Buffalo Germans Razed Basketball World Decades Ago, Compiling Amazing Records; Once Won 111 in a Row; Played in Jamestown

One evening about 30 years ago, a group of men stepped into an elevator in Cincinnati, Ohio, and were hoisted to a gymnasium on an upper floor.During the ride, one man, the manager of the Cincinnati Red Stockings basketball team, spoke in reassuring tones to the other passengers. “We have a great club here in Cincinnati. You boys from Buffalo will be playing a superlative aggregation with a fine following of fans. So don’t feel too badly if they become enthused and run up quite a score. And above all, don’t let the crowd’s cheering for our team get under your skins.”

It was a sporting gesture, but so unnecessary, as it turned out, that the aftermath would have been ludicrous had it not been so tragic.

The Buffalo team won by such a lop-sided score the game turned into a farce, and before it was half over, the fans were raising the roof cheering for the visitors.

The victors that night were the Buffalo Germans, twice world’s champions and one of the greatest basketball teams ever assembled before or since.

Once Won 111 in Row

This gang roamed the land far and wide during a day when practically every community boasted their prides.

They swept through the basketball world like a scourge, leaving in their wake victories so one-sided they are almost unbelievable in this day of close-checking, man-to-man and zone defenses.

At one stage of their amazing career, they compiled a consecutive winning chain of 111 straight games.

Several times during those early years following the turn of the century, they came to Jamestown to play local quintets. Tongues wagged for weeks after their departures. And the wizardry of the all-German five from the Bison City is still talked of in revered tones when basketball men gather to mull over the deeds of yesteryear.

Six Still Alive

Six members of that famed band of bucket busters still live in Buffalo, one is dead and another coaches the Westfield High School five. The latter is George Schell.

Schell, a closely knit, slightly graying gentleman in his 60s, is still a fine example of a man. George Schell likes to talk of the deeds of the Buffalo Germans of yesterday, but he likes, too, to talk of boys - boys of today, his boys at Westfield, boys he meets on basketball trips through the Lake Shore League, boys from all walks of life.

“I want my boys to know how to win and how to lose, how to play fair and clean. If they cannot learn those essentials of life now, when will they learn them?” he asks simply. “I want each of my boys to be a hard loser but not a poor loser. There is a big difference. A hard loser scraps right down to the wire for every point but when it is all over he shakes the hand of the man who has beaten him and says, ‘I’ll do better next time.’”

Probably never before in the history of the Lake Shore League has the Schell crowd received such a baptism of fire. At this writing the Grape Pickers have dropped nine conference games without registering a victory. Surely hampered by a lack of reserve power and dogged by sickness and injuries, the little Westfield school is still a shining example of how the sportsman loses.

But let’s get back to the Buffalo Germans.

The team was organized as the Buffalo German Orioles back in 1895. One of the early backers was Dr. Fred Burkhardt, whose brother Carl Burkhardt is the head of the physical education department in the Buffalo city schools.

Won World Title

The club compiled a great record during the next five years climaxing their achievements by winning the Pan-American championship during the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. They garnered the world’s championship at St. Louis in 1904, and it was shortly thereafter that George Schell came into the picture.

Schell, who started tossing basketballs at Buffalo’s old East side Westminister House, a church organization, and later with various German Y.M.C.A. teams and had played against the original Buffalo Germans several times. One day Manager Alfred Heerdt asked him to play with the Germans and he accepted.

That was in 1905 and Schell remained with the club until shortly before it broke up, about 1925. Most of the originals members were, of course, gone by then.

As stated before, six of the seven men who were the bulk of the club when Schell joined them are still alive. Heerdt is connected with the Buffalo Chevrolet plant, Ed and Harry Miller are with the Direct Sales Company of Buffalo, Hank Fausc is with the Hewittt Rubber Company, also of Buffalo, Bill Rohde is an official of the county sheriff’s department at Buffalo and Schell is with the Westfield school. Ed Linnborn is dead.

Spirals, American Legion, Jamestown Fives, Gave Buffalo Germans Close Battles In Orioles’ Heyday

Originally formed as the Buffalo German Orioles, the Buffalo city club adopted the name Buffalo German YMCA for home games and Buffalo Germans on the road. Still later they were known as the Buffalo German Ramblers, then the Buffalo German Orioles again and when World War I broke out, the club adopted the name Buffalo Orioles for obvious reasons.

In reviewing the history of the team, probably one of the most amazing phases of its career is that seven men played basketball together for more than two decades under all kinds of conditions without a single solitary bit of dissension.

After playing major teams throughout the eastern states, Schell and Miller decided to expand. One morning they cranked up Schell’s Model T Ford and started for California. It took six weeks for them to complete the trip, but when they returned a solid schedule for a southwestern swing had been booked.

The war interrupted, however, and Schell was soon in service in a unit of naval aviation when today’s mighty fleet of the airways was just sprouting it wings. He was stationed at Pelham Bay near New York, where he was soon in charge of the basketball team and later was made director of the camp’s entire physical education program.

Win String Snapped

That 111-game winning streak is probably one of the most astounding records ever rolled into the books for posterity. The feat takes on a deeper halo when one considers the Germans played the majority of their games on the road since no suitable gym was available at Buffalo.

The string was snapped one night at Herkimer by one point with a screaming crowd edging out on the floor in its excitement until only a few feet of playing space remained when the final gun sounded.

Forty-three more victories went into the record books before the Germans tasted defeat again – an overall record of 153 victories in 154 games during one sensational surge.

Following a game in Hamilton, the opposing manger came in and shook hands with each member of the Orioles, remarking as he did so: “We thought there were 10 Dutchmen out there tonight.”

Cleveland Incident

Then there was the time the Buffalo tossers went to Cleveland to play and were met at the train by the publicity man for their opponents, who immediately started extolling the home club. The late Tom Mercer, who managed the Orioles for years and who was once chief umpire for the Buffalo Muny Leagues, listened for a time and then remarked dryly: “Well, son, you are going to play a good team, too.”

Cleveland found out Tom was calling one right that night.

The Orioles came to Jamestown several times when our city was a hotbed of independent cage teams. There was the old Company E five, later followed by the Spirals, then the Bees or American Legion. These clubs boasted some fine players but were never able to turn the tables on the barnstorming quintet, although several of their contests were fast and close.

Company E, cage power in this area before the first World War, was composed of the late Fred Morey, Jimmy Johnson, still a resident of Jamestown; Jim Varley, now believed to be in New York; Charles Durnin, connected with the Jamestown Wallpaper Company; Ben Dawson, now dead; and Spike Anderburg, an employee of a local woolen mill. Many of the Company E v. Buffalo Germans thrillers are still talked about locally.

Spirals Lose Close One

The Spirals, city champs for many years, dropped a heartbreaking 42-40 decision to the Orioles in Buffalo. Louie Collins, owner of the local Collins Sporting Goods Company, recalls Bert Hall gained possession of the ball with six seconds remaining. His teammates screamed “shoot, shoot,” thinking there was not time enough for a dribble-in. Hall shot from far out on the court, the ball clung to the rim, then fell off where it was tied up. The Spirals had a fine team according to Collins. Hall, now with the Maddox Table Company; Ralph Johnson, a local insurance man; Pat Riley, connected with Sans Plumbers today; Ralph Thomas, with Lockwood’s at this writing; Carl Munson, coach of the Wooster College cagers; and Ken Bowers, now a resident of Youngstown, Ohio.

The American Legion, also called the Bees, which succeeded the Spirals as the top guns of the local cage wars, once led the Orioles through most of the game only to lose by one basket when one of the club’s stars, Yngve Adamson, crashed through a window and was severely cut. This game was played in the old state armory, scene of some tense and thrilling casaba battles, shortly after World War I. The Legion gang, which later bowed out in favor of the Mystics, was composed of Adamson, now a Prudential Life insurance man here; George Hahne, now cashier of the First National Bank; Charles N. Jones, an officer at Chadakoin Motors; George Hall, now of the Journal-Press of Jamestown; Harry James, currently employed at General Electric at Erie; and Merritt Himes of the Fairchild Company here.

Jiggs O’Dell Played Here

The club later boasted, Jiggs O’Dell, who played with the locals for more than a year before departing to join the original Celtics, another famed quint. O’Dell, later a brakeman, was killed in a railroad accident at Eldred, Pa., some years ago.

These were the types of teams the old Buffalo Germans wee parading their wares against over the length and breadth of the land a couple of decades ago. They played pro, semi-pro and college clubs – the best to be found, yet their losing percentage was so small many of the younger generation may scoff when the records are unfolded.

At one time, after running out of opposition in the Buffalo area, and after winning 98 games in a row, the club took on two teams in one night at Buffalo. They were Manhattan College and the Carlisle Indians. Those were the years the immortal Jim Thorpe was starring at both football and basketball for the Indians.

Polishing off Manhattan in rather easy manner, the Orioles rested 8 minutes than made it 100 in a row by downing the Indians.

“You know,” Schell told us just recently as he recalled the old days, “we tried our best to be sportsmen both on and off the court. It paid dividends, too, then and in later years.”

Rules For Living

Schell went on to relate an incident to emphasize his point. It occurred when he walked into the First National Bank of Jamestown not so long ago, presented a check at the grill and offered to produce proper identification. Cashier George Hahne, the same George Hahne who once played against the Orioles, overheard the conversation, reached over, took the check and oked it without question.

“Anyone who played with the old Buffalo Germans is good for any amount with me,” he remarked.

Today George Schell is moulding that same type of background in his Westfield High School boys telling them they, in reality, are part of the old Buffalo Germans “because you are part of me and I was part of the Germans.”

One of Schell’s training creeds is to get his players in condition to play games and not use games to get in condition.

“That is a mistake I believe some coaches in all types of sports make yearly,” he explained. “Every player must be handled differently. Boys should be studied. Some are huskies from the day of their birth and others are frail through to and after manhood. It doesn’t mean the latter shouldn’t participate in sports, though. It simply means they should be handled right.

“Habits of later life are far more injurious than sports, and if every one-time athlete could see fit to follow the creed of living he learns during his participation days, we would be a far healthier race.”

George Schell got up abruptly and terminated our talk. And as the old Buffalo Germans Oriole passed out through the door, we knew we had met a fine gentlemen.

And getting back to the Orioles again: They were a whale of a ball club!