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7 SATURDAY NIGHT SPHAS HABIT The big deal back then was to come to a Sphas game, meet a nice girl at the dance, win the suit and get married. —Dave Zinkoff, quoted in TODAY (PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER) G rowing up in South Philadelphia in the 1930s, Ed Lerner had a ritual every Saturday night during the winter months. After dinner with his family, Lerner took either the bus or subway to the corner of Broad and Wood Streets. When he arrived—always by himself—he paid his 40 cents and walked up the stairs to the balcony of the Broadwood Hotel. He sat in the same seat. It was in the middle of the balcony in the second row. He preferred that seat so he had an unobstructed view of the court below, where he could watch his SPHAS unfurl their precision passing attack from above. Lerner always arrived early. He did so to read the Sphas Sparks, a part program, part gossip column that Dave Zinkoff, the team’s publicity director , wrote, edited, and printed each week. Lerner sat in the balcony alone for two hours before the game, reading the Sphas Sparks, watching the team practice, and seeing the crowd arrive. It was his routine, and he performed this ritual each and every week without fail. “During the Depression, I was about 12 years old and everybody followed the SPHAS,” Ed Lerner recalled. “They were the kings of the world. If you could play basketball, your dream was to play for the SPHAS. Your life would be fulfilled. I would watch the games like God came down from heaven.”1 Lerner was not alone. Helen Liebovitz was a high school student in the mid- to late 1930s. In the evenings, Liebovitz took the trolley car to the 94 • THE SPHAS YMHA at Broad and Pine Streets to swim. After swimming, she made her way to the Broadwood Hotel, where she met some of her girlfriends. Together, they sat in the balcony, awaiting a SPHAS game. Nearly seventy years later Liebovitz remembered: After the game, there was dancing. The games usually started around 9:00 p.m. and the dancing would follow the games. We usually danced until 12:00 or 1:00 o’clock. One of the players, Gil Fitch, had a band, and he would play after the games. The singer Kitty Kallen got her start with the band. She was a very pretty girl. The dancing was sometimes straight and sometimes a little crazy with some twirling around. One night I arrived at the Broadwood Hotel, and my girlfriends and I found our seats in the balcony. Behind us was a group of single fellows who were there to watch the game. One of the fellows, Albert, started talking to me, and we talked for a while. There was an empty seat next to me and he asked if he could sit there. I said, “Sure.” After the game, we went dancing. When we finished dancing , Albert and I went for a sandwich at Linton’s. He asked me if he could call me again. We started dating. He was six and a half years older, and he was ready to settle down. I was still dating other fellows then. We were married in 1939. We were married for sixtythree years, until my husband passed away three years ago. That is how I met my husband at a SPHAS game. As you can see, basketball will always be my favorite sport.2 Sam (Leaden) Bernstein was a scrappy kid growing up in South Philadelphia . As a child, he loved playing sports, all sports, including basketball. Later in life, he became a great sandlot baseball player in Philadelphia, but as a youngster, he was drawn to the SPHAS. Growing up, his older brothers took him to games at the Palais Royal, and he watched Harry Litwack, Chickie Passon, and other stars of the late 1920s. He loved the SPHAS, read about them in the newspapers, talked about them with his friends, and by the mid-1930s was old enough to attend the games alone. It was around 50 cents to see a game. You went to see a game and after the game, one of the players, Gil Fitch, was the orchestra leader and he ran the dance afterwards. Kitty Kallen sang at the dances. It was the most beautiful place to attend. People later in life swear that was where they met their spouses and married...

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