Free Spinning the Globe by Ben Green Page B

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    Today, Michael Strauss is ninety-one years old and lives in Palm Beach, Florida. He retired from the Times in 1980, when he turned seventy, after an astonishing fifty-three years there, but has yet to retire from sportswriting. He is now the sports editor of the Palm Beach Daily News and writes at least five columns a week. He doesn’t do it for the money, as he’s a millionaire from investments in the stock market. “I do it to keep busy,” he explains.
    And thirty years after his encounter with Tommy Brookins, he still has vivid recollections of it. “Absolutely,” he says. “I can see myself standing right there on the beach at St. Martin, and he was talking to me. And I didn’t believe it. It came from left field…but he was sincere and well-spoken.”
    The story Brookins told that day on the beach is just as sensational today. And some of it can now be documented.
    “It all began with our schoolboy team,” Brookins began. He told Strauss about playing on the great Wendell Phillips team that nearly won the city championship, only to lose to Lane Tech. He told him about Dick Hudson starting the Savoy Big Five, which included Brookins, Randolph Ramsey, Toots Wright, Lester Johnson, and Inman Jackson. He told him about beating George Halas’s Chicago Bruins (although the Bruins actually beat the Savoy the first time they played, when Brookins was still on the team). And he told him about how they had changed the name of the team to “Tommy Brookins’ Globe Trotters” (and later to the Original Chicago Globe Trotters) and moved their games from the Savoy Ballroom to the Eighth Regiment Armory, after Hudson and I. J. Faggen, the Savoy owner, got into a hassle over money.
    And then Brookins started talking about Abe Saperstein. He said that the Globe Trotters were hoping to do some barnstorming inMichigan and Wisconsin, * to make extra money, and Dick Hudson told them, “Well, I’ve got a man who I think can help us. His name is Abe Saperstein.” Hudson explained that Abe had booked baseball teams in both those states, and could help the Globe Trotters “because he has a white face.”
    According to Brookins, Abe was hired strictly as a booking agent. The deal was that he would book ten games, for which he would get a 10 percent booking fee of whatever money they made. In addition, Abe asked for $100 expense money up front so he could “go into the country and find us some places to play.” The players voted to accept his deal, chipped in the $100 for travel expenses, and off he went.
    After Abe booked the games, the Tommy Brookins’s Globe Trotters headed out on the road to play them. “Everything was going great,” Brookins told Strauss. But one night, after a game ended, the team was sitting in the locker room when a fan came in to congratulate them.
    “I saw you guys the other night in Eau Claire,” he said. “You fellows are great!”
    “Eau Claire?” Brookins responded, quizzically. “We haven’t even played there yet. You must be mistaken.”
    Randolph Ramsey, who had overheard the conversation, was left to deliver the bad news. He told Brookins that Abe Saperstein was booking a second team, using the name Globe Trotters, in Wisconsin. Apparently, while Brookins’s was playing in Michigan, the “second” Globe Trotters team was in Wisconsin.
    Brookins was shocked—and livid. “How come you never told me until now?” he demanded.
    “I was going to tell you,” Ramsey said sheepishly, “but I was waiting until I thought you were in a good mood.”
    When Brookins asked what players Abe had on the other team, Ramsey said, “All the fellows we didn’t want.”
    As soon as Brookins could, he caught up with Abe and confrontedhim. “What’s the big idea?” he asked. “They tell me you’ve started another team and used our name.”
    Abe freely admitted it, saying, “I thought it would be a good idea to book two teams at once.” When Brookins told him he hadn’t treated them