Dave Sweet
WMAL.com
The days of the Washington Generals may be numbered.
On Thursday, after 63 years playing adversary to the world-famous Harlem Globetrotters, Generals President and GM John Ferrari confirmed the Globetrotters were severing its ties.
“We didn’t see this coming,” said Ferrari. “There was no negotiation. There was no process. We were just told that Globetrotter ownership decided they did not want to renew our contract going forward.”
The ownership Ferrari referred to is Herschend Enterprises, just the latest in a long string of Globetrotter owners battling financial woes. Instead of paying Ferrari to arrange for an opponent, the logic goes, why not arrange for one themselves?
Ferrari says his organization is now in hiatus. In terms of a next move, he was quick to dismiss the idea of playing in a Globetrotter ‘wanna-be tour’.
“We were 63 years with the greatest American sports tradition, the Harlem globetrotters. I don’t want to follow that up with something that is not going to keep the Generals in the highest regard.”
The ‘Washington’ part of the Generals has always been more entertainment than reality, Ferrari points out. The team’s founder and Ferrari’s father-in-law, Red Klotz, is actually a Philadelphia native, though he did play professionally for the Baltimore bullets in the ’40s. In 1953, after Klotz was asked by Globetrotters owner Abe Saperstein to have their two teams tour together, he changed the name. Washington was chosen because it didn’t have a basketball team at the time. The mascot, the ‘General’ was an ode to the wildly popular president at the time, General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Ferrari insists there are several misconceptions about the history of the Generals. First is that they were a team of entertainers and not basketball players. Ferrari never ‘went down to Actors Equity Studio to find basketball players’ he puts it, citing hundreds of college workouts he attended and players who turned into Division II and III basketball stars.
To Ferrari, the Generals were a compliment to the Globetrotters, not necessarily an adversary. They were there to entertain. Sure, they came up short every night, but still went out and tried. As Ferrari is quick to point out, not everyone ‘finishes first in the race’.
Most importantly, they were out there to win basketball games.
“People think we were owned by the trotters. We never were. And we did beat them once, in 1971. We tasted victory once, at least.”
(Photo: prnewswire.com)
