Basketball in a cage. Now, that sounds like the latest idea for an extreme sports event on cable TV.

Actually, it’s a fair description of what the holiday hoops season was like in Auburn almost a hundred years ago.

Basketball was a fairly new sport and there weren’t many indoor floors large enough for a winter game. The auditorium on the second floor of Auburn Hall filled the bill with certain limitations. Some local athletes not long out of high school had organized the Waseca Club, and it seems their exploits in the early part of the 1900s gave Auburn a prominent place in Maine’s basketball history.

It was pre-World War I, and the local schools had not yet adopted basketball for their sports schedules. Nevertheless, the game was developing a strong local following. Thanks to some resourceful fans, Auburn Hall became the place to be for Friday night games and the after-the-game dance.

Regulation dimensions were not a concern. The playing floor was almost square and the foul lines were only about 20 feet apart. It wasn’t uncommon for a good long shot to be made from the opposite foul line and one-handed shots were often tried from full length of the court, which wasn’t more than 45 or 50 feet. Today’s NBA court is 94 by 50 feet.

The hall was upstairs over three stores and the entrance was at the upper west end. There was just one flight of stairs about 12 feet wide and the ticket office was at the top. A policeman guarded the door to the hall, and he also served as the ticket-taker.

When fans entered the hall, they faced an arrangement of netting that formed a kind of cage. Inside this cage was the playing area, and the net kept the ball from landing in the balcony and slowing up the game.

It was a structure similar to hockey rink sideboards. They were made in 15-foot sections held end-to-end by large screw eyes and latches. The sideboard barrier reached from the hall’s stage down one side of the hall, across the hall, and up the other side, with the stage forming the fourth side. Fans at floor level were on settees behind the net.

Legend has it that the cage idea was suggested during meetings of the Waseca Social Club as a joke, but a plan soon took root. Ray H. Thayer of Auburn, who was manager of the Wasecas, and his assistant, Herbert Gammon, get credit for design and construction of The Cage.

Fans loved it. The Cage allowed almost continual play for the 10- or 12-minute periods.

It must have been a remarkable experience to be at Auburn Hall in those days. These descriptions come from a 1968 Lewiston Evening Journal feature story by Dick Murray, who had vivid memories of the colorful Auburn Hall crowd 50 or more years earlier.

He recalled how a youngster without a ticket could sometimes find a soft-hearted player to get him in. The player would let the kid carry his equipment bag past the policeman.

Crowds were packed in shoulder to shoulder, and the cheering was nonstop. Fights broke out here and there, sometimes spilling over to the play area.

As soon as the game ended, volunteers quickly removed The Cage and a five- or six-piece orchestra would set up for the after-the-game dance.

It was a raucous, rambunctious gathering at Auburn Hall on those Friday nights.

Come to think of it, there just might be a Ghost of Christmas Past lurking today in the nearly-new Auburn City Council chambers at Auburn Hall. After all, today’s politicians and taxpayers are facing off in just about the same area as that fabled cage. Do you think they might bring the net back?