When Is A Lemon Not A Lemon?

Long before I was ever a conventional sports fan, I was a Harlem Globetrotters fan. I suppose you could make the case that I was being fed basketball through a comedy tube, but I didn't see it that way. I knew what these guys were doing. Long before I ever stopped to consider whether or not wrestling was real or fake, I knew that the Washington Generals were the paid patsies for the Globetrotters to dribble and dunk around. I understood fully that what I was watching was an exhibition, not a a competition. I would have discouraged wagering. I knew that there would be a basketball game going on somewhere during all those antics and chicanery, but the game was not what I paid to see.
I wanted to see Meadowlark Lemon. I wanted to see him move that ball all around the court. Behind the back. Over the shoulder. Into the stands. It didn't matter from where the ball was launched. It was going to find its way through the hoop. All that skill and talent made me forget that what I was watching really was magic, to the tune of Sweet Georgia Brown. It was Meadowlark's half court hook shot that was the inspiration for my own driveway court specialty. Never being a great shot, I used the feel and the chatter of the Globetrotters to make it feel more like a goof if I made it, or not. I wasn't playing basketball. I was clowning around. Just like Meadowlark Lemon.
There were other Globetrotters, to be sure. like Curly Neal and Marques Haynes, even Wilt Chamberlain played with them for a year, but I watched the Globetrotters to see the Man. Meadowlark made me laugh. He was the one I tuned in to see whether it was on ABC's Wide World of Sports or to see them land on Gilligan's Island. He was their leader. The odd thing about this for me at the time was how much I wanted to take sports seriously. As the kid most likely to be picked last, there was a great stake placed on my own performance and the rigors of competition. So much so that I once fled a showing of Football Follies in tears because I felt it was doing a disservice to the athletes to be making fun of them.
Meadowlark Lemon would have laughed at that. He would have been right. There is something inherently funny about watching grown men toss themselves and various shaped balls about. We should all benefit from this lighthearted attitude. Meadowlark took him red, white and blue ball and dribbled off into the sunset this week, and I will miss him on the court and in the stands, and I will think of him whenever I see a great hook shot or a bucket full of confetti. Aloha, Mister Lemon. You stomped on the Terra.