The USHA and the common rules

In February 1972 the USHA's magazine Handball printed a column by a former chairman of the association's nominating committee, who recalled the national tournament and convention held at Denver in 1961. The association, he wrote, "was locked in a bitter dialogue with the AAU for handball supremacy," and the committee judged that it needed imaginative steps to answer the speeches of the A.A.U.'s chairman, Charles O'Connell. Its step was to look for a lawyer to replace the commissioner of the previous six years, because the confrontation called for a legally trained mind in the post. The post went to the second of two attorneys approached, who had served ten years by the time of the column. The USHA's champions list places its 1961 four-wall nationals at Denver. The column was written eleven years later by a man on one side of the quarrel, and no A.A.U. account is held.

The association dated its own beginning two ways. Its June 1972 rules page says that in 1950 a group of leading players and administrators formed a Players' Fraternity, pioneered by Bob Kendler, who meant to give the game its own identity, improve tournament conditions and standardize court sizes and rules. The cover note of the same issue says Kendler broke with the A.A.U. in 1951 to form the Fraternity, and credits Avery Brundage, the International Olympic Committee's president and, by the note, an outstanding player half a century before the note, with mediating a lasting agreement; what the agreement settled is not said. The champions list on the USHA's site marks 1950 with an A.A.U. four-wall title at Chicago and an A.A.U. three-wall title at Detroit, then adds "All future years are USHA." Its first USHA entries are for 1951, a four-wall tournament at Chicago, where Plekan took the open singles, and a three-wall one at Detroit. A page of 1997 counts the four-wall nationals from 1951, and a past president's letter of February 1998 speaks of 48 years, which counts from 1950. The USHA's collegiate history places its first Collegiate National Championships at Evanston, Illinois, in 1951, though the champions list shows a collegiate section only from 1953. Reading 1950 as the gathering and 1951 as the break fits these sources, but none says so.

The A.A.U. went on publishing. Its handball rules were registered for copyright on 10 April 1955, and the same serial appears in a library catalog with volumes for 1957 and 1960; the 1960 and 1962 books are known to me only from a seller's photographs of their covers and contents. O'Connell chaired the A.A.U.'s National Handball Committee from 1956 to 1965, by a 1968 booklet's committee page as a seller photographed it. The Y.M.C.A.'s National Handball Committee issued rules of its own in 1952, printed courtesy of a glove maker, by another seller's photographs. The bodies shared players: the cover of the A.A.U.'s 1960 book says Jacobs of the Los Angeles A.C. was the first to hold what it calls the Triple Crown, the A.A.U., USHA and Y.M.C.A. four-wall titles in 1956. The USHA's list gives him that year's four-wall singles; the other two results are the A.A.U.'s word alone. The USHA's Hall of Fame list, as archived in 2004, opens in 1954 with Banuet and Platak, yet the magazine of June 1971 says their names are inscribed "in the highest place in the Helms Hall of Fame, for handball." Whether the list began as another body's selections is open.

The four-body committee appears in five of the documents held. The introduction to the 1968 booklet, as photographed by a seller, says the Y.M.C.A., the A.A.U., the Jewish Welfare Board and the USHA adopted Official Standard Four-wall Handball Rules in 1958. The USHA's tribute of December 1971 lists under 1958 O'Connell's selection by the same four as chairman of a Unified Handball Rules Committee. A Champion Glove booklet, again from a seller's photographs and with no printing year visible, carries a committee page for the Y.M.C.A., A.A.U., USHA and Jewish Welfare Board: the USHA's executive secretary and its rules chairman, two Y.M.C.A. men, two members of the A.A.U.'s national committee, and O'Connell as chairman. The page says the committee had "agreed to serve for the year of 1960." A facing page seems to describe a meeting at Chicago in a December; the photograph cuts off the year. The A.A.U.'s books of 1960 and 1962 list the unified four-wall rules in their contents ahead of their one-wall, three-wall, hard-ball and glass-court sections. Secondary accounts date the merger to 1958 or 1959. Two documents give 1958 and none read gives 1959, but no text or minute of 1958 is held and both dates stay open.

The same 1962 book is the only source held for three events. It puts the first all-glass court at the Aurora, Illinois, Y.M.C.A. in 1958; it says a three-wall court of the jai-alai type was officially opened on 29 November 1959 at Forrest Park Playground in Queens, as it spells the name; and it says three New York Athletic Club players won four of seven matches in Ireland in 1957. The USHA's June 1972 rules page instead credits Kendler with inventing the glass court at his Chicago Town Club in 1945, and its tribute credits O'Connell with originating three-wall fronton courts in New York's parks in 1959. The USHA's list records its first one-wall national in 1959 at New York, with Obert taking the open singles, while the A.A.U.'s 1962 book captions the same man national one-wall singles champion for 1957, 1958 and 1959, which suggests that one-wall nationals under the A.A.U. came first.

O'Connell's name runs through the American side of all this. The USHA's tribute lists him as chairman of the first world handball championship at the New York Athletic Club in 1964; no source read says which game or games were played that year. His club dedicated a new gallery court on 1 October 1966, its president saying it recognized more than half a century of his work for handball, and the tribute lists his Handball Illustrated, published by the Ronald Press in 1965. The tribute, written by the USHA in December 1971, grants that he had spent two decades of its growth as a member of the A.A.U.'s "Enemy Camp" and says he never got inside the A.A.U. the help he needed to give the game its rightful position, which it names as the reason the USHA was formed.

The common rules were the work of four bodies, not two, and the USHA had left them by 1968, ten years before the date usually given for its becoming the only American rule-maker. The 1968 booklet names the A.A.U., the Jewish Welfare Board and the Y.M.C.A. on its cover, and its committee page is dated 19 January 1968. Its introduction says the USHA, after taking part in the rules discussion meetings, "decided not to participate in publishing this revision of the Unified Rules." It sets the four-wall court at 20 feet wide, 20 high and 40 long, with a back wall of 12 feet. A Long Beach newspaper of 4 June 1967 listed both the unified rules and a separate A.A.U. one-wall booklet among booklets available from the glove maker. These facts rest on a seller's photographs of one booklet and on the USHA's own tribute; a library catalog lists a 1968 Champion Glove printing with racquetball rules added, which I have not seen. The split was a process that the documents show from 1961, when the USHA's own account has it at odds with the A.A.U., to 1968, when three of the four published without it.

The year 1978 has no document behind it. A secondary account gives it for the USHA's becoming the sole governing body, and I have found no primary source that dates the A.A.U.'s withdrawal from handball. The USHA's list calls 1950 the last A.A.U. year for championships, the A.A.U.'s rule books run to 1962 on record, and a bibliography of 1987 cites one of 1983, which may be a stale entry.

The USHA kept its own record, and the era can be seen from its side only through it. Its magazine, Ace, took its name from a contest in the association's early days and became Handball with volume 21, number 3, in June 1971, after two decades under the old name; an Internet Archive record dates the magazine to 1950 rather than the 1951 of the USHA's own history. The champions list shows a "Pro Singles" champion for the first time in 1974, at Knoxville, without saying what made the title professional. A library catalog lists Championship Handball by the Experts, selected magazine articles edited by John W. Reznik, under 1976. After a visit from the president of the Irish Handball Council in August 1971, told in the Irish chapter, the USHA president's column of October 1971 asked whether Ireland could be brought into the American 20 by 40 orbit or the USHA must accept the Irish 60 by 30 court.

The USHA's magazine for 1951 to 1967 is not online anywhere I searched. The scanned issues begin in 1968, and the four from 1968 and 1969 are page images without a text layer that I have not read, though they are the nearest to January 1968; the run from 1973 sits in an Internet Archive collection closed to readers. No USHA rule book earlier than 1990 is held; the 1972 text below is a magazine printing, and the 1971 publication of its rules is a citation in an instruction book. The unified rules of 1958 are known from a 1968 introduction and a 1971 tribute, not from a 1958 text or minute, and the A.A.U. books of 1955 to 1962 are known from catalog entries and seller's photographs. No newspaper sweep covers 1951 to 1978; the Long Beach column of 1967 came from a full-text search. The year the A.A.U. stopped sanctioning handball was looked for in the documents above and not found.

In June 1972 the magazine printed the Official U.S. Handball Association Rules under the heading Four-Wall Revised Edition. A note on the page thanks Dan Reaugh of Seattle for countless hours spent drafting "our first official rules" and names the national rules and referees chairman as a more recent worker on them, so the first rules are older than this printing, and their date is not given. The text sets the standard court at 20 feet wide, 20 high and 40 long, with a back wall recommended at 12 feet, the dimensions the other three bodies had printed in 1968.