Letter to the editor

I read with great interest the article on the back page of the April 3 Eagle about George Yellow Eyes. I saw him play many times and he was indeed a great player. I only saw him in 1957, so didn't see him in his best years.

Terry's Glen Kuehn describes the buzzer beater in the semifinals of the tournament in 1957. He described himself as the closest spectator on the Terry bench. I saw it all from about the same distance that he did. Terry had a tall, very good team. State School was short, but they fought Terry tooth and nail. With three seconds to go in overtime, George calmly sank two free throws to put State School up 41-40. I say calmly, but he was almost laughing as he did it, he was so confident. Terry grabbed the ball, threw it inbounds to a guy, who threw it to another guy who swished the ball from half court. The article stated that there was some controversy over where he shot the ball from. As far as I am concerned, I will settle the controversy for you. I say the guy because I didn't know any of the Terry players. They inbounded it to a guy, who immediately threw it to another guy just outside the half court line on the left hand side of the court. He threw it up from there and it went in and won the game. A real heartbreak for State School.

As I mentioned before, George Yellow Eyes got even better in 1958 and 1959 but, I was in the Army in Korea during that time.

Now I will go into other sports things. The March 13 issue of the Eagle had the final installment of the Carter County athletic great picks. I disagree with these picks and submit that nobody can pick the greats because he or she can only judge on their own time.

They listed Bob Lasater as number one, I could agree with that. I probably saw every home game that he ever played. But he was only marginally better than Tom McCamish, if he was better at all. I saw every home game Tom MacCamish played as well. Sherry Farwell once said on Facebook that he had never seen Tom McCamish pitch. I said that I had never seen him pitch either, even though I had attempted to bat against him a number of times. My point was that he threw the ball so hard that I couldn't see it. Now, both Bob and Tom were very good athletes, but again they were only marginally better than Buddy Morrison who was only marginally better than other athletes of our time including his brother Leland.

So my point is that it is very difficult to pick the all time greats. Keep up the good work on the Eagle, Eric.

Sincerely,

Bill Lavell

California