-
3. Salesman
- Indiana University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
43 3. Salesman Akron may have been a watershed in Chuck Taylor’s playing days. Firestone and Goodyear basketball continued to prosper, but Chuck was not part of it. After leaving the Non-Skids, he moved to Detroit and joined teams supported by rst the Dodge Brothers, the famous automobile manufacturers, then by the T. B. Rayl Company, a large sporting goods retailer in the city. What Chuck had learned in Akron, besides some pointers from Sheeks and skills gained in competitive play, was the art of self-promotion. The Akron Beacon Journal covered Firestone and Goodyear basketball well, and the local factory boys were treated like real stars. Chuck took a few newspaper clippings and that rooftop photo of him in a Firestone uniform and made himself out to be a celebrity when he arrived in Detroit. The game plan? Reinvent himself. 03Chuck.indd 11/18/05, 3:00 PM 43 44 First, he wangled a small story in one of the Detroit papers in late 1921 after he joined the Dodge Brothers factory team. Taylor “is generally regarded here as the smartest handler of the ball seen in a local uniform in some years,” the short item proclaimed, accompanied by that rooftop photo of Chuck in the Firestones’ jersey.1 The move to the Rayls was even more provident.The Rayls often traveled to other midwestern cities, including in Indiana and Wisconsin, and claimed a “Midwest championship” in 1919. They also made a couple of appearances in Fort Wayne, where Chuck might rst have heard of them.2 Chuck may have worked on the assembly line for Dodge during the day, and he most likely sold athletic goods for Rayl. As both company teams were sponsored, Chuck would have worked and/or played ball on salary—a security blanket that was to become increasingly important to him later in life. The T. B. Rayl connection proved to be important in another way.As a large retail sporting goods store, it would have sold Converse All Star shoes, which had been introduced in 1917, as well as other popular court shoes of the era, such as those by Spalding, Goodyear, and others. Converse, a manufacturer with regional headquarters in Chicago, was a larger company than Rayl. It would have been a logical progression for the ambitious Taylor to move from the Motor City to the Windy City in 1922, after just one season, to work for Converse. That’s just what he did. What’s not certain, though, is whether Chuck played basketball for Converse as part of the move in 1922. There’s no evidence Converse elded a team in the early 1920s, though the evidence is clear that by 1926 Converse was sponsoring a traveling team. Yet Chuck probably did continue his basketball career in some signicant fashion right away when he moved to Chicago.A 1940 article in the Detroit News, published on the occasion of a Chuck 03Chuck.indd 11/18/05, 3:00 PM 44 [174.129.140.206] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:26 GMT) 45 Salesman Taylor clinic, quoted one source as saying Taylor was known in Detroit basketball circles in the old days and that he often went to Chicago on weekends to suit up for games with teams either based there or traveling through.3 Chuck Taylor started his career in sales with the Converse Rubber Shoe Company in 1922. It is this connection—moving inventory, not driving to the basket—that brought Chuck true fame in his life. Over time, there were to be many versions of how Chuck Taylor came to work for Converse. For example, the Taylor biography on hand at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springeld, Massachusetts reports that Chuck “walked into Converse’s Chicago sales ofce in the summer of 1921 complaining of sore feet and persuaded Converse executives, and company founder Marquis Converse, to create a shoe specically for basketball.”4 That’s unlikely to be the case. The Converse Rubber Shoe Company was based in Malden, Massachusetts in those days, and Marquis Converse, a native New Englander and former department store owner, would not have worked in the Chicago regional ofce. Also, the Converse All Star already was in production as an all-purpose court shoe. Chuck’s name was not added to the ankle patch until 1932, after his marketing genius became evident. In later years, Chuck was to give his own equally...