Spinning the Globe (5 page)

Like all great athletes, what these Wendell Phillips stars really wanted was to find a way to keep doing what they loved and somehow survive. What they wanted most, then, was to play their game.

N
ineteen hundred and twenty-seven was the greatest year in American sports history. It was the apex of the golden age of sports. This was the year Babe Ruth hit sixty home runs. The year the New York Yankees’ “Murderers’ Row,” still considered the best team in history, won the American League pennant by a record nineteen games, then swept the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. It was the year Ty Cobb became the first player to reach 4,000 hits. It was the year of the infamous “long count” in the heavyweight title rematch between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney. Red Grange, the “Galloping Ghost of Illinois” and the first professional football superstar, was running wild on the gridiron. Big Bill Tilden was the master of tennis, “Sir Walter” Hagen won his fourth straight PGA Championship, and Bobby Jones won his second British Open and his third U.S. Amateur.

The golden age was ushered in, partly, by the proliferation of radio, which reached five million homes. Radio turned local sports stars into national idols and created a mass popular culture, bringing play-by-play action into every living room in America.

Beyond the sports world, America in 1927 was still rollicking along in the euphoria of the Roaring Twenties, blithely unaware that it would all come crashing down in another two years. It was the year of the first transatlantic telephone call, the first demonstration of television by Philo T. Farnsworth, and the first talking picture,
The Jazz Singer,
with Al Jolson.

Unquestionably, the greatest news event of the year, and perhaps
of the decade, was Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic in
The Spirit of St. Louis
and landing at Le Bourget, near Paris, which set off a six-month-long celebration across the country.

Chicago was the perfect symbol for the Roaring Twenties. Al “Scarface” Capone was at the height of his powers, having built an empire on vice—speakeasies, gambling dens, brothels, nightclubs, and racetracks—that brought in a reputed $100 million a year.

On the North Side, Abe Saperstein was still living at home, sleeping on the living-room sofa, and still coaching the Chicago Reds, a lightweight (135-pounds) boys’ basketball team at Welles Park. Working for the city parks department had given him the opportunity to meet other coaches, team managers, and promoters in the Chicago sports scene, thereby expanding his world beyond the confines of Ravenswood.

One of the people he had met was Walter Ball, a legendary pitcher from the early days of the Negro Leagues. Ball, who had cultivated a nasty spitball and a reputation as the “swellest” dresser in black baseball, had played for over twenty years, from 1899 to 1923, including a stint with Rube Foster’s Chicago American Giants. By the time Abe met him, Ball’s playing days were over, but he was still a mover and shaker in Chicago’s African American sports world. He knew everybody in black baseball and basketball.

Ball wanted to send a black baseball team from Chicago on tour, most likely playing a regional schedule in Illinois and southern Wisconsin. This was not a novel idea, as Negro League teams had been barnstorming for years, but Walter Ball needed a booking agent to make the contacts and schedule the games—preferably a white man. It would be much easier for a white agent to book games in small Wisconsin farm towns, against local white teams, than a black man.

Using the same persuasive powers that had earned him the title of most popular kid in Ravenswood, Abe convinced Ball to give him the job. (Typically, a booking agent was paid on straight commission, receiving 10 percent of what the team received.)

This was Abe’s big chance. And it was the perfect job for him, blending all of his strengths and skills. He had to meet local promoters, shake their hand, and try to convince them that playing Walter Ball’s Negro team would be a great entertainment value for their
town. He was
born
to do this job. Once he launched into his spiel, a torrent of words poured out, and some promoters may have signed on just to shut him up. But he had the gift of all great salesmen of being able to make a connection, in a matter of seconds, that made the other person feel special. Abe was so likable, so sincere, you couldn’t even tell he was selling. He was your friend, he had something you needed, and he was doing you a favor to give it to you—for a price.

He did such a good job that Walter Ball would recommend him in the future. It was the start of a thirty-year relationship between Abe Saperstein and Negro League baseball. Booking Negro baseball games had just whetted his appetite, however. Now he was looking for more.

What should be the most basic and rudimentary question in the history of the Harlem Globe Trotters—when and how did the team begin?—turns out to be an intriguing mystery with all the elements of a Sherlock Holmes case. This fundamental question has been obscured by the passage of time, the deaths of the principal characters, and seventy years of hyperbolic press releases. What is absolutely clear, however, is that the official version of the Globe Trotters’ origins, as promoted by Abe Saperstein and reprinted in thousands of newspaper articles, could not possibly be true. There are fatal flaws in that official story, which researchers have uncovered long before this book began.

The conventional story of the birth of the Globe Trotters goes something like this: In 1926, Abe Saperstein was invited by Walter Ball to coach the all-black Giles Post American Legion basketball team, which soon evolved into the Savoy Big Five, when Dick Hudson, the business manager of the Giles Post team, arranged to play games at the Savoy Ballroom on Chicago’s South Side. However, disputes over money arose, several players quit the team, and the Savoy management soon replaced basketball with roller-skating. Three disgruntled Savoy players asked Abe to form his own barnstorming team, and the Harlem New York Globe Trotters played their first game on January 7, 1927, in Hinckley, Illinois.

To put it mildly, that is utter nonsense.

There are numerous problems with that story—fundamental, pro
found, and incontrovertible flaws—that prove this official version to be impossible and absurd. The first, and most elemental, is that the Savoy Ballroom did not even exist in January 1927, so there is no way the Savoy Big Five could have already been playing, much less have had several players quit, by that date. Second, there is no evidence that Abe Saperstein ever coached the Giles Post or Savoy teams, and the actual coaches of those teams are clearly identified in newspaper articles and photos. Third, although several Savoy players did quit the team, the Savoy Big Five did not fold—nor were they replaced by roller-skating—and continued playing for many years. Fourth, one of the original members of the Giles Post and Savoy teams claimed, thirty years ago, that
he
started the Globe Trotters, not Abe (and there is documentation to back up his claim), and that Abe, in effect, stole the team away from him. Fifth, Abe never mentioned anything about a “first game” in Hinckley on January 7, 1927, for at least twenty years, until 1947, when he conveniently proclaimed a return to Hinckley as the Trotters’ “twentieth anniversary”—which now appears to have been backdated as a marketing ploy.
*
And finally, even people in Hinckley, including some of the original players in that “first game,” have long denied that it occurred in 1927—and have a box score that may prove it.

Simply put, the Harlem Globe Trotters did not exist in January 1927, and they were not playing in Hinckley, Illinois, or anywhere else. Abe Saperstein was a great salesman and a marketing genius, but he was no historian—and he never let the facts get in the way of selling a good story.

So how did the Harlem Globe Trotters actually begin? The real story is much more fascinating than the official version. The truth usually is.

In January 1927, the South Side was jumping. Chicago had an inferiority complex when it came to New York, and would acknowledge that subordinate status in later years by calling itself “Second City.” On the South Side, however, black Chicagoans weren’t willing to concede anything to New York. “They’ve got Harlem, but we’ve got Bronzeville” was a common refrain. And indeed, although the Harlem Renaissance was exploding in New York, bringing unprecedented attention to the works of Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong, the South Side was having its own Chicago Renaissance.

Down around Forty-seventh Street and South Parkway, the central hub of Bronzeville, the nightclubs and cafés were hopping all night long. Ethel Waters was playing at the Café de Paris, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson was being held over at the Palace, and a “Deluxe Vaudeville Show” was packing them in at the Grand. Paul Robeson’s latest film,
Body and Soul,
” with an “All-Star colored cast,” was opening at the Twentieth Century Theater. Jazz lovers were snapping up copies of “Big Butter and Egg Man from the West,” Louis Armstrong’s latest release on OKeh Race Records. And the Regal Theater was holding “Black Bottom” contests, as the latest dance craze swept the nation. “Those were nothing but good times,” recalls Napoleon Oliver. “Chicago didn’t sleep back then. You had somewhere to go
all the time
—night and day.”

Meanwhile, over at the Eighth Regiment Armory, at Thirty-fifth and Giles, the manager of the Giles Post American Legion basketball team was making big plans. Dick Hudson, a twenty-eight-year-old former professional football player, who had had brief stints with three NFL teams, had assembled an all-star cast of ballplayers for the 1926–27 season. Hudson had signed a quintet of former Wendell Phillips stars, including Tommy Brookins, Randolph Ramsey, Toots Wright, and Lester Johnson. He had also imported Joe Lillard, a granite-bodied football player from Mason City, Iowa.

For years, Giles Post basketball squads had been playing around Chicago, but Dick Hudson, who had played football all over the country, had grander dreams of taking his team on the road. There
were several white barnstorming teams that were well known in the Midwest, which Hudson would have certainly known, including Basloe’s Globe Trotters and Olson’s Terrible Swedes. And the New York Renaissance, the most acclaimed black team in the country, had made a few barnstorming tours. If the Rens could make it on the road, there was hope for other black teams.

Dick Hudson was ready to try his luck. This team was certainly talented enough and his young ballplayers were willing to risk going on the road. Most likely, Hudson sought out the man who knew all the ins and outs of barnstorming, perhaps the most knowledgeable sportsman on the South Side: Walter Ball. Reportedly, Ball told Hudson about a young Jewish fellow from the North Side who had done a good job booking baseball games for him, an energetic young man named Abe Saperstein.

The rest, as they say, was history—only not the “official” history.

On December 21, 1926, the
Appleton
[Wisc.]
Post-Crescent
ran a small four-paragraph story under the headline “Colored Cage Team Plays in Vicinity,” which described an upcoming winter tour of Wisconsin by the “famous” Giles Post American Legion team, which was billed as the “national colored champions.” Eighteen Wisconsin towns were on the schedule, including Little Chute, Kaukauna, Neenah, Sheboygan, Fond du Lac, and La Crosse. There is no proof that Abe Saperstein booked this tour, but his handiwork is all over it. Most characteristically, the Giles Post players were advertised as former college stars from such prestigious universities as Colgate, Amherst, Dartmouth, the University of Southern California, Creighton, Northwestern, and Iowa—although they were actually Wendell Phillips boys who had never set foot on a college campus, and some hadn’t even graduated from high school. For years, Abe would employ the same kind of inflated college credentials for the Harlem Globe Trotters—but whether he learned it from Hudson or invented it himself is uncertain. Also, he would later adopt a Dick Hudson innovation that was inaugurated on this tour: halftime entertainment. Hudson brought along a black orchestra, the Wyonne Creole Serenaders from the Dreamland Night Club in Bronzeville, which played at halftime and after the game.

The Giles Post tour of Wisconsin began the last week of
December 1926. They won their first few games handily, but on January 7, 1927—the same date as the alleged “first game” of the Harlem Globetrotters in Hinckley, Illinois—they were handed a shocking 28–14 defeat by Clintonville. After a brief respite in Chicago, they returned to Wisconsin in mid-January and began summarily taking revenge on the local white teams. On January 25, they overwhelmed Watertown by a score of 50–11, a phenomenal score for that era. They were just getting started, however. Over the next few days, they destroyed the Fisher Body team from Janesville, 41–17; put a second whipping on Watertown, 50–10; and finished off the Reedsburg Flashes by a margin of 56–23.

They returned from Wisconsin in triumph, only to come under a withering attack from an unexpected quarter.
Chicago Defender
sports editor Fay Young wrote a scathing column, entitled “Killing Basketball,” in which he accused Hudson of “fraud” for claiming to represent Giles Post without the permission of the Legion commander and for falsely advertising his players as former college stars. Young worried that such deception would hurt future teams with “bona fide” players because white fans wouldn’t come out “after having once been buncoed.” Hudson was the one who caught the flack for the subterfuge, although Abe Saperstein may have been the one who concocted it; yet his role in booking the Giles Post tour seems to have been hidden deep in the shadows.

In the fall of 1927, the South Side was buzzing with excitement over the most anticipated social event of the year: the grand opening of the Savoy Ballroom, at Forty-seventh and South Parkway. Designed by the builder of its famous namesake in Harlem, the Savoy would have a half-acre dance floor that could accommodate 6,000 people. In the weeks before the Savoy’s “inaugural ball” on Thanksgiving eve, the
Defender
was flooded with advertisements predicting that the Savoy would be the “most beautiful and luxurious Ballroom in the country.”