Abraham Michael Saperstein was the founder, owner and earliest coach of the Harlem Globetrotters. Saperstein was a leading figure in black basketball and baseball from the 1920s through the 1950s, primarily before those sports were racially integrated.
KeyBank Center is a multipurpose indoor arena located in Buffalo, New York. Originally known as Marine Midland Arena, the venue has since been named HSBC Arena and First Niagara Center. Home to the Buffalo Sabres of the National Hockey League since 1996, is the largest indoor arena in Western New York, seating 19,070. It replaced the Sabres' former home, Buffalo Memorial Auditorium, where the team played from 1970 to 1996. The venue is also home to the Buffalo Bandits of the National Lacrosse League.
An exhibition game is a sporting event whose prize money and impact on the player's or the team's rankings is either zero or otherwise greatly reduced. Exhibition games often serve as 'warm up matches', particularly in many team sports where these games help coaches and managers select and condition players, before the competitive matches of a league season or tournament. If the players usually play in different teams in other leagues, exhibition games offer an opportunity for the players to learn to work with each other. The games can be held between separate teams or between parts of the same team.
The Birmingham Black Barons were a Negro league baseball team that played from 1920 until 1960. They shared their home field of Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, with the white Birmingham Barons, usually drawing larger crowds and equal press.
Reece "Goose" Tatum was an American Negro league baseball and basketball player. In 1942, he was signed to the Harlem Globetrotters and had an 11-year career with the team. He later formed his own team known as the Harlem Magicians with former Globetrotters player Marques Haynes. He is a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame. Tatum's number 50 is retired by the Globetrotters.
The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings is a 1976 American sports comedy film about a team of enterprising ex-Negro league baseball players in the era of racial segregation. Loosely based upon William Brashler's 1973 novel of the same name, it starred Billy Dee Williams, James Earl Jones and Richard Pryor. Directed by John Badham, the movie was produced by Berry Gordy for Motown Productions and Rob Cohen for Universal Pictures, and released by Universal on July 16, 1976.
The Buffalo Sabres Alumni Hockey Team is an independent barnstorming hockey team located in Buffalo, New York. Its roster consists entirely of retired National Hockey League players, mostly former members of the Buffalo Sabres. The team is operated by the Buffalo Sabres Alumni Association.
The Indianapolis Clowns were a professional baseball team in the Negro American League. Tracing their origins back to the 1930s, the Clowns were the last of the Negro league teams to disband, continuing to play exhibition games into the 1980s. They began play as the independent Ethiopian Clowns, joined the Negro American League as the Cincinnati Clowns and, after a couple of years, relocated to Indianapolis. Hank Aaron was a Clown for a short period, and the Clowns were also one of the first professional baseball teams to hire a female player.
The Seattle Steelheads were a Negro league baseball team from Seattle, Washington. Owned by Abe Saperstein, they were also known as the Harlem Globetrotters and Cincinnati Crescents, though occasionally the teams split and played each other.
The ICC AllStars was an early integrated professional basketball team of the barnstorming era led by David DeJernett. In 1935 DeJernett finished his fourth year of eligibility at Indiana Central College and started a pro career with former teammates from Indiana Central as well as Washington (IN) High School. The ICC All-Stars also featured Burl Friddle, a Franklin Wonder Fiver and Twenties pro who had coached DeJernett in high school.
The Chicago Crusaders were an all-black barnstorming basketball club whose history ran from 1933 through 1947. Commonly billed as the "Western World's Colored Champions" the team's roster over the years featured about a dozen players who also were members of the better-known Harlem Globetrotters and New York Renaissance, both enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Harlem Magicians was a basketball enterprise founded in 1953 by Lon Varnell through his Varnell Enterprises, that was similar in fashion and activities to the famous exhibition basketball team the Harlem Globetrotters. The full name of the barnstorming basketball team was the Fabulous Harlem Magicians with the main star attraction of the team being Marques Haynes. Haynes had been a member of the Globetrotters, but had left the team due to a contract dispute to join the Magicians. Other famous players in the team were Goose Tatum, comic Sam "Boom" Wheeler, Josh Grider, Ron Cavenall, and Bob "Ergie" Erickson. Dempsey Hovland, founder of 20th Century Booking Agency and himself owner of several barnstorming teams, was recruited to book the Harlem Magicians' games.
Dempsey Hovland was a baseball and basketball barnstorming entrepreneur and promoter and multiple sports team owner. He founded the 20th Century Booking Agency, a sports booking management for arranging and marketing of sporting exhibition events and booking of venues. He and his wife Florence Holder Hovland owned the Miss American Teenager beauty pageant in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Cuban House of David were a traveling Negro league baseball team that played from about 1927 to 1936 featuring players primarily from Cuba.
Buffalo, New York and its greater metropolitan area is currently home to two major league sports teams, the Buffalo Sabres & Buffalo Bills. Buffalo is also home to several other major and minor league sports teams, including the Buffalo Bandits, Buffalo Bisons, Buffalo eXtreme and FC Buffalo. Local colleges active in NCAA Division I athletics include Canisius University, Niagara University, St. Bonaventure University and University at Buffalo.
The Savannah Bananas are an exhibition barnstorming baseball team based in Savannah, Georgia. The team was founded in 2016 and has played at Grayson Stadium since its inaugural season. Until 2022, the Bananas competed as a collegiate summer baseball team in the Coastal Plain League's (CPL) West division, where they won three Petitt Cup championships. However, after the growth of their alternate "Banana Ball" format, the team transitioned entirely to exhibition games against their partner touring teams, the Party Animals, the Firefighters, and other "challenger" professional teams, similar to the decades-long format of basketball's Harlem Globetrotters and their partner touring team, the Washington Generals. The team has been featured by ESPN, The Wall Street Journal, CNN 10, and Sports Illustrated because of its on-field hijinks and viral videos.
Fred Thomas was a Canadian multi-sport professional athlete. He played on semi-professional or professional teams in basketball, baseball, and Canadian football. He was a standout on his college basketball team and is known as one of Canada's finest basketball players. A 2019 profile by TVOntario described Thomas as "the greatest Canadian athlete you've never heard of". He would likely have been more well-known had blacks not been denied opportunities to compete in major professional sports leagues in the 1940s and 1950s.
Napoleon Gulley was an American Negro league pitcher in the 1940s.
Winfield Scott Welch, nicknamed "Gus" and "Moe", was an American Negro league outfielder and manager. Welch spent most of his playing career with minor Negro teams. He is best known as a successful manager, lauded by some as "the Connie Mack of Negro baseball"
Wesley "Big Train" Barrow was an American Negro league player and manager in the 1940s who was once regarded as "one of the best developers of Negro talent in the South."
