A Basketball Junkie With Lots of Bounce

Two girls from Texas, eager to meet a celebrity on their holiday trip to Los Angeles, boldly approached Al Lewis last week at the Chaminade High School basketball tournament in Canoga Park.

“Are you the guy on ‘The Munsters?’ ” asked one.

Assured that Lewis was, indeed, “Grandpa” Munster, they asked, excitedly, if they could have their picture taken with him.

Clearly, this was a big moment for the girls; something to tell the folks back in Wichita Falls.

But for Southern Californians, the sight of Lewis at high school basketball games has become commonplace. A self-described basketball “junkie,” the 74-year-old actor estimates that he has seen about 10,000 games in the last 50 years.

That’s 200 a season, which may be a conservative estimate. In three days last week, he saw 16.

In the summer, he attends basketball camps in New York, Pittsburgh, Indiana, Georgia.

“All over,” he says, throwing his head back and filling the room with his distinctive, cackling laughter. He likes to laugh, it seems, as much as he likes basketball. And he loves basketball. “I’m a junkie,” he says, laughing again.

The Sherman Oaks resident is also a friendly, fiesty old man who fancies himself an unofficial college recruiter and considers himself an expert on evaluating talent.

“I get a great deal of enjoyment out of it because I have an ability that nobody has,” Lewis said. “I can watch a player for five minutes and tell you more about that player than an assistant coach coming in and seeing him in five games. I’ve been doing it for 50 years and I’m a shrewd SOB. . . .

“You turn over a rock and underneath is a player. That’s the trick. Anybody can recruit a superstar. Ain’t no big deal to see Wilt Chamberlain at Overbrook High School and say he’s a superstar. Stevie Wonder could recruit him. And he ain’t got no eyesight.”

For Lewis, the possibility of uncovering a potential star is the lure of high school basketball.

“I don’t go to professional basketball, although tickets are available to me for free, because it’s not really the game,” he said. “It’s entertainment, not pure basketball. They cut corners on rules so as to make it entertaining.

“I’ve always liked high school basketball because I coached club ball in New York and I like young people and I love the game.

“And I like to see kids develop along the way.”

Lewis has been “recruiting” players since 1935, when he first met the late Honey Russell, the former Seton Hall coach.

“He used to see me around at all the games,” Lewis said. “He said, ‘You can really evaluate players. Why don’t you recruit for me?”’

He’s been at it ever since.

“A coach calls me, I know what conference they play in,” he said. “I know the strength, the weakness, what’s out in the West, what’s out here, what’s out there. I tell him, ‘This player can’t play in your conference, this player can play in your conference.’ And then they come and look at them and make a decision.”

Nobody came to look at Lewis when he played high school basketball in New York.

“I played . . . poorly,” he told a reporter last week. “I’m not embarassed to say. I tried hard . . . I mean, let’s face it, you’re not Hemingway. Tit for tat.”

Lewis said he was “always an actor, even though I went to school.” He has a masters and a doctorate in child psychology from Columbia University, but he spent only two years as a child psychologist.

His undying passions are acting and basketball.

His two most famous television roles were as Officer Leo Schnauser in “Car 54, Where Are You?” and as Grandpa in “The Munsters.” Both series were on TV for three years in the 1960s. “The Munsters,” which was cancelled in 1966, has never been out of syndication, he said, so Grandpa is still easily recognizable wherever he goes.

Last week, at the Chaminade Tournament, the basketball team from Waiakea High School in Hilo, Hawaii, gave Lewis a case of papayas, a box of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts and a coconut-palm hat.

“They love me,” Lewis said. “My audience loves me.”

His acting now is confined mainly to live theater.

That, and basketball, take up most of his time.

“I work at night and in the day I see basketball,” he said.

“Happily” divorced--he and his ex-wife are “exceedingly” friendly--Lewis has three sons, ages 19, 20 and 26. His two youngest, Ted and Paul, are sophomores at the University of New Mexico and student managers of Coach Gary Colson’s basketball team.

Colson was still coaching at Pepperdine when he first met Lewis.

“He was in every gym that I was in,” Colson said. “He has a tremendous ability to evaluate players. I rely on him a lot. . . . He’s more than just Grandpa to us.”

What does Grandpa Munster look for in a player?

“Smarts,” he said. “I learned that 50 years ago. Honey Russell said to me, ‘Al, don’t get me the best players. Send them to the other guy. Send me the smartest, hungriest players and I’ll whip butt seven days a week.’ And it still applies today. It’s no different. . . .

“You throw a 100-pound steak down on center court and you let loose seven tigers, and the tiger who hasn’t eaten in a month is going to wind up with that steak and tear up six other butts.

“It still applies. Same thing with writers, artists, painters. How much do you need it, and how much are you willing to pay to get it? And those are the guys who come to the top. Those who have extreme talent come to the apex. The others find their place, find their niche. . . . It’s not old-fashioned.”

But hasn’t the role of the bird dog diminished? Isn’t big-time college recruiting more sophisticated now than it was in 1935?

“No, it ain’t,” Lewis said. “Don’t believe that. There are more recruiters out there. They use that name. But they’re not recruiters. They’re Avon ladies, order takers . . . they come in and take an order. ‘I need a 6-5, I need a 6-foot-9’. . . .

“It still works the old way. . . . There are very, very few superstars. You know how few? As many teeth as a chicken has. None. “

Al Lewis is almost as rare.