Spinning the Globe (29 page)

In contrast, in the early years of the tour the Globetrotter players received only their regular monthly salaries (although by 1961, they were getting paid time and a half for the three-week tour). They got no extra money for playing on the tour; to the contrary, there was fierce competition among all of the Trotter units and farm teams to be selected to the team. Abe’s attitude seemed to be that they were lucky to be chosen for the tour, so they shouldn’t complain about the money. At that time, rookies were typically starting at $300 a month, and many veterans—including Marques Haynes—were drawing only slightly more. So white All-Stars making $2,500 for the full three-week tour, and even those making $100 per game for a partial tour, were making much more money than the typical Globetrotter. Plus, Abe reportedly paid the Trotters less per diem (only $5 per day) than the All-Stars. When one Globetrotter, Josh Grider, complained about that inequity, Abe’s response was, “A Negro doesn’t need as much money as a white man.” His rationale, apparently, was that the white players were eating in higher-priced restaurants than the black players, either because they weren’t allowed in, or because the black players preferred “soul food” joints. In either case, it deeply offended Grider and other Trotters who heard the story.

By the end of the first All-American tour, in April 1950, it was the most acclaimed road show in American sports. And beyond the attendance records and gate receipts, it was an unprecedented public relations triumph. Until then, Globetrotter games had been
local
news, covered by the local press in the cities where they played. The College All-American tour, however, was a
national
news story covered by the United Press and put out on the national wire. With this stroke of genius, Abe had devised a way to splash the Trotters across the sports pages of newspapers all across America—from the
New York Times
to the
Berkshire County Eagle
—for three straight weeks! Baseball’s World Series might last ten days, at most, if it went to seven
games. The NFL championship was over in three hours. Even the Olympics lasted only two weeks. But the World Series of Basketball went on for twenty-one days!

Having conquered America, Abe next set out to conquer the world. The Globetrotters had already been to Mexico, Cuba, Canada, Alaska, and Hawaii, but now they would at last become true globe-trotters. On May 3, 1950, one week after the College All-Star tour, Abe and ten players took off from Idlewild Airport in New York bound for Lisbon, Portugal. In many ways, it was like turning back the clock twenty years. They were traveling in a Pan American Clipper instead of an old Model T, and they were on their way to Europe instead of Cut Bank, Montana, but, as in the old days, they were heading into the wilderness as complete unknowns. For that matter, their sport was also unknown, as basketball was in its infancy in much of Europe. The Globetrotters left the United States at their peak of popularity but arrived in Lisbon wondering if anyone would even notice.

Once again, however, Abe had worked his public relations magic. He had sent Harry Hannin over as an advance man, to work the local press, and so the team was met at the airport by the directors of the Sporting Club of Portugal and a host of reporters and photographers. The Globetrotters’ arrival turned into an hour-long photo shoot. That night, the Trotters played their first European game in an open-air stadium in Coimbra with seats for five thousand. Seven thousand people showed up.
*

In Coimbra, the Trotters were facing two challenges: the fans’ ignorance about basketball and a daunting language barrier. Neither one mattered. The Portuguese laughed just as hard at Goose Tatum’s clowning as the crowds had in Madison Square Garden. Indeed, it might have made Goose a better showman, because he had to find ways to get his comedy across without words. The Trotters, it was clear, spoke the universal language of joy.

After the game, the fans mobbed the players, asking for autographs, reaching out to touch them, not wanting them to leave. Each player was given a bottle of champagne, and the Trotters had to have a police escort to get out of the arena.

It was the same everywhere they went. In Oporto, police were stationed outside the Hotel Imperio to disperse the crowds that clogged the street, waiting for a player sighting. It was as if the Trotters were movie stars or international celebrities—which, by the time they left Europe, they were. Before the tour, Abe had shipped over the official Globetrotter bus, with “Harlem Globetrotters—Magicians of Basketball” emblazoned across the side, and as they drove the big school bus through towns and villages in Portugal’s countryside, crowds gathered wherever they went. In Oporto, they played three sold-out games, then flew back to Lisbon, the capital, and played two sellouts there, with top government officials in attendance. The fans were so enamored of the Globetrotters that 4,000 people showed up for an unannounced practice.

From Lisbon, they went to Paris, where they held a giant press conference and ball-handling exhibition for 200 news reporters and every newsreel company in Europe. Then it was on to Geneva, Switzerland, for three more sellouts.

Next up was London, where basketball, which was known as “net ball,” was considered a “sissy sport” played only by girls. After their superstar treatment in Portugal, France, and Switzerland, the Globetrotter players were surprised to find that one American tradition had followed them to London: racial prejudice. The Globetrotters were not allowed to stay in the city proper, but had to stay in a small hotel on the outskirts of London.

Their first game was played at the Empire Pool and Sports Arena, adjoining Wembley Stadium, in front of 8,000 specially invited guests and a throng of movie, TV, and newspaper reporters. Abe was so concerned about the British public’s lack of understanding of basketball that he hired a British announcer to give a detailed explanation of the game as it went along. He need not have worried. “We were a hit from the beginning,” recalls former Trotter Frank Washington. It helped that the game was broadcast nationally on British television, and was the
only
show on the air during that time slot. After that first
game, Abe’s worries were over. The Trotters played five straight sellouts in London, and the British promoters begged Abe to add another game to accommodate the demand, “No, Aunt Agatha,” one British newsman enthused, “this isn’t anything like the netball at your girls’ school. In fact, it isn’t like anything you’ve ever seen.” As for the British announcer, the crowds actually started booing him, feeling that his long-winded explanations were interfering with the action, and his services were dispensed with quickly.

From England, they flew to Belgium, for games in Antwerp, Brussels, and Liège. Then they returned by train to Paris, where they spent a week playing to sellout crowds at night and sightseeing during the day. Six more games were scheduled in the south of France, including one in Nancy, a night game in an outdoor stadium, which was rained out. Or so they thought. A downpour began in the afternoon and continued right up until game time. The Trotters were already packing their bags to catch an early train to Nice when the local promoter called, in a dither, to ask where they were. Ten thousand people were sitting in the rain, waiting patiently. The Trotters changed into their uniforms and played in the rain. Goose Tatum showed up wearing a derby hat and an old-fashioned striped bathing suit from the 1920s, and Marques Haynes did his dribbling act holding an umbrella in one hand. The crowd stayed until the very end.

The Harlem Globetrotters had taken Europe by storm. The crowds embraced the players as if they were royalty, and, other than the one regrettable experience with the London hotel, the Trotters saw no signs of racial prejudice. In fact, they were treated much better in Europe than in the United States. “Absolutely—we were treated like kings,” says Frank Washington. “I had to look in the mirror to see that I was black. People opened up their arms to us. We were down with ambassadors, kings, and queens.”

It wasn’t just the fans who welcomed them. Unknowingly, the Harlem Globetrotters also had become a propaganda weapon in the cold war. In Oporto, Portugal, the United States vice consul, Leland C. Altaffer, sent a detailed report on their visit to the State Department, saying: “It is believed that [the Globetrotters] made an unusually wide and deep impression of open friendliness both inter-racially and internationally.”

After one game, the U.S. consul told the players, “Thank God for you guys, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened here. We’ve gotten more cooperation out of these people [the Portuguese government] since you’ve played here than we’ve ever gotten.” In Geneva, the U.S. consul and other foreign diplomats were honored as special guests at one game. And after witnessing the fanatical response toward the Trotters wherever they went, the U.S. State Department would begin a deliberate campaign to use the Trotters to counteract Soviet propaganda about the oppression of blacks in America.

After their blitzkrieg across Europe, the Trotters boarded an Air France flight to Morocco. In Casablanca, the Trotters played before the sultan and his court. They continued across North Africa, to Algiers, where they toured the famed Casbah, which turned out to be a filthy slum, with narrow alleys, open sewers, and hordes of beggars. Most of the players were frightened or repulsed by it, but Goose Tatum found something soothing about the mysterious place and would disappear into the Casbah for hours. One day, he invited Frank Washington to join him. “Come on, Wash,” he said, “let’s go to the Casbah.” Thinking it was an exotic nightclub, Washington agreed. “Hell, it was a den of thieves,” he says, laughing. “I was glad to get the hell out.”

From Algiers, the Trotters flew back across the Mediterranean in a Douglass Skymaster to Milan, Italy, where they played before 21,000 people in a stadium erected by Mussolini. They played in Milan, Genoa, and Bologna, spent two days sightseeing in Rome, then crossed the border into West Germany, where they played Munich, West Berlin, Strasbourg, and Metz. The tour ended with five glorious days of sightseeing in Paris, before they came home on the ocean liner
Caronia,
arriving back in New York in early August.

They had been gone for three months, had played seventy-three games, winning all but one, before half a million fans. They had visited fourteen countries, had played in nine, and had won millions of new fans. The Harlem Globetrotters were the kings of the sports world.

For Abe Saperstein, it had been the headiest twelve months of his life, with one extraordinary triumph after another. There was the second victory over the Lakers, the debut in Madison Square Garden, the
Movietone and Paramount newsreels, the College All-Stars series, the first European tour, and a record 1.5 million fans who had seen them that season. The Globetrotters’ headquarters in Chicago finally looked the part of a world-class organization, as Abe had moved into a modern suite of offices on North Dearborn Street, in the heart of the Loop. Plus, he had opened a New York office on the seventy-sixth floor of the Empire State Building, staffed by his sister Fay and publicity director Walter Kennedy (later NBA commissioner).

It was a story that a Hollywood screenwriter could have written: a rags-to-riches tale of the immigrant Jewish boy and five black ballplayers, traveling across America in a leaky Model T, who were now the toast of three continents. In fact, a Hollywood screenwriter
was
writing it. Alfred Palca, a publicist for Twentieth Century-Fox, had made a movie deal with Abe and had sold a script to Columbia Pictures, which had scheduled filming of
The Harlem Globetrotters
to begin in October 1950.

It had been a magnificent year.

However, even as Abe was basking in the glory of those accomplishments, profound changes were occurring in the American basketball universe that would shake the foundations of his empire. Like a Greek tragedy, at his greatest moment of glory, with his chest swollen with pride, the seeds of his downfall were already being sown. The seeds would lie dormant for many years, during which, to all outward appearances, the Harlem Globetrotters would grow ever more popular and successful. Eventually, however, the seeds would germinate and, like a lowly weed that forces its way through a concrete slab, send out wiry tendrils that would crack through the walls of Abe’s business empire and bring down all that he had built.

The first symptom of trouble in Abe’s world occurred on April 25, 1950, as the Trotters were packing for Europe, when Charles Cooper, of Duquesne University, was drafted by the Boston Celtics, becoming the first African American to be chosen by the NBA. Allegedly, when Celtics’ owner Walter Brown announced his selection of Cooper in the second round, a hush fell over the hotel room where the NBA owners were gathered.

“Walter, don’t you know he’s a colored boy?” another owner asked.

“I don’t give a damn if he’s striped, plaid, or polka-dot!” Brown replied. “Boston takes Chuck Cooper of Duquesne!”

Once the Celtics broke the color line, the Washington Capitols selected two black players: Earl Lloyd, a six-foot-six center from West Virginia State, in the ninth round; and Harold Hunter, from North Carolina Central, in the tenth.

For Abe, the drafting of Cooper and Lloyd was disastrous—not for what it meant to the NBA, but for what it meant to the Trotters. Just a few weeks earlier, on April 1, Cooper had signed a contract with the Trotters and had played in all eighteen games against the College All-Stars. Earl Lloyd had also donned a Globetrotter uniform in early April, for a one-week tour, after which Abe told the press that he planned to offer Lloyd a contract after he graduated from college. Instead, two of the top black players in the country, whom Abe would have certainly signed a year earlier, were lost to the NBA.

For three years, Abe had kept the faltering league afloat by playing doubleheaders on NBA cards. Originally, the Trotters would play the first game and two NBA teams would play the “feature” game, but so many fans would leave after the Trotters’ game that the NBA had started scheduling the Trotters in the nightcap. Now, the league was showing its gratitude by stealing two of “his” ballplayers. He didn’t react to that prospect any better than he had taken to losing seven games to the College All-Stars. According to several published accounts (including Wilt Chamberlain’s autobiography), Abe “went crazy” when he heard the news. Two days after the draft, he reportedly threatened the NBA owners, saying that the Globetrotters would never play in Boston or Washington again. Celtic owner Walter Brown, whose team was drowning in debt, nonetheless refused to back down. “As far as I’m concerned,” he reportedly said, “Abe Saperstein is out of the Boston Garden right now.”