“Here it is,” Scott Flansburg said, gesturing to a parking lot. “You can kind of imagine it.” It was the site of the old Herkimer YMCA, built in the 1890s but gone since it burned down decades ago. Flansburg and others in town are convinced that this is where basketball was invented — not, as the famous story goes, by James Naismith and his peach baskets 160 miles east in Springfield, Mass., but by a 16-year-old Swedish immigrant named Lambert Will, who tossed cabbages into crates.
Tag: Scott Flansburg
He has receipts, Flansburg and others …
He has receipts, Flansburg and others said, after working with two sports historians who published a book this year called “Nais-MYTH” that purports to prove Herkimer is the true birthplace of basketball. That, Flansburg said, is the linchpin for the rest of his plans. “If I had $100 million, I couldn’t fix downtown and make it last two years,” Flansburg said. “But if this story is true, Herkimer could be like Cooperstown.” Those in Springfield are less impressed. “Count me on the side of this is nuts,” said Matt Zeysing, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame’s historian.
The historians, combing through …
The historians, combing through archives, discovered correspondence between Frank J. Basloe and his publisher that showed Basloe had wanted to publish a revision with even grander claims for Herkimer. It was Will, Basloe wrote, who actually sent his rules east to Springfield, not the other way around. The publisher, though, never issued the revision. The writers found other evidence they believe bolstered Basloe’s case, including an 1898 article from the Syracuse Herald that reported on the success of Herkimer’s early basketball team, which it said had been playing since the fall of 1891. “Herkimer Crack Players have lost but two of thirty-five games,” it declared. A 1940 article in Little Falls, a neighboring town, noted a celebration of the 50th anniversary of basketball with Will as grand chairman.