A great oversight will be rectified Thursday when the Harlem Globetrotters star Reece Tatum — better known as Goose — is enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.

The Globetrotters’ founder, Abe Saperstein, the former stars Meadowlark Lemon and Marques Haynes, and the organization have been in the Hall for some time. But Tatum, the original “clown prince,” the heart and soul of the team, was not. So last fall, I placed his name in nomination, the committee on African-American pioneers of the game agreed, and he will take his rightful place alongside his colleagues.

Tatum was my hero when I was a youngster and just starting to develop as a player. I grew up poor in segregated Indianapolis in the 1940s and ’50s, when it was rare to see black and white players on the same court. Attending professional basketball games was out of the question aside from a local community organization’s periodic $1 specials. But I wouldn’t think of missing the Globetrotters’ annual visit. Invited into their locker room when I was 13, I was astonished that the players’ primary halftime activity was their card game.

My fellow Crispus Attucks High School alumni Hallie Bryant, Willie Gardner and my older brother Bailey went on to play for the Trotters, and Cleveland Harp played for one of Tatum’s later barnstorming teams. (I resisted Saperstein’s overtures when I was at the University of Cincinnati because I had promised my mother I would get a college education.)