By Cliff Radel
The Cincinnati Enquirer

SPRINGDALE - With Xavier University's Cinderella season still on the city's radar screen, people keep wondering how this unsung team advanced so far in the NCAA basketball tournament.

Then...

...and now (Michael E. Keating and Enquirer file photos)

Here's a thought: Along the Musketeers' way to the school's first visit to the Elite Eight, they heard from Ray Tomlin.

The retired 70-year-old lab technician from Springdale told them how teamwork can topple any opponent, even the evils of racism.

Tomlin knows a thing or two about battling racism and going where no one has gone before in a Xavier uniform. He was the first African-American to play basketball for the Musketeers.

In a locker-room pep talk before the 2004 NCAA tournament, Tomlin - an inspiring speaker - drew on his pioneering experiences to draw the team closer together.

"I told them, 'When you play with heart and conviction, there's no telling how far you can go.' "

Then he asked for a favor. Win one for Ray and his alma mater.

"I wanted a 50-year anniversary present," he said as he adjusted his 6-foot-1-inch frame in his den's easy chair. On one wall, a youthful Tomlin sat in a photo with his teammates at Lockland Wayne High School. They won Ohio's Class B State Championship in 1952, when he was a senior. On another wall, he's photographed wearing a Musketeers' home uniform.

Tomlin played his first game as a freshman in February 1954. For that game 50 years ago, Xavier's lineup consisted of one black player and four white players. Fifty years later, those numbers were reversed when Xavier met Duke.

Tomlin watched that game in his living room. He saw everything but the color of anyone's skin.

"It was just like my first game," he said. "I only saw Musketeers."

If only the rest of the world had Tomlin's vision.

He saw racism on his first varsity road trip, in 1955. Xavier played Louisville, which was not so far south that Tomlin could not stay in the same hotel with his teammates.

After the game, Tomlin and his roommate, a combat-tested Korean War veteran named Frannie Stahl, wanted to get some cheeseburgers to eat in their hotel room.

They noticed the hotel's grill was still open. So, they went in.

Stahl sat at the counter. He invited his roommate to do the same.

Before Tomlin could respond, a bouncer walked up and said: "Sir, we don't serve Negroes."

Those words sent Stahl out of his chair and in the bouncer's face.

"Is this why I fought for my country in Korea?" he asked.

Before things got ugly, Tomlin grabbed Stahl and left the grill.

"We didn't want any bad publicity for the university," Tomlin said.

"Xavier was giving us a good education. And that's why I was going there, along with realizing my childhood dream of playing Division I college basketball."

Stahl was still hungry. So, they found a burger joint and took their food back to their room.

"We ate in silence," Tomlin recalled. "Frannie said all he had to say earlier in the night. Then he fell off to a blissful sleep.

"I looked over at him and wondered: 'What kind of world it would be if everybody - black or white - was like Frannie Stahl?' "

Tomlin swore he never heard any racial slurs from fans in the stands when he played games north of the Ohio River.

One night, he admitted, during his senior year in 1957, he did hear people putting their hands together. It was his last home game.

"The announcer said, 'From Cincinnati's Lockland Wayne, guard, No. 21, Ray Tomlin.' I ran onto the floor and got a two-minute standing ovation. Now, I heard that!"

Tomlin knows today's college game and its wealthy trappings are a far cry from the world he knew.

Raised by his grandmother Jennie Jasper, he grew up in Lockland "in a two-room house with an outdoor toilet."

Yet, one principle that held true in 1954 remains true today, in basketball and in life.

"These players may not be bringing home the national championship," he said. "But they played the game with heart and conviction.

"Because of that they are champions."

The same goes for Ray Tomlin. He's a champion of life.

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E-mail cradel@enquirer.com