You're listening to an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people.

Up next, a story that's close to my heart,

my favorite sport in the world and one I played relentlessly as a kid,

going to some of the greatest basketball camps in the world

with names like Shoshchewski and Karnasekha and Knight.

And I became a captain of my basketball team, not one year but two, and also the all-time

leading scorer of my high school. It was indeed a deep passion. I slept with my basketball.

So up next a story about the Billy Graham of basketball, the man who helped in the

end create the sport, if not invented. You know his name. You probably owned a pair of sneakers

that bear his signature. I bought my first pair back in grade school.

There's a fairly new pair in my closet today.

My 17-year-old daughter, well, she just bought a pair, and not for sport.

She just thinks they look great.

So to her friends.

What's remarkable about the man whose name we all know

and whose sneaker is still worn today, a century after it was created,

is that he was never a famous athlete, like Michael Jordan.

Chuck Taylor was a basketball player, that's true.

But he didn't get his name on the Converse Sneaker because he was a great NBA player.

The league wouldn't come into existence until 1949.

Baseball at the time had the most famous athletes in the 1920s and 30s.

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