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| Book Review | Indiana Magazine of History, 103.3 | The History Cooperative
103.3  
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September, 2007
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Reviews

Mac's Boys
Branch McCracken and the Legendary 1953 Hurryin' Hoosiers

By Jason Hiner
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. Pp. xii, 345. Illustrations, appendix, notes, index. Paperbound, $24.95.)

My guess is that Jason Hiner is too young to have been around for Indiana University's 1952–53 season—season, not just the NCAA championship that crowned it. During that year so many Hoosier frustrations were shed, replaced by joyful firsts—IU's first 100-point game, first outright Big Ten championship, first taste of No. 1 national ranking. I am old enough to have made that joyride, not with a reporter's shackles but with the unrestricted glee of a fan. As a senior at Huntington High School, late on a midweek March night with static complicating the in-and-out faintness of the only attainable radio signal, I suffered through the agonizing final seconds of the NCAA championship game: IU up 69–68, Kansas with the ball, "shot from the corner-r-r at the buzzer-r-r..." 1
      In Mac's Boys: Branch McCracken and the Legendary 1953 Hurryin' Hoosiers, Hiner captures the unique quality of IU fans' year—their fatalistic resignation throughout, conditioned by past second places and near-misses; their undying hopes— "wouldn't it be fantastic if"? Both extremes of pessimism and optimism collided for so many Hoosiers while that game-determining shot hung in the air—a shot they couldn't see, because there was no TV. Everything hung on what that radio voice would say, after a silence that seemed like weeks. . . .
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