Before the Blues, there were the Hawks
During the baby boomer era, changes were being made all across the United States in many different sports. In baseball, the Browns move to Baltimore was just one of many.
The Braves of the National League deserted Boston to move to Milwaukee, where they spent 13 seasons as the Milwaukee Braves, and drew enormous crowds. Two other teams in the National League who were established in New York and Brooklyn, both headed west and saw the opportunity of growth and revenue potential in the state of California: The Giants to San Francisco, and the Dodgers to Los Angeles.
Missouri stayed in the fold as well. The Philadelphia Athletics of the American League, who had spent the past 54 years in the city of brotherly love while winning five world titles, ceded the city to the Phillies and moved the Athletics to Kansas City in 1955. Kansas City had now become a major league town, and the Athletics played their home games in Municipal Stadium.
“Getting the American League franchise formerly held by Philadelphia and Connie Mack was a glorious triumph for the Kansas City spirit. Hundreds of thousands of supporters are atingle for the opening of the big-league era the A’s now bring.”
- Kansas City Star
Over 32,000 fans turned out to watch the Athletics play the Detroit Tigers in their first game in Kansas City and saw an 8-2 win by their home team. But it would turn out to be a tease, and the Athletics were a disappointment.
Although they drew over a million fans in their first season, the A’s were barely competitive finishing 63-91 in their first season in Kansas City. They never had a single winning season in Kansas City, and the closest they came was in 1958 when they had a record of 73-81, eight games below .500 and 19 games out of first place.
Despite their troubles and problems, the Athletics began to put together a more promising team in the mid 1960s. Their two best pitchers were John ‘Blue Moon’ Odom, and Jim Hunter, who would later be nicknamed ‘Catfish’. Catfish Hunter would become one of the best pitchers of his generation and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1987.
Another young prospect that the Athletics drafted second overall in 1966, was a 21-year-old outfielder with power to all fields named Reggie Jackson.
“In one area, Finley’s Athletics excelled: developing a productive minor-league system. Led in this effort by minor-league director and then general manager Hank Peters, the A’s began stockpiling talent in the minors, developing eight players who would be named league All-Stars more than once, and all made it into the Baseball Hall of Fame.”
- The State Historical Society of Missouri
Unfortunately for the Kansas City fans, they would not get the opportunity to see just how great these youngsters would become. Gate receipts were low during the Athletics tenure in the Midwest, and they consistently finished last or at the bottom of the standings each year.
The Athletics struggles would come to an end in 1967, when Finley moved the team out west to Oakland. However, Kansas City baseball fans would only have to wait only one year for Major League Baseball to return.
Meanwhile, just across the state, a new sport was coming to Missouri, basketball.
Two separate leagues, the newly founded Basketball Association of America, and the National Basketball League, established in 1937, merged in 1949 and became the National Basketball Association. The team that St. Louis had was called the Bombers, but their existence was short-lived.
Though they did make the BAA playoffs three consecutive years, they never won a playoff series, with only one player who would make the Hall of Fame on the team, Ed Macauley.
During the summer of 1950, the NBA lost six teams, including the Bombers, who folded.
Just five years after the Bombers left, a new NBA team that would develop a winning reputation now gave the fans of St. Louis another team to cheer on alongside the Cardinals: The St. Louis Hawks.
Established in 1946 as one of the original teams of the NBA, the Hawks began play in Buffalo before making their first move to Milwaukee in 1951. There, the team’s performance was pitiful, never finishing better than 15 games below .500, and the small crowds they drew meant another change was coming.
Ben Kerner is the owner that deserves the credit for bringing the NBA to Missouri. He had seen poor attendance in Milwaukee, and then took the biggest risk of his career at that point and moved the Hawks to St. Louis.
“I think the NBA is lucky to have Mr. Kerner as an owner. He is a very progressive-thinking person, a promotion-minded owner who is always looking for ideas to help sell his product and further the cause of professional basketball,” said Bob Pettit.
The Hawks made the move in the summer of 1955, and the change delighted St. Louisans. Although they had been one of the worst teams in the NBA through their first 10 seasons, the Hawks fortunes would begin to change rapidly.
In 1956, they drafted a number two pick named Bill Russell and immediately traded him to the Boston Celtics for two future hall of famers Cliff Hagan and Ed Macauley, who had previously played for the Bombers. Although the move may have been questionable given the future that Bill Russel would go on to have with the Celtics.
Bill Russell helped guide the Celtics to 11 NBA championships in just 14 seasons during his career and was considered by many to be one of the greatest players in the history of basketball, but that move didn’t discourage the Hawks.
Gaining Cliff Hagan, and Ed Macauley from the Celtics was a boost at the time for the team. Bob Petite, another legendary player who would go on to record more than 20,000 points in his NBA career, helped propel the Hawks in the late 1950s, while winning two Most Valuable Player Awards.
In 1957, the Hawks despite finishing four games below .500, made it to the playoffs thanks to the weak division they had competed in, and beat the Minneapolis Lakers to advance to the NBA Finals, where they faced off against the Celtics. It would go down in history as one of the greatest NBA Finals ever played.
In the series opener in Boston, the Hawks edged the Celtics by two points in overtime to take an early series lead. The Celtics though dominated in game two to even the series before coming to St. Louis.
The first NBA finals game in St. Louis was another thriller: the Hawks went ahead 100-98 in the final minute of play, and the Celtics could not connect on the last shot of the game, giving the Hawks a 2-1 series edge. The Celtics though evened things up in game four with another close win, and then took game five in Boston to go ahead three games to two.
Game six was played in St. Louis with the Hawks facing elimination. No margin was greater than six points throughout the contest, and the game was tied at 94 as the clock ticked down. Cliff Hagan got the ball, and eluded an attempted block, he put the ball in the hoop, and it went in. The Hawks had won to stay alive. Jack Barry of the Boston Globe stated after game six, “this game was the most spectacular and hardest fought of the greatest NBA final playoff series ever held.”
The series was now tied three games all, sending the series to a game seven showdown in the Boston Garden.
It would be to this day a game that both St. Louis, Boston, and basketball fans would talk about for years to come. The Hawks took a 53-51 lead at halftime, but they were outscored by eight points in the third quarter as the Celtics were just minutes away from their first NBA championship in franchise history.
The final minutes ticked down, and a sensational block by Bill Russell with 39 seconds left kept his team ahead by one, but the Hawks down to their last breath, sank a two-pointer to tie the score at 103 and send the finale into overtime.
Both teams exchanged 10 points each in the first overtime, and the second overtime went right down to the wire. With the Celtics ahead 125-123, Bob Pettit got the ball with three seconds left at the foul line, he put up the shot, and missed. The final buzzer had sounded, and the series was over.
The Celtics claimed their first NBA championship in franchise history, and it would begin one of the greatest dynasties in all of professional sports. The Celtics would go on to win 16 NBA titles in the next 30 years, and to this day, hold 17 crowns, the most in the NBA.
What excitement, but what heartbreak for the Hawks.
The Hawks had come up a hair short, but that gave them even more incentive to come back even stronger the next season.
In 1958, the Hawks had finished 10 games above .500 and had their first winning record in franchise history. They demolished their division foes and met the Celtics again for the 1958 NBA Finals. The heartbreak and disappointment from the year prior was washed away, as the Hawks achieved the dream, beating the Celtics four games to two and brought the NBA Championship to St. Louis.
The Hawks maintained their success while in St. Louis, finishing first in their division five straight years, returning to the NBA Finals in 1960 and 1961, and making the NBA playoffs in 12 of the franchise’s 13 years while in the Show Me State.
“They should remain there for a long time. The current championship team is young and talented. Pettit, who wants to be the greatest player there ever was, gets them the ball at one end of the court and puts it through the hoop for them at the other end. This is difficult work, and nobody in the league does the combined job as well as he does.”
- Bob Kuska, Pro Basketball History Blog
The Boston Celtics franchise, meanwhile, appeared in 16 NBA Finals from 1957-84, and their dominance was so apparent, that they managed to win 15 of those 16 finals appearances they were in.
The lone exception was their loss to St. Louis.
The only NBA Finals that Bill Russell lost was to the St. Louis Hawks.
