JOE DAVIS: “HE WAS A MONSTER”

By Frederick A. Hurst

When you’re the only Black guy on an otherwise all-white team and you score 60 points against the all-Black Dunbar Community Center and you and your White teammates defeat Dunbar by 136-112, that’s saying something about your game. And, when you return a few days later and score 42 points against the same team to win the second game in a best of three title series by 108 to 83, that’s saying a whole lot more. But Joe Davis was accustomed to the outsider role and once he agreed to join the White team, it was second nature for him to play hard, even though he was playing against name Black players such as Jay Griffin and Eddie “Gimp” Gearring, who were once his teammates.

DAVIS DUMPS DUNBAR!

Monsanto, the team that upset regular season champion Milton Bradley in the semifinal playoffs, got off to a fast start in the CAI title series against Dunbar Tuesday night at the YMCA as Joe Davis tossed 60 points.

Monsanto won the opener of a best in three series, 136-112. The title series is between two teams which finished third and fourth in the regular season, Dunbar having surprised Pine Point in the semifinal playoffs….Davis was a standout as he caged 21 baskets and made good on 18 free throws. Ed Gearring was Dunbar’s top scorer with 20 points.

Joe Davis had the distinction of living in Holyoke, while most of his peers in the Black community lived in Springfield. He was born and raised in 1940 on Newton Street, above the Holyoke canal, which separated the White neighborhoods from Holyoke’s very small Black neighborhood and, until his family moved to Springfield in 1956, he attended all-White schools. For years baseball was his primary sport simply because Holyoke had many little league baseball programs and few basketball programs. He attended Holyoke’s H. B. Lawrence Junior High, where he continued his baseball career at the grade six through nine school but also played guard on the basketball team for all four years.

Joe’s basketball career really began to develop when he played with the Holyoke Wonders out of the Holyoke Boys Club. The Wonders often played the Springfield Boys Club and Dunbar teams, which gave Joe the opportunity to compete and interact with Black basketball players. It’s not like it was his first exposure to Black kids. He often spent time with his cousins in Holyoke, who lived on the other side of the canal, and every week his family trekked to Springfield to get hair cuts, attend church and to access other ethnic amenities not available in predominantly White Holyoke. But the basketball contests against the Dunbar and Springfield Boys Club put him up against much better players. It wasn’t long before he was partying with them after pick-up games and on weekends.

In 1956, when his family moved to Windsor Street in Springfield in his junior year, Joe joined the Commerce High School varsity team as guard, the same position he had been playing at Holyoke High. Commerce was predominantly female so not many boys were available to make up the basketball team. In fact, Joe’s 1958 graduating class contained 299 girls and 26 boys. Consequently, the Commerce team was restricted to what was called the “small” conference that did not include the powerhouse teams at Trade, Classical and Tech High, where some of the greatest high school players of the period were. Essentially, Joe played for the Commerce team in its infancy as it grew into its own and by 1958, Joe’s final year, Commerce won all of its ten small conference games. Soon afterwards, boys poured into Commerce, and it became a basketball powerhouse.

Joe was not the star of the fledgling Commerce team. In fact, he played in the shadow of one of the most famous high school forwards of the time, Eddie (“Gimp”) Gearring. They say Gimp brought the jump shot to Springfield and all he needed to score was the ball. And, as point guard Joe Davis was an expert at feeding it to him. Without a hint of envy Joe said, “I made Gimp an All-American. He could shoot and I gave him the ball.” In their senior year, Gimp averaged 27 points per game and Joe averaged 13. “Few back court combinations averaged so much,” Joe said.

Joe Davis’ basketball career changed dramatically after he left high school and joined the Air Force. For starters, he grew up physically. In high school he was 5’ 9” and 160 pounds. Eighteen months later he was 6’ 2” and 210 pounds. And after the sergeant “put his foot in (his) behind,” Joe grew mentally and began to play a much more aggressive style. He told Joe, “You gotta be selfish.” And soon the man, whose high school career was marked by his generosity with the ball, finally became “selfish” and developed into a scoring machine. And, after playing all over Europe and Africa for eight years as a star on the Air Force team, Joe Davis returned to Springfield as a far more formidable competitor.

“Joe Davis is one of the best ballplayers to come out of this area. He has played with all of the previous players in your paper. He was a great player and a terrific person.”

Bobby Knight

In his last two years in the service, while stationed at Westover Field in Chicopee, Leo Best, the father of Travis, invited him to play on the Hood basketball team, which at the time, was the home team of the legendary Bobby Knight. Joe and Bobby instantly bonded in their first game and started traveling around on the basketball circuit together. “Bobby and I hit it off on the court and enjoyed each other’s company…He could tell where I was going to be and I could tell where he was going to be and we could get the ball to each other. We played together in Hartford, Springfield, Worcester, Ware…all kinds of teams. Bobby hooked me up!”

After he left the service, Joe played for the all-Black Dunbar team for two years. In 1966, however, he went to work for Monsanto, which was forming a team of its own. One day his boss saw him playing for Dunbar and convinced Joe to play for Monsanto’s all-White team. Eventually Monsanto competed against the Dunbar in a best of three championship series. Had Monsanto played Dunbar without Joe, it would have resulted in an easy win for Dunbar. With Joe it became a Monsanto rout and a humbling experience for the Dunbar team who lost the first two games.. Joe played like a man possessed and scored 60 points in the first game to lead Monsanto to a 136-112 romp and 40 points in the second game for a 108-83 repeat to win the championship. It was obviously not a race thing for Joe, but, rather, a team thing.

DAVIS DOUBLE DUMPS

DUNBAR

Joe Davis pumped in 42 points to add to his opening game output of 60 and sparked Monsanto to a 108-83 victory over Dunbar and the CAI basketball championship Thursday night at the YMCA.

Monsanto, which finished fourth in the regular season standings, beat Dunbar two straight games in the best-of-three final playoffs. The champions upset first place Milton Bradley in the opening round of the playoffs, and third place Dunbar stunned second place Pine Point.

“Joe Davis,” Knight wrote,” is one of the best players to come out of the era. He has played with all of the previous players in your paper. He was a great player and a terrific person. He was a great shooter. He once scored 63 points in one game. He scored 40 and 30 points many times…we sometimes used to play three games in a day. We would leave one game, get in the car and change on the way to the next. We always had a friend driving. We would be laughing and changing and talking about the game as we went along.”

Joe’s prolific basketball career spanned decades. One of his later great moments came when he was 50 years old while he was playing in an over 40 three-on-three game in which he played with Waymon Dotson, Tom Oakley and Alton King to defeat the team of Bud “50 Point” Williams, Don “Walkaway” Martin, Haskill Kennedy and Herman Curtis. Trying to stop Joe from scoring was, in Bud William’s word, “impossible” and at least one team member, whose name is omitted, was humiliated for trying.

Ever the gentleman, Bud Williams said of Joe, “He was not that good in high school but when Joe got out of high school, he became great. Once he got out of high school, he got better than all those guys in high school, and he was a good team player. He was one of the best players around. He was a monster!” n