A few weeks ago, I opined about the Mount Rushmore of Philadelphia sports figures and promised to do the same for the Lehigh Valley, and trust me, the Lehigh Valley was a lot tougher. So tougher that this is the first of two parts, and today's will be about who did not quite make it.
Remember the rules of Mount Rushmore; there are four and there are no more. Anyone can just start naming names, the trick is to get it to four. So, these people I'm talking about today — there's nothing flawed about them, nothing that deemed them unworthy. They just didn't quite make it.
I had help with this from two distinguished Lehigh Valley-ites who know the scene well: Charlie Marcon and Ted Lyons. We met one morning and followed up with a few texts and we still worry that somehow there's a worthy athlete we've forgotten.
Now, the first of those left off is Mario Andretti. Synonymous with race car driving, winner of the '69 Indie 500 and countless other races, Mario is Mr. Nazareth in so many ways. He's a not-quite on my list.
Same for another prominent Lehigh Valley Italian, Mike Caruso, Lehigh's only three-time national wrestling champion. Sorry, Mike, who's a friend of mine, you were close.
So was Michelle Marciniak, who scored over 3,000 points in her storied basketball career at Central Catholic and went on to lead Tennessee to a national championship in 1996.
Two other Lehigh Valley worthies would've been Curt Simmons and Elmer Valo, longtime Major Leaguers from, respectively, Coplay and Palmerton. Had they been more modern, maybe they would've made the list. Same for another Palmerton immortal, Bill Mlkvy, the famed "Owl Without a Vowel" who, in the 1950-51 season for Temple, led the nation in scoring.
Someone else's list might include Nazareth native and Becah High graduate Joe Kovacs, who, with silver medals in the last three Olympics, will go down as one of America's greatest shot-putters in history.
Also on my not-quite list is the best all-around athlete I ever covered while I was at the Bethlehem Globe Times in the '70s: Mike Guman. Mike's "worst sport" was basketball, and all he did was lead the East Penn league in scoring. Another all-around Lehigh Valley immortal is also on my almost list; Ross Moore, a football, basketball, and track star at Dieruff, and really his friends said he could do anything — bowling, golf, whatever it was. Ross died last year at age 73.
The most difficult leave-off decision I had to make was about someone who would not have qualified for Mount Rushmore based on his athleticism. He is J. Birney Crum, whose name is synonymous with Lehigh Valley sports accomplishments. I wasn't around when he was in his hey day as a football and basketball coach at Allentown High School, but anyone who dealt with him used words like "Lehigh Valley institution." Birney was the very model of the modern coach; running the feeder programs, establishing training tables that emphasized nutrition, scouting, medical support, everything. "It ran like a college program," said one Crum product in a book written by Lehigh Valley sports historian Evan Burian.
Eventually, though, Birney's pension for organizing everything resulted in his being penalized severely for using ineligible players. The District XI committee even revoked the two straight state basketball championships it had won under Crum. One can't forget that Birney won 680 games as Allentown High's football and basketball coach and de facto CEO, but I also can't forget those penalties, and for that reason primarily, Birney doesn't quite make my Mount Rushmore.
Next week, I'll tell you who does make it.
