The stone rested atop a base outside the blacksmith shop at Bennie's Corners during the early 1870's. In a game called "duck on a rock" players would take turns chucking fist-sized stones at it. If you hit it, you'd go back to the end of the line to await another turn. But if you missed, you'd have to race the "guard" watching the target to the stone you just threw. Get there last and you'd become the next guard.
They figured out a fastball would carom away and increase the odds of being beaten to it. A high, lofting toss turned out to be more controllable and more likely to stay close enough to let you outrace the guard. This simple childhood game provided a key inspiration decades later for one of the young players.
Always athletic, the player had a fondness for contact sports like lacrosse (sometimes called "legalized murder") and rugby, which was considered to be a "tool of the devil." They were seemingly paradoxical avocations for a McGill University theological student who took his Christian faith seriously.
He eventually found his way to the Young Men's Christian Association's International Training School for Christian Workers, where he developed a safe indoor activity where running was allowed but tackling and rough play near the goals was discouraged. This last feature was accomplished by raising the goals overhead where they were too high to guard.
One vexing problem: how to score. The answer came from the game he played as a boy. The controlled arcing lobs used in "duck on a rock" were perfect for tossing a soccer ball into a peach basket. And so James Naismith invented the game of basketball at what is now Springfield College.
Naismith intended his new game to embody the Christian spirit. According to John A. Murray writing in The Wall Street Journal, the issue was addressed in 1897: "The game must be kept clean. It is a perfect outrage for an institution that stands for Christian work in the community to tolerate not merely ungentlemanly treatment of guests, but slugging and that which violates the elementary principles of morals....Excuse for the rest of the year any player who is not clean in his play."
He never capitalized on his invention and even refused fees for speaking about it. When others called for the game to be called "Naismith Ball" he insisted on "Basket Ball," and he remained a modest, dedicated Christian throughout his life.
The sport was "an important evangelical tool for many during its first 50 years," but the Christian aspect has been diluted since. Dr. Naismith couldn't have imagined gargantuan grown men racing down the court, bellowing at each other, trading blows and slamming the ball through the basket from high above.
Decades after Dr. Naismith was laid to rest, players like Charles Barkley (aka "Sir Charles" and "The Round Mound of Rebound") burst upon the scene. Sheer physical prowess transformed the dignified nature of the game and secularism overwhelmed its spirituality.
In 1891, who could've guessed this would be the game's future?
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