March 17-23, 2005

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Media Madness

by J.F. Pirro

Dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, it's hard for Jack Scheuer to hide his white, skinny 72-year-old half-Irish legs. A brace on his right knee may mask two surgeries beneath it, but there's no disguising his ancient, two-handed set shot at the Palestra. "It's like having a ghost in the place," says Inquirer columnist and longtime basketball scribe Bob Ford.

Scheuer, a Big Five Hall of Fame inductee and historian, says he knows what others think when they see him in "uniform" shooting that shot: "They're saying, "He's old,' and it's true. I am an old guy."

But unlike a contemporary of his, Temple's John Chaney, at least Scheuer's an old guy who can control himself on the court.

At noon on Wednesdays from October to April for the last 32 years, the longtime Associated Press sportswriter has run "media games," four-on-four, half-court 9-point hoops games (each basket counts as one) at Penn's Palestra. Ford and about a dozen other sports journalists willingly trade deadlines for foul lines as a reprieve from their own March Madness, basketball's busiest stretch.

Scheuer, who for the 18 years he covered the Phils in spring training would fly home for Wednesday's games, says he's pulling for Illinois in this year's NCAA tournament. The team's "pass-it, don't-force-it," purist, old-school style matches his own.

It's with the good graces of another purist, Penn coach Fran Dunphy, that the media games continue. Once, Dunphy forgot it was Wednesday. He brought his Quakers in to practice, then redirected them to Weightman Hall. "Can you imagine Bobby Knight doing that?" Scheuer asks.

Or Chaney? Scheuer (Frankford) and Chaney (Ben Franklin) were high school opponents. "He doesn't have too many defenders this time," Scheuer says

, referring to last month's

"Goon Game" versus St. Joe's and Chaney's subsequent suspension. "There's bad hoops and good hoops. We play good hoops."

Postgame protocol calls for showers and trivia in locker room No. 4 where Scheuer also holds court. "If it's one of Jackie's questions, nine times out of 10 it's about basketball," quips Nick Fierro, Easton Express-Times sports columnist.

No. 4 is the same lair Scheuer changed in when Frankford met Overbrook for the 1949 Public League title and his two-handed set shot first landed him a place in city hoops history. "You know, I've played against some young kids who think it's a new kind of shot," he says.