This night, Generals pull rank on Globetrotters

If the baseball season ended today, the Chicago Cubs would be firmly in the playoffs. And now comes news the Washington Generals have folded.

So now what are fans of lovable losers supposed to do?

The Harlem Globetrotters recently notified Generals "brass" they will go it alone, without their longtime foil, effective immediately. Sort of like Chuck Berry, who instead of traveling with a backup band, almost always performs with musicians from the town in which he is appearing. It's cheaper that way, and nobody for which he is responsible trashes a room at the Best Western.

When I read the sad sacks of basketball had folded, or had been terminated by the Globetrotters, I thought of Barry Rohrssen, a former UNLV assistant under Bill Bayno. Rohrssen, who recently joined Chris Mullin's staff at St. John's, is known as an excellent recruiter.

That's what it usually says in the media guide. Rarely, if ever, does his bio mention Rohrssen played for the Washington Generals. Apparently this is not something you point out in trying to impress an employer, unless the employer happens to be the Minnesota Timberwolves.

"I wasn't there long enough to get (doused) with the confetti basket," the man they call "Slice" told the Review-Journal's Ed Graney at this year's Final Four, where Rohrssen was helping John Calipari recruit guys to Kentucky. Not that Calipari needed help.

Rohrssen didn't mention if he was with the Generals long enough to have had his pants pulled down.

That's what it meant to be a General, or a New Jersey Red, or a Baltimore Rocket — or any of the other guises under which the Generals performed to suggest the Globetrotters played in some kind of league.

You showed up at an armory or some neglected civic center, or, if it was being filmed for "Wide World of Sports," perhaps on the deck of an aircraft carrier or at a dude ranch in Arizona or some other exotic location. You might even have had your pants pulled down behind an iron curtain in front of a Soviet premier. Which, one supposes, would be a lot more disquieting than playing the T-Wolves at Target Center.

You played serious basketball for about 30 percent of the game, never learned to defend The Weave or Meadowlark Lemon in the high post, had your pants pulled down, got doused by the contents of the confetti pail.

Sometimes there was water in it.

You got the tune to "Sweet Georgia Brown" stuck in your head.

You lost a reported 2,495 games in a row — take that 2010-11 Cavaliers and 2013-14 76ers. And then one night, in a small town in Tennessee, you finally won one.

The only officially accepted Generals victory over the Globetrotters happened on Jan. 5, 1971, in Martin, Tenn., where Washington was appearing as the New Jersey Reds. Supposedly the Trotters were a little off that night during the real basketball segments and/or "didn't realize" they were 12 points down with about two minutes to play.

Apparently, Harlem was like UNLV coach Dave Rice and had used all of its timeouts. There have been a lot of games recently where the Rebels were down 12 with about two minutes to play and didn't realize it.

The timekeeper was told to go easy on the toggle switch, which, now that Brigham Young has departed, rarely happens in the Mountain West.

The Trotters mounted a furious comeback until Red Klotz, the Generals' star, coach and founder, had the ball with a few seconds to play.

Red sank one of his patented two-handed set shots. The Reds/Generals were back in front.

Historians — well, a guy named Dan who maintains a website devoted to the Generals — postulate Klotz might have been trying to miss the winning shot, because he didn't want to put one of his players in the position of making it and thus inciting the ire of the entire Harlem team, organization and Sweet Georgia Brown herself.

Red Klotz died last summer. He took the secret of the last shot to the grave.

Meadowlark missed a couple of tries at the other end. The timekeeper had little choice but to flip on the toggle switch. The scoreboard went to triple zeros.

Reds (Generals) 100. Globetrotters 99.

Kids in Martin, Tenn., cried.

It had to be the biggest upset of all time. Bigger than Villanova over Georgetown. Bigger than Douglas over Tyson. Bigger than Chaminade over Ralph Sampson, even, or any Miracle on Ice.

The Generals celebrated by spraying one another with orange soda.

"They looked at us like we killed Santa Claus," Red Klotz said.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski