Jim Baechtold, a member of the 2006 Founders Class of the Eastern Kentucky University Athletics Hall of Fame, a former star basketball player at EKU and a successful head coach of the Colonels, was the second pick of the first round of the 1952 National Basketball Association draft going to the Baltimore Bullets.
His selection as the second pick of the 1952 NBA draft still makes him the highest Ohio Valley Conference player ever taken in the NBA draft.
Baechtold hails from Moon Township, PA, where he lettered in three sports and graduated from Moon High School in 1946. At 6-1 with a basketball scholarship still a possibility, Baechtold, on the advice of Duquesne basketball coach Chick Davies, joined the Army.
As a member of the Army’s First Cavalry Division, he was sent to Fort Knox, KY, for basic training. Having spent two years in the Army, on detached service in Japan, he played ball (anything that rolled or bounced) with the United States occupational forces.
After his discharge from the Army, he accepted a scholarship offer to play football; yes, that’s right, football, at the University of Alabama. He was no longer the 6-1 frail youngster that had graduated from the Pennsylvania high school. He had grown into a 6-4, 215-pound, 20-year old athlete.
On his way to Alabama, Baechtold stopped in Richmond, KY, to visit Howard Gracey and Chuck Hertzer, friends from Moon Township who were on football scholarships at Eastern.
That led to a pickup basketball game in EKU’s Weaver Health Building gymnasium with successful Eastern head basketball coach Paul McBrayer in attendance. McBrayer liked what he saw, offered Baechtold a basketball scholarship on the spot, beginning four wonderful years of playing the sport he loved the most with close friends nearby to help aleve any anxieties or homesickness.
By the mid-forties, World War II veterans had begun returning to college. Men who had once starred on high school teams in Pennsylvania, Ohio and other states close by were now dotting the Eastern athletic team rosters in number. On Eastern’s basketball team in 1948 were four World War II veterans from Pennsylvania: Chuck Mrazovich (fellow EKU Athletics Hall of Fame member), Ed Shemelya, Joe Fryz and Baechtold.
It didn’t take Baechtold long to make his mark.
In his first year at Eastern, Baechtold did not start the opening game of the season against Indiana Central, but he contributed 12 points in that 65-55 win and was described as “a promising freshman”. When Eastern defeated Dayton 48-40 in the next tilt, Baechtold was high-point man with 13 points and later that season scored 20 points in a 57-53 win over highly-regarded Toledo.
He was on his way.
Another highlight of his freshman year of 1948-49 was the 42-40 upset of Western Kentucky at Bowling Green which ended the Hilltoppers’ 15-game winning streak and broke a record of 31 consecutive wins for the Hilltoppers on Western’s home floor.
In his sophomore year, Eastern’s basketball team gained wide national recognition, climbing as high as No. 11 in the AP poll. That team finished the year on a roll, winning its last seven games, including a 62-50 win over Western Kentucky in the finals of the OVC Tournament (OVC champions were decided in the early years of the conference by final regular season won-lost records.)
By his junior season, Baechtold was nicknamed “The Big Cat” and was setting records and gaining notice as an outstanding collegiate basketball player. He was named All-OVC that year.
After his last season at Eastern in 1951-52, he had received many honors. The student body voted him the award as “Mr. Popularity”. He had been named to dozens of all-opponent teams throughout his career and as the team’s Most Valuable Player following his final season at Eastern. Once again, he was a first-team All-OVC choice and United Press International gave him All-American honorable mention.
Following his four-year career at Eastern that produced 1,137 points (20th best in school history) and 933 rebounds (second best in EKU history), he was the NBA’s Baltimore Bullets’ first round draft choice, selected as the second pick in that year’s draft.
Baechtold wasted no time in making a name for himself in Baltimore. In his first NBA season, he played in 64 games, including a game in Boston Garden where his 30 points helped the Bullets beat the New York Knicks in a doubleheader. He finished the year as the team’s third-leading scorer with his 10.3 points per game average.
His game in Boston Garden must have impressed Knicks’ coach Joe Lapchick as New York gave up three players – Jim Luisi, Max Zaslofsky and Roy Belliveau – to acquire Baechtold.
While as a member of the Knicks, Baechtold lived in Manhattan’s Belvedere Hotel which was adjacent to Madison Square Garden, home of the Knicks. Playing in Madison Square Garden had always been his dream.
Autograph seekers lined the corridors, waiting for players or television celebrities such as Art Carney, Jackie Gleason’s sidekick on the longtime TV serial “The Honeymooners”, to walk by. Carney was a regular at the Garden, as was boxing champ Joe Louis, who came to cheer on his friend, Nathaniel “Sweetwater” Clifton, the Knicks’ popular African-American star player.
While playing for the Knicks, Baechtold, and his wife, Shirley, whom he had dated at Eastern while an undergraduate and later married in 1954, spent summers in Bloomington, IN, where they were enrolled in graduate school at Indiana University together.
Many fond memories highlight Baechtold’s four-year stay with the Knicks. He was blessed to play with such outstanding Knick teammates like fellow starting guard Dick McGuire, Harry Gallatin, Carl Braun, Clifton and longtime Marquette basketball coach and TV analyst Al McGuire.
Veteran New York broadcaster Marv Albert, who was only 13 years of age, was president of the Jim Baechtold Fan Club and published The Baechtold Bulletin every month. In his book, I’d Love To, But I Have a Game, Albert says, “Jim Baechtold was a very underrated player. He owned one of the first really classy jump shots in the NBA.”
Others took note of Baechtold’s jumper as not many players in the fifties were shooting jump shots. Current NBA President David Stern was one of those who remembered when he was growing up in New York, trying without success, to emulate Baechtold’s jumper.
Baechtold’s final tally for five seasons of pro basketball with the Bullets and the Knicks showed 3,123 points; 1,009 rebounds; and 685 assists. His best NBA season came in his second year with the Knicks in 1954-55 when he averaged 13.9 points, played in 72 games (second most in the NBA that season) and hit 82.3 per cent from the free throw line which ranked him fifth best in the league and led Lapchick to make him the team’s designated free throw shooter for technical foul shots.
When a knee injury and subsequent surgery forced him to retire from professional basketball in 1957, the couple returned to Eastern where he became an assistant basketball coach for his college mentor McBrayer.
During his first year of serving as an assistant coach at Eastern, Baechtold taught nine hours, did all the scouting, a good share of the recruiting and coached the EKU freshmen team.
Suddenly, midway through the 1961-62 season, Baechtold was appointed interim head coach to replace McBrayer who resigned in early January for health reasons. In the remainder of that season, Eastern finished by winning six of its last nine games.
The Eastern administration was pleased with the way he handled the interim head coaching duties to end the ’61-62 season and Baechtold was named Eastern head coach in 1962-63.
His coaching staff consisted of two former Eastern basketball favorites: Jack Adams, his assistant coach, and Roland Wierwille, his graduate assistant. Adams’ basketball fame, which included having been the only athlete in Eastern history to ever have his number retired, to his selection in the 2006 Founders Class of the EKU Athletics Hall of Fame, while Wierwille’s successful coaching career at Berea College led to his being honored in the NAIA Hall of Fame.
Several significant “firsts” occurred during the years Baechtold served as head coach. For the first time, African-Americans began playing on Eastern’s basketball teams. For the first time, opposing coaches were shocked to encounter an occasional 3-2 or matching zone defense, replacing Eastern’s tough, hard-nosed man-to-man defense that made had become the mainstay of a McBrayer-coached unit.
Also, during his tenure, Eastern began playing in the 6,500-seat Alumni Coliseum (McBrayer Arena) it still calls home with the first contest on the new home court a thrilling 78-65 victory over the University of Louisville.
Before Alumni Coliseum was dedicated in December of 1963, Baechtold’s wife, Shirley, a member of Eastern’s Department of English, was asked by her colleague in the English Department, William Keene, to write the dedication for the Alumni Coliseum dedication ceremony.
Upon Keene’s recommendation to EKU President Robert R. Martin, Shirley wrote and read the dedication at the dedication ceremony.
Baechtold coached Eastern for five and one-half years, compiling a 70-57 record, guiding the Colonels to the OVC championship and a trip to the NCAA Tournament in the 1964-65 season, a year in which Eastern won all but one of 14 league contests, a feat unmatched by any Eastern team until 2006-07 when the Colonels played 20 OVC games and finished with 13 victories.
For that effort in 1964-65, Baechtold was selected as OVC Coach of the Year.
After 33 years at Eastern coaching basketball or teaching in the University’s Recreation Department, Baechtold retired. He and his wife are residing in Richmond.
