NEWS Photo by Marc Blanchette

Meadowlark Lemon decided it was time to get the crowd going Sunday night. He rolled the basketball down his arm, pulled it in with his long fingers and flicked it in the opposite direction behind his back. He bounced it under his leg, off his forehead and off his backside. With a slow belly laugh, he sent 800 pairs of eyes in one direction while he fired the ball the other way.

The cheers swelled. It did not matter to them that Lemon had traded his red, white and blue uniform for a dark suit. His straight men were not his teammates of 22 years, the Harlem Globetrotters, but three middle-aged women in dresses and heels. Instead of center court, Lemon put on his show in the aisles of the Glad Tidings Church in Bangor. But for the 800 people in the seats, the smiles and gasps and guffaws came just as fast as ever.

After a lifetime touring with the Globetrotters and then his own basketball team, Meadowlark Lemon is on the road again. This time he is alone, rousing church congregations around the world with a loose weave of basketball stunts, old-fashioned gospel revival, one-liners and stories of his conversion to Christianity.

“This is harder than anything I’ve ever done,” said Lemon, who visited Presque Isle on Saturday before appearing in Bangor Sunday. Resting before Sunday night’s service, he let down his smile for just a moment. “It’s really tiring. I didn’t realize that ministering could be so hard.”

Lemon claims he does not remember how old he is, but he began playing professional basketball more than 30 years ago. Most of that time he has put on more than 400 shows a year, covering 92 countries. Now, without an entourage, a team plane or even a chartered bus, the road poses an even greater challenge.

Lemon spent nearly 15 hours traveling Saturday. When his flight from Connecticut to Presque Isle was cancelled, he rented a car and pushed on through the cottony fog, arriving minutes before he was scheduled to appear. His luggage, lost in the parallel — and paralyzed — world of air travel, did not catch up to him until Sunday.

Still, by the time he stepped up to the pulpit Sunday night, Meadowlark Lemon looked ready to go full court: “You can all get down here. We’re going to have some fun. Just let it hang out — I believe that’s what we’re supposed to do in church. I don’t want to come in here and look like I’m sucking a lemon.”

He does not want the kids in the audience sucking lemons either. “I first saw the Globetrotters when I was 11. I knew down in my belly that I would play with the `Trotters, but it didn’t happen all at once. You young people, you gotta have a dream,” he said. “I had people who grew up playing basketball with me, and they were better, and they told me I couldn’t do it. Michael Jordan came from the same hometown, and they told him that too.”

Lemon may not have been Jordan’s equal on the court, but he became every bit as famous. Shortly after he left the Globetrotters in 1980, one magazine voted Lemon the most recognizable athlete in the world. He moved to Los Angeles, put together his own basketball exhibition team, dabbled in movies and became a fixture in the celebrity scene.

“About eight years ago I was one of the best partiers in the world,” Lemon said. It was not drugs or alcohol; instead he revelled in big cars and fancy toys. “When I had holes in me, a void in my life, I filled it with things.”

That is when Lemon became a Christian. “I guess God got tired of me acting as a fool, so I got myself together.”

Eventually he began touring churches instead of gyms. Now after four years on the evangelical circuit, Lemon is planning to return to the hardwood for what he calls a Farewell Tour. For fans, it will be a chance to see Meadowlark Lemon play basketball; for Lemon, it is the best way he can think of to raise money for Christian ministry.

“The concept is to go back to every city I’ve ever played in. Some of the old gyms aren’t there any more; they’ve been replaced by newer facilities. But I want to go back to every city,” he said. “It should take about three years.”

After that, he will return to preaching. “If a good family-type role comes along in Hollywood, I’ll do that too. It won’t take away from the ministry,” he said.

And, of course, he will never be too far away from a basketball. “That’s a part of my life,” he said Sunday. “I can’t forget that I was a basketball player.”

He will not forget the road, either. Even on a foggy night in Maine, after an exhausting weekend, Meadowlark Lemon said that he had no regrets about a life of barnstorming. “I’ve been able to have a complete life,” he said. “I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.”