When I was a kid, just after World War II, the Trotters came to our town, Bellingham, Washington, every year. At that time, before being reduced to a silly sideshow of clowns, they were the best basketball team in the world. They beat the NBA champions, the Minneapolis Lakers, three games to two at the end of the season. Led by Goose Tatum, Marcus Haynes, and Ted Strong, they not only put on a great “circus” of passing, dribbling, and scoring, but they also almost always won. They racked up a scorecard of hundreds of wins against very few losses, several of which came at the hands of our local pro team, the Bellingham Fircrest.

 Surprisingly, our town organized a professional basketball league in the Pacific Northwest during the post-war years, featuring cities like Bellingham, Vancouver, B.C., Seattle, Yakima-Tacoma, and Portland, Ore. The league lasted about five years, with Bellingham winning most of the championships and our Bellingham Fircrest earning numerous titles as well. The Fircrest were led by Gale Bishop, a local player who was an All-American at Washington State University and once scored 54 points in a game at Madison Square Garden. The team was sponsored by a local dairy firm owned by Dick Smith.

The Trotters were formed before the war by Abe Saperstein, with their showman headquarters in Harlem, NYC. They trained to be trickster showmen and excelled in basketball as well. Traveling across the country, they often competed in barnstorming games against small local amateur teams, nearly always emerging victorious. Years ago, a movie was made about them, and it may still be available. The Trotters traveled the world, captivating audiences in every country with their antics.

Marcus Haynes was the world’s greatest dribbler, keeping the ball away from the opposition by lying on the floor and pretending to sleep while dribbling it at an impossibly low height and speed. Their center, Goose Tatum, played all sorts of tricks with the ball behind his back and was remarkably accurate at shooting it over his head and between his legs. He often scored his free throws by bouncing the ball off his head. Ted Strong could throw the ball the length of the court, and I once saw him score a basket from 65 feet away while standing under his own basket.

One year, when the Trotters came to town, the ticket manager of Fircrest asked me if I wanted to be the waterboy for the Trotters at their next game. Of course! I got to sit on their bench and hand them water and towels. At that time, no Black people lived in Bellingham, so sitting on the bench next to the Trotters was as perplexing as it was an honor. I had never been close to a Black person before, and I was both honored and mystified by this experience. Their skin next to mine was truly eye-opening for a 12-year-old.

Well, the game was a hard-fought battle, but our Fircrest team won for the third time in a row, partly due to the presence of one Ziggy Marcel, who chose to play for us that year. Abe Saperstein himself attended the game and afterward described Bellingham as “The Flatbush of basketball,” referring to the craziness for which the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team had become famous. However, it wasn’t long before the great Trotters were reduced to a kind of “side-show” outfit that provided basketball shows strictly for laughs. I will always remember them not as the “Greatest Show on Earth,” but as the “Greatest Basketball Team in the World.”

Editor’s Note: Click on the link to view the blog post with photos: The Truth About the Harlem Globetrotters Updated