July 6, 1959: As part of a cultural exchange program, which ends up including the "Kitchen Debate" between Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, basketball's Harlem Globetrotters play a game in Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union.
Since 1927, the all-black Globies -- or the Trotters, if you prefer -- had been entertaining crowds all over the world with trick plays when they could, and with great basketball skill when they had to. They would play anybody, anywhere. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, they played a few games against the top team in the still-all-white pro leagues, the Minneapolis Lakers, and won the 1st 2 times before the Lakers managed to adjust.
Vasily Gricorevich, the director of Lenin Central Statium (later renamed the Luzhniki Stadium), extended an invitation to the Globetrotters. They played 9 games there, outdoors, in front of crowds in excess of 60,000, starting on July 6.
Among the Globetrotter players who made the trip were 3 whose uniform numbers would later be retired by the team: Charles "Tex" Harrison, Number 34; Meadowlark Lemon, Number 36; and Wilt Chamberlain, Number 13.
(They've honored 8 players in total. The others: Reece "Goose" Tatum, Number 50, from the 1940s and early '50s; Marques Haynes, Humber 20, from the same era, and returned as an elder statesman in the 1970s; Hubert "Geese Ausbie, Number 35, and Fred "Curly" Neal, Number 22, who played from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s; and Sweet Lou Dunbar, Number 41, who played in the 1970s and '80s, and now coaches the team.)
Chamberlain had starred at the University of Kansas, and wanted to turn pro, but the NBA wouldn't let him play until his college class had graduated in the Spring of 1959. So he played the 1958-59 season with the Globetrotters, and made more money with them in that one year, and certainly traveled to more places, and more interesting ones, than he did in each of his first few years in the NBA, with his hometown Philadelphia Warriors.
The previous season, 1957-58, Bob Gibson, who had starred on the court for Omaha's Creighton University before a Hall of Fame career pitching for baseball's St. Louis Cardinals, played for the Globetrotters. An urban legend said that Gibson quit because he couldn't stand the clowning, but it was really the constant traveling that made him give baseball a full go. Chamberlain later admitted that he loved the stunts.
In his writeup of the 1st game for Pravda, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, Gregor Belevich was not kind:
This is not basketball; it is too full of tricks. The Harlem Globetrotters from New York City played tonight against Basketball Club Dynamo of Moscow in what was presented to be a virtuous competition of basketball but was in fact nothing of the sort. These Americans are men big of the body, but made small by their deeds...
By relying on hoax and chicanery, these Globetrotters have surely become beholden to deception at the expense of their competitive spirit and industriousness (a more apt team of representatives from America this reporter cannot think of…). While the final score was 98–42 in favor of the Globetrotters, it is better to go to bed supperless than to rise in debt.
Dynamo was then known for its great soccer team, but also had the best basketball team in the U.S.S.R. at the time. It should also be noted that, while Harlem is in New York City, it was chosen as an identifier to indicate that the team was all-black. The team was actually based in Chicago, hometown of their founder, owner and manager, Abe Saperstein. Later ownership groups would move the team's organization to Los Angeles, and now to Phoenix.
But the fans did not agree with Belevich, and loved what they saw. Khrushchev met with them, and awarded them the Order of Lenin. While this medal could be given to Soviet citizens for various forms of service, it was also the highest award the country could give to a foreigner, usually to "Those who promoted friendship and cooperation between people and in strengthening peace."
The 2 leading newspapers in the Soviet Union were Pravda, meaning "Truth"; and Izvestia, meaning "News." This led to a joke: "There is no news in the Truth, and there is no truth in the News."
On this same trip, the Globetrotters played in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and -- no doubt due to some very delicate negotiations, as that nation was still largely closed to the West -- the People's Republic of China. Chamberlain was with them the whole way, before departing for the Warriors.
Interviewing him for his radio show in 1986, Philadelphia basketball historian Sonny Hill, told his listeners, "In the Fifties, they knew about Wilt Chamberlain in China! That's how big of a man he was, and is!" And, in this case, "big" did not refer to the man's physical size, but his impact.
*
July 6, 1959 was a Monday. There were no scores on this historic day: Baseball was in its All-Star Break, and no other sports were in season.
No comments:
Post a Comment