Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Washington Generals

Episode Date: August 12, 2020

Sports history is littered with really bad teams. The 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers didn’t win a single game and wound up losing 26 in a row. The 2012 Charlotte Bobcats went 7-59 for a .106 winning percentage. The 1899 Cleveland Spiders set a record for futility in baseball winning only 20 games out of 154. However, all of those teams are giants compared to the worst professional sports team in history: The Washington Generals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sports history is littered with really bad teams. The 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers didn't win a single game and wound up losing 26 in a row. The 2012 Charlotte Bobcats had seven wins and 59 losses for a 0.106 winning percentage. The 1899 Cleveland Spiders set a record for futility in baseball winning only 20 games out of 154. However, all of these teams are giants compared to the worst professional sports team in history, the Washington Generals. Learn more about the team which was actually paid money to lose on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR.

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As I traveled around the world, I taught myself the art of travel photography, eventually mastering it to a point where I was named Travel Photographer the year three times in North America. The Travel Photography Academy is an online course that teaches you everything you need to know to master your camera and to take better photos on your next trip. To improve your photography and to get better images on your next trip, visit Travel Photographyacademy.com or click in the link in the show notes. The Washington generals are the basketball equivalent of the coyote to the Harlem Globetrotters Roadrunner. To understand the generals in their long-term futility, you first have to understand the Globetrotters.

The Harlem Globetrotters are a professional exhibition basketball team, whose roots trace back to 1926. The team was first called the Savoy Big Five, getting their name from the Savoy Ballroom on Chicago's south side, where they would play exhibition games before dances. A team consisting of entirely black players was something unique at the time, and became the team's signature. In 1928, the team split in a dispute over money and, The contingent led by Tommy Brookens formed a team called the Globe Trotters, two words. It was at this point in time, the team met up with a man who had shaped their future for years to come, Abe Saperstein. He became the manager and promoter for the team, and also changed the team name to the Harlem Globetrotters. It should be noted that the team wasn't from Harlem. They used the word Harlem because it was the center of African American culture at the time with the Harlem Renaissance.

In fact, the team never even played in Harlem until 1960s. 48, 40 years after they were founded. The Globetrotter part of the name was just added to make the team sound more worldly. The early team was anything but worldly, as they only toured around Illinois and Iowa in 1929. The Globetrotters at this time were a legitimate team. While they were a touring exhibition team, their games were all real. In fact, in 1940, they won the World Professional Basketball Tournament, which was considered the World Championship before the establishment of the NBA.

Throughout the 1940s, the Globetrotters would regularly beat the best white basketball teams in exhibition games. Because the color barrier had not been broken in basketball, and the Globetrotters couldn't join any of the professional leagues, they basically had a monopoly on the best black players in the country. There was a famous 1948 game against the Minneapolis Lakers, now the Los Angeles Lakers, which took place in Chicago where the Globetrotters beat the world champs on a last second shot. With the creation of the NBA and the breaking of basketball's color players, barrier, several of their best players left to play for the NBA, and the Globetrotters began adding comedy elements to their performance. The addition of comedy is attributed to Reese Goose Tatum,

who developed many of the comic routines which the team still uses today. It was in 1952 that the Washington generals entered the pitcher. As the Globetrotters became more about entertainment, it was more difficult to put on such a performance with a different team every night. Having a single opponent they could face would make everything much easier. Abe Saperstein asked his friend and professional basketball player read Clots to put together a team that could play the Globetrotters on a regular basis. Clots was, and still is, the shortest person in NBA history at 5'7 ever to have won an NBA championship,

and the fourth shortest person ever to have played a game in the NBA. The team was named in honor of the new U.S. president, General Dwight Eisenhower, who was the Supreme Allied commander during World War II. However, they weren't necessarily expected to win. They lost and lost and lost and lost. People didn't buy tickets to see the generals. They bought tickets to see the Globetrotters. For a brief period of time in 1971 and 1972,

the generals used other names for the team just to give the illusion of variety. Other names included the New Jersey Reds, the Boston Shamrocks, the Baltimore Rockets, and the Atlantic City Seagulls. Red Clots played with the team as a point guard until he was 60. years old. Here is where I should note that the Washington generals were a totally separate team from the Globetrotters. They were owned by different people and different companies. At several times throughout his career, Clawt said in an interview that the generals actually tried to win every game, which makes their record all the more sad, if true. In 2015, the Globetrotters

were under new management and they decided to bring their opposition in-house. They canceled their contract with the Washington Generals. And on August 1st, 2015, the Generals and the Globetrotters played their last game. From 1952 to 2015, it is estimated that the two teams played over 16,000 games against each other. No one is sure of the exact number because records were never kept. During that time, it's estimated that the Washington Generals won exactly three games. Three games in over 16,000. The most famous and last of these games occurred on January 5, 1971 in Martin, Tennessee. Basically, the Globetrotters just lost track of the score as they were going about entertaining the crowd.

With two minutes left, the Globetrotters were down by 12 points and played legit at the end of the game to try to win. The generals won 100 to 99. The last second shot by Red Clots won the game. The timekeeper tried to stop the clock, but the buzzer went off. The crowd was stunned because this wasn't supposed to happen. As Clots later said in an interview, the crowd looked at us like we killed Santa Claus. Some children were actually seen crying after the game. The sad part about that win is that it was one of the nights where they weren't playing under the name the Washington Generals.

That night, they were the New Jersey Reds. If you want to find a win where the Generals actually played as the Generals, you'd have to go back to 1958. Red Clots passed away in 2014 at the age of 93, and the Globetrotters eventually purchased the Generals in 2017 and revived the team name. With the team's reintroduction, They entered a legitimate five-on-five tournament run by ESPN, but kept the losing streak alive by losing in the first round. Executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is James Mackala.

I would also like to thank everyone who's been leaving comments over on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts because the reviews really help. And I'd like to take the time to actually read some of them to you. So if you leave a review over there, I will be able to read it on the show. Yahoo 15 left a review. This podcast is short, 9 to 12 minutes and daily. While I love listening to it, I would suggest that the host might want to make it a weekday podcast. I can't imagine going 365 days a year. If he ever gets to travel or gets ill or whatever, this one could back up real fast.

I would, however, recommend it highly along with this week in travel, which is also hosted by Gary occasionally. This week in travel, not every week in travel. Even through the pandemic, both of these are worth the cost of admission, zero. Thanks Yahoo 15 and thanks all of you who are supporting the podcast over on patreon.com slash everything everywhere.