NCAA Regionals, it was the first time in the history of the school that CLU has ever advanced that far and to win an NCAA Regionals.
And Harry, I think that was my greatest thrill.
Elgin, what is the big difference you noticed in making the jump from college to professional ball?
Well Harry, it's the big jump.
The fellows are larger and it's tough offensively and defensively, and you find that you have to condition yourself more.
The shooting is much better and the defense.
And there are a few other things.
Well, the game, the fellows are a lot larger and it's a lot rougher, a lot more body contact.
Then you find great shooters and scores like Shays, Adolph Shays that is, Bill Russell, Bob Cousin, and other greats.
And I think it's quite a jump.
Is there one game in your college career you wish you could play over again if you could?
Yes, I think the year of 1957, 1958, the NCAA Championship game we played, CLU, against the University of Kentucky.
It was a wonderful game.
The fellows played well.
We lost the game.
It was such a hard game to lose that I think the rest of the fellows on the team feel the same way as I do.
In addition to that, well, Kentucky had a very good team, well-balanced team, and was well coached.
And I think, well, we got off to a bad start.
And near the end of the game, we played pretty well.
So if there is a game I would like to play over it, it would be that one.
Elgin, thinking back to the first game you ever played as a pro, how did you feel just before the first whistle?
Well, Harry, before the regular season started, we had quite a few exhibition games against St. Louis Hawks and the Detroit Pistons.
And that sort of loosened us up a little and got us used to playing with the professionals.
And I would say I felt as if I did when I was playing college ball.
I was just relaxed.
Elgin, what is the big difference in the conditioning program between the colleges and the pros?
Well, I think the big difference is the practice.
We practice twice a day, that is at 10 o'clock in the morning and 2-3 in the afternoon.
And then at practice in the afternoon, practice, well, the coach stress more on defense and we work hard on defense.
And in college, well, we work more on offense.
And of course, with the 24-second rule being in professional ranks, conditioning would be stressed more,
the lay of condition of getting yourself in shape so you may be able to run the entire game.
And there are 48 minutes and still 40 minutes in the game.
And I think that is about the biggest difference.
What is the funniest thing that ever happened to you on the court, either as a collegian or a pro?
Well, Harry, the funniest thing that happened to me since I have been watching basketball,
it was in the year of 1955, I was playing with an AAU team in the state of Washington.
I was over at the practice at Seattle University.
The varsity team was practicing.
Well, the offensive team had the ball and I think the fellow who had the ball was Callex Bauer.
He was a top scorer for Seattle University.
And the defender was on him.
And Callex was making an attempt to pass the ball.
The defender deflected the ball and the ball bounced off his head and went into the basket.
And I think that is about the funniest player I have seen in basketball.
Thank you very much Elgin Baylor of the Minneapolis Lakers, one of pro basketball's outstanding players.