Spinning the Globe (39 page)

The ABL started play in 1961, with eight teams, including the Cleveland Pipers, owned by thirty-year-old shipping magnate George Steinbrenner. But the new league was in trouble from the beginning. Abe scheduled the Globetrotters for doubleheaders, to draw crowds, but the ABL lost $1.5 million in its first season. Halfway into its second season, Steinbrenner attempted to bolt to the NBA and in January 1963, the ABL collapsed. Abe lost $300,000 of his own money.
†
Five years later, the American Basketball Association (ABA) would be formed and would incorporate most of Abe’s innovations, including the three-point shot and a red-white-and-blue ball.

In the middle of the ABL fiasco, Abe tried again to single-handedly revive vaudeville. In April 1961, he launched the “World of
Music,” a two-month-long tour headlined by three obscure singers from Europe and Olga James, an African American singer who had starred opposite Harry Belafonte in
Carmen Jones.
The show was a disaster, folded after only a few weeks, and cost Abe another $75,000. He was stuck in the past and still in love with vaudeville, which blinded him to new opportunities. He was reportedly approached about booking a rising young foursome from Liverpool, England, for a tour of the United States, but declined, saying skeptically, “What’s a Beatle?”

Instead of focusing on the Globetrotters, he kept expanding into other sports or show business ventures. In 1965, he bankrolled an overseas tour of the Ice Capades, which, in his words, turned into “a Frankenstein.” The Ice Capades lost $24,000 in Hawaii, another $30,000 in Europe and Australia. With the losses mounting, Abe sent a telegram to Joe Anzivino, a Globetrotters’ advance man who was managing the Ice Capades tour, suggesting desperate measures:

It was bad enough to lose money on peripheral ventures, but he also was having setbacks with the Globetrotters. The College All-Star tour, which had been one of his most successful promotions since 1950, came to an abrupt end in 1962.
*
The AAU’s gray eminences, who had been haunting Abe for decades, effectively killed it by ruling that college seniors who played on the All-Star tour would lose the remainder of their college scholarships. Since the tour was scheduled during spring break, players would have had to front their tuition and room and board for the last few months of college. Even prior to that ruling, attendance for the College All-Star series had been dropping steadily since the mid-1950s, as the NCAA and NIT tournaments grew in popularity, but the AAU ruling was the final
blow. Another of Abe’s old standbys, the summer baseball park tour, also ended in 1964; once again, lagging attendance was the culprit.

In some ways, the Trotters’ increased TV exposure was hurting them at the box office, as fans now had the option of sitting in the comfort of their living rooms, instead of buying a ticket, to watch the show.

In 1964, the Globetrotters had one of the worst seasons in their history. The regular tour did so poorly that Abe was forced to lay off one entire unit and some of his staff. Among the casualties was Ermer Robinson, one of the all-time Trotter greats, who had been coaching for Abe since the mid-1950s.
*
Over the years, Abe had released hundreds of ballplayers, and had become so inured to it that he often used a form letter to break the news. But Ermer Robinson had been one of Abe’s most loyal employees for nearly twenty years. It was Robinson who had made the winning shot in the 1948 triumph over the Lakers, perhaps the greatest single play in Harlem Globetrotter history. Now Abe was cutting him loose. In a wrenching two-page letter, Abe tried to explain his reasons:

For decades, Abe had run the Globetrotters based on his gut instincts and his relationships with people, but now, as the organization grew larger and he grew more frail, his attorney, Allan Bloch, and his “business advisers” (including Marie Linehan) were starting to have more say. “Abe was not good with money,” says Red Klotz. “He would give away thousands and thousands of dollars in gifts. He’d bring editors to Paris with their wives. He treated everybody wonderful. Made them feel good. But it cost him a lot money.”

There were other pressures closing in, as the world changed around him. The drug culture was exploding across America, and the Globetrotters were not immune. When the Globetrotters flew home from a trip to Mexico, one of Abe’s favorite players was busted at the airport by U.S. Customs officials for possession of marijuana and hashish. NBA players were hiring agents to negotiate their contracts, and there were rumblings that some of the Trotters would try to do the same. “I’ll never deal with any agents!” Abe growled. “He was a man of his time,” says Wyonella Smith, “and [agents were] something new and different.”

The strain of the failed business ventures and the “dog food” dinners and grueling travel all combined to hasten his decline. Judging from his correspondence, he seemed to be growing weary of the incessant problems and logistical complications of running the tour—the worries about portable floors that had to be shipped halfway around the world, incomplete visa applications, contract squabbles with union musicians, and the never-ending stream of personnel problems.

In 1965, it all came to a head. Instead of slowing down, as his doctors and family had been urging, he booked himself on a Herculean four-month-long “around the world” tour to meet with promoters in Europe, Turkey, India, Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan, the
Philippines, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii. It was enough to break a man half his age, but Abe seemed to be testing himself, to see if he could still cut it—or die trying.

On July 20, ninety days into the marathon, he was starting to realize the enormity of what he had brought on himself. In a letter to Red Klotz, from Tokyo, he wrote: “I thought over a period of 20 years of travel to almost a hundred countries around this little old globe of ours…and every major city on the face of that globe…that I knew what travel was…but this past 90 days have beaten anything ever attempted.”

He pushed on to Australia, where it all caught up with him. He came down with a severe cold, refused to see a doctor, and nearly died. “We learned later that he had suffered a mild heart attack there,” says Fay Saperstein. By the time he made it home to Chicago, he was in terrible shape. “He should have never gone to Australia,” says Red Klotz. “He messed himself all up. He knew he was gonna go. I used to bring soup up to him in his hotel room, and he’d sit in a dark room and drink some soup. But he just didn’t want to let up.”

Explaining Abe’s condition to a player, Marie wrote: “He has been quite ill for several weeks and although he is recuperating nicely right now, his daily working hours are very short and isn’t getting involved in too much correspondence work.” Unable to travel and forced to abide by a restricted work schedule, he had more time to reflect. In January 1966, he wrote to a promoter in Australia:

During his lengthy recuperation, he turned once again to the man who had stood beside him for over thirty years, through Montana blizzards and player revolts, the one person whom he trusted more than anyone else: Inman Jackson. The two men had been through so much together, and although Inman had stepped away from the
limelight for the last twenty years, he had remained one of Abe’s closest friends. Abe’s only form of relaxation was fishing, and for years he and Inman and Red Klotz had gone fishing in the summers in the wilderness of northernmost Canada, 300 miles from the Arctic Circle. They would fly over the tundra in a bush plane to Great Slave Lake, where they’d live in a log cabin with no phone, and fish for grayling and giant Arctic char. Abe footed the bill for the fishing trips, but Inman handled the money and made all of the arrangements.

However paternalistic or condescending Abe might have been with other black players, there is no doubt that his relationship with Inman was one of deep friendship and respect. “He loved Inman Jackson,” says Wyonella Smith. “Abe loved Jack as much as he loved his brothers. He was his closest friend. I’m sure there are things he shared with Jack that he didn’t share with anyone. And when he got sick, he wanted Jack to be there.”

Abe’s recuperation took many weeks, but the front office staff knew he was coming around when he sent Inman out to buy a pair of women’s legs off a department store mannequin, which he propped behind the drapes in his hospital room, as if a naked woman was hiding there.

He had refused his doctors’ advice to slow down, but he did follow another of their suggestions: to spend the winter in California, away from Chicago’s brutal weather. He rented an apartment (which belonged to Steve Allen) in Hollywood, and flew out on several occasions for extended stays, sometimes with his wife, Sylvia.

By mid-January 1966, he was feeling strong enough to resume a limited travel schedule, and made brief trips to San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver. In February, he flew to Portland and then to Honolulu, returning to Los Angeles each time. But then he had a relapse and ended up back in the hospital in Los Angeles for ten days. Now, in addition to his heart, he was having other problems. The doctors told him he needed a prostate operation, so Abe made plans to return to Chicago for the surgery. His brother Harry, who lived in Los Angeles, tried to talk him out of it. “I told him, ‘Abe, we have good doctors out here, there’s no reason to go back to Chicago,’” Harry says. But Abe insisted on going home.

On March 2, before leaving, he wired Joe Anzivino, who was in Florida with the Trotters’ eastern unit. “Your…telegram received and Florida news most welcome…. Returned Monday from another ten day stretch hospitalization. Going into Chicago Monday afternoon. Let’s stay in touch. Regards to yourself and host mutual acquaintances down the line. Abe Saperstein.”

On March 7, he flew to Chicago on United Airlines Flight 102, which, as he duly noted in his Air Travel Log, left nine minutes late, and arrived in his hometown at three-fifteen
P
.
M
. He made one final entry in his log: “Clear sunshiny 70 degrees leaving Los Angeles. Nice ride over.”

For the most widely traveled man in the world, it was a fitting commentary for his final journey: “Nice ride over.”

On Friday, March 11, he was admitted to Chicago’s Weiss Memorial Hospital for the prostate surgery. “He was supposed to come home the next day,” says his sister Leah. While being prepped for the operation, however, he had a coughing fit that triggered a heart attack, from which he never recovered. He died on March 15, at seven
P
.
M
.

Marie Linehan and Wyonella Smith were still working at the office when the phone rang. “We knew he was quite ill, so we weren’t that shocked,” says Smith. The Trotters’ east unit was playing that night in Greensboro, North Carolina, against their usual foils, the Washington Generals. When Red Klotz, the Generals’ player-coach and one of Abe’s closest friends, heard the news, he just walked off the court. “I couldn’t finish the game,” he says. “My team did, but I couldn’t. I knew he was dying. He knew it too, but he kept fighting to the end.” In the Trotters’ locker room, a tearful Parnell Woods, the traveling secretary, told the players, “Skip has died. He would want you to finish the game and the tour.” The Globetrotters played on.

In its obituary, the
Chicago Tribune
ran a photo of Abe with the caption “Show’s over.” His funeral took place on St. Patrick’s Day, as 70,000 people marched through the Loop in the city’s annual parade. “Abe was a showman to the end,” wrote one scribe. “He was born on the Fourth of July, and was buried on St. Patrick’s Day.” Over the next few weeks, innumerable tributes were composed by his friends in the press. Abe was praised for his generosity, honesty, and
contributions to both basketball and American goodwill abroad. “Thousands find it difficult to say good-by to Abe,” wrote David Condon in the
Tribune.
“Even in recent weeks, when his face was lean and drawn, Abe still wore a captivating smile. He didn’t know many languages, but that smile had universal appeal. The Saperstein smile ignited friendships in each nation that Abe visited.”

Earlier in the 1965–66 season, Abe had come up with the idea of scheduling a game in Hinckley, Illinois, as a sentimental commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the Trotters’ “first game” in 1927. There wasn’t room for a Hinckley game on the regular schedule, so the Trotters’ front office tacked it on as the last game of the season. It was a terrific marketing idea and the perfect ending to the year. On April 13, the Harlem Globetrotters played once more in Hinckley, Illinois, but Abe wasn’t there.