Dear Mr. Rice,

Your recent mention of Championship Basketball made me go get mine off the shelf. It's inscribed "To Robert Sparks, A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year - Adolph F. Rupp"

Of course, that's to my father, who died in 1999, not to me. Coach Rupp gave the book to him shortly after it was published in 1948. Dad ran the clock for UK games from Alumni Gym days up until they moved to Rupp Arena. Cecil Bell sat on one side of him, running the scoreboard, and Jim Robinson sat on the other, with the official scorebook. (You may have heard that Cecil died a few months ago.)

As a boy, I took Rupp's book to UK athletic banquets and collected players' autographs. In it I have the signatures of Dale Barnstable, Wallace Jones, Ralph Beard, Jim Line, Alex Groza, Cliff Barker, Roger Day, Humzey Yessin, Mike Dolan, Shelby Linville, Bobby Watson, Skippy Whitaker, Frank Ramsey, Cliff Hagan, Lou Tsioropoulos, Ronny Clark, James W. Flynn, Bobby Moore, Cookie Grawemeyer, Jerry Bird, and Bob Burrow. What a fabulous list of UK stars. (Some I don't recognize, though.)

Another treasure on my UK bookshelf is your 1976 Big Blue Machine. The inscription in it says "To Bob Sparks: It has been my pleasure to call you friend all these years - Best wishes to a fine person from all of us in 'Big Blue Country' Sincerely, Russell Rice"

I always read your page first when the Cats' Pause arrives. I suppose it's my age, but the "old time" things are more interesting to me than who quit the team this week. Keep up the good work.

Go Big Blue!

Robert A. Sparks, III, M.D. (I too am called Bob)

UK Med School Class of 1968

Orthopedic Surgeon

Decatur, AL

Dear Bob:

Thanks for the update on Cecil Bell. I try to read the Herald-Leader obituaries online each morning, but I missed the notice about Mr. Bell. Cecil and I have kept in contact throughout the years by telephone. As a member of Rupp's first team at UK, he possessed a wealth of information.

If you'll send a list of unfamiliar names on your list of autographs, I'll try to answer. Offhand, I would say Ronny Clark, James W. Flynn and Bobby Moore fit that category. Ron Clark was a 6-foot-6 F/C from Springfield, Mass., who played in six games, scoring seven points, during the 1951-52 season. He apparently didn't return to the squad after UK's year of suspension. "Chigger" Flynn earned a letter as a manager in 1956. Bobby Moore lettered as a manager in 1950, '51 and '52. He is a teacher of Russian.

Your letter brings back many memories. I hope you don't mind if I repeat a few.

When huge student crowds forced UK to close most of its games in Alumni Gym to the public, Adolph Rupp's friends asked if he could get them in the games. The old gym contained two scoreboards with two control buttons each. "There are four buttons," Rupp said. "That will take care of four of you." He assigned Bob Sparks, his lumber dealer, the job of firing a blank pistol at halftime and at the end of a game. Elmer Rix handled the keys to the locker room and Louis Ades was the public address announcer. Lyman Ginger kept score.

When the games moved to Memorial Coliseum in 1951, Rupp wouldn't let his "support staff" retire, insisting that he didn't want students controlling factors that his job depended on. Sparks operated the new game clock. Ginger, by this time the dean of the College of Education, could no longer keep score, so that job went to Jim Robinson, an official at the bank where Rupp kept his money. J. D. Reeves, another of Rupp's bankers, kept rebounds, which had not been kept prior to that time.

With the new scoreboard, Sparks exchanged his pistol for a buzzer. Kentucky was leading Mississippi by 14 points when a Rebel player sank a shot as the halftime buzzer sounded. The referee deferred the judgment to Sparks, who ruled the ball was in the air when the whistle blew.

"Bob, I knew everybody else in the gym was against me," Rupp said, "but I didn't think you were."

"If you want me to steal for you, turn out the lights," Sparks replied. "I won't steal before 11,500 people."

"Oh, you know I didn't mean it," Rupp said. Then Sparks asked, "What difference did it make. You were so far ahead they didn't have a chance."

"Every time they score, my heart bleeds," Rupp said. "I don't care what the score is."

Rupp later said he wished all clock operators were as honest as Bob Sparks. He said some situations had caused him to have doubts. When a tense situation arrived with mini-seconds remaining on the road, I would stand behind the clock operator and make sure he hit the buzzer the instant the ball hit a player's hand. Rupp appreciated that.

A back problem dating back to a surgery in 1937 kept Adolph Rupp out of World War II; however, the baron received much publicity for raising a Victory Garden on his 200-acre farm. Bob Sparks offered to plow the garden tract if Rupp would help put in the garden.

"Are you suggesting that I work with a rake and hoe?" Rupp asked. "Old Mother Nature has been good to me, and I can't smack her in the face with a garden hoe." However, Rupp was no stranger to farming, since he was born and raised on a Kansas homestead.

Bob thought they should preserve some food, so he bought a bushel of peaches and suggested that they take them to the cannery at Lafayette High School. After eating three of the overripe peaches, they canned the rest. Just before midnight, Rupp called Bob and said he had made the greatest deal of his life. On the way home from the cannery, he had stopped at the A&P grocery out of curiosity. In Aisle 5, he found a can whose label showed a girl holding a peach. The can cost 39 cents. Rupp compared that with the product from the local cannery. The Lafayette product was shiny; it bore no label, no pretty picture. Rupp knew the peaches inside were fine – they'd eaten the "rotten" ones and canned the good ones – but when he figured up the cost of the sugar, the can and the peaches, he came up with 42 cents a can. And that didn't include all the valuable time he and Bob had spent on the project.

"I've called H. J. Heinz and made a deal with him," Rupp said. He is not going to coach basketball, and I am not going to can any more peaches."

I was sports editor of The Lexington Leader covering a UK football game at Auburn. J. D. and Bob invited me on a quail hunt somewhere there in Alabama. After the game, they drove several miles to a lodge where we spent the night. Early Sunday morning, we traveled into the boonies, where a handler kept Bob's bird dog, along with others. We got few quail that day, mainly because we couldn't keep up with the dogs. In fact, we completely lost them and quit whistling and searching at sundown. The handler later explained that the dogs had been hunting with men on horseback. I'm sure Bob straightened that situation out, and J. D. forgot plans to purchase a hunting dog.

Rupp had a reputation as a close guardian of the mighty dollar, especially when it came to university funds. After a tournament in New York, Rupp call Ralph Beard and Wah Wah Jones to the hotel desk as the team checked out before returning to Lexington. "You boys have radios in your room," Rupp said. "

"Well, you each owe the university one dollar a day for the three days that you had the radio. That's three dollars each you own the university."

After a UK game vs. Michigan State at East Lansing, Larry Boeck, who covered the 'Cats for the Courier-Journal, was boarding the team bus when he was summoned back to the hotel. Rupp was waiting at the desk. "Larry, there are three telephone calls from your room charged to the team's bill," Rupp said. "You owe the university 18 cents."

When Bob Sparks' lumber business burned, the local newspaper reported that he had a $100,000 loss and only $80,000 in insurance. Two days later, Rupp told Sparks he had $20,000 that he was welcome to."

Rupp's impatience made him a poor fisherman, said Sparks, who served as guide, rower and hook baiter on their trips to Herrington Lake. "Adolph had a rusty little steel rod, a knobby reel and a silk line." Sparks recalled. "He would fish for about 15 minutes and say, "Well, they're not biting, let's go." As Rupp's son Herky grew older, the equipment got better as did Adolph's patience.