...history is the best measure of one's accomplishments at the games, and in this case the former Olympian worth talking about is Sam Balter.

An All-American at UCLA in 1929, Balter was 26--of prime basketball age--when the United States sent its best athletes to Berlin for the Nazi Olympics. That year was 1936, and the Olympics were best remembered for the heroics of Jesse Owens, an African America who won four medals in Hitler's stadium. "On the sacred soil of the Fatherland, the master athlete humiliated the master race," ESPN later wrote. But Balter too did his part in shaming the man who shamed humanity...

...There was some publicity in the Boston papers about my roommate and me, Norman Cahners. There was a picture of us winning six gold medals in the Harvard-Yale track meet. Rabbi Levy was the head of the Temple Israel in Boston, a Reform temple, and he was well respected all over the United States. And he had seen the publicity and knew that we were potential Olympic candidates, and said he'd like to talk to us. I was confirmed at Temple Israel and naturally when they asked us to come -- asked me and Norman Cahners -- we agreed to come.

I didn't know what they were going to talk about, except something about the Olympics. They told us about the terrible things that were going on in Germany and the Nazi regime. And it was a shock to me and Norman. They suggested that it might be a good idea for us not to go to the Olympics because of all these problems, and to sort of register our objections and sort of boycotting the Olympics. And we were quite taken aback about that thought. They tried to explain to us that we would never regret it if we did take that action to boycott the Olympics. And that meeting really turned us around, because we were horrified at the terrible things that were going on in Germany. Both Cahners and I decided that we would boycott the Olympics. We just felt it was the right thing to do.

I spoke to the track coach at Harvard. We told him about our intention. He tried to persuade us not to do it. He said he didn't think it would do much good, and we should try to go to the final tryouts and try to make the team. But we didn't want to do that.

After we boycotted the Olympics, no one came to speak to us or ask us if we'd make any statements about it. And I don't think anyone knew particularly that we did boycott it.

I think back on making that decision and whether I would have won [laughs] silver or gold or some sort of a medal, and every time I go to the Olympics -- I've been to three of them -- I particularly watch the high hurdles and the long jump, and I picture myself [laughs] as maybe having won a medal in it.