Figuring out how the Harlem Globetrotters started is a complicated story because there are actually two differing accounts. There is the official story that the Globetrotters themselves tell as to how they got started. But there is very little confirmation for this version of the story. Then there is a more likely and more documented story about how they got started.
The problem is there is not enough concrete evidence to say that the second story is true. But, the second story does have more documentation to support it. So, what are we left with? Basically, we have no idea what the complete true story is. In one way that makes this so fun; the fact that it is shrouded in mystery.
I’ll tell you both stories and let you decide which one you want to believe. But before we do that I need to tell you about a man named Abe Saperstein. He is credited with being the founder of the Globetrotters. To understand both stories, we first need to understand who this man was.
Then you can decide who you think the real founder of the team was. So let’s get into Abe’s story. He was born in 1902 in London, England to two Polish Jews, Louis, and Anna Saperstein. His father was a tailor’s apprentice back in Poland where both parents grew up. But, his parents had to escape Poland because Poland was under the control of the Russian Empire and the Russians were very much anti-Jew back then.
In the late 1800s, the Russian Army was allowed to draft young male Jews to basically work like slaves for the Russian soldiers. They could be made to serve for as long as 25 years. With this hanging over their heads, Saperstein’s parents escaped to England and then relocated to Chicago in 1907.
Sapersteins Arrives In Chicago
Louis Saperstein decided to use his skills as a tailor to find a job in a local tailor shop. The local tailor was looking for an assistant, but his job ad was very clear that no Jews were to apply. But Louis would not let that stop him. So Louis told the shop owner that his name was Louis Schneider.
Schneider is the German word for tailor. With that, he got the job. He was able to eventually purchase the shop from the original owner when the original owner decided to retire. At that point, he stopped pretending about his last name and changed the name of the store to Saperstein’s Tailor Shop.
This was the environment where Little Abe Saperstein grew up. And when he was around 10 years old he absolutely fell in love with sports. He played basketball, baseball, football, boxing, and track to name a few. Basically, anything that was offered, he signed up for. He so badly wanted to be a professional athlete in something.
Unfortunately for Abe Saperstein, he grew up to a full height of 5’3” (160cm). But he was determined to make his career in sports somehow. So, he had to tell his father that he was not going to take over the family business as a tailor. But, since he was not that athletic and really, really short he had to get creative. While working for the Chicago Parks Department as a playground supervisor he organized a barnstorming team called the Chicago Reds.
Abe the Promoter
He began to earn a reputation for scheduling and promoting barnstorming teams. He was contacted by someone with an all-black baseball team and they needed someone to organize a tour of Wisconsin and Illinois. Abe took the job and organized a successful tour for the team and everyone was able to earn a good amount of money on that tour, including Abe himself.
Through this success, Abe was able to work with both black and white baseball teams. For a brief period of time, he was the chief scout for black players for the Cleveland Indians.
Globetrotters Original Story #1
So, now let’s get back to how the Globetrotters started. The official story says that in 1926 Abe was coaching a black barnstorming basketball team called the Giles Post American Legion. That team would later become the Savoy Big Five when they relocated their home games from the American Legion to the Savoy Ballroom in Chicago.
The story goes that the Savoy players had money issues with ownership and they quit the team. Those players then asked Abe to leave the team with them and form a new team. The new team would be called the Harlem New York Globe Trotters. Now, remember, this is all happening in Chicago. No one in this story is actually from New York, let alone Harlem. But since they were an all-black team, saying that they were from Harlem, New York automatically gave them a strong reputation.
After all, the New York Renaissance had been tearing up the barnstorming tours and everyone knew they were from Harlem. So, people just assumed that the Globe Trotters were also from Harlem since that is what they called themselves. Abe then scheduled their very first game to be played in Hinckley, Illinois on January 7, 1927.
I’ve been to Hinckley. It is this little rural town in the middle of the cornfields in DeKalb County in northcentral Illinois. I used to drive through Hinckley on my way to my father-in-law’s hometown of Waterman, which is the next town over.
If you live within 30 minutes of Hinckley then you’ve probably gone out for ice cream at the Dairy Joy, which is like a mom-and-pop Dairy Queen. It’s pretty good soft-serve ice cream. I would recommend it in case you are ever in the area. As you enter Hinckley there is a big sign that says “Welcome to Hinckley. Site of the first-ever Harlem Globetrotters road game. January 7, 1927.”
The problem with this story is that it’s a bunch of baloney. The Savoy Big Five, the team where some of the players had come from didn’t exist yet. There is plenty of documentation on that. The main evidence is that the Savoy Ballroom wouldn’t open until Thanksgiving of 1927, 10 months after the supposed first Globetrotters game. Without the Savoy Ballroom, nobody would have called themselves the Savoy Big Five.
And Abe never coached the Giles Post American Legion. There are plenty of articles from that time that name the coach… and it is not Abe Saperstein. But, as any good promotor will tell you, never let the truth ruin a good story.
Globetrotters Origin Story #2
Now, let us go to the second version of the Globetrotter’s origin story. There was a player around that same time in Chicago named Tommy Brookins. Brookins did, indeed, play for the Giles Post American Legion and then later for the Savoy Big Five. There were definitely money issues with the team’s ownership. That part of the story is all true. Everyone agrees to that part of it.
So, Brookins and several of the Big Five players left the team along with the assistant coach and formed their own team. According to an article published in the Chicago Defender newspaper on November 24, 1928, this new team was called the Globe Trotters, spelled as two words. Globe. Trotters.
As opposed to today where the word Globetrotters is spelled as one word. But in any case, they were playing under the name Globe Trotters and Abe Saperstein had nothing to do with the forming of the team.
Brookins was the leader of the team and predicted the demise of his old team the Savoy Big Five since he had taken all of their good players. However, most of those players returned to the Big Five when the owners worked to resolve the money issues. But Brookins soldiered on with his new team.
There are plenty of articles from that time reporting on the success of the Globe Trotters season. Abe is not mentioned in any of these newspaper articles at this point. The team went by a couple of different names. They were initially called the Tommy Brookins’ Globe Trotters. Later they changed their name to the Original Chicago Globe Trotters.
Brookins wanted to take his new team on a tour of Wisconsin and Michigan. So, through a friend, he got in contact with Abe Saperstein, who was known for being very successful at scheduling barnstorming tours. Abe’s only role at this time was as the team’s booking agent. For that service, he would get 10% of the revenue and an expense account of $100 to travel around and schedule many of these games in person. So, the games are booked, and off they went to Michigan to begin the tour.
Abe Stole The Globetrotters
Here is where this story gets really weird. The Globe Trotters had just finished a game in Michigan. After the game, a fan came up and told them how great they were and he had seen them a few nights earlier in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Brookins is confused. They had not played in Wisconsin yet. The Wisconsin games were for later in the tour.
His teammate, Randolph Ramsey, came over to him with a sheepish look on his face. He told Brookins that Abe was booking a second Globe Trotters team to play in Wisconsin while Brookins was in Michigan with the first team.
Well, Brookins was livid. He asked Ramsey who in the world was playing for the other team. Ramsey reports that it was a bunch of the players that they had cut. Some sources say that it was the players from the Savoy Big Five who were moonlighting as Globe Trotters for some extra cash.
When Brookins got a chance to confront Abe, Abe does not even deny it. He is excited. He told Brookins that he thought it would be a great idea to have two teams touring under the Globe Trotters name. It means double the income. Double the income for Abe, that is. Of course, Brookins doesn’t like this. But, the games were booked and the tour had already started.
Brookins does not have the energy to fight Abe on this. As it turns out Brookins was also an incredible singer in addition to being a great basketball player. It was at this same time that he was offered $75 a week by the Regal Theatre in Chicago to be a full-time performer. This is the equivalent of $56,000 per year today. It was a lot more than what he made as a basketball player. This is really good money and also no more traveling, which Brookins was getting tired of. Also, his mother was sick and he wanted to be close to home to take care of her.
Abe Is New Owner Of Globetrotters
So, with resignation, he wished Abe good luck and he asked Abe to promise to hire some of Brookins’ guys for the new Globe Trotters team. Abe said that he would and asked Brookins if he had any extra uniforms to spare. Brookins gave him three sets. With that, the Tommy Brookins Globe Trotters are over and Saperstein takes full control of the team without paying a single penny.
So now that the team belonged to him, he set out booking games and promoting the team as New York’s finest basketball team.
Which Is The True Story?
But is this second version of the story true? Or, is it a bunch of baloney like the first story? The second story has way more evidence backing it up. The details of this second story all come from an interview that Brookins did in the 1970s, nearly 50 years after the Globetrotters started playing games.
By then he owned a restaurant in St. Martin, in the Caribbean. An old sports writer by the name of Michael Strauss was on vacation and ran into Brookins. Brookins asked where he was from and Strauss said that he was a sports writer in New York. That was when Brookins asked if Strauss knew how the Globe Trotters really got started. So, Brookins told Struass all the details of the second story.
If not for that chance meeting in St. Martin, this second story probably never comes to light. Strauss was naturally very skeptical at first because he had known Saperstein personally back in the day, but had never heard this story. Unfortunately, Saperstein had passed away at this point so he was not there to defend himself, and Brookins version of the story got published.
And since that article a number of sports writers and researchers have dug deep into the story, going through rolls and rolls of old microfilm and piecing together the history of the team. The consensus today is that the Brookins story is the real one. There are a few inconsistencies in dates and timing, but the basic facts of the story all check out.
Abe Saperstein basically stole the Globe Trotters from Tommy Brookins.
In an ironic twist, the earliest confirmed game that the new Globetrotters played, now that they were completely under Saperstein’s control, was in Hinckley, Illinois. They played on January 21, 1929, not 1927. And they lost to the Hinckley Merchants by a score of 43-34. The Globetrotters netted a grand total of $8 from the game. Abe and the five players split the take and went home with $1.33 each. With that, you could get a ride back to Chicago and maybe two meals out of it. Not bad for two hours of work.
And the newly christened Harlem New York Globe Trotters were on their way. Abe would very quickly drop the New York part of the name to save on printing and embroidery on the uniforms and such. It was a smart idea because the great depression was going to start later that year and they were going to need every penny they could save.
As part of their business strategy, the current Globetrotters send three teams all over the world to perform their show. Two of the teams cover the United States and the third team travels internationally. I guess Saperstein’s idea of having multiple teams on tour was a good one after all. But I do not want to leave you with the idea that Abe was a bad guy. He was a strong businessman and was well-connected.
It was also he who would save the Globetrotters when barnstorming basketball began to disappear in the late 1940s. It was his idea to begin to introduce comedy into their games. Eventually, as other barnstorming teams went out of business, they transitioned from a regular basketball team to a basketball-themed comedy group.
It is because of that decision that the Globetrotters still exist today. Abe does deserve a lot of credit for that. If you want to know more about the barnstorming days of basketball, check out episode 2 of our podcast.
1927 = Not When Globetrotters Started
The last question I want to address is this; how did 1927 become the date of their first game if they were not even a team yet? How did that become part of the official story? It turns out that in 1947 they did play a game in Hinckley, Illinois, and to help promote the game, Abe Saperstein advertised the game as the 20th-anniversary game.
It really was not the 20th-anniversary game, but once it was printed it meant that their first game must have been back in 1927. That is how myth becomes a legend.
Never let the truth ruin a good story.
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