April 21, 1948: Baltimore wins the World Championship of professional basketball. This may surprise some people who aren't old enough to remember Baltimore having a team in the NBA.
The Baltimore Bullets began play in 1944, as a team in the American Basketball League. They took their name in reference to the bullets produced for the U.S. Army by the Phoenix Shot Tower in Baltimore. In the ABL, Baltimore reached the championship round all three seasons, winning the title in 1946. The Bullets won a division title in 1947, but forfeited that season's championship in favor of playing in the World professional Basketball Tournament.
For the 1947-48 season, the Bullets joined the Basketball Association of America. Playing at the Baltimore Coliseum, they were led by head coach and guard Harry "Buddy" Jeannette, guard Joseph "Chick" Reiser, forwards Dick Schulz and Carl Meinhold, and center Clarence "Cleggie" Hermsen. They had a very inconsistent season: They lost their opening game, won their next 9, then lost their next 5.
That season, the BAA's Western Division couldn't have been much tighter. The St. Louis Bombers won it with a 29-19 record. The Bullets, the Chicago Stags (the previous season's Finalists), and the Washington Capitols (the next season's Finalists) all finished right behind at 28-20. The Bullets won a tiebreaker with the Stags to be declared the Division's 2nd-place finisher. The 2nd-place teams in each Division played each other in the 1st Round of the Playoffs, and the Bullets beat the New York Knicks, 2 games to 1. The Bullets then swept the Stags in 2 straight to reach the Finals.
They played the defending Champions, the Philadelphia Warriors. The 1st 2 games were in Philadelphia, and the Bullets won Game 2 to gain a split. The next 2 were in Baltimore, and the Bullets won them both. The Warriors won Game 5 in Philadelphia to stay alive.
But in Game 6, in Baltimore, the Bullets went on a 2nd-quarter run, and the Warriors never recovered. Reiser scored 16 points, Jeannette and Paul Hoffman each scored 15, and Hermsen and Connie Simmons each scored 12. In contrast, Joe Fulks, the league's 1st scoring leader the season before, scored 28 points, but no other Warrior got into double figures.
The BAA merged with the National Basketball league for the 1949-50 season, becoming the National Basketball Association, but tracing their history to the foundation of the BAA in 1946. As a result, Jeannette and Bill Russell, of the 1968 and 1969 Boston Celtics, are the only player-coaches to win an NBA Championship.
Born outside Pittsburgh in 1917, Jeannette graduated from nearby Washington & Jefferson College. He played professional basketball from 1938 to 1950, and had previously reached the NBL Finals with the 1944 and '45 Fort Wayne Pistons. He was head coach at Georgetown University from 1952 to 1956, and coached the revived Bullets from 1964 to 1967. He last coached in pro ball with the Pittsburgh Pipers of the American Basketball Association in 1970. He was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player in 1994, and died in 1998.
The Bullets never had another winning season. They made the Playoffs with sub-.500 records in 1949 and 1953, but won only 1 Playoff game for the rest of their history. On November 27, 1954, with a 3-11 record to start the 1954-55 season, the franchise folded.
Built in 1939, the Baltimore Coliseum became obsolete with the 1962 opening of the Baltimore Civic Center (now the Royal Farms Arena) downtown, and was closed in 1968, though it stood until 2008 before it was demolished.
In 1963, the Chicago Zephyrs moved into the Baltimore Civic Center, becoming the new Baltimore Bullets. They reached the NBA Finals in 1971, losing to the Milwaukee Bucks. They moved down the Baltimore-Washington Parkway in 1973, becoming the Washington Bullets. Despite various plans, including building a new arena and renovating and expanding the 13,000-seat Civic Center, there has never been another NBA team in Baltimore. The ABA tried to move the Memphis Sounds there for 1975-76, but, as the Baltimore Claws, they played 3 preseason exhibition games before running out of money, and were dissolved.
(UPDATE: The Civic Center was renovated in 2022-23, and renamed the CFG Bank Arena.)
The Bullets lost the 1975 Finals to the Golden State Warriors (who had moved from Philadelphia to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1962), winning the title in 1978 by beating the Seattle SuperSonics in the Finals, and losing a Finals rematch to the Sonics the next season.
In 1997, Abe Pollin, owner of the Bullets and the NHL's Washington Capitals, moved both teams from the suburbs into an arena in the District of Columbia. Eager to avoid references to Washington's tag as "the murder capital of America," Pollin gave the basketball team a new name, the alliterative Washington Wizards.
They are one of the great underachieving teams in sports: In a basketball-mad Chesapeake region -- Baltimore and Washington and hotbeds of high school hoops, and Georgetown and the Universities of Maryland and Virginia are major college programs -- they have not made even the NBA Eastern Conference Finals since 1979. They do not claim the 1948 Baltimore Bullets' title as their own. There's little to stop them from doing so -- after all, the Sacramento Kings, who are at least the same continuous franchise, claim the 1951 Rochester Royals' title as theirs -- but they don't.
One of the '48 Bullets' reserves, guard Louis "Red" Klotz, had starred for the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association, a.k.a. the Philadelphia SPHAs, one of the top pro teams of the pre-NBA era. In 1953, he formed the team that was set up as the regular opponents of the Harlem Globetrotters, most often known as the Washington Generals, in tribute to Dwight D. Eisenhower. They have been known by other names, including the Baltimore Rockets and the New Jersey Reds, but the Generals name is the most common.
Meinhold was an original member of the Generals. He was also the last survivor of the '48 Bullets, living until 2019.
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April 21, 1948 was a Wednesday. Gary Condit, a Congressman from California who lost a bid for re-election because he was a suspect in the murder of his mistress, was born on this day.
Football was out of season. The NHL season ended 7 days earlier, when the Toronto Maple Leafs swept the Detroit Red Wings in the Finals, to win the Stanley Cup. And these baseball games were played:
* The New York Yankees lost to the Washington Senators, 6-3 at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Mickey Haefner went the distance for the win, while Vic Raschi didn't get out of the 3rd inning. Gil Coan hit a home run for the Senators, Joe DiMaggio for the Yankees.
* The New York Giants beat their arch-rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers, 9-5 at the Polo Grounds. Sheldon "Available" Jones was the winning pitcher. Johnny Mize and Sid Gordon hit home runs. The Dodgers got 2 home runs from Arky Vaughan, the longtime All-Star shortstop from Pittsburgh, one of them an inside-the-park homer; and a homer from Carl Furillo. Jackie Robinson went 0-for-2, and then left the game after 5 innings.
Ralph Branca, coming off a season where he won 21 games at age 21, didn't get out of the 2nd inning. It was, statistically, his worst performance against the Giants. But it would not remain his most damaging. Speaking of which: Gordon was a replacement for Bobby Thomson, who was listed on manager Mel Ott's lineup card as the starting center fielder, but was injured covering Vaughan's inside-the-parker in the 1st inning. Gordon was put into left field, and Whitey Lockman was moved from left to center.
* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Boston Braves, 4-3 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Cliché Alert: Walks can kill you, especially
the leadoff variety. Bert Haas led off the bottom of the 13th with a walk, and later scored on a sacrifice fly by Granville "Granny" Hamner.
* The Chicago Cubs beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 6-3 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh.
* The Detroit Tigers beat the Chicago White Sox, 4-3 at Comiskey Park in Chicago.
* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Cincinnati Reds, 5-2 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Stan Musial went 0-for-3, but drew 2 walks.
* The Boston Red Sox and the Philadelphia Athletics were rained out at Fenway Park in Boston. The game was made up the next day, and the A's won, 5-3. Ted Williams went 0-for-3 with a walk. Barney McCosky doubled 2 runs home in the top of the 9th inning.
* And the Cleveland Indians and the St. Louis Browns were not scheduled.
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