Spinning the Globe (55 page)

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A note on spelling: until approximately 1947, Globe Trotters was generally spelled as two words, and I have followed that convention throughout the book.

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The festering conditions would lead to a general strike by 20,000 garment workers in 1908. Their union won a small wage increase, but demands for increased fire safety were rejected. Tragically, three years later, a fire at the Triangle shirtwaist factory killed 146 workers, many of them young women.

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Abe would later claim to have attended the University of Illinois for about a year, but the university has no record of his ever enrolling.

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In an October 26, 1951, interview with Red Smith in the
New York Herald-Tribune
, Abe Saperstein claimed that “the first place we played” was in Hinckley “against the Hinckley high school team,” in front of 400 people. However,Abe’s story was contradicted by the original Hinckley players themselves, who said, in a 1959 interview, that it was not the high school team (it was the Hinckley Merchants) and it was not in 1927. In the Red Smith article, Abe hints at what may have been the origin of the “first game” story: he says that in 1947, some people from Hinckley wrote him, asking if the Trotters would come back and play a game, and when they arrived, Hinckley put on a “big old fashioned country barbeque and party.” From that point on, he began holding “anniversary” games in Hinckley.

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In the original article, Strauss wrote that the team wanted to play in Wisconsin and Minnesota, but he insists today that was a mistake, that Brookins had said Wisconsin and Michigan—which is more likely.

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In a 1959 newspaper article, several of the original Hinckley players suggested that their first game against the Globe Trotters was in January 1928, but J Michael Kenyon has uncovered a newspaper account that puts the game on January 21, 1929. A surviving box score from that game supports that. Pullins and Toots Wright are both listed in the box score, but in January 1928 Pullins was in the middle of his senior season at Wendell Phillips and Toots Wright was playing regularly for the Savoy Big Five. Neither was likely to be barnstorming with Abe.

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Runt Pullins would later claim that Abe got only a regular share, so gate receipts were split six ways. But Abe said that he got a double share, which seems more likely, given his additional expenses.

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Before returning to the Savoy Big Five for the 1930–31 season, Hudson had started another team, the Chicago Hottentots, which included Tommy Brookins and Randolph Ramsey.

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A few years later, the three-second rule was expanded to include any player in the lane, whether he had the ball or not. And the confusing issue of whether his back was to the basket or not was dropped.

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This statement contains at least two, if not three, factual errors: the Trotters were not from New York, were not seven years old, and were not, most likely, organized by Abe.

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Today, the University of Illinois has no record of Abe Saperstein having ever been enrolled at any of its campuses.

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The two Hearst papers would merge into the
Chicago Herald-American
later in 1939.

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Two of the selected players, Ralph Giannini of Santa Clara and Jim McNatt of Oklahoma State, decided not to play after the AAU’s gray eminences, who were still haunting Abe Saperstein, warned that the college players would lose their amateur status if they played the Globe Trotters.

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Before the oil boom in 1921, El Dorado had no black high school, so children had to go to Little Rock or Pine Bluff to get a high school education. But in 1923, Washington began expanding to include the upper grades and graduated its first class in 1927.

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That year, the Clowns were based in Cincinnati, but would soon move to Indianapolis.

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That year’s world title was captured by the Washington Bears, composed almost entirely of former Rens, including Johnny Isaacs, Pop Gates,Tarzan Cooper, Dolly King, and Sonny Woods.

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Karstens passed away in January 2005. Other than Abe, Karstens is usually credited with being the only other white Globe Trotter, but there have been at least four others. Bunny Leavitt, the world-record free-throw shooter, apparently played a few games in the mid-1930s; Ritchie Nichol, a white ballplayer from Nainamo, British Columbia, played one game for the Trotters in 1944, as a substitute for the injured Babe Pressley; and in December 1944, after three Trotters missed a train to Winona, Minnesota, two white assistant coaches from St. Mary’s College played for the Trotters.

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In fact, during the 1944 World Pro Tournament, Boswell, Cumberland, and Clayton all played for the Trotters, who were eliminated in the semifinals by the Brooklyn Eagles. The Trotters rebounded from that loss to defeat the New York Rens and earn third place in the tourney. It would be the final game between the two great rivals, with the Trotters holding a two games to one advantage.

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In March 1932, a player for the Spring Grove Independents scored 32 points against the Trotters.

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In January 1946, Abe had even attempted to launch his own baseball league, the West Coast Negro Baseball League, but it did not survive its first season.

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Wendell Smith, the longtime sports editor of the
Pittsburgh Courier,
and the most influential black sportswriter in the country, had moved to Chicago to become a columnist for the
Herald-American.

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According to Vertes Zeigler, Abe gave most players $100, but gave $150 to Ermer Robinson and $200 to Goose. In 1987, Sam Wheeler claimed that each player got a $1,000 bill.

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The effect at the box office was immediate: four days after the Trotters’ win, the Trotters played before 13,000 in Boston Garden, the largest crowd ever to watch a basketball game in Boston.

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The Rose Bowl game would make the
Guinness Book of World Records
, but the record lasted for only five months, until the Trotters set a new world record in Berlin. It was probably the
least
competitive game in the entire history of the Series, as a portable floor was laid directly over the football field, and the combination of falling dew and condensation caused water to puddle on the floor. The players were slipping and sliding so badly (the referee even fell on his behind when he walked out for the opening tip) that Ray Meyer told his All-Americans, “Don’t hurt yourself; just let the Trotters put on the show.”

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The two teams flew on separate DC-3s the first year, but after that flew together on a chartered United DC-6.

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The Trotters had brought along their own opposition team, the Stars of America (with Bob Karstens on the roster), and their own referee, Elliott Hasan, whose diary provided most of the details of this tour.

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Clifton finished his playing career in 1962 with the Chicago Majors, in Abe’s failed American Basketball League. Clifton (whose legal name was actually Clifton Nathaniel) then bought a cab and drove that until his death, in 1990, at age sixty-two.

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After a six-year hiatus, Abe and the Lakers agreed to restart the series in 1958, but the deal fell apart after one game, due to a dispute over the selection of referees and the use of NBA rules (such as the twenty-four-second clock).

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The next day, the West Berlin Boxing Commission reversed the referee’s disqualification of Robinson and ruled the bout a “no-decision,” although two members of the commission resigned in protest. The referee was later suspended for failing to complete a ten-count after Robinson knocked Hecht down in the first round and for giving Hecht extra time between the first and second rounds to recover.

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Owens landed awkwardly in the broad jump pit and hurt his ankle and had to hobble off the field, assisted by Marques Haynes and Sam Wheeler. He was later treated by a doctor.

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Abe’s contract with Columbia Pictures called for him to pay the players, rather than the studio, supposedly at the minimum rates in the Screen Actors Guild contract.

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The Globetrotters had been invited to London as part of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation.

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At least by 1961, if not before, Globetrotter player contracts did contain such language.

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The Watkins was the most celebrated black-owned hotel in L. A.; it was where Duke Ellington and other famous entertainers stayed in the 1940s and ’50s.

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In February 1954, a federal district court judge ruled in Abe’s favor, ordering Marques to discontinue using any variation of “Globetrotters” in his advertising and remove stars from his uniforms, which were similar to the ones on the Trotters’ uniforms.

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Kline’ Never Lose,
is an inspiring memoir of his years with the Trotters, his battle with drug addiction, and his eventual attainment of a Ph.D.

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Bevo Francis spent two years playing for the Boston Whirlwinds, an opposition team, then was drafted by the Philadelphia Warriors but turned down Eddie Gottlieb’s contract offer and went home to Ohio, where he worked in the steel mills.

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Tragically, Rocky Saperstein died two nights later, in Denver, when he collapsed just before halftime and died of a heart attack in the locker room.

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The House of David team, which played on the doubleheader, supplied portable lights for this game, making it the first night game in Wrigley Field history.

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Years later, Russell would write in his memoirs that Abe had purportedly mentioned a figure of $50,000 in the press.

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Clayton was also a boxing referee, and he was the first African American to referee a heavyweight championship fight: the Ezzard Charles–Jersey Joe Walcott bout in June 1952.

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At that time, a person making $42,000 was in the 69 percent tax bracket, but at $65,000 the rate was 78 percent.

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Hillard was shot to death by his wife in March 1977, at age forty-five.

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When the Trotters made their first visit to Czechoslovakia, they were not allowed to bring any Czech money out of the country, so Abe bartered to bring Czechoslovakian folk artists on tour with the Trotters.

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Hawkins sued the NBA and won reinstatement in 1969.

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The most unique
Sports Spectacular
broadcast took place in November 1963, in London, when the Trotters played the “Lord Taveners,” a group of “sporting rogues” made up of actors, journalists, and TV personalities, whose “Twelfth Man” was Prince Philip.The game, a complete spoof, was a benefit to raise money for youth sports programs, and ended with Prince Philip serving champagne to the Globetrotters.

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Based on Abe’s oft-repeated claim that the Trotters played their first game on January 7, 1927.

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His letters had a characteristic style and structure, with the opening paragraphs taken up with a travelogue description of where he’s been; and he favored Walter Winchell’s trademark use of ellipses to set off sentences or clauses—so much that Marie Linehan adopted it, too.

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The commonly accepted view of the ABL’s origin is that Abe got angry after the NBA refused to sell him the Minneapolis Lakers in May 1960, but he was actually sending out query letters to prospective owners a year before that, in April 1959, just one month after Gottlieb convinced Wilt Chamberlain to leave the Trotters for the NBA. Abe held a meeting in Los Angeles with interested arena owners, and undertook negotiations with NBA commissioner Maurice Podoloff. By the time the NBA’s Board of Governors approved the Lakers’ move to Los Angeles, in May 1960, Abe had already announced his new league.

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Connie Hawkins, who led the ABL in scoring with a 27-point average, signed with the Trotters after the ABL collapsed. Several former Trotters, including Sweetwater Clifton and Govoner Vaughn, played for the Chicago Majors or other ABL teams.

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The All-Star tour had not been held in 1959, because of the Pan Am Games, or in 1960, because of the Olympics.

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Robinson had also coached the Oakland entry in the failed American Basketball League.

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In fact, Naomi’s behavior after Goose’s death seemed so odd that his family began to question whether Goose had died from natural causes. A week after Goose died, Naomi gave away Reece’s two dogs, and two months later, she packed them both up and moved to Barbados, where she opened two restaurants. She cut all ties with Goose’s family, and threw away all photos and mementos that referred to him. They stayed gone five years, and by the time they returned to the States, young Reece had lost all traces of the black side of the family. He would not reconnect with them for nearly forty years.