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
7 responses to “The Truth About the Harlem Globetrotters Updated”
Great Dennis :O) Thank you so much. I forgot to mention that Saperstein was a really short guy :O) He invented the whole thing and took ’em to the top. At first they only operated out of Harlem and were called “The Big SAVOY FIVE,” Hope you can keep some pictures up – makes a lot of difference !!! :O) Jer
Jerry,
I don’t remember as far back as you, of course, but I remember as a kid watching Meadowlark Lemon, Curly Neal, etc.
I believe Wilt Chamberlain played with Globetrotters right after college, as did Canadian major league pitcher Ferguson Jenkins (he played a couple of seasons with them during the baseball off-season). Side note: The Phillies actually traded Jenkins away to the Cubs, and he proceeded to win 20 games six years in a row.
The whipping boys I recall from those days were the Jersey Reds.
Gary
Thanks Gar – never heard of the kjersey Reds but did see baseball games with the traveling Baseball trotters and House of David bearded wonders :O) Great to hear from you !! Paz, jerry
I have vague memories of seeing them when I was a kid. I think they
had a trick where Goose threw the ball to the ref but then pulled it
back on a string. A big laugh.
Yeah – that had several tricks on the refs. Also, Ted Strong would throw the inbounds pass the length of the court and often it would go in the basket for a score. I loved them :O)
Ok, I looked it up. it looks like the “Jersey Reds” was just another name for the Washington Generals. And they had many other names as well.
From Wikipedia:
The Generals remained a continuous presence in the Globetrotters act from then on, but to give the illusion of variety they played under a variety of different names with changes of uniform. During the 1971–72 season, the Generals’ name was alternated with the “Boston Shamrocks”, “New Jersey Reds”, “Baltimore Rockets”, and “Atlantic City Seagulls”. The team rotated between these identities for a few seasons before going back to the Generals identity full-time. In 1995 Klotz “disbanded” the Generals and formed the “New York Nationals” which again was only a nominal change.
ThanksmGar for the update. Being a Westerner I never heard of any of those teams :O( Paz, jerry