The Graves County Boys: A Tale of Kentucky Basketball, Perseverance, and the Unlikely Championship of the Cuba Cubs

22. The Season of Joy and Sorrow

22 The season of Joy and sorrow if you think losing with good sportsmanship is as good as winning, then why in the hell do they keep score? —adolph rupp early in January 1951, the Cubs lost their second game of the season when Clark County, the number one team in the state rankings , beat them 62-61. The day the Cubs left for Winchester to play Clark County, snow was falling heavily in Kentucky. They left early that morning because Winchester was twenty miles beyond lexington , an eight-hour drive. needing an extra driver, Coach story asked Jess Warren, who seldom drove far out of Graves County, to let some of the boys ride with him. Joe Buddy, Jess’s son, along with howie, doodle, Ted, and Jimmie, piled into Jess’s car on this trip. The highways were dangerously slick with ice and, as darkness fell, the roads got worse. Just outside of lexington, Jess noticed a slight rise in the highway and a highway sign that he could not see to read because of thickly falling snow. Thinking that he was approaching a hill, he The season of Joy and sorrow 167 was worried he’d get halfway up the icy road without enough power to get over the incline, so he sped forward about thirty yards. all too abruptly, he realized that they were going downhill at a breakneck speed. Much to everyone’s horror, they were headed toward the narrow ice-covered bridge spanning the Kentucky river. holding tightly to the steering wheel, trying to keep control of the car, Jess bit the stem off his pipe as his car skimmed and skidded over the frozen road and rolled onto the bridge at great speed. no one said a word until they crossed that bridge; then they all sighed with relief. less than thirty minutes before the game was to start, they arrived in Winchester tired, cold, and still shaken. They lost to Clark County 62-61. The Clark County game was followed by a win over Farmington , 76-45. Cuba completely outclassed Farmington, leading 18-8 at the half. Farmington’s coach, W. W. Chumbler, had instructed his players to stall, to freeze the ball as early as they could to prevent Cuba from scoring. But Cuba had such a great defense that getting the ball to howie to dribble was not difficult. and once howie had the ball, no one could take it away from him. The Cubs got so far ahead and the game was so boring and slow, they asked Coach story during the break if they could perform their Globetrotters act, something that they had not done thus far in any game. Thinking the audience would enjoy the performance and he would too, he told them to go ahead. The surprised crowd went wild as the Cubs started the same way the Globetrotters start their games, by playing the four-man weave with another player set up at the post. Propelled by the fans’ enthusiasm, the Cubs did all kinds of stunts; they passed the ball while pretending to read a newspaper, they acted as if they were playing baseball, and they even attempted a football field goal while poor helpless Farmington stood aghast. When the game was over, the Cubs received a standing ovation. 168 The Graves County Boys Their performance that night established their reputation as what the newspapers often called, after that, the most colorful high school team ever to play basketball. The associated Press picked up the story about their act, and an article about the Cuba Cubs appeared in newspapers across the nation. Within a few days after the article appeared, Coach story got a call from abe saperstein, manager of the harlem Globetrotters, who had read the article in a st. louis newspaper. he invited Coach story and the Cubs to come to st. louis as his guests for an appearance with the Globetrotters . That trip was one of the highlights of the boys’ young lives. in his publicity material, saperstein capitalized on the opportunity by inserting in the programs photographs of doodle with Tatum, howie with haynes, and Coach story with saperstein. after the game with Farmington, the Cubs beat Fulton 70-40 and Wingo 90-63. in the annual Mayfield Charities invitational Game, they beat the highly ranked lone oak’s Purple Flash 80–69. Then came victories over symsonia...