Keeping Score
February 23, 2007 09:33 AM | General
February 23, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Allen Babcock has probably gone through a small warehouse of ballpoint pens and pencils keeping score of West Virginia University men’s basketball games for the last 63 years. That’s right, 63 years. Babcock began scoring WVU games before the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy.
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| Al Babock has been keeping score of West Virginia men's basketball games since 1944.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
He got his start when the late Morgantown Post sports editor Tony Constantine got fed up trying to keep track of points, rebounds and assists in addition to covering the games.
“Tony said, ‘I’d like to spend my time watching the game rather than keeping the scorebook. How would you like to take over?’” Babcock recalled recently. “I’ve been doing it ever since.”
Known by everyone as simply Al, Babcock first got interested in sports by keeping score of Parkersburg High School baseball games with his father, an accountant by trade. That led to him becoming Parkersburg’s team manager while in junior high school.
“They had to lift me up to hang the uniforms up,” Babcock laughed.
Legendary Syracuse coach Ben Schwartzwalder, then coaching the Parkersburg High football team, eventually took young Babcock under his wing.
“I practically lived over at his house,” Babcock remembered. “I was his gofer and I can remember he was always drawing up plays, even when he was eating his breakfast and drinking his coffee.
“He brought me over here to see a ballgame and to see (Athletic Director) Legs Hawley,” Babcock said. “He told Legs that I was a hard-working young man who needed some help going to school. Legs said, ‘Yeah, I think we can help him.’ They started me out waiting tables up at Women’s Hall for my board and then they got me a job working down at the equipment room.”
Babcock did other odd jobs for the athletic department, working in the ticket office and helping out Sports Information Director Forest Crane in the publicity department. Babcock served two stints as interim SID when Crane was called into the service.
At first, Babcock was not only keeping points and fouls but also assists, rebounds and field goal percentage.
“It wasn’t as specific as it is now as far as an offensive or defensive rebound, but I could do it back then because they had a jump ball,” he said. “I couldn’t do that now and there are few people today who could.”
It’s safe to estimate that Babcock has scored more than a thousand games when you count high school tournaments and WVU games played in Charleston. He has only missed a handful of games driving up from his home in Fairmont in the 63 years he’s been doing this.
Today, there is an official statistics crew that is located at the concourse level of the arena using a computer program that keeps track of shots, rebounds, assists, steals and other stats. But the stat crew must confirm their points and fouls with Al’s official book courtside. The official scorer is really an extension of the three officials on the floor.
“It’s not the same game in any way shape or form,” Babcock says. “They’ve improved the game and it is much faster game. It reminds me of baseball in that the games used to take forever. (Basketball) has much more appeal to it now.”
Being a witness to so much history, naturally Babcock has his favorite personal moments.
“Every game is a great game, but to this day the UCLA and the UNLV games were very enjoyable,” he said. “I really cherish those games against Pitt, especially when Doc Carlson coached the Panthers. Somebody dumped a cup of water on him and the next year he came into the Field House carrying an umbrella. He just took it with grace. He was a wonderful coach and a wonderful person.”
Babcock also is proud to say he got to see the great Jerry West play in person.
“Jerry was the greatest,” he said. “In my time I think Jerry and Oscar Robertson were the two greatest basketball players I can remember. When they were on the Olympic team they played an exhibition here and one in Wheeling and I had the pleasure of keeping score for both games.”
Babcock says Hot Rod Hundley was both the most exciting and most underrated player in WVU history.
“Rod never really got the credit that he deserved because he could play defense when he wanted to,” he explained. “Rod was a showman and he packed the Field House.”
Babcock says Charleston’s Bobby Joe Smith came in a close second to Hundley when it came to having a flare for the dramatic.
“He would get fouled hard driving to the basket and he would just lie on the floor for what seemed like an hour,” Babcock laughed. "Then he would jump up and the crowd would give him a standing ovation.”
Babcock was there in 1965 when Weirton’s Ron Williams was part of a four-person group of African-American players that integrated basketball in the Southern Conference.
“What a wonderful person,” Babcock said. “Ron Williams was our Jesse Arnelle (All-America player who integrated basketball at Penn State).”
Eleven different coaches have worked the sidelines during Babcock’s tenure, from Harry Lothes in 1944 to John Beilein of the present. Babcock has personal memories of each.
“I can remember when Lee Patton was the high school coach at Princeton,” he said. “And I was one of the first guys to meet Fred Schaus when he came on campus. I was in the ticket office and this guy came walking up and asked, ‘Where is the athletic director’s office?’ I walked him across the bridge to the director’s office.
“Fred was such an imposing person,” Babcock continued. “When you shook hands with that guy you knew you shook hands with somebody. And when he had something to say everybody listened.”
Babcock says he was probably closest to Gale Catlett, whom he first got to know as a scrappy player for George King in the early 1960s.
“His wife (Anise) was a student when my wife was teaching at Morgantown High School so I had a closer relationship with him,” Babcock says.
The longtime scorer also holds current coach John Beilein in high regard.
“He’s such a genuine guy,” Babcock said. “He sold his program to the kids, to the students and the fans. One of the things that I admire about him is his philosophy on recruiting. He says he doesn’t put a lot of faith in news clippings.”
For many years Babcock offered his game day services for free. When WVU began paying him he would simply endorse the check back to his alma mater.
“I have two scholarships now, one in my name and one for my wife,” he said. “I’m working on one for my daughter. She graduated from the University in Med Tech. I brought her up right because I used to take her to baseball, football and basketball games in a buggy. It worked from there to a stroller and then she started walking.”
Now 86, Babcock has no aims of slowing down any time soon. Last year he gave a touching introduction to the 2006 men’s basketball highlight video, and he has since been made aware of the fact that N.C. State has a press row worker who is 93.
“My daughter told me that,” Babcock laughed. “He’s got seven years on me. I could do this for another 63 years! Being around these kids makes me feel young.”
