Bob Karstens, 89, the First White Harlem Globetrotter
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Ball Handler Bob Karstens, signed to the Harlem Globetrotters in 1942, was one of team’s greatest innovators. It was wartime. Major League Baseball had a one-armed outfielder, and the Globetrotters fielded a white player. Fans of the team will be familiar with the ‘Yo-Yo’ basketball, the behind-the-back trick shot, and the ‘goofball,’ an unevenly-weighted ball that bounced every which way. Karstens developed all of them. Despite the name, the Globetrotters were a Chicago team and had occasionally fielded white guest players, including their founder, Abe Saperstein, but Karstens was the first to join the lineup on a permanent basis. There have been two others whites since then. Karstens stopped playing for the Globetrotters after he was drafted into the Army Air Corps in 1943, although he occasionally appeared as a player for the Globetrotters’s opponents. One of these was the New York Celtics, an actual team. Karstens died December 31 in his hometown of Davenport, La. He was 89.
