The Cal 100: No. 19 -- Brutus Hamilton
We count down the top 100 individuals associated with Cal athletics, based on their impact in sports or in the world at large – a wide-open category. See if you agree.
No. 19: Brutus Hamilton
Cal Sports Connection: Hamilton coached the Cal track and field program for 33 years and served as athletic director for nearly a decade
Claim to Fame: A two-time Olympian from Missouri, he coached Cal athletes to 22 world records and four Olympic gold medals and was responsible for the hiring of Pappy Waldorf and Pete Newell, two of the Bears' greatest coaches
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Brutus Hamilton competed at two Olympics long before he was hired as Cal’s track and field coach in 1932. But he was just getting started.
Hamilton coached the Cal program for 33 years while also serving as athletic director from 1946 through ’55. Here’s some of what he accomplished:
— Hamilton coached 22 world-record holders at Cal, including Hal Davis (100 yards, 100 meters), Grover Klemmer (440 yards, 400 meters, mile relay, 2-mile relay), Lon Spurrier (880 yards, 1,000 yards, mile relay, 2-mile relay) and Leamon King (100 yards, 100 meters, 400-meter relay, 880-yard relay)
— He directed 13 Olympians, including gold medalists Archie Williams (400 meters, 1936), Guinn Smith (pole vault, 1948), Leamon King (4x100 relay, 1956) and Jack Yerman (4x100 relay, 1960)
— Hamilton three times served on the U.S. Olympic team coaching staff, including as head coach in 1952
— He trained Olympian Don Bowden, who in 1957 became the first American to break the 4-minute mile — 22 years after Hamilton predicted no man would ever accomplish the feat
— As athletic director, he hired two of Cal’s greatest coaches — football’s Pappy Waldorf and basketball Pete Newell
Cal coach Brutus Hamilton
Photo courtesy of Cal Athletics
Hamilton was inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1974. Cal honored hm by voting him into its athletic hall of fame in 1986 and since 1998 has staged the Brutus Hamilton Invitational meet each spring.
We recognize Hamilton’s contributions by placing him at No. 19 in The Cal 100.
Brutus Kerr Hamilton was born in 1900 in the tiny Missouri town of Peculiar, population 104, according to the U.S. census that year. He grew up on a farm in nearby Grandview, across the road from the Truman family farm, home to the future 33rd president of the United States.
At age 6, Hamilton suffered an accident in which his hip was dislocated and a foot nearly severed, leaving doctors unsure if he’d ever walk normally again. But by high school, Hamilton was a star, winning nine Missouri state track titles and leading Harrisonville High to a pair of state team championships.
He enlisted during World War I but was not sent overseas. Instead, he was assigned to bury Missouri residents who had died during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.
Hamilton competed at the University of Missouri, winning the national championship in the decathlon, and in 1920 he qualified for the Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium.
He won a silver medal in the decathlon and finished sixth in the pentathlon, then sent a succinct telegram to his mother before returning home: "Did my best, but lost by four points. Good time. Well. Home soon. Brutus.”
Hamilton actually made his first visit to Berkeley in 1922, for a Cal-Missouri dual meet 10 years before he was hired at Cal. The Bears won 85-45 but Hamilton was the high-point scorer.
During his time at Missouri, the versatile Hamilton also earned second-team honors as an end on the 1921 Walter Camp All-America football team. He later played on the 1923 Kansas City Athletic Club basketball team that won the national AAU championship.
As if that wasn’t enough, Hamilton was regarded as an accomplished golfer and boxer, and reportedly once had a tryout with the New York Yankees.
In 1924, at the Paris Games, Hamilton finished seventh in the pentathlon. In 1950, he was voted Missouri’s greatest amateur athlete of the first half of the century.
After his second Olympics, Hamilton became track coach at Kansas, where his developed miler Glenn Cunningham into a world-record holder and two-time Olympian and decathlete Jim Bausch into the 1932 Olympic champion.
His coaching career at Cal featured a two-year hiatus during World War II, when Hamilton enlisted and served as a major in the U.S. Air Intelligence in England and in North Africa.
At Cal, beginning in the fall of 1932, he made an impact not only through the accomplishments of his athletes but by his approach to cultivating them.
Bowden, the sub-4 miler, explained Hamilton’s approach was to create a balanced person. “He built character and built the person for a lifetime, not just a race,” Bowden said in 2017. “There are people today who still ask themselves, `What would Brutus do?’ “
Quarter-miler Archie Williams, the ’36 Olympic champ, was grateful Hamilton recruited him to Cal, which had few African American athletes at the time.
In a 1992 interview, Williams referred to Hamilton’s “kind wisdom.”
“I have some letters that he wrote. Geez, it’s almost like Shakespeare, the way he handled words,” Williams said in the interview. “In other words, anything that he took up, he was good at. The main thing, he was a man among men. In anything.”
David Epstein ran the quarter-mile for Hamilton from 1957-61 and praised his old coach in a 1998 interview with the San Francisco Examiner.
"He was without a doubt the finest gentleman and most astute coach this country has ever seen," said Epstein, who became a lawyer. "It's a shame the qualities Brutus insisted upon are so rarely found these days in athletic programs.
“The most important thing to Brutus was what was going to happen to your life. It was critical that you graduate and that you be a scholar before an athlete.”
Hamilton died in Berkeley three days after Christmas in 1970.
-- No 20: Joe Roth
Cover photo of Brutus Hamilton at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics courtesy of Telenet
Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo