Spinning the Globe (10 page)

Not surprisingly, Rens’ owner Bob Douglas completely ignored Abe’s boast, which was ludicrous. The Globe Trotters were nowhere near as skilled as the Rens, who had been playing the top pro teams in the country for years. When Douglas refused to dignify Abe’s challenge with a response, Abe simply ratcheted up the rhetoric, telling the
Defender
that the Globe Trotters were officially laying claim to “the National cage title,” and asserting that the Trotters had “repeatedly challenged the New York Rens, but the Harlem team has avoided meeting the Westerners.” In lieu of playing and beating the Rens, Abe was now trying to claim the title by default, which was even more preposterous. In truth, probably the last thing Abe wanted was to actually play the Rens. He had already been ducking the better teams in the Midwest, and had been waxed three times in a row by the Rochester Elks Aces and soundly beaten by the Minneapolis Barns-dalls, who were hardly in the same league with the Rens. But again, Abe’s marketing brilliance shone through. He understood that in marketing, if not in reality,
saying
something enough can make it so.

Abe must have realized as well that every team needs a great rivalry, and so he set his sights on the greatest team of all, particularly in the black community. For the next five years, the Trotters and the Rens would be circling each other like two great panthers, drawing close enough to pick up the other’s scent, then moving warily away.

I
n January 1933, America began to allow itself to hope again, after nearly four years of utter despair, due in large part to the optimism of one man—Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In his inaugural speech, FDR told the country, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and in the First Hundred Days of his administration he rammed through Congress an alphabet soup of new federal programs—including the AAA, CCC, FERA, and NRA—to stop the bleeding.

At first glance, there would seem to be little in common between Franklin Roosevelt, the wealthy Wasp aristocrat from eastern high-brow society, and Abe Saperstein, the immigrant Jew who had grown up living hand to mouth, moving constantly to keep ahead of the eviction notices. Indeed, there is no comparison between the gravity of FDR’s responsibilities and those of Abe. But the men shared two fundamental traits: they were incurable optimists and great salesmen. FDR was trying to sell the American people on his New Deal, which gave the federal government an unprecedented role in economic affairs, while Abe, in his own way, was also peddling hope in the face of despair, selling the American public a form of escapist entertainment—a night at the ball game—to survive the turmoil of the Depression, which had already destroyed the dust-blown dreams of millions of Americans.

In November 1933, Abe began the new season with guarded optimism, knowing that his vagabond team had not only survived, but was beginning to flourish on the back roads of America. The core of
the team—Runt Pullins, Inman Jackson, Toots Wright, and Fat Long—had been intact for four seasons, giving the Globe Trotters the continuity to one day challenge the vaunted Rens. Little did any of them, including Abe, realize what turmoil awaited them in the next few months, or how a season of such hope would come crashing down, provoking the greatest crisis in the Globe Trotters’ early history.

In early November, the Trotter players gathered in Chicago for ten days of intensive preseason practice—a regimen that would become a test by fire for generations of Globe Trotter hopefuls. Abe brought together all of the players from the two Globe Trotter squads, plus the white New York Nationals, and they were scrimmaging against each other two hours a day.

There were only two players whose jobs were secure: Runt Pullins and Inman Jackson, the stars of the team. But all of the other slots were up for grabs, and by the end of training camp William “Razor” Frazier beat out Toots Wright and Rock Anderson for the fifth starting spot (although Frazier and Anderson would rotate throughout the season). Wright was relegated to the second unit along with Kid Oliver.

But Runt and Inman were untouchable. Jackson, now twenty-six, had matured into one of the most dominating centers in professional ball. He was the focal point of the offense, particularly under the new rules that emphasized the half-court game. “Jackson is the key man of the team,” reported the
Alexandria
[Minn.]
Echo Press.
“His effective play under the basket is almost unstoppable and when Big Jack makes up his mind to score a few buckets, it’s well nigh impossible to stop him.”

Pullins, only twenty-three, was one of the greatest outside shooters in the game and consistently led the Trotters in scoring. In fact, Abe was bragging that Runt had set an “American record” by scoring 2,581 points during the 1931–32 season, although that was another of Abe’s nebulous claims. (To begin with, no American scoring records were being maintained at that time, so there was no official scoring record to break. And while Pullins often scored in double figures, he would have had to average over 17 points per game for the season, and surviving box scores from that year don’t show him even approaching that.)

Runt and Inman were the heart and soul of the team. Oliver, Long, Wright, and Rock Anderson could rotate between the first and second units, but Runt and Inman were always there. Without them, it seemed, there could be no Globe Trotters.

The Trotters opened their 1933–34 season in Pittsburgh, then drove to Detroit for a Thanksgiving Day game at the Central Community Center, later known as the Brewster Center. This was the first game in what would become a season-opening tradition for the Globe Trotters. The Brewster Center was a recreation center in Detroit’s African American community that would become legendary as the training ground for Joe Louis and a dozen future Globe Trotters. The season openers between the Trotters and the Brewster Center team would become huge social affairs in east Detroit, with fans dressed to the nines and standing room only in the modest-sized gym.

In this inaugural game, Runt Pullins and Inman Jackson were off their games, scoring only 6 points between them, but George Easter saved the day for the Trotters, hitting for 12 points from long range and leading the Trotters to a 1-point win, 28–27. The most impressive players on the floor that day, however, were two young Brewster players: Harry Rusan and Gus Finney, whose performances made a strong impression on Abe.

After leaving Detroit, the Trotters headed to their familiar haunts in Wisconsin and Minnesota for most of December and January. There, Abe carried his unconsummated rivalry with the New York Rens to new heights of presumptiveness. Since Bob Douglas, the Rens’ owner, had never contested Abe’s default claim to the “colored world championship,” Abe now went even further and claimed it retroactively. He told a Green Bay reporter that the Globe Trotters had owned the “world’s colored professional championship for the past several years.”

Of course, Abe could spout off all he wanted in Green Bay, but the black press was having none of it. On January 27, 1934, the
Defender
made its position clear, when sports columnist Al Monroe, a former coach of the Savoy Big Five, described the Rens as “undoubtedly the greatest sports attraction in the world.” The Rens were coming to Chicago to play the Savoy team, and Monroe predicted
that “when you see the Rens perform you’ll be watching the nearest thing to sports perfection.” And although he may have had a vested interest, Monroe also made it clear which team he thought was in second place: “the nearest approach to the Rens right now is the Savoy Big 5.” The Globe Trotters, to Abe’s certain consternation, were not mentioned at all. Abe might be able to convince the
Owatonna
[Minn.]
People’s Press
or the
Fargo
[N.D.]
Forum
that the Trotters were the world’s colored champs, but nobody was buying it in Chicago or New York.

Nonetheless, Abe remained undeterred. In February, the Trotters followed their usual route into the Dakotas and Montana, where Abe kept up the drumbeat about the mythical “world championship.” And out there in the boonies, where there were no other black teams, who was going to dispute him? After all, Abe had convinced these same sportswriters that he was “still under contract” to the Cleveland Rosenblums. In fact, he eventually persuaded some of them to join his cheering section. “This team is one that has for several years run the Renaissance to cover in a perpetual challenge for the world’s colored basket ball championship, which the Rens cannot see fit to accept,” wrote Preston Hinebaugh.

Ironically, at the same time Abe was bragging about the Globe Trotters’ straight basketball skills, their showmanship was becoming more overt, as the players were continually inventing new tricks and wrinkles. Inman Jackson developed more elaborate hand tricks, palming the ball and rolling it up and down his arms. Fat Long started spinning the ball on one finger. The Trotters played catch as though the basketball was a baseball. More and more, the Trotters’ comedy was getting top billing over the basketball. One newspaper ad described them as “a 5-man circus—you’ll laugh yourself sick over their antics between gasps at their skill.” And the further the Trotters got ahead of an opponent, the more they clowned. In Winona, Minnesota, they played a game against Babe Didrikson’s All-Americans, a team featuring the greatest female athlete in the world, who had won two gold medals at the 1932 Olympics. The Trotters built a 20 to 6 lead in the first half, then “clowned the rest of the way.”

By February 1934, the Globe Trotters were heading toward
Montana, in the midst of a terrific season. As a reflection of their success, Abe had even booked the Globe Trotters’ first-ever tour of the West Coast, with games scheduled in Spokane, Seattle, and Portland, among other cities. And then, shockingly, it all fell apart—the West Coast tour, the mythic “colored championship,” the whole damn team.

In February 1934, Montana was enjoying the most unseasonably warm winter in its history. Average temperatures were nearly ten degrees above normal, and highs reached the seventies in some parts of the state. Snowfall was the lightest ever recorded. The snowcaps had completely disappeared from the lower elevations of the mountains, and ice was melting in the streams and rivers. Livestock were turned out of their barns to feed on the range. Farmers in the southern part of the state were out disking their fields, and some even risked an early planting. On the evening of February 12, a brilliant meteor was observed in the southern sky, which was interpreted as an omen of good luck.

Like the locals, the Harlem Globe Trotters were basking in the unexpected warmth, as they played their way across the state in anticipation of their West Coast tour. Their first game had been in Poplar on February 7, in the northeast corner of the state, only fifty miles from Canada. Poplar was in the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, the home of 6,000 Sioux and Assiniboine Indians. Prior to the game, the neighboring
Wolf Point Herald News
carried an ad that described the Trotters as “the Sensational Darky Champions”—and one can only wonder how that description went over with the Sioux.

From Poplar, the Trotters worked their way across the state’s northern rim on U.S. Highway 2, through Malta, Chinook, and Havre to Shelby, where they played an unscheduled doubleheader on the eleventh, after so many people were turned away for the first game. Then the Trotters headed south to Great Falls, and into the Rockies for games in Butte, Helena, Bozeman, and Harlowton, winning every game along the way. At last, the Globe Trotters looped back east, driving to Billings for their last scheduled game on February 17.

It had been a sensational road trip so far, and the unexpected
mild weather had made it even sweeter. Runt Pullins, in particular, had played terrifically, scoring 18 points in Great Falls and 15 in Bozeman. In the latter game, the
Bozeman Chronicle
marveled at how he “took the first five tipoffs and dropped them through the hoop for field goals without moving a foot and before the [opponents] had a chance to get their hands on the ball.”

And then the Trotters ran into a buzz saw in Billings, losing 38–33 to the Golden Bobcats, a team made up of former Montana State University stars, including three former All-Americans (Frank “Pop” Ward, Cat Thompson, and Keith Ario). Runt Pullins had scored 17 points, more than half of the Trotters’ total, but it wasn’t enough.

The loss to the Golden Bobcats injected an arctic chill on the otherwise balmy Montana trip, but what occurred in the locker room
after
the game was far more memorable—and numbing. In the five years they’d been together, Abe and the Globe Trotter players had always split the gate receipts seven ways, with the five players each getting one share and Abe getting two, to pay for transportation and promotion. Their entire history—and their recent success—had been built on this egalitarian partnership: they were all co-owners of the team, not employees. In the lean years, driving through the blizzards in Abe’s funeral-parlor Model T, nobody had made any money, but now, on a good night with a full house, they could end up with thirty or forty bucks apiece—far more than they could make working a regular job back home in Chicago. As recently as early February, just before the Trotters arrived in Montana, Abe had described their financial arrangement to the
Minot
[N.D.]
Daily News:
“The Trotters play on a percentage basis, which finds each one ready to do or die for that dear old alma mater, Mazuma.”

But on this night, in anticipation of their West Coast premiere, Abe announced that he was making some changes in the organization. From now on, he said, there would be no more splitting the gate, no more playing on a percentage, no more do or die for dear old Mazuma. Instead, the players would now be paid $7.50 per game. In effect, the players would now be employees, not co-owners. And the Harlem Globe Trotters would henceforth be Abe Saperstein’s team. He would no longer be just the manager and promoter; he would be the owner. The boss.

Whether Abe had been planning this monumental shake-up for a long time is unknown. He may have been influenced by his future father-in-law, Mr. Franklin, who had already convinced him to build up the Saperstein name by putting it on the jerseys. Or the idea may have come as a gradual evolution, as Abe’s promotional empire expanded. He was booking two Globe Trotter units, plus the white New York Nationals; had invested in a Negro League baseball franchise; and was promoting another baseball team called the Cleveland All-Nations, which boasted eleven players representing eleven different nationalities. He was becoming a sports magnate, he had professional standing in his field, his name and his face were known to sportswriters in a half dozen states. Why should he still be splitting gate receipts with five Negroes who were lucky to be on his team? And it was
his
team. He was the one doing all the legwork, arranging the bookings, sending out the publicity, massaging the sportswriters, haggling with promoters, collecting the money, and dividing up the receipts. And, not insignificantly, he was the one getting most of the attention in the press—which he liked a lot more than he might admit.

Whatever Abe’s motivation, the reaction to his ultimatum was immediate: the team blew up in front of him. Runt Pullins, Fat Long, and George Easter refused to go along with this new edict. Years later, Pullins would claim that the players had been averaging around $40 apiece per game, so $7.50 per game would have meant a drastic reduction in their incomes. “We felt that as long as we had all started as equal partners, we should stay that way,” Pullins said.