Cat Tales: A hall of fame officiating career begins

(This is excerpt #5 from the book currently being written by Greg Eckerle called “Cat Tales: Jasper Sports Stories.” Eckerle can be reached at gregeckerle@twc.com.)

From the high of the 1934 Indiana basketball Final Four to the low of losing Eddie Rottet, his best friend, and also losing his dream Purdue basketball scholarship because of illness, Cyril Birge was admittedly adrift for a while.

He wrote in his autobiography, “I found myself wanting to get away from Jasper. My hair was gone and I didn’t seem to care about anything.” He stayed with his grandparents in Louisville for a bit.

Cyril eventually returned to Jasper, marrying his high school sweetheart, Antoinette, in 1936. He worked at various odd jobs before becoming custodian at Jasper High School in the fall of 1938.

Jerry Birge told me in 2020 about his dad’s tough upbringing. Carl Seng had told Jerry that the 1934 tournament run was such a big deal in Jasper that people would put milk on Cyril’s porch, because they wanted him to be healthy for the games. They knew his family couldn’t afford milk for all the children.

“Then he ended up as janitor,” said Jerry. “This is the Depression, he’s married, he had to get a job. While cleaning the gym aisles, the Jasper basketball coach, Woody Weir, asked him if he wanted to referee a scrimmage. Weir said he did a pretty good job and suggested he get a referee’s license.” Cyril did, beginning a Hall of Fame officiating career that ran from 1939 to 1970 and turned him into an area legend.

Cyril wrote about an exchange with a referee in the 1934 State Finals second round: “Referee Birch Bayh, Sr., officiating our Richmond game, a pretty rough game, came to me at a time out with, ‘Birge, are you a senior?’ ‘Yes, I am, Mr. Bayh.’ ‘Have you ever thought of taking up officiating?’ ‘No, I haven’t, Mr. Bayh.’ ‘You should, you’re doing some kind of job out here this morning.’ We both smiled . . . In later years, when I took up officiating, I gave Birch, Sr., credit for putting the thought in my mind.”

Cyril proved to be a good official. He was quickly noticed by a neighbor, Bob Hoffman, who was a veteran referee. When Hoffman entered the service in World War II, he suggested to schools that Birge be his replacement. Ironically, both ended up in the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame, and their two sons, Jerry Birge and John Hoffman, became friends and starters on Jasper’s 1957 basketball semi-state runners-up.

In just his second season as a referee, Cyril was good enough to be picked to work a sectional in 1941 at Brownstown. He worked every game, 13 in four days.

Cyril also wrote about some of the quirks in long-ago gyms. The Dubois gym was in a downtown building with a very low ceiling. The roof had been cut out and raised around the baskets at each end, but only to the free throw outer circle. It was impossible to take a shot from farther out. The Ireland gym was in a church that sat on concrete blocks. “During one game a small section of the floor gave way as I was going under the basket making a call,” wrote Cyril. “The game was held up for about 15 minutes until that section could be braced up from the outside.”    

Cyril said he received “my best compliment, when I thought I was being insulted,” after a game in the 1942 Martinsville sectional. “Glenn Curtis (a four-time state champion coach, including one with John Wooden in 1927) came in the dressing room and said, ‘Nice game, Birge, I wouldn’t have known you were on the floor.’ I almost wanted to hit him,” Cyril said, laughing, “(but he meant) everything went right, so actually that’s the way it should be.” Everyone was intent on the game, with little attention paid to the officials.

Cyril also began working college games in 1941. His reputation grew, and he was selected to officiate the high school state finals in 1951 and 1952. Officials were normally restricted to working only two state finals back then. But as Cyril’s son Jerry wrote in The Herald in 1983, “When the IHSAA was involved in the Terre Haute Gerstmeyer – South Bend Central personal foul controversy in the 1953 state tournament, L.V. Phillips, the IHSAA commissioner, told his people to hire the best officials possible the next year, even if they had worked the (state finals) before.” They hired Cyril, setting him up to officiate the famous 1954 Milan – Muncie Central state title game, known as the “Milan Miracle,” the upset that inspired the hit movie “Hoosiers.”

(The next “Cat Tales” excerpt will delve more into Cyril Birge’s work in the Milan Miracle state championship game.)