Arizona Daily Star from Tucson, Arizona • Page 40

Page Eight Section jJIif Ari -ona Dailo Star Tucson, Sunday, December 25, 1994' UA BLAST FROM THE PAST eoression-era UA clu 14 South Bend, IN Notre Dame 4G, UA 24 13 Chicago DePaul 37, UA 34 oneered the road trip 1229 Des Moines, IA UA 36, Drake 35 11 Lafayette, IN Purdue 34, UA 28 12 Bloomington, IL Illinois Wesleyan 49, UA 44 1 -J. dr 1227 Winfield, KS I Southwestern College 34, UA 26 16 St. Louis, MO St. Louis 40, UA 28 1226 Oklahoma City I UA 30, Oklahoma City Univ. 25 i "We'd spend a half-hour with the manager practicing cheating," -said Warnock.

"We learned how to (deflect) the jump-ball opponent's arm and get away with it." The Wildcats were rough, but Notre Dame was downright nasty, said Warnock, who played against Edward "Moose" Krause, an All-American in basketball and football for the Fighting IrisTi. "When they fouled you in the Midwest, they wanted you to know you were fouled," said Warnock. "I was going in for a sure layup when Moose knocked me clean over a little canvas fence surrounding the dirt floor." Arizona, which won 11 of its last 12 games during the regular season to finish 18-9, went 3-6 on the trip. But it opened some eyes by beating Drake 36-35, with Byrne scoring 15 points, and knocking off Oklahoma City University 30-25. The Arizona Daily Star was along for the trip.

In the Dec. 27, 1933, edition, which followed the win in, Oklahoma City, readers were informed: "A band of basketball players from the land of cactus and sagebrush, the University of Arizona Wildcats opened a barnstorming trip through the Midwest by beating Oklahoma City University 30-25 tonight. "Curious citizens of the city jammed the university gymnasium expected the rugged young men from the West perhaps even unwashed young men to go down to defeat before the Goldbugs, considered one of the classiest cage aggregations in Oklahoma. It was the home boys who suffered. "If curiosity brought them to the gym, the patrons certainly were given double their money's worth.

Without even a war whoop, the Arizona collegians played rings around the Goldbugs, leading all the way and running into trouble only momentarily in the second half." The Drake victory was epic, according to the coverage dateline Des Moines, Iowa, in the Dec. 30, 1933, Star: "Leading 34-28 with five minutes to go, the Cats saw their margin fade away. It was a close, furious battle all the way, and the boys from the Southwest agreed in the shower room after the final whistle that Frank Smith, blond Bulldog forward, is the best eager they have encountered this season. "The strong guarding of George Johnson the entire game and of Gene Filbrun until he went out on fouls really provided Arizona with a victory." By Mark Stewart The Arizona Daily Star Travel has become commonplace for the UA basketball team, which in the last decade has plaved in Alaska, Hawaii, Europe and Australia, ampng other venues. Hal Warnock and his teammates pioneered the long road trip, partly by bus, partly by thumb, for thej Wildcats during the 1933 Christmas season.

Before that, Arizona had never played a basketball garjie on the road, other than in California or New MeKico. i Enke, assistant coach F.T. "Limey" Gibbings, stutlent manager Frank Davis and 11 Wildcats toured the Midwest via chartered bus, playing nine gafhes in 15 days. "It was a cheap bus line," War-nok noted. "The bus would break down every 80 miljes, and we'd have to wait in Dumbarton, oreomewhere like that for the replacement bus to arrive." The tour began Dec.

23 with an exhibition in ElJPaso, followed by games at Oklahoma City University, Southwestern College (Winfield, Purdue, Illinois Wesleyan, DePaul and Notre Dame. It concluded at St. Louis University on Jan. 6.J On the way back to Tucson, the bus broke down outside St. Louis.

The team members had to hitchhike to Tulsa, where another bus was chartered. That one caught fire en route to Oklahoma. City. Further difficulties ensued, and the team finblly returned to Tucson on Jan. 14, the day before its Border Conference opener with Texas Tech.

Warnock, the tallest Wildcat at 6-1, was the backup center to Vince Byrne, his best friend on the team. Byrne, who was first-team All-Border Conference, led the team in scoring with a then-highly respectable 10.3 points a game. Other UA allrconference first-teamers were Gene Filbrun and George "Doc" Johnson, the Wildcats' captain. Basketball in that. era was an entirely different garqe.

The eight men on the traveling squad for conference games rode in two two-door cars, "Ford an4 Chevrolet coaches," said Warnock. Also traveling with the group were Enke and "our 300-pound trainer," Warnock noted. A capacity crowd at Bear Gym, forerunner to McKale Center, was 500-600. Players fouled out after four fouls, and ''there was a jump ball after every basket, every foul, every free throw," Warnock recalled. Warnock and Byrne devoted a lot of time to jump balls.

TUCSON IVs; ''W. QIOn Fl PflQn. TV UA 63, Five Points Garage 15 The Arizona Daily Star THE WARNOCK FILE sour individual. I remember once asking him what he did in the offseason. He told me he sold Cadillacs.

I asked why he didn't sell a cheaper car, like a Chevrolet or a Ford. He told me, 'Listen sonny, anybody who's sap enough to buy a car from a guy just because he's a ballplayer is dumb enough to pay five times more for a car he can't Memorable client: The late Bill Veeck, former owner of the St. Louis Browns, Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox. "Veeck was a personality in the true sense of the word. He was smart, lightning-quick, daring and with an impish sense of humor, witness the incident where he sent a midget up to bat in a major-league game Bill was constantly at war with the other major-league owners because of his acumen and success.

He had Family: Wife Bunny, son John of Tucson, daughter Martha of Phoenix. Education: Graduated from UA College of Law, 1935. Arizona athletic career: Lettered in basketball 1932-34, lettered in baseball 1933-35. Member of Pop McKale's all-time Wildcat baseball team. Professional sports: Briefly played with St.

Louis Browns, managed by Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby, in 1935. Six games, seven at-bats, two hits, both doubles, lifetime batting average of .286. Memorable contemporary: 1920s and '30s major-leaguer "Sunny Jim" Bottomley. "The sportswriters called him 'Sunny Jim' because he'd turn his hat sideways and give them goofy smiles, but in reality, he was a an endless supply of ideas and they instinctively opposed all of them, right or wrong." Military career: Naval officer in World War II. Scheduled to go ashore for the invasion of Japan before the atomic bombs were dropped, ending the war.

Left service as a lieutenant commander. Legal career: Joined Bilby and Shoenhair in 1938, senior partner for years. Semi-retired from Lesher and Lesher. How Tucson's changed: "After I graduated from law school, I approached James Boyle, who had a law fum here, about a job. He told me, 'Harold, I don't think Tucson will ever support a law firm with more than three partners and we have that Twenty years later I was a partner with him, and our firm had 40 lawyers." at him.

He didn't hit him, but he did hit his own car six times. Enke was a different story. On the one hand, Warnock was grateful to the basketball coach and respected him. "He let me play," Warnock said. "I was the only guy on the squad who hadn't been an all-stater in high school.

"Enke had been a great athlete at Minnesota, a guard on both the football and basketball teams. And he was a smart guy -a graduate civil engineer with great grades. But he wanted to be the coach. He was not any fun. We were giggling and laughing at him a lot, because he was a stiff guy." No scholarships were available back then, the height of the Depression.

The only material thing Warnock and others like him had to show for their efforts were varsity letters. "I played sports because I loved it," Warnock said. "I was pretty good at a couple of sports, and I loved the competition. "Everybody was desperately poor back then, but I never knew that. I'd never known anything else." for $8 apiece, "so I was a dollar to the good," he said.

Warnock had another job, as "an agent of Varsity Cleaners." "Years later," he recalled fondly, "prominent businessmen would avoid me on the street because they still owed $3.75 cleaning bills." During his freshman year at the UA, Warnock attained his adult height of 6-foot-1 and "fleshed out" to 125 pounds. Two legendary Arizona coaches, J.F. "Pop" McKale and Fred Enke, liked what they saw of Warnock and selected him for the varsity baseball and basketball teams, respectively. Warnock earned three letters in each of those sports. Of his two Wildcat coaches, Warnock preferred McKale, even though he had occasional run-ins with him.

"We had a mutual admiration society," recalled Warnock, with a trace of irony. "I struck out once and laughed in embarrassment. McKale spent an hour at practice the next day demonstrating how Warnock, Continued from Page Page 1C towns like Douglas. Warnock, vyhose father was a court reporter, was in the running for the 10th and last spot on the Douglas High basketball team. But vyhen he found out he was competing with the son of the manager of the mining town's company story, "I picked up my Keds right then.

I knew it was hopeless," he said. Warnock arrived at the UA in the fall of 1929, with $50 to his name. It cost him $17.50 to enroll, but he had the mistaken impression that his housing was taken care of. thought I had pledged Sigma Nu, but that night they told me that the house 'was a little so there I was, 17 years old, with about $30 in my pocket and nowhere to go." Warnock quickly got a job at the University Commons, fore-tunner of the Student Union, waiting on tables. That job paid Slim $9 a month, and he and three friends rented a basement laugh with him or at him." One example was when a peeping Tom was bothering McKale's daughters.

McKale, who had obtained a pistol from a former UA athlete, told the daugh his 'nonchalant center fielder laughed off striking But, "McKale was a very funny man, short, fat and pigeon-toed. He always had something going for him where you could ters to scream if the voyeur showed up again. A few nights later he did, and McKale rushed out of the house, pistol in hand. He chased the intruder around his property, emptying the pistol A- i it r. I i1 i i- v.

i i 1 P' FxXos courtesy of Hat take him seriously. Warnock's brief career with the St. Louis Browns, photo at right, included two doubles in seven'at-bats. Mai WamoCK, no. in aoove pnoio, saa iw repwiea uie ihtelligerKe of coach Fred Enke (at right, above), but refused to I.