At the end of every basketball all-star game, a trophy is awarded to the Most Valuable Player. In 1959 the vote for MVP ended in a tie between Bob Petit and rookie Elgin Baylor. A tie had never happened before, and the officials obviously were not expecting one, because there was only one trophy to be awarded.

At this point Petit walked over to Baylor and shook his hand. “You take it, he told the young star. “I’ve won the award before. I can wait for my duplicate.”

Petit knew how much it meant to Baylor to win the award in his first pro season, and how proud he would be to walk off the court with it.

From The Giant Book of More Strange But True Sports Stories by Howard Liss. Illustrations by Joe Mathieu.