Father took me to the Paducah Tilghman Christmas Tournament final in 1966 or so between Paducah Tilghman and Lone Oak. It was an exciting game, though to me, rarely is a bball game boring. As county people we were rooting for Lone Oak and I looked up to couple of the Lone Oak players particularly one of the Via boys. (After all these years I hope I am spelling the name correctly.) Anyway in the very last seconds a Lone Oak player put up a shot that went in to win the game by one. It seemed to me the gym exploded with noise and cheering as the Purple Flash had, for once, beaten the hated Big Blue. Then dad poked me and said there is a problem of some sort. We sat back down and after a few minutes it was announced that the final basket did not count and that Tilghman had won the game. Booing broke out, a few items were tossed on the court, Lone Oak fans called Tilghman cheats and father and me began to file out. (Though I didn’t see it, someone was probably tossing Tums on the WPAD radio team, or maybe that was another game when Tilghman won at home in the last second.) Father was telling me to be quiet the whole way since I was joining in with my young cries of cheats, cheaters, or whatever one says at that age.
This game was burned in my memory because of what happened next. I spied an empty paper cup in the aisle and decided to see how much noise I could make with it. I grabbed the cup, stood it bottom side up and drove my foot down on it. Boom! Father and most of the people near me jumped and the noise echoed in the gym. Father, asked what was I doing (not exactly like that) and I told him. He said it sounded like a gunshot and we needed to get out of there.
The next night on WPSD TV Bob Swisher spent much of his sports segment explaining why the Lone Oak basket did not count. Now anyone below the age of 40 or so will not understand how primitive the graphics Mr. Swisher used were, but try to imagine. Mr. Swisher had a white sheet of paper on which he had drawn a basket and another sheet on which he had drawn a basketball. Moving these two pieces of paper around as he talked he explained that even though the shot went up before time expired the ball had not been directly above the basket when the horn sounded and therefore did not count. Mr. Swisher was known to be a Tilghman fan and I am not sure many of his viewers believed him, but if you think about it bit you will recall that even today in hockey and soccer the ball or puck must cross the goal line before the horn sounds for the goal to count. So maybe Mr. Swisher was correct and Tilghman had won, fairly. On the other hand, how a referee could decide this accurately was beyond me then and remains so now.
Moving forward over 40 years, father is being fitted for a wheel chair. A Mr. Orr is doing the work and we are talking as he is working on the chair. Of course since this is in Paducah, the topic turned to basketball and I asked if he played ball. He said he played at Lone Oak and graduated in 1968. I smiled and said, then you must have played with the Via boys on that team that had a winning basket disallowed in the Christmas tournament final. He looked at me for a minute or so and said, no I didn’t play that year. I was a sophomore year, too young to drive and didn’t have a ride home to Lovelaceville after practice. Then he smiled and said, but I remember that game, some friends and I were out coon hunting that night and we listened to it on the radio. Boy, he said, was I mad about that. I asked, was the coon hunting good that night and he said, yes, as I recall we got a couple.
I asked do you remember Mr. Swisher’s explanation on TV the next night? Mr. Orr said I sure do and I still don’t believe him.
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