Tall Firs

Where's the little guy?

About 40 miles west of Portland, Oregon lay the 364,000 acre Tillamook State Forest. It is a broad expanse of young Douglas Firs situated along northern Oregon's Pacific coastline. In 1933, a terrible fire swept through this forest and in 1939 a second fire destroyed many of the remaining tall firs. South of Portland on Interstate 5 is the city of Eugene, home of the University of Oregon. Eugene was named for an early settler to the area, Eugene Franklin Skinner. Mr. Skinner was the postmaster in 1850 and helped lay out the plans for the city. At the time, the area was known as Skinner's Mudhole.

In 1939 the world was witnessing the growing menace of Adolph Hitler and his unprovoked invasion of Poland. Batman first appeared in a comic book in 1939 and Lou Gehrig played his last baseball game. On the 4th of July in 1939, Lou told us that he considered himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth, while dying from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (now known as Lou Gehrig's disease).

The story I'm doing here about 1939 however, is about the Tall Firs. It was a name given to the University of Oregon basketball team by L.H. Gregory, sports editor of The Oregonian. Urgel 'Slim' Wintermute was a 6 foot 8 inch center and he was flanked by two 6 foot 4 inch forwards, John Dick and Laddie Gale. Back in 1939 this was a very tall team, but they weren't only tall, they were fast. Coach Howard Hobson ran a fast breaking offense that was guided by two expert ball handlers, 5-8 Bobby Anet and 5-11 Wally Johansen. During those days the game was a bit different from today. There were no requirements for an official to handle the ball during a change of possession, so if a ball went out of bounds or a traveling violation occurred, the nearest man ran for the ball and inbounded as quickly as possible to initiate a fast break. The Ducks, or The Tall Firs, were well trained in getting this done. (Of course nowadays they don't even call traveling unless you take at least 6 steps without dribbling.)

In 1938, Ned Irish, a sportswriter and promoter had initiated the National Invitational Tournament to determine a National Champion. Many of the coaches liked the idea but were disappointed that someone other than the colleges would be profiting from this exposure. The following year the coaches association initiated their own 8-team tournament and the Oregon Ducks defeated the Ohio State Buckeyes for the championship. The tournament lost over $2000 and the coaches convinced the NCAA to cover the loss and to manage the future tournaments.

It was a different time from the huge 65-team tourney that we watch today. Today, these squads board massive airliners and jet from city to city in a matter of hours, while back then it took the Ducks three days by train to reach the Patten Gymnasium at Northwestern University in Evanston. Just think how many ties you would have in your office pool if your brackets consisted of only 8 teams. And if you wanted a reserve seat at Mac Court, home to the Oregon Tall Firs, it cost you just 75 cents a game.

The coaches had a trophy made for the winner of the tournament and it was kept courtside at the game. During a scramble for a loose ball, Ducks' guard Bobby Anet, dove and hit the trophy sending it falling to the floor. The little posed figure of a basketball player atop the trophy was broken off. In the picture above, only the feet remain of the poor little fellow atop the trophy.

On the train trip home, the train stopped at The Dalles, hometown of forward John Dick. Although the Southern Pacific was not pleased with the stop, the townsfolk had convinced the president of the Railway that they would barricade the track if it didn't stop. During this short interlude in their journey home, the 300 citizens of The Dalles presented John Dick with a watch. In just a couple of years, John Dick would be a Naval Aviator fighting in the Pacific. He retired as a Rear Admiral in 1973.

Slim Wintermute at the age of 60 disappeared on his yacht outside of Portage Bay near Seattle. Although his yacht was intact and a friend found asleep on the boat, his body was never found and his death was dismissed as an accident.

The Ducks' leading scorer, Laddie Gale, played for a couple of years in professional basketball, but was soon drafted after the attack on Pearl Harbor and served through the remainder of the war.

They were a very good basketball team during their time, good enough to be our first National Champions.

Now we'll be filling out our picks shortly for this 2010 NCAA Tourney, but don't look for the Ducks to be there, they currently sit in the cellar of their conference. Don't take too long with your picks either, because that recent Chilean earthquake just shortened your day by 1.26 milliseconds, according to the scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Oh yes, by the way, maybe this was purely coincidental, maybe not, but on June 9th, 1939, just a few months after crowning our first college basketball champion, Mae Vitale gave birth to her little boy Richard. And... on November 28th of that same year, the basketball world saw the passing of Dr. James Naismith.