The legendary Joe Cy

His last name was spelled Cichocki, but it was pronounced Suh-HUS-kee, though often we called him Cy-HOCK-ee, or Joe Cy, for short.

Joe Cy was a character, a legend in his own time (and mind), a fellow as colorful as Frank Bagozzi, except that Cichocki was a much better athlete and had about him a harder edge. He was a promising basketball player, big enough and talented enough to play any position. There was no shot he didn't try – and try with confidence. He was a shameless gunner, playing as though teammates were there to feed him, which would have been annoying if Joe Cy weren't so goofily up front about his need to score.

In 9th grade we played together on the Solvay Tigers basketball team. I'd made the high school junior varsity team, but was ruled ineligible because I was 13, a year too young for interscholastic sports. (Surely that state rule has been changed.) Cichocki didn't survive the high school tryouts, perhaps because the two coaches, Lester Stone of the junior varsity and Al Tallmadge of the varsity, figured he might be more trouble than he was worth.

Solvay Tigers coaches reached the same conclusion near the end of our season. Cichocki was dismissed from the team even though he was our leading scorer.

A year later we played together on the Solvay High junior varsity under an inexperienced coach, Bob Demperio, who'd been placed in the thankless position of replacing both Stone and Tallmadge. (I believe at one point Stone's junior varsity basketball teams won more than 90 consecutive games; Tallmadge's teams, over 12 years, won more than 180 games against 15-or-so defeats).

For Joe Cy, myself and several of our teammates, the 1952-53 season was the beginning of a drama similar to The Caine Mutiny, with Demperio as our Captain Queeg. Like the Caine crew, we didn't cut our leader much slack, even though we acknowledged he had been handed an impossible assignment. Tallmadge's last team was perhaps Solvay's best Solvay ever, but four starters were gone. Understandably, Demperio concentrated his efforts on the varsity, allowing a pick-up team mentality to undermine the jayvee team. Cichocki enjoyed the freedom to gun.

Things came to a head in our fifth game, against Baldwinsville. It was a big night. Our varsity was undefeated, so was Baldwinsville. In the stands was Marc Guley, the Syracuse University basketball coach, scouting the Baldwinsville star, Art Peters.

Cichocki, looking down the road a couple of years, wanted Guley to notice him, too, so he concocted a bet that he could score 30 points, a very impressive total for a 24-minute junior varsity game. I can't recall which teammates bet against him, but some of us decided that if the opportunity presented itself, we'd help Cichocki win the bet. That was a big if – because we'd already lost two games. For all we knew, Cichocki would have trouble scoring at all.

As things turned out, the Baldwinsville jayvees presented no threat. Late in the third quarter Joe Cy had 21 points and seemed on his way to his goal – until some clowning on my part tipped Coach Demperio that something was up. Cichocki and I were slow going downcourt after a turnover. However, Baldwinsville turned the ball back to us and one of our players looked downcourt and saw that I was free for an easy shot. But when I took the pass, Cichocki sprinted toward the basket, screaming for me to give him the ball. And so I did, but with a flourish. I stepped forward, and like a quarterback handing off to a running back, I delivered the ball to Cichocki and he scored.

Among the spectators was my father. His displeasure came through loud and clear when he bellowed "SHOOT!" while I was handing the ball to Cichocki. That scene prompted Demperio to take Cichocki and me out of the game.

So Joe Cy wound up with 23 points and we won by 24. The varsity, however, suffered its first defeat. They would lose only three games that season, all to Baldwinsville, the last one in overtime.

Cichocki and I were on the varsity the following season. My scoring average went up, his went down, though both of us failed to deliver in the clutch and Solvay lost 6 games. That had never happened before.

Through it all Joe Cy remained incorrigible, yet engaging. Like the afternoon in Binghamton when we got our first look at Kalurah Temple and had a brief practice for what would be a 50-point loss a few hours later. The Binghamton Central coach stopped by to say hello (and to assure himself we were the patsies he expected) and Joe Cy made it a point to introduce himself. He then proceeded to show off by taking trick shots from a descending stairway between the bleachers, about 20 feet upcourt from one of the baskets. Joe Cy thought he was making an impression, and he probably was. I'm sure the reason the Binghamton coach was smiling was that Joe Cy helped convince him we were a team of undisciplined clowns. Cichocki scored only two points that night.

The high school basketball career of Joe Cy ended in scandal after one game in his senior year. That he was the only one punished may have been unfair. You could argue that everyone on the team was involved because we all had money riding on the outcome. For that matter, so did several students and a few faculty members. That's right, we had placed bets on a high school basketball game. Three games, to be exact. And it seemed rather naive and innocent (okay, stupid) – until after our game, when there were sinister overtones because some folks concluded that point-shaving was involved.

Joe Cy had created a parlay on the three Friday night games that opened the Onondaga County League's central division 1954-55 season, and distributed copies around the school early in the week. It cost $1 to play. All you had to do was pick three winners – against a point spread Joe Cy had devised. I forget what the payoff would be.

All three favorites – Solvay, North Syracuse and Fayetteville-Manlius – were giving at least 10 points to their opponents, Liverpool, East Syracuse and Baldwinsville. Despite the spread, almost everyone who played the parlay picked the favorites. (We all had experience playing parlays. During football seasons throughout my childhood my father brought home a parlay every week from the Solvay Process Company where he worked. Together we'd select five or six games from a long list on a betting slip that must have been played by half the men in the village. This was before newspapers began pandering to sports-betting readers by printing point spreads and odds on a daily basis. Our local newspaper in South Carolina even establishes point spreads on local high school football games.)

Well, North Syracuse beat East Syracuse, 59-47, and Fayetteville-Manlius beat Baldwinsville, 56-39. But we lost to Liverpool, 59-58, when a last-second shot by Pete LeFevre was ruled taken after time had expired. (Wouldn't you know that our scoreboard clock would break down during the game and time was kept by a stopwatch at the scorer's table. We sprinted off the court, thinking we'd won. Math teacher Bruce Burroughs, stopwatch in hand, summoned the officials to tell them LeFevre's shot shouldn't count.)

Even if the shot had counted, we'd still have been losers on the parlay. The only winner was Joe Cy, who pocketed most of the money that had been bet, though it couldn't have been much.

The high school principal, Walter Weyant, found out about the parlay over the weekend and on Monday morning Cichocki was tossed off the team. At that point Coach Demperio seemed to lose interest in the varsity, concentrating on a junior varsity squad that would go through its league season undefeated. He was so disgusted with the varsity – I suspect this was a motivational ploy – that he kicked us out of the gym that Monday afternoon rather than let us practice. On Tuesday night we beat Phoenix High School, 73-23. Weeks later, at Liverpool, we avenged that opening game loss, though we'd learned by then that Liverpool was a much better team than oddsmaker Cichocki had given them credit for.

Demperio never replaced Cichocki on the varsity roster, though he could have selected one of the 14 players on the jayvees, four of whom were seniors. One of them, Bill Hall, even had a year of varsity experience. That left the varsity with only six players, and one of them, Ed Showerman, graduated in January. When we took the floor to play Baldwinsville late in the season we stood in a five-person circle passing the ball around until some of the jayvees changed uniforms and joined us so we could run our layup drill. When I fouled out in the third period, my teammates congratulated me because Coach Demperio was forced to use one of the jayvee players, which automatically made that player a member of the varsity for the rest of the season. That player was Hall, who a week later scored 17 points against East Syracuse. Clearly he belonged on the varsity, though he hadn't even been a starter on the jayvees.

As for Joe Cy, it was appropriate, perhaps, that the last time I saw him was in my early 20s at Vernon Downs, a harness racing track between Syracuse and Utica. I'd worked there a few summers earlier. That night my cousin Tom Smolinski and I, strictly $2 bettors, were with dates. Joe Cy, however, was a Vernon regular. When we bumped into him, he told us he was about $200 ahead for the evening. A couple of races later we saw him again and he told us he'd blown the $200.

Cichocki died several years ago, having spent much of his adult life in – where else? – Las Vegas.

– JACK MAJOR

The painting of the Solvay Process limestone pile, once a well-known village landmark, was done many years ago by artist Edith Noble, a teacher at Solvay High School.