The years 1946-1962
James Naismith had arrived there a few decades earlier, precisely in 1891 in a small town in Massachusetts, one of the many Springfields that can be found in the United States. In Tortona, a ball and a pair of baskets about 3 meters high arrive only in 1946 and the Naismiths of our house are the refugees from Istria and Dalmatia, now at home in the former Passalacqua Barracks. Those who were there cannot forget the legendary "Romoletti" (from Romolo Conia) who for over a decade have represented Tortona basketball made up of mythical characters and mythical scenarios: it is naturally played outdoors, on clay and the different categories are not other than the different heights of the participants. It's a game, a "complementary" sport and the natural reference is to football so it happens that we hear about full-backs while there is someone who attacks and someone who defends, strictly separated.
Aurora, Folgore, Virtus, Intrepida are the local teams that animate the oratories because these are the years in which they play in school courtyards, in Piazza Duomo and in the Station Square and you have to wait for half of the Years' 50 to read about a Tortonese sports club, chaired by Nino Orsi, who livens up the Santa Croce fair by chasing a few basket shots.
But above all these are the years of Professor Messina and it is difficult to be contradicted by writing that the refugees brought us basketball but Nico taught it to us, that he perfected it, in short, he made us love it. He explains the game to the kids of the time and then continues and becomes "Il tigre" who discovers Meneghin, Bovone and Caglieris and who sits on one of the most prestigious benches in Italy, that of Ignis Varese with which he will be Italian Champion twice after 53 victories out of 67 races. Messina is player-coach in 1956, the year in which Derthona Basket played its first senior championship, immediately achieving promotion to the next series.
Basketball becomes less and less of a game and more and more of a sport, in America the myth of Red Auerbach and the Boston Celtics is born who win eight consecutive titles while in our home you are either Simmenthal or you are Ignis and on the Milan-Varese axis it becomes the story of a decade when in Tortona the names were those of Merlo, Soncino, Vecchietti but also of Giacomo Bidone, the first and historic President. If you are over 19m you are "long" and Piero Mecchia has class and centimeters but fate takes him away too soon, at just XNUMX years old and then it is the turn of the very young Di Matteo and Civitico.
The "Mancio" knows how to play and knows how to make people talk about himself, he becomes one of the characters that you forcefully link to a leather ball, perhaps to the nylon one stolen in Turin in one of those stories that everyone tells, everyone passes down even if no one perhaps it really was there. We move forward amidst a thousand difficulties, between the Corso Garibaldi gym still under construction, the lows of financial problems and the highs of the event in Piazza Duomo when the "red shoes" of Simmenthal arrive to celebrate the memory of Mecchia.
1958 becomes the year of grace, Derthona Basket, having obtained affiliation to the FIP, won the first Regional Allievi title while women also began to play, with scores that today make you smile while in 1961-62 Enrico Bovone made his debut, 207 centimeters discovered in Novi Ligure coincidentally by Messina: Bovone starts from Tortona and gets very far, in 65 matches with the blue shirt, at the Mexico City Olympics until becoming a flagship of Mens Sana Siena with whom he ends 1975 averaging 25 points and 9 rebounds.
When Bovone and Messina left for Varese, Derthona was forced to give up the championship. We are in the 1962 and some think that basketball in Tortona is already history. It won't be like that.
Texts taken from the book “HEART OF A LION: fifty years of basketball in Tortona” by Roberto Gabatelli – 2008
