Today of all days I am turning 80. I will write a double-headed column going through my early days in the world of sports – especially basketball – but also keeping the column focused on the Final Four dribble-drive for this coming weekend.

As I predicted last week, there were no glaring upsets. But there were a number of surprises. The biggest might have been Southern Illinois over Virginia Tech but the Salukis have been there before under several coaches – the latest being Chris Lowery.

Ohio State inched by Xavier and I personally would not have considered that game an upset if Xavier had won. They have a deep, talented team and an up-and-coming coach in Sean Miller who was one of the great point guards of the modern era during his college days. He also prepped under Thad Motta who once coached the Musketeers.

Another surprise was Southern California. With an outstanding young team and more help on the way, Tim Floyd could be building a dynasty. The Pac-10 was a tough conference last year (I thought it was the best early on) and they join the SEC (Florida, Vanderbilt and Tennessee) in placing three teams with USC, Oregon and UCLA in the Sweet 16.

Kansas and Texas A&M represent the Big 12 while Georgetown and Pittsburgh are from the Big East. Single entries are SIU (Missouri Valley), UNLV (Mountain West), Butler (Horizon) and Memphis (Conference USA).

Again physicality was evident in most of last week’s games. Big people – and defense – wins games.

Fans watching will zero in on Butler and SIU – the two so-called mid-majors. I hate that moniker. SIU has nearly 14,000 students and has been a fixture in the Missouri Valley back to the halcyon days of Harry “The Horse” Gallatin, whom we hired away from the Salukis to coach the St. Louis Hawks in the early 1960s. And the Missouri Valley every year is one of the most competitive of all conferences, as is the Mid-American, where one year five teams tied for first place and four tied for second.

Whatever you bracket fillers filled in, throw it out. Only a few buckets will decide the Elite Eight, which might be more exciting come Saturday and Sunday than the eventual Final Four. Physicality will prevail.

But getting back to my turning 80. Go figure, my father passed at 67 and my mother at 95, so maybe I have my mother’s genes. I grew up in the little coal-mining town of Wyoming, Pa., having moved there from my birthplace, Patterson, N.J., at age eight. My father and his three brothers owned three big silk mills in Patterson, Lancaster and Manheim, Pa. in the late 1920s, but no one was interested in silk during the impending Depression, so the family closed the three mills. Since my father was the youngest, the others each took a mill under their belts and my father was forced to find a job. He and my mother opened a small dry goods store in Wyoming where a half-sister of mine lived. It was about as large as a nice room at a Marriott and we lived in three rooms behind the store.

Two years later he passed away – my mother always said of a broken heart. He had planned a wonderful life for his wife and only child only to see his dreams fade away. Of course the impending World War II fracas later created a need for silk, but the three remaining brothers failed to remember their younger addition. We rarely heard from them.

Growing up I began to covet sports as a way out of my environment. We had moved our store across the street and lived in two rooms in back of that establishment. My brother-in-law Bob Haimes knew the owner of the Class A Wilkes-Barre Barons, a Cleveland farm club, and when I turned 13 in 1940, I obtained my first paying sports job as a $1-a-day bat boy for that club. I also got any broken bats or used, scuffed up balls that were available and bus tickets and meals at the ballpark. I usually hitched a ride to and from Artillery Park, home of the Barons, to save the bus fare.

Our third baseman was Phil Seghi, who had been both a baseball and basketball star at Northwestern University and who later played with the Cleveland Indians, becoming their general manager when he retired. Our left fielder was Bob Lemon, the same Bob Lemon who not only pitched for the New York Yankees but eventually became the very successful manager of that team.

I enlisted in the Army right out of high school and eventually hooked up with Seghi during basic training at Camp Blanding. He remembered the hustling young batboy, asked for my home address and said when he got out he would write a couple of letters for me.

Seghi’s help paid off. I was soon a member of the Cleveland farm system, working again for the hometown baseball Barons while going to college. Later, I traveled the country with a number of Bill Veeck’s promotions, the most notable of which was Baseball Youth Week. Our camp included famed medal-winning Olympic hurler Harrison Dillard, a Cleveland native who taught basestealing.

A year after my batboy gig, I earned a basketball entry level job. I had attended most of the home games of the semi-pro basketball Barons in the company of an unusually large scorecard that radio announcer, Franklin Coslett, had given me for Christmas. One day, the Barons’ official scorekeeper failed to show. Then-coach Eddie White remembered seeing me in the stands most games and sent someone up in the stands to get me.

“I guess you know how to keep score,” he said, “since everyone here goes up to double check their figures with you. The job pays $3.00 per game and bus fare (when I told him I lived five miles away).”

White owned a bar in Wilkes-Barre and his team traveled around the Eastern portion of the state playing games in surrounding cities. When I was discharged in late 1946, my last Army posting was at Fort Benning, Ga., where, for the past five months, I had been the team manager for the post football team. The soon-to-be undefeated gridders were coached by Bill Meek, who later was head man at Tennessee, Brigham Young (or Utah) and the Houston Texans of the AFL. That period was the heyday of the service academies’ success – remember the great Army teams of Doc Blanchard and Glen Davis and company.

Our Fort Benning team included the starting offensive and defensive Army team from the previous Fall, minus Doc and Glen, as well as All-Americans Dick Pfitzer at tight end (two time All-American); Allie Joy at guard (once); and John “Pinky” Green (three times). Green later was on the staff of Florida and Tennessee.

Our team was five men deep at every position and our starting backfield starred quarterback Bob Walterhouse, half-backs Max Minor and Bobby Chabor, and a fullback whose name escapes me. The commanding general of Fort Benning was Major General John Mike O’Daniel, who later became our ambassador to the Soviet Union – a great sports fan.

The word was passed down that when visiting other bases in the surrounding service commands, if we saw any good football players on their teams, to get them transferred to Benning. We had future and present AFL and NFL players playing on our third units.

When I returned home I started college and I again joined forces with Mr. White who was in the midst of forming what was to become the Eastern Basketball League. Teams from Allentown, Wilkes-Barre, Scranton and Williamsport in Pennsylvania and Binghamton and Utica in New York were among the early entries. But Eddie got upset with some of his partners and joined another upstart minor league, the American League, before returning to the Eastern League fold.

The Eastern League was eventually to become the Continental Basketball Association. I was the director of scouting for that league for many, many years donating my services to the circuit. The cage Barons eventually were to play many NBA teams, including yearly appearances by the Rochester Royals and Syracuse Nationals among others. White played a lot of games outside the regular Eastern League schedule, first playing in a nearby city for eight or nine hundred dollars and then chartering two busloads of fans to attend the game – ending up with a net loss for his trouble. But he was a true sports fan. The game was the thing with him.

The NBA teams would interrupt their regular season to play games in Wilkes-Barre where, on most occasions, they attracted bigger crowds than some of those clubs pulled in at home. And White paid exceptional salaries for that period. The Chanecka Brothers earned nearly $8,000 per season. White often brought in ex-NBA players to complete his roster. These included legendary Hall of Famers Bobby McDermott and Bob Gates. Only the World Campion Lakers beat the Barons decisively, while the New York Knicks managed to survive a couple of close decisions. The Lakers game drew a turnaway crowd to a local armory.

I turned my association with both Barons’ teams into positions with a number of other organizations, becoming part owner of a stock car track in the Pocono Mountains; a publicity posting with world-famous trick car show performer Joey Chitwood who was the first individual in the 1940s and 1950s to organize a national Thrill Event; a stint with Sugar Ray Robinson, the greatest fighter pound for pound in the history of boxing; and handling the arena and theater promotions in the area for Irvin Field of Super Music Stores in Washington, D.C., who eventually, in the company of his brother, purchased the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus.

I became the youngest licensed boxing matchmaker in the U.S. in 1948 or 1949 and became a part of the local scene promoting boxing and wrestling events – the latter under the aegis of Jess McMahon, the grandfather of wrestling mogul Vince McMahon. Grandpa Jess used to own and promote pro basketball games in the 1920s and 1930s in the New York City area.

I came back to Wilkes-Barre in 1953 handling publicity for a publicly-owned baseball team again in the Class A Eastern League. Cleveland, which once had 27 farm clubs from Triple A to Class D, pulled out of Wilkes-Barre and many other cities. It appeared that minor league baseball was on the way out nationally. Everyone was wrong. Today, the minors are one of the hottest items in sports with franchises going for millions of dollars.

In the summer of 1954, I had arranged for the Harlem Globetrotters to play a double-header outdoors in Artillery Park as part of a fundraiser to once again try to save baseball in our city. The ‘Trotters played the NBA All-Stars with Bob Cousy and Red Holzman and other stars and the Boston Whirlwinds with Bevo Francis, who scored a number of 100-point games at little Rio Grande Ohio College against the Washington Generals. Francis and his coach at Rio Grande, Newt Oliver, had signed big-time contracts with the Trotters in May. The event drew the largest crowd ever to see a basketball game in the surrounding areas and thousands were turned away. Ben Kerner, the owner of the Milwaukee Hawks, happened to be at that game and asked Mendy Rudolph, an NBA official, who lived in Wilkes-Barre and where all these people had come from. Rudolph, a lifelong friend of mine who often arranged tickets for me at NBA games, pointed me out to Kerner.

Kerner invited me out for a late-night dinner and told me he was looking for a public relations guy for his team.

“We could use a promoter like you,” he said. “I can’t promise you a lot of money, but if we ever hit it big, I’ll take care of you.”

I had heard that song before but I knew the baseball team would not last the summer and I accepted an offer that was hundreds of dollars less than what I was making. A hurried call to Eddie Gottlieb, the owner of the Philadelphia Warriors, brought a soft approval of the Milwaukee Hawks, but Gotty did say this was a foot in the door.

“Call me if you don’t like it there,” he said. “You know there is always room here.”

When I arrived two weeks later in Milwaukee, I met our then-coach, Red Holzman, at a baseball game and he was surprised to see me.

“You’re not due for a couple of days,” he said.

Told I was there to meet the staff, he took me in the bathroom of the Milwaukee Braves press box and uttered words I would never forget – “You are the staff.”

As shocked as I was, the next day I found out he was right.

I was the only employee. Red was the coach, Ben Kerner was the owner and I was the staff. We added a secretary, Pat Fitzgerald.

The rest, I guess, is history.

I convinced Kerner to move to St. Louis a year later after obtaining a package of 1,000 guaranteed season tickets and TV and radio deal with local officials. We won the first Western Division crown in our first season and after completing one of the most historical deals in the team’s history (our rights to Bill Russell to Boston for rights to two Hall of Famers, Ed Macauley and Cliff Hagan), we took the Celtics to the last game series before losing in double overtime, 125-123, in what I still say was one of the greatest games in league history. A year later we beat the Celtics again in the Finals, four games to three, as Bob Pettit scored 50 of our 101 points. We won a number of Western titles there, then the Hawks were sold to an Atlanta businessman, the best owner I ever had, Tom Cousins.

In our years in Atlanta we won another division title one year and finished second in the other. Eventually I was faced with the situations that saw Len Wilkens being traded to Seattle and Paul Silas to Phoenix. Then Zelmo Beaty jumped an existing contract to bolt to the Utah Stars of the ABA.

Still we survived. I got another future Hall of Fame center, Walt Bellamy, in a trade for the draft choice I had acquired from the Suns, added backup center Dave Newmark (from Cincinnati) and acquired a high pick in the 1970 NBA Draft from San Francisco for the draft rights to Beaty. I knew Beaty would never play for the Warriors but just to be sure I made them promise to give me the rights to their top draft choice of a year ago, Vanderbilt’s all-time best player, Clyde Lee.

I then drafted “Pistol” Pete Maravich with the third pick in that year’s draft (remember San Francisco) and later in the draft picked international players, 6-4 Manuel Raga (Mexico’s greatest player) in the 10th round and 18-year-old 6-10, 275-pound Dino Meneghin of Italy in the 11th. Both played for Italy’s Varese team in the Division I Italian League.

When I found out Maravich would eventually get a two million dollar contract offer, I left for the ABA’s Pittsburgh team called the Pipers. The Hawks never did contact either of my late picks – Dino played 28 years in Italy and 15 years later was chosen the greatest player in the history of international basketball. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame four years ago. Raga, until he was injured, was called “the Jerry West” of international ball. The Hawks then lost our best returning player, “Jumpin” Joe Caldwell, to the ABA when they failed to offer him a proper contract.

Had I stayed we would have signed Meneghin and Raga (who had said through back channels that he wanted to play in the NBA) to join with an alignment of “Sweet” Lou Hudson, Bill Bridges, Jim Davis and Joe Caldwell at forward (Joe could play two spots); Walt Bellamy and Newmark, plus Meneghin at forward and center; and Richie Guerin, Walt Hazzard, Butch Beard, Maravich and Raga at guards. We would have been the Boston Celtics of the 1970s.

In 1969-70 when we won the Western Division crown, the Hawks were 48-34 while the next season they fell to 36-46, losing Caldwell and Newmark. The 1971-72 record was also 36-46. Meanwhile, I sunk the Condors, named for a dying California bird, because after the merger between the NBA and ABA fell through, my ownership team faded away.

The rest is history, or have I missed anything?

It’s been a great run – and you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.