A Real Hoosier Doesn’t Need Any Favors From Hollywood

Jimmy Chitwood, the kid from Hickory High School whose jump shot in the 1954 Indiana state basketball championship gave berth to the movie “Hoosiers,” walked around a picket fence and stuck out his hand, friendly as could be.

Only, his real name is Bobby Plump. You understand.

The town’s brooding basketball stud couldn’t be named “Plump,” of course. So, the movie folks took a small liberty. No harm in that.

And, it was little Milan High that he shot to the championship, not Hickory High. You understand.

“Hickory” sounds so Indiana. So small-town charming. No harm there.

The movie, after all, was “based on the true story,” they said. What’s a few tweaks to Hollywood? Again, you understand.

So Bobby Plump, 63, pulled up a chair in a pub that has his name on it, ordered a soft drink, and said: “A lot of people ask me how factual the movie was. I tell them, ‘The only part that was factual was the last 18 seconds.’ ”

He laughs.

You . . . don’t . . . quite . . . understand.

For the next hour, sitting in a northern Indianapolis beer joint called “Plump’s Last Shot,” the man himself took a sledgehammer to that lovely movie, shattering it from the opening credits to the moment that memorable shot left Jimmy’s fingertips.

Make that Plump’s fingertips.

Work of fiction: Plump, a financial analyst who opened the bar with his son, Jonathan, only five years ago, began the laundry list by touching the pinkie of his right hand.

Here’s the list of inaccuracies, and this is just the big stuff:

* Milan High hardly came from nowhere to win the 1954 state title. In 1953, the Indians were state finalists.

* A coaching change was made, but it was after Plump’s sophomore year, not before his senior season.

* The new coach was not what Gene Hackman portrayed. In fact, the district superintendent fired the Hackman type and replaced him with Marvin Wood, who was 24, married, with two children. He never once raised his voice, Plump said, and often practiced with the team.

* Wood indeed wanted to play a man-to-man defense, only to realize the Milan players didn’t have the quickness for it. They were back to a zone defense within a month and it’s all they ever played.

* They didn’t even take an old, rickety bus to “the big city,” Indianapolis, for the title game. A local car dealership lent them three new Cadillacs for the trip.

That pretty much leaves 18 seconds.

Who’s naive now? Hoosiers, the Heartland people, have been holding out on the rest of us. They’ve known all of this for years, and have let us go on believing in Coach Norman Dale and lovable, drunken boosters and reluctant heroes.

God bless ‘em.

And Plump, who had double-bypass heart surgery six years ago, loves it. He said he can still feel the shot, hear the crowd, smell the gym, see the rim, taste the victory, 46 years later.

“I live with it every day,” he said, “because people ask me about it. Very seldom when I’m in public does a day pass that somebody doesn’t.”

The Milan state champions will hold their annual reunion July 15. Plump recalled their first five years after the title game. Of course, the conversation topic was their win, his shot.

At the time, he shook his head and asked the team, “You reckon we’re still going to be talking about this next year?”

Overheard: At a hotel in downtown Indianapolis, two 20-ish attendants behind the front desk were asked for driving directions to Plump’s bar.

The guy behind the desk answered: “Whose bar?”

Bobby Plump’s. You know, Hoosiers? The movie?

The guy: “Man, that movie came out when I was, like, 4.”

OK then.

The girl behind the desk jumped in: “The name sounds familiar.”

Basketball movie?

The girl: “No, that’s not it.”

This is still Indiana, right?

Reaction: From Plump himself: “Are you sure they’re from Indiana?”

Fan of the game: A woman sitting about 20 rows up from the floor wore a full Wonder Woman costume, with “Super Pacer” written on the back of her cape. A ruby tiara was the final delicate touch to her flowerlike persona.

Then the Lakers took the floor for pregame warmups, and she cupped her willowy fingers to her tiny mouth.

“Lakers!!” she bellowed. “You’re going to die!!”

Security!

At the buzzer: Accompanying an Indianapolis Star story Wednesday on Shaq’s free-throw percentage, there ran a graphic that compared Shaq’s free-throw shooting with that of George Mikan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain.

The Star didn’t stop there.

It had five seventh-grade girls take 13 shots apiece. Shaq had missed 10 of 13 in Game 3.

The results? Predictable.

All five--Becky, Stacie, Leslie, Lindsey and Kahla--made at least five. Stacie, the little sharpshooter, made all 13.

Jerry West immediately signed her to a 10-day contract, and she was in uniform Wednesday night.