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

26. A Memorable Year: 1952

26 a Memorable year: 1952 open the gates and give the victors their way. —shakespeare With no time for a much-needed rest after two overtimes, the Cubs prepared themselves for the championship game that evening against louisville Manual, which had just survived a grueling semifinal game of its own to upset Clark County 54-53. Clark County and Manual were rated first and second, respectively, in the associated Press poll that year. earlier, Clark County had beaten Cuba 57-48. Manual had beaten Cuba twice: the first time 48-41, and then again by 70-58 in the final game of the louisville invitational Tournament. one of the largest schools in the state, if not the largest, Manual had the tallest players in the tournament. its stars—six-foot-eight Phil “Cookie” Grawmeyer and six-foot-seven Curtis Moffett, looked like professional players. The average height of Manual’s other players was six feet four, making its smallest players the same size as 202 The Graves County Boys doodle, the tallest Cub. Many sports broadcasters were saying that Cuba was about to meet its nemesis in favored Manual. one radio sportscaster flatly stated that Cuba did not stand a chance against the Crimson Tide. Manual had reason to be confident it would beat Cuba a third time in the championship game, set for 8:45 p.m. at dusk that saturday, when the Cubs came out of the hotel to board the bus for their final ride to Memorial Coliseum, they were surprised to see the Manual team already seated on the bus. The usual procedure was for competing teams to ride in separate buses, but not on this night, for some unexplained reason. as the Cubs lined up in front of the bus, Manual fans ran over to them. inspired by the media hype about one man in Cuba staying home to milk all the cows while everyone else went to lexington , some Manual fans started ringing cowbells and spewing nasty insults, calling the Cubs skinny little hicks . . . show-offs . . . hot dogs. some shouted such comments as, “hey, Cuba, wipe the cow manure off your shoes!” “Go on home and feed your hogs!” “did you have corn pone and taters for supper?” some boys were bragging that the Crimsons were going to mop up the floor that night with the little hot-doggy hicks. as they boarded the bus, the Cubs did just what Coach story had always told them to do—ignore insults, do not look at the speakers, and remain silent. The Manual players did not say anything either. everyone on the bus was silent. This trip to lexington had made the Cubs more sensitive about their humble rural background. The city had a way of driving the idea of inferiority home to them fast. Confronting some of these city kids’ swaggering sense of superiority was more than the Cubs needed to deal with at that moment. They were tired and tense, and they were facing something bigger than a game. For five years they had been close friends and teammates, living and playing together, dreaming together of winning this state championship. now all of a Memorable year: 1952 203 that was coming to an end. not far ahead lay graduation, and the separate paths they would take into adulthood. This game was the last game they would ever play together; it marked the end of their boyhood together. as the bus drove through the narrow streets to the Coliseum, the Cubs were quiet and tense. The streetlights and flickering neon signs they passed illuminated the serious expressions on their handsome young faces. They were country kids in the city, and to be called so was humiliating—in 1952 a pejorative distinction was made between city people and country people. and no matter how many games they won, they were still country. When that fact was pointed out to them in such a mean manner, it hurt, but it also hardened them and made them all the more determined to win that night. in previous dark times, their sense of humor had pulled them through, and it did again on that bus ride. it was not doodle this time who brightened the scene; it was robert Peters, one of their team’s managers. never an athlete, Peters had always wanted to be an evangelical preacher, and he never missed an opportunity to preach. a...