Spinning the Globe (18 page)

It was Inman Jackson.

The old man had been too slow to catch Bell, but he had kept running anyway, even when it appeared to be hopeless. With the game seemingly a lost cause, Inman had kept coming. No one in that arena, not even Abe Saperstein, understood the importance of that last shot more than Inman Jackson. No one had paid the dues that he had, in wear and tear on his body, in sweat and blood, playing sick and injured and in pain. And so he kept on running, and when the youngster Puggy Bell made the worst mistake of his career, it was the old pro who was there to snag the ball. He held it in a death grip in his big paws. Tarzan Cooper came running up and wrapped his arms around Inman, trying to snatch it away. But no one—not even the entire Rens team—could have pried that ball free. The final buzzer sounded with Cooper draped all over Inman Jackson, trying to wrest the ball away.

The game was over. The Trotters had won by 1 point, 37–36.

The next day, Sonny Boswell, who had scored 19 of the Trotters’ 37 points, was acclaimed as the star of the game, and rightfully so. “If the Rens could have tied Sonny Boswell’s hands behind him, the 1939 world champs might have repeated,” the
Defender
wrote. No sportswriter even mentioned Puggy Bell’s miscue or Inman Jackson’s game-saving rebound, or how he had run the entire length of the floor to snare it. But today, sixty-five years later, that is the one play, and the only play, that the Rens’ John Isaacs, the sole survivor from that game, still remembers. “If Puggy had hit that shot, we would have won by one point,” he says ruefully. “But Inman Jackson got the rebound, and the horn sounded.”

Undoubtedly, it was Sonny Boswell, the Trotters’ sensational young star, who had won the game, but it was their oldest player, the grand old warhorse, who had preserved it. In the history of basketball, there have been a number of legendary plays that have proved decisive in championship games. Some of the most memorable include the Boston Celtics’ John Havlicek stealing the ball to seal Game 7 of the 1965 Eastern Conference finals against the Philadelphia 76ers; Christian Laettner’s buzzer-beater in overtime against
Kentucky in 1992 to give Duke the NCAA East Region championship; and Michael Jordan’s twenty-foot jump shot in 1998 to bury the Utah Jazz and clinch the Chicago Bulls’ sixth NBA championship. In the storied history of the Harlem Globe Trotters, Inman Jackson’s final rebound against the Rens may be the most decisive play of all.

By all rights, the Globe Trotters’ victory over the Rens should have given them the world championship, but they actually had two more games to play. After the exultation of finally beating the Rens, one could have almost predicted a letdown in their next game. Tuesday night, in their semifinal game against the Syracuse Reds, Sonny Boswell was completely off his game, scoring only 6 points. Fortunately, as they had all year, other players picked up the slack. Babe Pressley and Duke Cumberland chipped in 8 points apiece, and Bernie Price added 7 more. More important, the Trotters’ defense allowed only three Syracuse players to score any field goals, which sealed their 34–24 win.

That victory put the Trotters in the championship game on Wednesday night against George Halas’s Chicago Bruins. The game should have been billed as an all-Chicago final, but the
Chicago Tribune
still hadn’t figured out, or accepted, that the Trotters were even from Chicago. “The Chicago Bruins and the Harlem Globe Trotters, a Negro team from Seattle, Wash., will battle for the championship,” the
Trib
inexplicably wrote.

The Bruins had been the obvious favorites of Chicago’s white press and had garnered the lion’s share of copy during the tournament. They were led by big Mike Novak and his former Loyola teammate Wibs Kautz, who had gone wild in the tournament, scoring 24 points in each of his last two games. In their semifinal win over the Washington Brewers, however, Novak had sprained his ankle and been forced to leave the game; his status for the championship game was questionable.

Despite Novak’s injury, the bookies had made the Bruins a 3–1 or 4–1 favorite over the Trotters, as the conventional wisdom was that Ted Strong could not possibly contain Novak, even if he wasn’t
100 percent. With the Trotters’ best defensive big man, Hilary Brown, disqualified by the tournament committee, the Trotters were so shorthanded that they dressed out only seven men for the game.

Sixty-five hundred fans turned out for the championship game on a chilly Wednesday evening. The crowd was mostly white and mostly rooting for the Bruins, although the Trotters did have one special contingent of cheerleaders: the New York Rens, who, despite their rivalry, knew that their ultimate loyalties lay with their race.

Early on, it appeared that the bookies might be right. With Novak hurting, Wibs Kautz took up the slack, hitting two straight buckets in the first thirty seconds to give the Bruins a 4–0 lead. But the Trotters then clamped down on Kautz, who would score only one more point the entire night. A few minutes later, a Sonny Boswell free throw tied the game at 4 apiece.

It was a sluggish first quarter, with both teams overanxious and unable to score. It was going to be an old-style brawl, with rough play under the boards, free-swinging elbows, and every shot contested. Referee Pat Kennedy was constantly bellowing out fouls, but neither team could hit from the line (the Bruins hit just 9 of 23 free throws all night, and the Trotters made only 5 of 16). In the first quarter alone, there were six lead changes, the score was tied five times, and the Trotters led 7–6 at the end of the period.

The scoring picked up in the second quarter, as the Bruins ran off 4 straight points, but Boswell, Strong, Price, and Cumberland all scored to give the Trotters their own 4-point advantage. Boswell was starting to heat up, which was bad news for the Bruins, and he gave the Trotters a 7-point lead. With a minute and a half left in the second quarter, still up by 7, the Trotters went into their half-court stall, and took what appeared to be a commanding 20–13 lead into halftime.

Globe Trotter fans were giddy, anticipating a world title, and the Trotter players might have gotten caught up in the delirium, because they came out lackadaisically after halftime and promptly let the Bruins right back in the game. The Bruins scored 7 straight points to tie the score, then took the lead outright. Despite his gimpy ankle, Mike Novak was beginning to wear down Ted Strong, and midway through the third quarter Strong picked up his fifth foul. The disqualification
of Hilary Brown once more came back to haunt the Trotters, as Abe had to call on Inman Jackson to defend the Bruins’ center. Inman had saved the game against the Rens, but this was asking too much of him, even with his great heart and courage. Inman was giving up six inches and forty pounds to Novak, and all he could do was foul to keep the bigger man at bay.

The third quarter was a disaster for the Trotters. They went from being ahead by 7 to being behind by one, 21–20, as the Bruins held them to one point in the entire period. It appeared that the emotional win over the Rens had taken too much out of them. So much had been riding on that game—perhaps they had been pointing to it
too much
—and the Globe Trotters appeared to have nothing left in the championship game.

The fourth quarter was more of the same, as the Bruins built an 8-point lead with only five and a half minutes to play. The Trotters had dug themselves into what appeared to be an insurmountable hole, and the players seemed “paralyzed,” according to the
Defender
.

But then, with their dreams of a world championship slipping away, the Trotters’ resolve stiffened. Babe Pressley hit a free throw, and Duke Cumberland connected on a long shot from outside. At the urging of assistant coach Leon Wheeler, Abe finally pulled Inman Jackson, who had drawn three personal fouls in his futile attempt to guard Novak, and replaced him with the only other player in uniform: Al Fawks, the former Western Reserve player from Cleveland, who had seen only limited action in one earlier game. Ten seconds after entering the game, Fawks hit a long set shot, and the Bruins’ lead was down to two, 29–27. Now it was the Bruins’ turn to go cold, as they hadn’t scored a point in nearly four minutes. Babe Pressley made a basket, and the score was tied.

Apparently doomed a few minutes earlier, the Trotters had fought their way back. Their fans came back to life. “The packed house was in a frenzy,” the
Defender
reported. Even the usually restrained
Herald-American
described the 6,500 fans as “on the verge of hysteria.”

There was a minute left in the game. The Trotters got the ball back and Bernie Price dribbled to center court, then, surprisingly, pulled up to take a shot. He was impossibly far out—
too
far out to be taking any kind of shot, particularly with the game on the line—but
he let fly anyway with a two-hand set shot. The fans watched the ball’s slow descent toward the hoop, then let out a collective gasp as it went through the net with a soft
swish.
The Trotters were ahead by 2, their first lead since early in the third quarter.

In the closing seconds of the game, three Bruin players missed free throws (indeed, the outcome of the game could have been different if
either
team had been able to connect from the free throw stripe). When the final gun sounded, there was bedlam on the court, as the Trotters’ players and fans rejoiced over their win. In the Globe Trotter locker room, players hugged each other, and Abe, Leon Wheeler, and trainer Dr. Powell Johnson held a triumphant “powwow.” On the other side, in the gloom of the Bruins’ locker room, owner George Halas “had little to say.” The Globe Trotters collected the $1,000 first prize, and Abe gave each player a $100 bonus. To no one’s surprise, Sonny Boswell was named the tournament’s Most Valuable Player.

The next day, Leo Fischer of the
Herald-American
praised the Trotters for their courageous comeback and called the game “as brilliant a contest as has ever been staged in these parts,” although he did throw a little cold water on their victory, attributing the Bruins’ loss, at least partly, to Novak being “crippled.” Fay Young of the
Chicago Defender
had no such reservations about the Trotters’ win, and even added a racial commentary to their triumph. “I have come to the conclusion that basketball is not a white man’s game,” he wrote. “The pale faces just don’t know how to play it.”

For the second year in a row, the South Side was celebrating a world championship. The unofficial mayor of Bronzeville hosted a party for the Trotters and the Rens at his Club DeLuxe, and even invited the Bruins, although none of the white players showed up. Nonetheless, the celebration lasted long into the evening. The Harlem Globe Trotters were champions of the world.

Eight months after capturing the world pro championship, the Globe Trotters got an unexpected bonus that might have been more valuable than the title itself. On the night of November 29, 1940, they hosted the inaugural All-Star Classic in Chicago Stadium, in front of the largest crowd ever assembled to watch a basketball game.

The All-Star Classic was another promotion dreamed up by the
Chicago Herald-American,
in hopes of capitalizing on the success of the 1940 pro tournament. The idea was to match the world professional champs against a team of the best college players in America, as chosen by a panel of thirty-six sports editors. The Globe Trotters just happened to be in the right place at the right time, having won the pro tournament the same year that the All-Star Classic debuted. It would prove to be the single most publicized game in their early history.

Abe recognized the marketing potential of this game early on, and began drumming up publicity weeks in advance. He told the press that the Trotters would be reporting to training camp a week early to prepare for the All-Stars. And instead of training on the South Side, as usual, they would be training in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, where they would scrimmage daily against the Sheboygan Redskins. This was one of many innovations that Abe would contribute to the sport, as the Trotters were one of the first professional teams to hold out-of-town training camps.

Abe’s own efforts to publicize the All-Star game were augmented by the
Herald-American,
which promoted the game with self-serving zeal. And the black press applauded the
Herald-American
’s willingness to showcase the game, even with a black team playing. As Wendell Smith wrote in the
Courier:
“Sports editor Ed Cochrane might have waited until the Trotters had fallen off the pedestal of cage supremacy and then put on his big game with a white quintet…. Sepia cagefans, I am sure, will repay his broadness and liberal attitude by jamming the portals of the Chicago Stadium on November 29!”

The College All-Stars, who were coached by Northwestern’s Dutch Lonborg, included Ralph Vaughn of USC, Bob Carpenter of Texas Tech, Ed Sadowski of Seton Hall, and Rex Ellis of Notre Dame.
*
The
Herald-American
ran lengthy stories on every aspect of the All-Star game. They had photos of the college boys arriving in Chicago, and daily practice reports. Their entire focus, however, was
on the
white
All-Stars; almost no mention was made of the Globe Trotters, who seemed to be incidental to the whole affair.

Nonetheless, the results of this marketing onslaught exceeded anyone’s expectations: 20,583 fans filled the cavernous Chicago Stadium. Abe would proudly claim it as a world record (until the Trotters broke it many times over). More impressive, it was a racially mixed crowd, perhaps the largest mixed gathering in U.S. sports history.

The pregame ceremonies reinforced the racial harmony, as the honorary “mascots” for each team, Miss All-Star and Miss Bronze America, were introduced at midcourt. The teams were introduced, then opera star John Pane-Gasser sang “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and the inimitable Pat Kennedy led the teams to center court for the opening tip-off.

With so much pregame publicity, the contest itself could have easily been a letdown, but it more than lived up to the hype. The All-Stars led for most of the first period, and took a 13–11 lead into the second quarter. They extended their lead to 18–12 midway through the second period, but Sonny Boswell, Babe Pressley, and Bernie Price got the Trotters back in the game, tying the score 20–20 at halftime. The score was tied again at the end of three quarters, 30–30, and during the final period the lead changed hands repeatedly. With two minutes to play, the Trotters held a 37–35 lead and, perhaps too cockily, started putting on the show, attempting to run out the clock. But the All-Stars intercepted a pass and scored, and then, with just seconds remaining, Ralph Vaughn of USC hit an apparent game-winning basket to give the All-Stars a 39–37 lead.