They met outside their alma mater, five aging men braced against the wintry cold but eager to bask in the glow of the past.
The point guard hugged the center. The forwards locked arms. And all embraced the hard-nosed coach who, 40 years ago, led City College to an undefeated season.
Never mind that the tiny gym where they once played has been replaced.
"I can still smell the old gym," said Leonard Hamm, captain of City's basketball team in 1966-67. "It's a smell of sweat, a good smell - the smell of success."
City's dominance in that era is legend: back-to-back 20-0 seasons and Maryland Scholastic Association championships. The team did not lose a game from December 1965 through February 1967, a period during which America had seven manned space flights, the Beatles had nine chart hits and Frank Robinson went from baseball discard to American League Most Valuable Player.
Last week, four star players from the '67 champs - a tad slower, wider and all pushing 60 - huddled with coach Jerry Phipps, 77, on campus for an anniversary photograph.
Four decades ago, the starting five of Hamm, Sam Brown, Chucky Blue, Gerry Owens and Marvin Bass made history. The first all-African-American starting team in City annals, they epitomized the school's nickname, the Black Knights. Phipps was their White Shadow.
It was a match made, if not in heaven, then in the confines of City's bantam-sized gym. There, on the dark oaken floor, the coach shaped a team that lit up the town.
Public schools and parochials - City torched them all that season, winning its first 18 games by an average margin of 25 points. Then the Knights swept Mount St. Joseph in a best-of-three series for the MSA title. Those games, played in what was then called the Baltimore Civic Center (now 1st Mariner Arena), were broadcast live on WBAL-TV and WFBR radio.
On Feb. 27, 1967, City swamped Mount St. Joseph, 65-44, for its 40th consecutive victory and the city championship. The jubilant Knights threw their coach into the shower, after which a sodden Phipps told reporters what they already knew:
"We haven't been really tested in some time."
Forty years later, the players wonder how long they would have kept winning had that club remained intact.
"We didn't bludgeon teams, we dissected them with a surgical precision," said Hamm, now Baltimore police commissioner.
Said Phipps: "That team won with grace. And they would have lost with dignity - had they ever lost."
How'd they do it? City had no player taller than 6 feet 2. Other schools had guards who towered over Brown, the Knights' gangly 6-1 center.
But City's stamina, sure-handedness and savvy were second to none, a product of grueling practices. Even now, players flinch recalling the merciless drills of their day.
"What did we learn? Life lessons. Teamwork. Trust," Blue said.
"All the while, we were cussing [the coach] under our breath."
Swear aloud and you paid dearly.
"Once, Bobby Price said a cuss word in practice," Brown said. "Phipps ran him so hard that when Bobby got home that day, he was still sweating."
Surviving City's workouts was a feat itself.
"Our practices were magnificently brutal," Hamm said. Afterward, players would trudge to a sub shop on Kirk Avenue, sip sodas, compare skinned knees and burned thighs and sneak a smoke.
"Of course [Phipps] knew that we liked cigarettes," Brown said. "He would run that out of us at practice, too."
The Knights were the most fit team around.
"One time, against Towson Catholic, we had five consecutive five-on-none fast-break layups," Hamm said. "We'd get a rebound, kick the ball outside like we were the old Boston Celtics, fill the lanes and run."
'Men against boys'
Stop City? Forest Park tried and lost, 96-48. Patterson High scored the game's first bucket, then succumbed, 84-36.
"City vs. anybody was like men against boys," said Jean Fugett, a basketball star at Cardinal Gibbons before he played for the Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins in the NFL. "There was a mystique about City, like they were better than the rest of us.
"We Catholic schools thought we were pretty good, but we couldn't match their firepower."
One team came close. Loyola led visiting City most of the game before losing, 77-72.
"I can still see all those priests in the stands and hear [Loyola's] bass drum banging," Blue said.
At halftime, City sought to ice Loyola's Tim Nordbrook, switching defenders on the Dons' top scorer, who blistered the Knights for 31 points.
"Nordbrook [who later played for the Orioles] had been lighting up Lenny Hamm, going behind his back and between his legs and making the ball sing," Blue said. "So we put Marvin [Bass] on him. Now, Marvin couldn't throw the ball in the ocean if he was standing on the beach, but he was our best defender."
City clawed back.
The turning point, Blue said, was when a Loyola player slipped and fell in the path of Hamm, who was driving to the basket.
"Lenny stepped on the guy's chest and made the layup," Blue said. "Things got quiet. It was all over then."
Defense was City's forte, the full-court press its instrument.
"We had more confidence in that press than in any scoring play we had," said Thom Gatewood, who played football for the New York Giants but who was a reserve on City's basketball team. "If we missed three or four shots in a row, Coach would inject that press as a confidence-builder, to spur us on.
"When we pulled that clamp out of nowhere, it created a panic - and we preyed on that panic."
In City's tiny gym, with its cinderblock wall smack up against one sideline, the Knights' hounding defense felt doubly suffocating, opponents said.
"When City pressed in that bandbox, you were lucky to get the ball past half court," recalled Bob Connor Jr., then Mount St. Joseph's best player.
Moreover, there were "dead spots" on the floor known only to the home team - places where a ball wouldn't bounce right.
"That gym was an archaic mess, a cultural shock for other teams," Blue said.
"Geez, I loved that place."
They all did.
In their minds' eyes, the old Knights can still picture one another in their prime.
Blue? The point guard was "a smooth, stylish glide guy with a running jump hook that seemed to float in," Gatewood said.
Brown? The sky-walking junior center "would do stuff in games that stunned you," Hamm said. "Once, from the high post, he did a whirl and spin and jumped toward the hoop with both arms out like a swan. The ball left his hand and went right in the basket."
Owens? The scrappy forward was "quick, strong and fearless," Blue said. "We called him 'Cossack' because he was tough. If you went into an alley with 'O,' you knew you'd both come out."
Hamm? "Tough as nails, a tremendous leader," Gatewood said. "The tools he had weren't all natural, but his work ethic was incredible."
Bass? "I don't think Marvin said three words all season," Hamm said. "Didn't have to. His defense spoke for itself."
Playing together
Respect ran deep among these guys.
"Ours was a cohesive group, with no one guy jealous of another," said Gary Handleman, one of the reserves. Hamm (18 points per game) led the team in scoring, followed by Owens (15) and Brown (14).
"You had to play unselfishly or you sat down," Blue said. "And if you didn't play defense, you didn't play at all."
Phipps "made you give your best, no matter what," said Ron Berger, another sub. "One team we played had a one-armed point guard, and I guess I wasn't pressing him because, during a timeout, the coach reamed me out."
"How dare you give him a break?" Phipps told Berger. "He's not a one-armed basketball player, he's a basketball player. Now, go take the ball away from him!"
"I did," Berger said. "Then I missed the layup."
Once, at Cardinal Gibbons, City appeared ripe for upset. The Knights failed to score a basket in the first quarter and left the court tied 23-all at halftime.
Blue recalls Phipps' locker room rant.
"Coach told the starters, 'We're going to play baseline to baseline, and don't even raise your hand to come out,'" Blue said. "Then he got in my face and said, 'Do you want me to introduce you to the guy you're supposed to be guarding?'"
City won the game by 26.
The next season, the Knights met defeat. In its 1967-68 opener, City lost to archrival Poly, 79-77, in double overtime. Sam Brown sat out the game, benched for breaching team rules: Phipps had seen Brown drinking at a school event.
"I could have turned that game around, but I had to suffer that defeat," Brown said. "Hallelujah that I learned a lesson."
Brown attended Augusta (Ga.) College, converted to Judaism and moved to Israel, where he works as a bookkeeper. Hamm played at Philadelphia Textile before turning to law enforcement. Bass settled in Durham, N.C., where he owns a college merchandise store near his alma mater, North Carolina Central.
Owens, a custodial worker at Enoch Pratt Library, played at East Carolina University. Blue (Towson State) is an investigating supervisor in housing discrimination for the state.
Phipps coached eight years at City, where he won four MSA titles, then moved to Community College of Baltimore. There, in 14 years, Phipps won 12 state junior college championships and five regional crowns.
In the end, winning at City was a relatively simple matter, Hamm said:
"We had a system we all believed in, a coach we all believed in - and we genuinely liked each other."
mike.klingaman@baltsun.com
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
The 1966-67 City boys basketball team:
Starters
Marvin Bass / / Owner of college merchandise store in Durham, N.C.
Sam Brown / / Bookkeeper in Arad, Israel
Chucky Blue / / Supervisor for the Maryland Human Relations Commission
Leonard Hamm / / Police commissioner of Baltimore City
Gerry Owens / / Custodial worker at Enoch Pratt Library
Reserves
Ron Berger / / Optometrist in Columbia
Charles Butler / / Deceased
Leon Dutton / / Retired and living in Charlotte, N.C.
Earl Frazier / / Deceased
Gary Handleman / / Senior vice president of facilities for Verizon Center in Washington
Thom Gatewood / / President of Blue Atlas Productions in New York
Joey Jay / / Unknown
John Kimmerer / / Unknown
Bobby Price / / Deceased
Phil Pugh / / Schoolteacher in the Bahamas
Coach
Jerry Phipps / / Retired and living in Loganville, Pa.