/—=

The 1954 Toledo Mercurys with Sid Goldberg, left, and Iry Pollock, standing second from
right.

Sid

Jack Dempsey and Sid Goldberg at ringside.

n a sweltering Fourth of July in 1919, a 7-year-
old boy worked the crowds at an outdoor box-
ing match in Toledo, Ohio.
Sidney Goldberg was selling ice, and he found
no shortage of eager buyers among the crowd
gathered to cheer the Manassa Mauler, Jack
Dempsey, as his powerful fists won the world heavy-
weight championship from the giant Jess Willard.
Thirteen years later, that same youngster, now a strap-
ping young man of 20, brought Jack Dempsey back to
Toledo for an exhibition bout. It was to be the first of many
appearances Dempsey would make in Toledo for Sid Gold-
berg over the next 30 years.
On May 14, 1996, another crowd gathered to honor
Sid Goldberg at his installation in the Toledo Jewish Com-
munity Center's Sports Hall of Fame. The most frequent
comment that night: "It's a shame Sid isn't here, because
he would have loved it." For as fate would have it,. Sid
Goldberg died last October at the age of 83.
When Goldberg was inducted into his high school's hall
of fame in 1988, he rewarded his audience by correctly

0

Alan Abrams is a writer for the Toledo Blade.

Oberg, Jack Dempsey and Iry Pollock pose in 1952.

The Toledo JCC inducts
legendary boxing and basketball
promoter Sidney Goldberg
into its hall of fame.

ALAN ABRAMS

SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

predicting the win, place and show winners in that week's
running of the Preakness. During his 60-year career,
Sid Goldberg was more than just a Toledo boxing pro-
moter. He was a pioneer in professional basketball, own-
ing three franchises between 1938 and 1949 in the
forerunner of the National Basketball Association (NBA).
One of his teams played in the world's first professional
basketball championship game in 1941. It was inter-
rupted by news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
But Goldberg's proudest accomplishment was being

the first to hire African-American athletes to play on the
same professional basketball team with whites. That
was back in 1942, five years before Jackie Robinson in-
tegrated Major League baseball. The team was the Jim
White Chevvies, named after a Toledo car dealer, and
Goldberg hired four African-American players.
Goldberg's first team, the one that made it to the cham-
pionships, was the Toledo White Huts, named after the
Toledo hamburger chain whose owner, Sam Fine, coughed
up $250 to buy uniforms for the team.
Goldberg's third pro team, the Toledo Jeeps of the
old National Basketball League, is today Ted Turner's
Atlanta Hawks of the NBA. Jules Rivlin was coach of the
Jeeps, and Harry Boykoff and Paul Seymour were among
the star players on the team, which made it to the finals
of the 1947 World Professional Tournament, only to lose
to the Indianapolis Kautskys.
Because of his many contributions to the game, Gold-
berg is still a contender for enshrinement in the Naismith
Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame among other giants
of the game like Red Auerbach, Nat Holman and Abe
Saperstein.

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