OBITUARY – Excellence Under Pressure! –
April 25, 2019 – “Havlicek stole the ball” is still one of the great rallying cries in sports history, shouted by announcer Johnny Most and quietly repeated by countless numbers of aspiring players in pickup games across the region for years after … John Joseph Havlicek, whose father emigrated from Czechoslovakia, was born in a coal-and-steel town in eastern Ohio and lived in a house above his parents’ grocery store. His grandfather and uncles worked in the mines. Although he was frequently unwell as a child (“Crying and sickness were my trademarks’’), Mr. Havlicek grew into an exceptional multisport athlete.
At Ohio State, where football coach Woody Hayes unsuccessfully recruited him for quarterback, Mr. Havlicek played first base for the baseball team and was a sophomore starter on the Buckeye basketball varsity that won its only national championship in 1960.
