MILLIANS: A song for Meadowlark

Published 3:23 pm Friday, February 14, 2025

I recently read a wonderful story on theathletic.com about the Harlem Globetrotters, the occasion being Black History Month and their 99th anniversary.

Memories flooded back, from watching the Globetrotters on ABC-TV’s “Wide World of Sports”, seeing them play at Georgia Tech’s arena in Atlanta, and later interviewing Globetrotters star Meadowlark Lemon.

In the early ‘60s, when I was 10 or 11, dad took me and my brother Mike to a Globetrotters game. We were fascinated by the game – and the crowd, which included then Georgia Tech football stars Billy Lothridge and Billy Martin, the quarterback and receiver. Naturally, at that age, we asked for their autographs.

The Globetrotters, who literally have played all other the globe, were known for their basketball prowess as well as their comedic high jinks. They drew huge crowds in exhibition games against NBA teams, as well. NBA legend Wilt Chamberlain played with the Globetrotters for a year. Howard Cosell even called some of their games.

Who can forget their famous “bucket trick?” Curly Neal would fake an argument with a teammate and wind up throwing a glass of water he’d gotten out of a bucket in his teammate’s face. The angry teammate would grab the bucket and chase Neal, tossing the bucket’s contents at him. Neal would duck, and the bucket’s contents would go into the crowd. But the bucket contained confetti, not water.

Corny, but it never got old. Crowds always screamed with delight.

Then, many years later, it must have been 1977, the Globetrotters came to play in the Macon Coliseum. I went to the game as a young sports editor at the Macon Telegraph and News to write a column on Lemon, the “Clown Prince of Basketball.”

Lemon was a man of many talents: a terrific basketball player, known for his ballhandling, his behind-the-back passes and his long-range hook shots.

“When you go to the Ice Capades, you see all these beautiful skaters, and then you see the clown come out on the ice, stumbling and pretending like he can hardly stay up on his skates, just to make you laugh,” Lemon told Sports Illustrated in 2010. “A lot of times, that clown is the best skater of the bunch.”

Lemon was the best of the basketball bunch for 22 seasons with the Globetrotters.

“Meadowlark was the most sensational, awesome, incredible basketball player I’ve ever seen,” Chamberlain said in a television interview not long before he died in 1999. “People would say it would be Dr. J (Julius Erving) or even (Michael) Jordan. For me, it would be Meadowlark Lemon.”

But what he was really known for was his comic timing. He never missed a cue. He brought smiles and laughs to a needy country during the racially turbulent ‘60s.

And who could forget a name like his? Born Meadow George Lemon, he adopted Meadowlark for the bird’s sweet, happy song when he joined the Globetrotters.

Lemon helped make the Globetrotters more famous, with the team appearing on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and “The Harlem Globetrotters Popcorn Machine.” He appeared in national TV commercials and an animation star on “The Harlem Globetrotters” cartoon series and on episodes of “Scooby Doo.”

Lemon was as nice as he could be, accommodating and forthcoming, when I interviewed him before yet another game — he played in more than 16,000 Globetrotter games — against the Washington Generals. He answered questions I’m sure he had been asked thousands of times with great patience.

Of course, parts of the Globetrotter games were scripted. Of course, the comedy bits were planned. Of course, the Generals and coach Red Klotz would lose again.

That is what fans paid good money to see.

The thing I remember the most about talking to Lemon was that he never smiled as we talked.

When you have made so many laugh maybe you just get tired.

I think Meadowlark Lemon was tired that night in Macon. As it turned out, he left the Globetrotters a year or so later. He later formed his own comedic basketball team and became an ordained minister.

His place in basketball history was cemented by his induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2003.

“He believed . . . if he could make someone laugh, he would get you to listen, to believe, and to change,” Globetrotters co-owner Mannie Jackson said when introducing Lemon at the Hall of Fame ceremony. “He changed people’s attitudes about race. He changed foreigners’ attitudes about America. And along the way, he made millions love the game of basketball.”

Lemon died in 2015 at the age of 83.

Memories of Meadowlark always make me smile.

—Rick Millians is retired after working as a sports editor at newspapers in Georgia, Ohio and South Carolina.