Not to be Skipped Over

March 21, 2025 Michael Olesker

The 1970-1971 Baltimore Bullets team included such stars as Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, Gus “Honeycomb” Johnson, Wes Unseld, Jack Marin and Kevin Loughery. (Official team photo)

When the clock ran out on Henry “Skip” Feldman last week, he still had dreams of telling his life story to the whole wide world. He was 88. The world had largely forgotten him by then, but Skip still had stories to tell.

In his day, just think of the people who leaned on him, and the noise they created, and the thrills they gave a nervous Baltimore when the city needed it the most.

Coming out of Northwest Baltimore and Forest Park High School, Skip graduated from the old Towson State Teachers College.

He latched onto work as the trainer for the Baltimore Bullets when they were one of the most exciting professional basketball teams of the 20th century. They were the Bullets of Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, Gus “Honeycomb” Johnson, Wes Unseld, Jack Marin and Kevin Loughery.

“Let me tell you about a time,” Skip would say, leaning over a corned beef sandwich at Lenny’s Deli in Owings Mills. “The Bullets brought life to downtown Baltimore when the city really needed it.”

In the post-riot years of the late 1960s, when many were afraid to venture downtown after dark, those Bullets brought a thrilling brand of ball to the place we used to call the Civic Center and won a string of division championships along the way.

Keep in mind, that’s the remarkable era when the Orioles were dominating Major League Baseball and the Colts were winning pro football titles. Throw in those Bullets, and you make a pretty strong case that Baltimore was the most triumphant sports town in America back then.

Skip was one of those behind-the-scenes people, slightly out of the spotlight, propping up the stars.

He became one of sport’s best-known trainers, primarily because he invented ways to hold one battered body in playing condition — the immortal Earl Monroe’s.

It was Earl who brought improvisational theater to pro basketball, and Skip who helped keep him going. Those kids you see playing ball on any basketball court in town today and for the last half century, they’re the spiritual children of Earl Monroe, with his mad, spinning, whirling dervish suicide missions to the basket against defenders nearly a foot taller.

And Earl did it, Skip was saying on that afternoon at Lenny’s, even though “he had the legs of an 85-year-old man.”

Skip was the guy they put in charge of Earl Monroe’s knees. He designed a portable heating device, the only one of its kind, to help Monroe deal with the NBA’s grueling 82-game season plus playoffs.

In those days, basketball was still claiming to be a “no contact” sport. That is strictly myth. Pro basketball players are extra large and powerful athletes who look for any vulnerable spot on an opponent’s body to do a little damage.

And not just on the knees.

“Earl was amazing,” Skip said. “He ripped a couple of ribs one night in Philly. We took him to the dressing room, and he says, ‘Skip, you gotta tape me up.’”

Kenny Spence, the team doctor, gave Monroe Demerol for the pain.

“You take that stuff,” Skip said, “and you want to go to sleep. You’re on cloud nine. There’s no way you can play basketball. But Earl goes out and scores 39. Kenny Spence is sitting on the bench, and he’s saying, ‘This can’t be happening. You can’t do this on Demerol.’”

Nights like that one helped propel Monroe into pro basketball’s Hall of Fame. If there’s such a place for sports trainers, Skip Feldman should have been there long ago.

A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, including “Journeys to the Heart of Baltimore” (Johns Hopkins University Press) and “Michael Olesker’s Baltimore: If You Live Here, You’re Home” (Johns Hopkins University).