Islanders Crusade To Add `Ashcan' To Hall Of Fame

Your agent made a visit to Bainbridge Island the other day and was immediately caught up in a crusade - a crusade, by the way, that aroused my enthusiasm, as you will soon see.

Fellow named Jerry Elfendahl, curator of the Bainbridge Island Historical Society, is out to get Ed Loverich into the Husky Hall of Fame.

Who was Ed Loverich? You should ask, whippersnappers; you aren't old enough to have enjoyed him.

Ed was a basketball and baseball player at the UW. He was more prominent in basketball because he literally revolutionized the game. They used to call him "Ashcan."

Several explanations for this odd nickname have surfaced. But I think the one by Vince O'Keefe, former Times sports writer, comes closest.

"Loverich," Vince wrote, "gained his nickname, `Ashcan,' as a youngster at Bainbridge Island High School. Legend has it that he honed his marksmanship by countless hours of shooting at open ashcans behind his father's grocery."

That is a long way back as the crow flies, or, to be more specific, as Ed's great arcing push-shots went into the basket from far out. If he had played in today's three-point-shot game, he'd have run up telephone numbers.

You see, Ed was no ordinary player.

He played before the era of giantism in basketball - the mid-1930s. You could talk to a basketball player in those days without dislocating your neck looking upward.

In the years 1936 and 1937, Loverich set new standards for college shooting. He lead the Huskies in scoring then - more field goals than any other Pacific Coast Conference player.

When the name "Ashcan" was appended to Ed, newspapers were reporting "Ashcan Can Can `Em." There was nobody quite like him.

Here is what his coach, Hec Edmundson, said about Ed: "Loverich did more than any other player in the game's history to revolutionize the basketball fundamental of shooting."

The one-handed push shot was unheard of then. Players shot two-handed from far out, using one hand only on layups or tip-ins. To many of Ed's older fans, he was the Larry Bird of the 1930s.

Former radio announcer and basketball player Rod Belcher summed up Loverich as follows:

"It wasn't until the early 1940s that one-handed outside shots began to supplant the two-handed Eastern and Midwestern two-handers. And it wasn't until the early 1950s that the jump shot began to replace the set shot from the perimeter.

"I've always felt that Loverich was the real pioneer with the one-handed style - truly a major development in the game."

Loverich, of course, was just about all-everything: all-conference, All-American, you name it.

In Madison Square Garden at the Olympics trials, Loverich unloosed his one-hander for 20 points (incredible for those days) as the Huskies destroyed DePaul, 54-33.

Bob Winslow, a former manager and equipment kid at the UW, saw every college game Loverich played. He is quick to point out that Edmundson, who coached 27 years at Washington, "selected Ed as one of the five players on his all-time team."

Loverich grew up on Bainbridge Island, and he has a whole island helping Elfendahl get him into the Husky Hall of Fame. The selection committee has done well, thus far, in naming old-time Huskies for the Hall.

But Loverich's appointment is long past due. And so, for that matter, I think, is the naming of Dr. William B. Hutchinson, a baseball star, to the Hall of Fame.

Dr. Bill was an outstanding ball player - a third-baseman, fine hitter, aggressive, smart, fast, a team leader. His coach, the veteran Tubby Graves once said, "Bill Hutchinson was the best all-around player of my time at Washington . . . He was the outstanding captain of my 20 years."

When I asked about Hutch a couple of years ago, about why he wasn't in the Hall of Fame, I was told the selection committee felt Dr. Bill had received enough other awards - in research, academics and medicine.

I didn't argue at the time, but I do now: What the hell difference does that make? This is about a great college baseball player, not medicine.

Emmett Watson's column appears Sunday and Thursday in the Northwest section of The Times.