Short in physical stature, but a giant in his time, Abe Saperstein created in Chicago that international sensation called the Harlem Globetrotters.
That remains his most notable and influential achievement, but this was a man of inexhaustible energy and ideas. You can add to that success as others like pioneering the three-point shot; increase the popularity of basketball throughout the country and the planet; promotes a variety of talents, from musicians to movie stars, from the Ice Capades to a French portraitist; work with baseball’s Bill Veeck and others to break major league baseball’s color barrier and promote pitcher Satchel Paige; and rescue Olympic star Jesse Owens from poverty.
All of that — but wait, there’s more — earns this 5-foot-3-inch man a place alongside the likes of George Halas and just a few other Chicagoans in the pantheon of 20th-century sports and entertainment wonders.
Born on July 4, 1902, in the London neighborhood of Whitechapel, Saperstein died on March 15, 1966 at the Weiss Memorial Hospital there. His 63 years were filled with so much activity that it is mysteriously amazing that there has never been a full biography. That certainly would have saddened and surprised him, because in his life he was a leading fabulist, creating in the press favorable stories about himself, the Globetrotters and his many other efforts.
This injustice has finally been remedied by brothers Mark and Matthew Jacob in their heavily researched and exquisitely written new book, “Globetrotter: How Abe Saperstein Shook Up the World of Sports” (Rowman & Littlefield).
Mark was previously a longtime journalist with the Sun-Times and Tribune, where he was a senior editor. Matthew was a journalist for a time before becoming a public health consultant based in Virginia. They first collaborated on the 2010 “What the Big Man: A Curious Story of Food and Fame” and Mark is the author of a number of books as well as lively media and politics. newsletterand is the editor of the new book “Everybody Needs an Editor”.
The couple was looking for a new project when the idea for it came from their friend Richard Cahan, a local photographer, author and publisher.
Admitting that “the legacy of their subject is complicated,” the brothers have written what is surely the definitive Saperstein story, and a fabulous one at that. They rightly call him “the 20th century version of PT Barnum.”
He arrived here as the 5-year-old son of a father who was a tailor in a family that would have nine children. An enthusiastic and talented athlete, he graduated from Lake View High School and worked a number of jobs until he was hired at 24 as a public employee in Welles Park, where he often played sports. There he started coaching basketball and that would lead to the formation of the Globetrotters.
The book details that path, a rollercoaster ride of sorts, with Saperstein and five Black players traveling in (and often forced to sleep in) a Ford Model T, with the shadow of race ever-present, as he writes Jacob brothers, “. a Jewish man and five black athletes rolling around in predominantly white rural towns where some residents have never seen a Jew or a black person face to face.”
These early years are captured in compelling detail, and then things take flight with a 1948 game between the Globetrotters and the Minneapolis Lakers and their star George Mikan at Chicago Stadium.
More successfully, Saperstein quickly hired 7-foot college star Wilt Chamberlain, after failing to land that other college sensation, Bill Russell, who eventually signed with the Boston Celtics, but not before telling the Globetrotters: “I don’t want not be a basketball clown.”
But that clown was a great appeal of the Globetrotters, beautifying the high-flying talents of the players.
At first, neither of the Jacob brothers knew much more than a few modest details of Saperstein’s history, but they were excited about their trip.
“We immediately realized how little we knew about him. And although I may have written more than the book, I gave Matthew the hard parts,” says Mark.
“I did a lot of the research and Mark did most of the interviews,” says Matthew. “We swap chapters, talk often, never really argue. Our writing styles are quite similar.”
They initially refer to Saperstein as a “human dynamo” and the following pages offer ample proof. They write that “he didn’t make biographies easy, but he sure made them interesting.”
They write that its subject is “a tangle of contradictions, myths, mysteries, mistakes and triumphs … the story of a force of nature that burst into life, making a spectacular impact.”
Indeed. Some see Saperstein today as having promoted degrading racial stereotypes. Others gave him and his Globetrotters – in 1978 Jesse Jackson said: “I think they had a positive influence. They didn’t show Black people as stupid. On the contrary, they were shown as superiors”.
Jonathan Eig, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “King: A Life,” says the Jacob brothers’ book “dazzles with its beautiful writing and scores even more with its impressive research.” Robert Kurson, author of “Shadow Divers,” calls it a biography of a man “whose impact on American athletics, race relations and flat-out entertainment remains as vibrant and valuable as ever.”
Some may not come away from this book with an unbridled affection for Saperstein. He was not, for example, a faithful husband to his wife Sylvia. As one of his brothers said, “His only vice was women – lots of them! He had women all over the world.”
He ended up visiting 90 countries in his lifetime, falling short of 10 of his ambitions of 100 countries. But it gave millions of fans “a brief escape from the everyday.”
The Jacob brothers appreciate this and are undeniably fascinated with the man. They discovered an invaluable amount of facts, such as this bit of self-evaluation from the mouth of their subject: “I’m wrong. Sometimes I’ve been crazy. The trick in life, though, is to keep on venturing and hoping that it will work out reason more times than crazy.
What a man. What a book.
rkogan@chicagotribune.com
