Spinning the Globe (28 page)

Then Goose got into the act. He took a pass down low in the pivot and, with Mikan hovering over him, faked as if he was going to shoot his hook, then stuffed the ball under his jersey and started walking away. Mikan looked to the ref for help, while Goose calmly stood near the foul line, his jersey bulging. The ref called a jump ball, which Mikan easily controlled, but who cared? The crowd was having a ball. A few minutes later, Goose again got the ball and started flailing his arms and waving the ball around. The crowd was really getting into it, and Mikan started enjoying the show himself. He let down his guard for an instant, and Goose whipped a pass right past his ear to Ermer Robinson, who went in for an easy layup.

By then, as the
Minneapolis Star
sadly noted, thousands of Globetrotter fans were chanting—“Baseball! Baseball!”—exhorting the Trotters to perform their classic skit. They never did, as that would have been rubbing it in a little too much. While the Trotters were
busy putting on the show, the Lakers scored the last 9 points of the game, but the outcome was never in doubt. The final score was 49–45, and even white sportswriters agreed that the Trotters could have won by more. Once again, the Trotters had done the impossible, defeating the mighty Lakers, the most formidable team in professional ball.

In the end, it was Sweetwater Clifton’s ability to neutralize Mikan that made the difference. Big George had scored two early field goals against Goose, but once Clifton started covering him, he made only two buckets the rest of the game. The Trotters also had a balanced attack, led by Goose with 14 points, Marques and Clifton with 11 each, Babe Pressley with 7, and Ermer Robinson with 6. For the Lakers, Mikan ended up with 19, but no other player had more than 7. Clearly, the absence of Jim Pollard and Swede Carlson was a major hindrance to the Lakers’ chances.

The first victory over the Lakers may have been more shocking, and certainly had a more spectacular ending, with Robinson’s last-second shot, but to some of the Trotters’ fans, the second win was more satisfying. They had not just beaten Whitey; they had sealed their victory by putting on the show. As Timuel Black recalled his reaction, and that of his friends, “We wanted to see a Trotter victory—
and the show.
We were waiting for the show, which made the victory that much sweeter.”

Ultimately, the second win had a much greater impact on the Globetrotters’ fortunes because of the coverage of the game on Movietone News. For twenty years, Abe had depended on his network of grizzled, stogie-chewing sportswriters to spread the Globetrotters’ fame across the land, in stories pounded out on Underwood or Royal typewriters, set in hot lead, and read by individual readers over their morning coffee. But the second Lakers game was Abe’s introduction to an entirely different medium—a
visual
medium—that could bring that game to millions of Americans in every town and neighborhood. Through the Movietone newsreel, those people would
experience
the victory over the Lakers as if they had been there in person. They would marvel at Marques Haynes’s dribbling and laugh at Goose Tatum stuffing the ball under his jersey, and know in their hearts—because the silver screen never lied—that the Harlem
Globetrotters were the most entertaining sports spectacle in the country.
*

Ever since he was a kid, Abe Saperstein had loved the movies. He had even come close to being
in
the movies himself, when he won the popularity contest at the Ravenswood Theater. His infatuation with Hollywood was still just as strong. On stifling days in the summer, when the electric fans in the Globetrotters’ office couldn’t keep up with Chicago’s climbing mercury, Abe would say, “Let’s get out of here!” and take the whole staff to lunch, and then to the movies on Randolph Street, where they’d sit in air-conditioned comfort and catch a weekday matinee. His all-time favorite movie was
The Al Jolson Story,
the saga of the little Jewish boy who makes it big, which he would watch over and over again. Now, for the first time in their history, the Harlem Globetrotters were
in
the movie theaters. It was just a fifty-second Movietone newsreel, but it was a harbinger of a new age that was dawning in America—and for the Globetrotters—in which
electronic
communication, via television tubes and transistors, would soon be mainlining the Harlem Globetrotters directly into every home in America.

O
n April 2, 1950, in Chicago Stadium, the site of so many decisive moments in Globetrotter history, the inaugural game of the most audacious promotion in American sports history, the World Series of Basketball, was played between the Harlem Globetrotters and the College All-Stars. It was the first of eighteen games on a three-week, 9,000-mile transcontinental tour of America, played in seventeen major cities before 181,000 fans.

Over the next twelve years, the World Series of Basketball would be witnessed by over
two million
fans and, at its peak, in the mid-1950s, would be the most popular basketball event in America, overshadowing the NCAA and NIT tournaments and the NBA finals. Its impact would still be reflected over fifty years later, in September 2002, when Larry Brown, coach of the 2004 world champion Detroit Pistons, was being inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts—the highest honor in the sport. In his acceptance speech, Brown said, “The greatest day I ever spent in basketball was when I was growing up in New York and my father took me to Madison Square Garden to see the Harlem Globetrotters play the College All-Stars.”

Only the mind of an Abe Saperstein could have conceived it. And only the front office staff he had assembled, led by Marie Linehan, could have pulled it off. It was the culmination of twenty years of promoting games in byways and whistle-stops across the land, now magnified on a grand scale to the largest cites and arenas in America.

The College All-Star tour was daring, and perhaps insane, on
many levels. First, the idea of a transcontinental tour—by
airplane
—was in itself a bold undertaking. Commercial air travel was still fairly uncommon, and many of the players, on both teams, had never flown in their lives. The expenses for such a tour were far beyond anything Abe and Marie had ever incurred. Airfare alone to fly a party of forty people (two teams, coaches, staff, technicians, orchestra, and halftime entertainers), in two chartered DC-3s, to seventeen different cities, one each day, from New York to Los Angeles, cost an estimated $25,000. That was more than the Globetrotters’ gross receipts for an entire season a few years earlier. Once they landed in a city, there were additional costs for ground transportation, hotels, salaries, state and federal taxes, liability insurance, publicity (newspaper ads, billboards, posters), stadium rentals (usually 30–40 percent of the gate, after expenses), lights, microphones, and union electricians. Multiply those headaches times seventeen straight days in seventeen different cities—it was enough to make any other sports promoter blanch. But not Abe.

And the logistics of moving that entourage from one end of the country to the other, and back again, all the while rotating players and coaches in and out, were staggering. That’s where Marie Linehan’s organizational skills came in. She sent each participant a detailed letter listing departure times for the United charter from Chicago to New York, baggage limitations, reservations at the Victoria Hotel on Fifty-first Street, and a reminder not to miss the dress rehearsal in Madison Square Garden.

Somehow, they pulled it off, and did it so successfully that it would become a template for even grander and more audacious tours. If it could be done across America, why not across Europe? South America? Asia? Hell, why not around the world?

The concept of professionals playing a team of college all-stars did not originate with Abe Saperstein but, as with many of his other successes, he recognized a great idea and capitalized on it. College all-star games had been played in various cities for decades, with assorted combinations of collegiate players. The Globetrotters had played many such games, including the most publicized one, the first annual All-Star Classic in 1940.

The vision of a College All-Star
tour
arose in March 1949. Just
three weeks after their second victory over the Lakers, the Trotters returned to Chicago Stadium to face the Midwest All-Stars, an amalgamation of players from DePaul, Notre Dame, Marquette, and Loyola. That game happened because the Chicago Stags, the local BAA franchise, were drawing poorly and asked Abe to headline a doubleheader, to help draw a crowd. Abe called Ray Meyer, the DePaul coach, and asked him to cobble together an “all-star” team. “It was really just a lark,” Meyer recalls. “The Stags were losing money and asked Abe to play a doubleheader. They paid us twenty-five dollars apiece for the game.”

In the aftermath of the Trotters’ great triumph over the Lakers, however, 14, 451 people showed up for the game. The Trotters, who were without Sweetwater Clifton (he was out with a fever), played listlessly, and lost 51–50, on a last-second shot. Afterward, the
Defender
lambasted the Trotters for being out of condition, and claimed they had “lost some prestige” by letting a pickup team of college boys beat them.

To Abe, however, the game was an epiphany. “Abe saw that it was a gold mine,” says Ray Meyer. The idea developed to have the Globetrotters play the top college seniors in the country on a cross-country tour. It would begin in early April, after the NCAA tournament (so the players’ college eligibility was already used up) and during spring break for most colleges. Abe adapted a similar model to the one that the
Chicago Herald-American
had been using for a decade with its All-Star Classic, by having a panel of college coaches nominate the players. In fact, Abe hired Harry Hannin, the promoter of the Classic (and the World Pro Tournament), to direct the College All-Star tour; and he hired Ray Meyer to coach the team. Together, Abe and Hannin came up with the high-minded title—“The World Series of Basketball”—which echoed baseball’s fall classic.

It was the perfect convergence of all their skills. Hannin and Meyer already had contacts with the top college coaches in the country, who would nominate the players, while Abe had the contacts with the promoters and arena managers to book the games, and with his army of sportswriters to promote them.

Some two dozen players were chosen for the All-American squad, although only about half suited up for any game. In another
ingenious move, Abe and Hannin decided to rotate some of the players during the tour—ostensibly to keep players from missing class when their spring break ended—but more important to ensure that local college stars were playing the games in their own geographic areas, to guarantee a turnout of the home fans. And they did the same thing with coaches: Meyer was the head coach for the entire tour, assisted by Clair Bee of Long Island University, but they also had “honorary coaches” from every region (in many cases, the coaches of the top All-Stars), who were rotated in for a few games. Using this method, they brought in some of the most well-known coaches in the country, including Frank McGuire, Honey Russell, Branch McCracken, Ed Jucker, and John Wooden. It was an irresistible combination—the top players in the country
and
their coaches, playing in front of hometown fans, against the most celebrated pro team in the nation. And it proved to be astoundingly successful.

The first year, the tour began in Chicago, ended in Washington, D.C., and included stops in Cleveland, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, St. Louis, Detroit, Boston, and Philadelphia, among others. In later years, the series typically began with a doubleheader in Madison Square Garden, worked its way across the country to Los Angeles, then back east to Boston Garden for the finale.

The World Series was a sensation from the start. Thirteen of the eighteen games were sellouts, and all-time attendance records were set in six cities. But the tour grew even bigger as time went on. In 1951, a world attendance record for a basketball game was set, when 31, 648 people came out on a wet night in the Rose Bowl.
*
By 1952, all but two games were played before standing-room-only audiences, including 35, 548 fans for a doubleheader at Madison Square Garden. In 1953, the tour was expanded to twenty-one games in
nineteen days, total attendance for the series peaked at 308, 451, and new records were set in fifteen cities, including a new American record of 36, 256 at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

The World Series of Basketball included more than just great basketball; it was a show business extravaganza. At halftime of every game, Abe would bring out several vaudeville acts, including jugglers, Ping-Pong champs, baton twirlers, accordionists, hand balancers, even Cab Calloway.

Over the years, the College All-American teams included some of the greatest college players of the era, many of whom went on to illustrious pro careers: Paul Arizin, Bob Cousy, Bill Sharman, Bill Garrett, Frank Ramsey, Cliff Hagan, Gene Shue, Larry Costello, Tom Gola, Jack Twyman, Chet Forte, Guy Rodgers, Connie Dierking, K. C. Jones, Walt Bellamy, Bill Bridges, and Tom Heinsohn. In 1954, Abe was applauded for selecting the first two African American players to the All-American team (at the suggestion of the
Pittsburgh Courier
), both of whom, Willie Thomas and Tex Harrison, went on to play with the Trotters (Harrison is still with the organization, as the Trotters’ longtime coach).

The pace of the tour was punishing. The college boys were used to playing a game or two a week, but now they were playing every night. “It was a grind—twenty-one games in a row,” Ray Meyer says. “The Globetrotters had such an advantage, because they were used to that. They could relax better than anybody I’ve ever seen. They would get on the plane and before the engines started up they were asleep, and they’d sleep until we’d get off. But we could not sleep, so my guys got pretty worn down. We would play well the first week or so, but after that we were through.”

The All-Stars had another disadvantage, which was having no practice time before the tour began. “I’d meet the players the night before the first game and we’d talk about what we were going to do,” says Meyers. He had no time to install an offensive system, other than a few basic give-and-go and pick-and-roll plays. “But we had great players,” he says. “I’ve never had that kind of talent before.”

And great talent can overcome many disadvantages. The Globetrotters had their hands full with the college boys almost every game—it was like the Trotters and Lakers every night—and seldom
got a big enough lead to put on the show. The first year, the Trotters won eleven games but lost seven—the worst winning percentage in their history, by far. In 1954, Frank Ramsey and Cliff Hagan, who had carried Kentucky to a 25–0 record, led the All-Stars to three straight wins and a 6–15 record. The next year, Tom Gola, of LaSalle, established a World Series scoring record of 348 points, and the All-Stars won ten and lost fourteen. And in 1956, the All-Stars won seven of the last ten games, and the Trotters barely won the series with an 11–10 record.

After twenty years of winning over 90 percent of their games, Abe did not take gracefully to losing. “Abe was a madman,” Meyer says, laughing. “He had never experienced losing before, and he would go crazy.” In fact, Abe would get so mad when the All-Stars won that Meyer would avoid him by walking back to the hotel, rather than riding on the team bus. If the All-Stars won several games in a row, tour director Harry Hannin would warn Meyer, “If you guys beat them any more, Abe will send everybody home.” And one year in Boston, on the final night of the tour, the All-Stars started putting on the Trotters’ show, with one guy doing a dribbling routine and the others jumping in the lane on free-throw attempts. The crowd was howling, but when Meyer sneaked a peek at the Trotters’ bench, he didn’t like what he saw. “Abe was turning green,” he says, laughing. Without hesitating, Meyer got up and left the building. “I didn’t even see the end of the game,” he says.

“It was the only time in my career that it paid to lose,” Meyer says. “When the Trotters won, Abe would be in a good mood and take us out to dinner, or give the players some extra money.” Still, Meyer is proud of the fact that he won more games against the Trotters than any other coach in history.

Abe was so obsessed with winning that he wasn’t above planting a stooge or two on the All-American team to give the Trotters an advantage. A panel of college coaches
nominated
the college players, but Abe had the final decision, and he would send out his chief scout, Phil Brownstein, to check out the nominees. In 1955, Brownstein’s scouting report on one All-American center read: “Very weak defensively—easy to go around…Bulls his way in, not much of [a] ball handler—no fakes around basket—looked bad both nites [
sic
].” Based
on that critique, you might think the player would be scratched from the list, but Brownstein recommended just the opposite: “Use on All Star college squad—tell man playing against him, he’s easy to fake & get around.” This player did, in fact, play ten games on the tour, averaging 3.5 points per game.

The two teams played hard on the court, but they traveled together
*
for nearly three weeks on a chartered United DC-6, and friendships inevitably developed. There were long-running poker games in the back of the plane that carried over from city to city. For many of the players on
both
teams, it was the first time in their lives that they had experienced a racially mixed environment. In fact, that United DC-6 may have been the most integrated place in America in the early 1950s.

The only ugly incident that Ray Meyer recalled in ten years of such tours was when a new All-American player unsuspectingly sat in Goose Tatum’s “reserved” seat on the plane. “I thought Goose was gonna kill him,” Meyer says. But Goose was notoriously moody and unpredictable, and would sometimes “go off” on his own teammates, so that explosion was not necessarily racially motivated.

However, not all racial differences melted away. In later years, both teams stayed in the same hotels, but in the early 1950s the white players were often housed in first-class hotels, while the Trotters were relegated to “colored” hotels in black neighborhoods. This was true even in some of the bigger cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. And today, some former Globetrotters still resent how much money Abe paid the white players, compared with what they were making. The first year, when the tour arrived in Louisville for the fourth game of the Series (by which point Abe realized it was going to be a smashing success), he told the All-Stars, “Tear up your contracts—they’ve just been doubled.” According to Ray Meyer, from then on Abe paid the All-Stars $2,500 apiece for the full tour, plus $7.50 per diem for meals. Those players who only rotated in for some of the tour got approximately $100 per game (in
1955, for example, one player received $1,250 for twelve games). In addition, the All-Stars were given an assortment of gifts and mementos, including a specially engraved Elgin “All-American” wristwatch, a diamond-studded basketball charm and cuff links, an RCA portable radio, and a Coca-Cola Achievement plaque.