Biddy Basketball World Champions Roy Walker and Art Yagodnik, today
Remembering Gary's 1960 Biddy Basketball World Champions
Contributed By: The 411 News
Gary through the eyes of 11-12 year old basketball players on their path to fame
Last week, Gary’s Steel City Biddy Basketball team returned from the 2025 World Biddy Basketball Tournament held in Covington, Louisiana.
Sixty-five years ago today, the Gary Biddy Basketball All-Stars team claimed the title in the 1960 Biddy Basketball International Tournament held in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
This time last year, John Fraire was searching for those All-Stars’ members. Fraire is an educator, theatre artist, and an historian specializing in northwest Indiana history.
He found Art ‘Artie’ Yagodnik and Roy Walker. In the team photo, Walker is kneeling at the far right, in the front row. Yagodnik is standing behind Walker, in the second row.
Fraire’s research on the team is now included in the Calumet Region Archives.
World Champion 1960 Gary Biddy Basketball All-Stars: Front row (L-R): Edward Irons, John Truttling, Arthur Hunnicutt, Robert Protho, Roy Walker. Back row (L-R): Coach Edward "Doc" James, Mike Kelly, Tom Carlson, Bob Ricard, Bill Namovich, Art Yagodnik, and Coach Alvin Schmidt. Photo Courtesy of Art Yagodnik.
It’s the story of Gary through the eyes of 11- and 12-year-old basketball players on their path to become world champions in 1960. Four years earlier, Gary had celebrated its 50th birthday, proclaiming itself the “City of the Century,” a motto that added to its luster of being the steel capitol of the world.
Walker now lives outside of the District of Columbia, in Fort Washington, Maryland. Yagodnik still lives in northwest Indiana.
The two boys only knew each other from weekend basketball tournaments at the Armory on 11th Avenue and Madison. Back then, the Armory was the place where all the Gary biddy teams met for team competitions held on Saturday and Sunday. Basketball practices were held in a neighborhood gym.
“In those early years of Biddy Basketball in Gary, teams were formed in neighborhoods by friends and family, or under the auspices of a community organization,” Fraire wrote. “Some of those sponsors back in 1960 included the Gary Lions and Kiwanis Clubs, Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), B’Nai B’rth, American Legion Posts 17 (Yagodnik’s team) and 485, the Ol’ Timers community group (Roy Walker’s team), and others.
Walker lived in the Dorie Miller Housing Project and John Truttling lived in Marshalltown, neighborhoods on Gary’s east side. “To me, Dorie Miller was like a palace. I cry when I see it today,” Walker said. Dorie Miller was demolished in 2023. Marshalltown is a distressed neighborhood, with severe blight and population loss.
“The most prolific of the teams in the early 1960s were the “Ol’ Timers” coached by Ed “Doc” James who would be the coach of the 1960 All Stars team,” Fraire wrote.
“Doc James was like a father to all of us,” Walker said. At that time, his father was in the Army, in Germany. “Basically, I was raised by my mother. Doc James was concerned about making us productive young men. He showed us that and gave us a sense of pride.”
“Yagodnik did not have Doc James. He had Al Schmidt, the All Stars’ Assistant Coach who coached him throughout his youth. Yagodnik said that Schmidt ‘not only taught us basketball fundamentals, but calisthenics, tumbling, volleyball, dodgeball, flag football [and] even how to waltz with girls one day per week in the sixth grade,’” Fraire wrote.
Walker, Yagodnik and 8 other boys from Gary made up the All Stars, competing for the state championship in Bedford. From there, they went to the national competition in Bridgeport.
Walker’s mother went with the team to Bridgeport. “My mother was raising 5 kids on pay as a day worker in Glen Park. I don’t know where she got the money,” Walker said.
After the final game, Yagodnik was awarded “Mr. Biddy Basketball” as the MVP of the tournament. He and Walker were placed on the All Biddy Basketball tournament team as the best players in the tournament.
The team received a champions’ welcome on the return home with a parade down Broadway. Walker and Yagodnik received Keys to the City from Mayor George Chacharis. “I was the 2nd Black person in the city’s history to receive a Key to the City. The first was Lee Calhoun,” Walker said. Calhoun was a gold medalist hurdler in the 1956 and 1960 Olympics.
The next year, 1961, Gary hosted the International Biddy Basketball Tournament, but the Gary team didn’t make it out of state. On the 1961 team was Charles Hughes, current Gary Chamber of Commerce President, and San Antonio Spurs coach and NBA Hall of Famer, Gregg Popovich.
Walker said, “I truly appreciate Fraire’s work to honor the team that brought Gary its only world championship title. I am now trying to get recognition of our team in Gary’s Sports Hall of Fame.” Walker also believes Gary’s high school sports teams that win state titles should be included.
John Fraire’s dad, Gabriel, was a commissioner in the Gary Biddy Basketball League in the 60s and John played on the 1968 All Stars team.
John Fraire is the author of “Mexicans Playing Baseball in an Indiana Steel Town: Baseball, Identity and the Old Timers of Indiana Harbor, Indiana, 1920 – 1942.”
Story Posted:04/09/2025
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