More than 41,000 people showed up, still the largest crowd to ever watch a high school basketball game.Ī columnist for an Indianapolis paper spent a whole column asking Larry Bird about Damon Bailey. His final game, in the 1990 state championship, was played at the Hoosier Dome. At meetings across the state, his elementary school principal introduced himself as being from “Heltonville, home of Damon Bailey.” Because of demand, his games were moved to Butler’s Hinkle Fieldhouse or Indianapolis’ Market Square Arena, the home of the Pacers. People wore “Baileyville” shirts in his hometown and out-of-towners stole blades of grass from his yard. To say he was a sensation would almost be underselling. In his sophomore year alone, Bailey’s appeal increased his school’s athletic budget by $50,000. More households paid $10 to watch Bailey on pay-per-view in one part of Indiana than paid to watch the Tyson-Spinks fight. Tickets to playoff games went for a couple hundred. There are all kinds of crazy stories that illustrate what Damon Bailey meant to the state of Indiana.įor instance: During his senior season, scalpers sold $2.50 tickets for as much as $50. Bailey was just so polished.Īnd so when Knight left Heltonville that night, he turned to Hammel and said, “Do you know who he’s going to be like? Jerry West.” But there was something else about him, something that made people say things that seem crazy in hindsight. He was athletic and tall for his age (6 feet), and he was a good shooter. It wasn’t that Bailey was the best shooter or the most explosive athlete in the world. Heltonville was tiny, with a population, Bailey once said, of “150…no, make that 200.” Heltonville’s high school had closed years earlier, and the middle school didn’t field a baseball team, but the Shawswick Junior High Farmers’ basketball team reportedly played to crowds of 1,000 people. That same year, Knight and his friend Bob Hammel, the sports editor of the Bloomington Herald-Times, drove to Heltonville to see Bailey play. He still went to pizza parties after games. “The Bailey kid,” Melito told the Iowa Press-Citizen in 1985, “is going to make some college coach very, very happy.”ĭamon Bailey was 13 at the time. No, that distinction goes to a man named Chuck Melito who coached an AAU team in New Orleans and watched Bailey’s Indianapolis team dominate the Junior Olympics in Iowa City.
HIGH SCOOL YEARBOOK PHOTO GUN MN SERIES
This is the first in a series about some of the greatest high school athletes ever, with one twist: The idea is to go back into the archives and look at them as they were perceived, talked about and covered at the time, without the benefit or influence of hindsight.īob Knight was not the first person to say something outrageous about Damon Bailey.