Slam Dunk (Safire said 1976?); OT: David Shulman, NYPL to get my home

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

In tomorrow's "On Language" column in the N.Y. Times, William Safire cites 
the OED's 1976 first use for the term "slam dunk."  Here's earlier from 
Newspaperarchive:
  
1971 _Kennebec Journal_ 14 Jan. 12  West's 20-foot jumper, only his second 
field goal of the game, and Alcindor's slam dunk over Baltimore's West Unself 
gave the West a 102-101 lead with 3 1 2 minutes to go.
  
Fred Shapiro
  
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   No one remembers what I'd posted on ADS-L?  No one?  
   I had planned to re-check "slam dunk" and "point guard" and a few other 
terms when the LOS ANGELES TIMES digitization (now at March 1964) advances to 
this time period.
   It's the NEW YORK TIMES and it's Safire and I'm banned from correcting him 
every week, so that's how it goes.  Yeesh, what a life.
   On 6 August 2002, I posted this (ADS-L archives):
  
The Associated PressMonday, August 5, 2002; 10:22 PM LOS ANGELES –– 
Play-by-play announcer Chick Hearn, who made phrases like "slam dunk" and "air 
ball" common basketball expressions during his 42-year career with the Los 
Angeles Lakers, died Monday. He was 85."Chick Hearn passed away at 6:30 this 
evening," Los Angeles Lakers spokesman Bob Steiner told a hushed news conference 
outside Northridge Medical Center Hospital, where Hearn was taken Friday night 
after suffering a fall.Hearn fell Friday in the back yard of the Encino home he 
shared with wife, Marge. The two would have celebrated their 64th wedding 
anniversary on Aug. 13.Surgeons operated twice on Saturday to relieve swelling in 
his brain, but he never regained consciousness.Whether Hearn was the most 
famous Laker of them all can be debated, but his career with the team was far 
longer than such standouts as Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain, Magic 
Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jamaal Wilkes, James Worthy and Michael Cooper.And 
he was calling games long before current stars Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe 
Bryant were born.Hearn called a record 3,338 consecutive Lakers games starting in 
1965 before missing one because he had to have an operation in December 2001 
for a blocked aortic valve.While recovering, he fell and broke his hip.Hearn 
returned to work April 9 and broadcast the Lakers' playoff run to their third 
consecutive NBA championship.He called his first Lakers game in March 1961. His 
last game was June 12 when the Lakers beat the New Jersey Nets 113-107 in East 
Rutherford, N.J., to complete a sweep of the NBA Finals and earn their ninth 
title since moving from Minneapolis in 1960.During the finals, he told The 
Associated Press he was getting stronger every day and planned to work at least 
one more season. And he said he believed his call of the Lakers' Game 7 victory 
over Sacramento in the Western Conference finals might have been as good as 
any in his career.As recently as last week, he drove to Las Vegas with his wife 
to speak at a fantasy basketball camp.Born Francis Dayle Hearn on Nov. 27, 
1916, in Aurora, Ill., Hearn peppered his rapid-fire delivery with terms like 
"no harm, no foul," "the mustard's off the hot dog," "ticky-tack foul," and 
"faked him into the popcorn machine."Whenever he believed a Lakers victory was 
clinched, Hearn would say: "You can put this onein the refrigerator. The door's 
closed, the light's out, the eggs are cooling, the butter's getting hard and 
the Jell-O is jiggling."
    
  
    A few weeks later in August 2002, I'd posted this:
  
  
AIR BALL
   28 March 1976, NEW YORK TIMES, pg. 165:
   "One time I even shot an air ball; that's how slippery the ball was."
(There is also a 1975 basketball hit, but I couldn't spot the "air ball" in 
it in my quick reading.  The first hit here and the next one in 1977 come from 
college basketball, not the Los Angeles Lakers--ed.)
 
SLAM DUNK
   7 December 1972, NEW YORK TIMES, pg. 108 ad for SPORTS ILLUSTRATED:
   "...Julius Erving, he of the reverse slam dunks."(That's how I remember 
it.  Julius Erving, of the ABA Virginia Squires    
  
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OT: DAVID SHULMAN, NYPL TO GET MY HOME
  
DAVID SHULMAN--He had trouble breathing and he just entered the hospital 
again.  This is what I do when I'm not doing parking tickets.  It's a wonderful 
life.
  
NYPL TO GET MY HOME--For only the past ten years or so, I've been trying to 
get the NYPL's Research Library to correct an outdated web page on "the Big 
Apple," and the Chicago Public Library to correct an outdated web page on "the 
Windy City."  In a normal world, these corrections would be done in five 
minutes.  In the real world, you beg for ten years and no one listens to you.
   When I "Big Apple Corner" was made law in 1997 and both of my parents died 
that year, I approached the NYPL twice to donate money and to correct the web 
site on "the Big Apple," adding the historic materials at last to the web, 
where people can see them.  No one responded.  Last month, I received a form 
response--after seven years--that the NYPL just "couldn't do it."  Even for free? 
 Yes, they can't do it even if it would cost the NYPL nothing.  There was 
still no response on correcting its outdated web page, which had just fooled 
Google Answers.
   I asked the NYPL to take my home, forcing me to leave New York and 
formally ending the 12-year "torture a scholar" program.  There are only two 
requirements: (1) That the NYPL never honor me or the memory of my mother or father, 
and (2) that the NYPL never acknowledge any of my work, on "the Big Apple" or 
anything else.
   Yesterday, I got a response from an NYPL ("the People's University") 
attorney.
   The NYPL will agree to take my home.