Joe Worzel
One night in 1957 in a Manhattan gym, the youth fourteen to sixteen year old basketball team of the Hebrew Association of the Deaf (HAD) had a game against the HAD old timers. No one remembers who won the game (the much experienced Old Timers did) or even the score. But fans attending the game would remember one thing – that Joe Worzel, attired in street clothes and dress shoes, entered the game with just a few seconds remaining and let go a set shot from midcourt. The ball went swish for a perfect basket!
The long range attempt itself was no big deal. What was the big deal was that Joe was 59 years old and had not played a game in years but was able to make the shot. How good was Joe as a basketball player when he was much younger?
Well, Joe was good enough to have played professional basketball, playing against some of the nation’s most storied barnstorming teams of the twenties, playing for his Silent Separates team against the Original Celtics, the Rens and the Visitations among other long-forgotten teams.
And the late Art Kruger, the nation’s most eminent sports writer for the deaf, chose Joe as the sixth greatest deaf player on his list of fifteen greatest deaf cagers of the half century (1900-1950), which was published in the January 1951 edition of the Silent Worker.
Art wrote this remarkable accuracy in locating the basket made him a dangerous man and his speed in dribbling was a revelation. He had to be great in dribbling and shooting for he only weighed 115 lbs and could easily be shoved away by much-burlier opponents. Another asset that Joe had was his exemplary court sense always making the right pass at the right moment for an opportune layup.
How good was he in AMD ball? Unfortunately by the time MMD came into existence (in 1945), Joe was too old to play competitive ball. That he was born too soon is a crying shame because the majority of deaf basketball fans have been denied a chance to see, and to marvel at, him in action, He would have run rings over everyone’s’ fingers on the court.
Joe, born in Austria in 1898, became deaf at the age of seven after a bout of double mastoids. Emigrating to the States at the age of nine speaking only Yiddish. He enrolled at the Lexington School for the Deaf and it was there when he made a name for himself, not just in basketball, but also in baseball and in track and field.
After graduating from Lexington and before embarking on a long career as a printer for the New York Post he worked at his alma mater as a supervisor and then taught linotyping at the New York School for the Deaf. It was at the Post that he continued his association with basketball, getting free passes to pro games. He always stayed in touch with many of his old opponents, including Nat Holman and Joe Lapchick, these ; luminaries of old pro basketball days.
He has been inducted into two hall of fames – the AAAD (American Association Athletic of the Deaf) and NCJD (National Congress of Jewish Deaf).
Daughter Lila Worzel Miller has inherited her father’s athletic genes as she was inducted into the Brooklyn College athletic hall of fame. She attended the original NCJD hall of fame dinner at Philadelphia in 1984 to accept the honor on behalf of her deceased father. It was a tremendous thrill for her, but naturally she wished her father was alive to accept the honor in person.
Lila. who is not deaf, was quite an accomplished basketball player in her own right; Never mind the inherited genes, she has credited her father for making the person that she is. At present she is working on a book, a biography of her father, and is looking for a publisher. al still take some shots at the basketball nowadays,” she says. Don’t ask her what her age is!
