Bobby Dews, a former Braves coach and minor-league manager and administrator, shared his experience with an old amateur sports tradition in Georgia in the 1950s in which fans would pass cash to basketball players after a good game. Dews grew up in Edison, where he played high school baseball and basketball and went on to star in both sports at Georgia Tech. Dews spent 53 years in professional baseball, including the past 37 years with the Braves, before retiring in 2012. He also is a professional writer, who has published novels such as “Largo,” and “Unpublished Poets,” as well as a collection of short stories, “Legends, Demons and Dreams.” He is currently working on a book about semi-pro basketball in the segregated South called “Freakshot.”
We called them “money shakes” when I was playing high school basketball in the mid-’50s. These “green” handshakes usually came from rich farmers after a player would have a great game, generally the high scorer. The more points you scored, the bigger the bill.
Remember this was Class C high school athletics — the smallest classification in the state and maybe the world. There was no football and not much baseball because before integration the schools were very small. I think there were 19 students in my graduating class. So the basketball team was really the only serious game in town.
The money shakes usually ranged from $5 to $10, but a state senator once gave me $100 for scoring over 50 points against Shellman High. That was actually the night I was scouted by Georgia Tech. Our coach was watching and took the bill and gave the team a steak supper. We had a cookout at the coach’s house because there were no restaurants in Edison at the time.
I stole the ball from my own teammate one night to be sure we beat the buzzer to score 100 points. … We all got money shakes that night.
Giving amateurs money was a prevalent practice back in the day, but I really don’t think it is done very much down here (in South Georgia) these days. There just isn’t enough loose cash down here for those “money shakes” anymore.
As for the validity of these incidents, I’ll simply quote Job, as did Herman Melville in Moby Dick: “I alone am escaped to tell you.”
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