One Baltimore Group Growing

By: Keith Mills

The One Baltimore monthly gatherings of former area basketball standouts and coaches gained a little extra "pop" two weeks ago when Rodney "Pop" Wright visited from his adopted home town of Des Moines, Iowa.

Wright was a tremendous player for coach Woody Williams at Lake Clifton High School in the mid-1970s. He helped the Lakers win back-to-back Maryland State Athletics A Conference championships in 1975 and '76, and just like he did when he played, he announced his presence at One Baltimore with authority.

"He came in with his all-time, All-MSA team," said former Edmondson standout Stacey Fowlkes. "He must've had 100 guys on the list. And guys were getting all angry and upset over who was on which team. It was hilarious."

"Pop's just Pop," said Timmy Greene, who organizes the monthly gatherings at an East Baltimore restaurant along with Jimmy Conyers, Donny Joy and Larry "Sook" Johnson. Joy and Greene both played on the Dunbar team that beat DeMatha in the 1973 showdown at the Baltimore Civic Center, and they have been instrumental in bringing back nearly 100 former local legends either at breakfast or dinner meetings since last fall.

Wright, who came through the Madison Square Recreation Center in East Baltimore, was a scoring machine at Lake Clifton, averaging more than 20 points a game in four varsity seasons. He scored 40 points in a game twice in 1977, against Polytechnic and City College. In the ’76 title game against Northwestern, he was unstoppable, hitting five long jump shots to give the Lakers a lead they never relinquished.

Wright and Arnold “Clyde” Gaines formed one of the best backcourts in area high school basketball, and the Lake Clifton team of 1976 is one of the best in local history. Wright, Gaines, Ernie and Kevin Graham, Robert Brown and sixth man Lance Hill set a standard that continues at the East Baltimore school. First under the leadership of Williams, then Charlie Moore and now Herman Harried, the Lakers have been a state power for more than 30 years.

Ernie Graham left Lake Clifton for Dunbar after the '76 season. Gaines went to Wisconsin along with former Northwestern star Ray Sydnor, while Wright went first to San Diego Community College and then to Drake University in Des Moines.

Wright now runs a non-profit program for at-risk kids called the Positive Outreach Program, an organization created out of his own drug and alcohol use.

"Since the age of 12, Pop had been abusing drugs and in high school added alcohol to the mix," the program's brochure reads. "After doing and dealing drugs for years, losing his dream basketball career and surviving gunshot and stab wounds, Pop's drug and alcohol habit was brought to a halt when he was arrested for check forgery in 1985."

Following that arrest and more than a year of rehabilitation, Wright began to turn things around, starting his non-profit P.O.P. program in 1988 and sharing his story with kids throughout the Midwest.

Two weeks ago, he returned home, attending the One Baltimore gathering with his brother Fred. He was the latest in a long line of local legends who have made the meetings a huge part of the basketball landscape.

Longtime coaches Frank Szymanski, Jerry Phipps and Sam Knicely were guests two weeks ago while former Towson University star, Roger Dickens, is also now a regular.

Dickens never played high school basketball at City College, but he eventually played for Phipps at the Community College of Baltimore and is among Towson's greatest players ever. In just two years he scored more than 1,000 points and helped the Tigers win 53 games and the 1978 Mason-Dixon Conference championship. He eventually followed Phipps to Liberty Road as the men's coach at Baltimore City Community College.

Many of his former Towson teammates, including Brian Matthews, Pat McKinley and Rod Norris, attend the One Baltimore gatherings while Szymanski, who coached against Towson while the men's coach at the University of Baltimore, made his first appearance two weeks ago.

The Towson-UB rivalry was the among the best on the East Coast in the 1970s with Baltimore's Ronald Smith, Kenny Sullivan, Cleveland Rudisill, Gerald Watson and George Pinchback playing with or against many of the Towson players in high school.

Knicely, meanwhile, coached the men's team at Catonsville Community College that featured many Baltimore City players including Greene, who was a junior college All-American at Catonsville in the late 1970s.

"Coach Knicely did a lot for me," Greene said. "He helped me see the big picture. Having him, Coach Syz and Coach Phipps show up just shows how big these things are getting. I get calls all the time from guys who played 20, 30 years ago."

"Now, if we can just get some young guys to show up and learn a little bit about the basketball history of the city."

Issue 3.31: July 31, 2008