Dan Rooney

by Dan Rooney

  At first base he turned right.

  “You don’t play it like that,” Dad said, shaking his head in disgust.

  “We play differently now,” Tim objected, “not the way they played in the olden days.”

  Things went downhill from there.

  The next inning a fly ball sailed deep into the outfield, over the heads of Tim and Colman Daly. Instead of going after it, the boys stopped and argued about whose ball it was. Meanwhile a runner scored, and my father kept shaking his head and shouted, “What are you guys doing out there?” Pat and John did the Rooneys proud that day, but it wasn’t enough to make up for our team’s poor play.

  Pat was pitching a good game. He struck out three players in a row, which should have ended the inning, but the catcher dropped the ball on the final strike and the boy beat the throw to first base. So Pat had to strike out a fourth player.

  The next inning the same thing happened. Pat threw his glove down and walked off the mound, yelling back over his shoulder, “I can’t do this anymore!”

  That was enough for Dad. Shaking his head, he shouted to us, “None of you guys know a thing about the game! Don’t say you are Rooneys,” and he walked off. We never saw him back at Monument Hill.

  Our North Side group was made up of all kinds of kids. My very good friend, Richie McCabe, was an Irish boy. Then there were Babe Hugo, Dan Laughlin, and Don McGerry—they loved mischief as much as anyone. And up the block, two African-American kids, Joey and Clarence White, rounded out our little band.

  I remember in 1941 we were all sitting around our kitchen table listening to the Billy Conn-Joe Louis world heavyweight fight at the Polo Grounds. Now, Billy was from Pittsburgh—they called him the “Pittsburgh Kid”—and a regular visitor to our house. He was like family and asked Dad to be godfather to his son. He was actually closer to my father than he was to his father-in-law, with whom he engaged in fistfights and kitchen brawls. Dad was a calming influence on the hot-tempered Conn and often traveled with him. In fact, he was with him that night at the Polo Grounds when he fought Louis. For thirteen rounds it seemed like Conn had the “Brown Bomber” on the ropes. Most of us were going wild, cheering for Billy, but Joey and Clarence were quiet. Then, in a sudden reversal, Louis caught Conn with a right hook that floored him and ended the fight.

  Now we heard from Joey and Clarence, who were cheering. I couldn’t understand it and turned to them and asked, “What are you guys cheering about? Conn’s been knocked out!” They just smiled and said, “We’ve got to go home.” They wanted to celebrate the victory with their family.

  This was a real eye-opener for me. Joe Louis was their hero because he was black and they identified with him. Joey and Clarence remained friends, but in this case race trumped neighborhood loyalty. I know this sounds impossible but in those days growing up on the North Side, we didn’t think about your skin color, or your accent, or what church you went to. What mattered was that you lived up to your word, pulled your own weight, and looked out for your friends.

  The North Side could be a rough place. Mom warned us away from the crap games and street toughs who hung out near the playing field at Monument Hill. One time, my friends and I were playing on the Hill when a flasher accosted us. We had never seen anything like that before, so we pelted the degenerate with stones and ran for home. My Dad’s youngest brother, Tom, happened to be there at the time. He was only ten years older than I, and more like a big brother to me than an uncle. When he heard the story, he grabbed my mother’s car keys and screeched off for the Hill, me beside him on the front seat. The flasher was still there, dressed in a suit and tie, leaning against a telephone pole. Tom ran up to him, grabbed him by the knot of his tie and pinned him against the pole. I thought he was going to kill the guy. But Tom just looked him in the eye and said, “If I ever catch you around here again, you won’t be able to walk down that hill!” The flasher never came back.

  You had to know how to take care of yourself. I remember my first real fistfight. It was about even and neither of us quit. You couldn’t quit—you’d lose respect. We all had our share of fights with each other, but we stuck together. We didn’t worry about other boys. Our real rivalry was with the green-uniformed park police—we called them the “Grasshoppers.” We would jump over the four-foot chicken-wire fence protecting the precious grass in West Park. When the Grasshoppers spotted us on the grounds, they’d chase us, especially me, whom they regarded as the leader. But I was too fast for them and never got caught, although I think they knew who I was and where I lived.

  If Mom had known what we were really up to she might have worried more than she did. We worked up a routine to get pocket change to buy popsicles and snik-snaks. We’d go out to Allegheny Avenue where there was lots of traffic and make like we were beating up one of the smaller boys. Babe Hugo was a fine actor and could cry on demand. Invariably a passing motorist, usually a woman, would see the fight, slam on her breaks, and chase us “bullies” off. Babe, bawling his eyes out, would sob, “They took my lunch money!” The kind-hearted woman would give him a handful of change to make up for his loss. This scam worked fine—until the day Babe overplayed his hand. This time the Good Samaritan smelled a rat and insisted on taking Babe home to his mother. After all, she explained, “The bad boys are sure to come back and take your money again as soon as I leave.” Babe beat it out of there in a hurry. After that, we learned to get our popsicles at Hite’s Drug Store through other means, by hook or by crook.

  Our house was the hub of activity for all the neighborhood kids. It made sense. We had a big enough backyard to accommodate all the sports, and my father used our basement to store equipment for his baseball and football teams. Plus, the five Rooneys provided enough kids for a team in any sport—though the twins, Pat and John, mostly got in the way in the early years. One time poor Pat caught a hockey stick square in the face, knocking out two of his front teeth.

  Sometimes our play went beyond sports. The backyard was perfect for war games. During World War II we excavated trenches in our backyard. What we knew of war came from World War I movies, like Sergeant York starring Gary Cooper, so we dug trenches instead of foxholes. This wasn’t a particularly good idea. When the rains came, as they always do in Pittsburgh, the trenches filled with muddy water or washed away, so we really never had grass in the backyard, just dirt and asphalt. In truth, we were oblivious to the seriousness of the war effort. While other kids got involved in scrap drives and other patriotic activities, we played war games. It only hit home how dire the situation really was when we learned that Billy Conn had thrown his silver and bronze boxing trophies into the scrap pile at Lake Elizabeth, the drained pond at West Park. That really made an impression on us.

  The war arrived on our doorstep when we learned that Uncle Tom, who had survived Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and all the heavy fighting against the Japanese in the South Pacific, had been killed in the first assault wave on the beaches of Guam. Tom had always been my favorite uncle. He had enlisted at the age of eighteen in the marines right after Pearl Harbor. We exchanged many letters while he was away. Although he couldn’t tell me much about the war or where he was, he never failed to offer good advice, urging me to study hard and stay in school. It took months for the navy to return his body to Pittsburgh. The marines turned out for the ceremony at North Side Catholic Cemetery and fired a rifle salute as the bugler played taps. My mother took Tom’s death especially hard. He was so young, more like one of her children than a brother-in-law, and so close to me in age that I think it reminded her of how vulnerable we all were.

  Our house was headquarters for much of our mischief on the North Side. We got on top of the carriage houses and garages and jumped across alleys from roof to roof making all sorts of racket. We made so much noise that our cranky neighbor, old man Hausen, would yell out his second-floor window, “Pipe down you kids and play someplace else.” This spurred us on to even louder and more raucous play. Hausen told my father that we were “hoodlums” and n
eeded to be controlled. He threatened to call the County Child Delinquency Department, but my dad just laughed it off and told us to stay out of Hausen’s way. Even Aunt Alice, who stayed with us to help my mother, would shout back in our defense when Hausen went off on one of his tirades. She knew we were just having fun.

  But I have to admit we did sometimes carry our pranks a little too far. One day we found a dead cat down by the river. We all looked at each other with the same idea in mind: “Let’s get even with Hausen!” As we dragged the carcass back to Lincoln Avenue, we came across a bucket of tar, which Babe Hugo pointed out was just the thing we needed to glue the cat to old man Hausen’s porch. The deed was done quicker than you could skin a cat.

  It’s difficult to describe the pandemonium that resulted. Hausen went berserk and my father looked pretty upset. Our cantankerous neighbor had been right all along. His Irish temper flaring, my father gave me a whack—the only time I can remember him spanking me. I never saw him so mad. He banished the whole crowd from the house and grounded me for a week. But Mother once again came to the rescue, saying to my father, “You’re not going to let Old Hausen beat us, are you?” Dad gave in, the kids came back, and it was business as usual for the Rooneys, much to Hausen’s disbelief and dismay. Eventually he moved away. To this day I’m not sure whether we drove him out or he left of his own accord.

  These were happy-go-lucky days for us kids, but remember the late 1930s were hard times. We didn’t know how tough things were, that so many people were out of work and going hungry. We always knew we had a place to eat and a roof over our heads, but some North Side families didn’t.

  I’ll never forget the day a strange man came to the door and asked my mother for help. He said he was hungry, and she sent him around to the back door. Watching through the window, I saw her give him a plate of food. He turned away from me but I could see him eat. He was very hungry but he was still proud. Mom asked if he wanted more, but he shook his head no and thanked her for her kindness. She slipped him a couple dollars and I could see he was grateful. This hungry man made a big impression on me. I can see him even now—I’ll always remember the face of real hunger and the value of charity.

  I was often in charge of my younger brothers, but I didn’t always do such a good job of watching them. Art was three years younger and he always wanted to tag along.

  Mom would say, “Take him with you.”

  And I would say, “Mom, I don’t want to take him. He’s just a little kid.”

  Timmy was two years younger than Art, and the twins, Pat and John, younger still. Whenever my little brothers got into trouble, I was blamed, like the time we went for an outing at Senator Coyne’s farm in Alison Park. Tim, Arty, and I, along with some friends, were out by the horse barns. The senator’s son, Jimmy, had just mounted a high-spirited horse and was about to ride for the fields to check the fences. Somehow Timmy got under the horse, and the animal reared. Jimmy yelled, “Somebody get him!” So while the horse was still on its hind legs, I dashed in from the side, grabbed Tim, and pulled him out of the way. When we got home, Mom was furious. She blamed me for not watching little Tim more closely. She wouldn’t accept any excuses, accident or no, it didn’t matter—he was my responsibility. What bothered me most about the incident was that I had let my mother down.

  My mother’s reliance on me shaped my character in ways that stayed with me for the rest of my life. She taught me how to accept responsibility, even though my brothers often gave me a hard time and resisted my authority. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been more comfortable being in charge and making decisions than taking orders and following along. My mother was the most important influence on my life during these formative years. When I think of her now, I wish I had been nicer to her and helped her more. I wish I had told her how I really felt—that I loved her very much.

  My parents instilled in us their values. My father always said integrity and character are everything. Mom and Dad expected us to do the right thing. If my dad ever caught us saying something disparaging about a person, he would come down hard on us. “That isn’t going to do you or that person any good talking like that,” he would say. What my father cared about most was treating people right. If he ever caught one of us acting like a “big shot,” he’d give us a hard time. He made sure we would never use the Rooney name to get special favors or to make someone else feel small. We never swore in front of our parents. Occasionally when I’d slip and swear around my friends, they would look surprised, even though any one of them could curse a blue streak with only the slightest provocation. But they knew such language wasn’t me. It’s kind of strange considering the locker rooms and sandlots I grew up in, but even today I rarely resort to profanity.

  Our family went to church at St. Peter’s every Sunday and on holy days. Mom would have gone more often but she always had little ones at home to care for. We were a Catholic family, and the church was especially important to me. I wanted to be like Father Campbell, a man who did good work and people looked up to. From the time I was in seventh grade at St. Peter’s School, I thought seriously of becoming a priest myself. I started going to mass four or five times a week. No one in my family insisted, but I could tell Mom and Dad were pleased. But they didn’t push me one way or the other. It was something I’d have to figure out for myself.

  After eight losing seasons as the Pittsburgh Pirates, coached by Dad’s friends—Jap Douds, Luby DiMelio, Joe Bach, Johnny Blood, and Walt Kiesling—my father was desperate to win. It’s not like he didn’t invest in the team. He had broken the salary barrier in 1938 when he hired Byron “Whizzer” White, the great University of Colorado running back, receiver, and kicker, for the unheard price of $15,800—three times the going rate for the top players in the league. The other owners were furious. George Preston Marshall accosted Dad, saying, “What are you trying to do, ruin the league?” But as I said, Dad was desperate. His losing team was not only losing fans, it was losing money. He thought the Whizzer could turn the team around, but although his new star impressed fans and opponents, even he couldn’t overcome the erratic coaching and general poor play of the Pittsburgh team. To make matters worse, the Whizzer only played one season, then went on to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, then law school, and eventually to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Byron White was a gentleman, scholar, and one of the greatest athletes I’ve ever seen.

  Having failed at finding the right coach and the best players, Dad tried a different strategy: he’d rename the team and start the 1940 season with a clean slate. A public naming contest generated “Steelers,” and Dad thought it a perfect fit for Pittsburgh’s hard-working fans. But even a name change wasn’t enough to turn the “same old Steelers” into winners. The team finished a dismal 2 wins, 7 loses, and 2 ties.

  At the end of the season, wealthy New York financier Lex Thompson offered to buy the team for $160,000. Dad knew that Thompson would move the team to Boston, leaving Pittsburgh without an NFL franchise. So he and his friend Bert Bell, owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, and Thompson came up with a scheme whereby Thompson would buy the Steelers and move them to Boston, which was without a team at the time. Dad and Bell would join forces and make the “Keystoners” a team for all of Pennsylvania—a team that would play half its games in Philadelphia and the other half in Pittsburgh.

  The league approved the sale, but a group of franchise owners led by George Preston Marshall of the Washington Redskins blocked the move of the Pittsburgh franchise to Boston. He wasn’t about to allow my father and Bell to control an entire state. Thompson was miserable and so was my father, who found himself and Pittsburgh without a team.

  None of the partners was happy with the situation, so before the opening kickoff of the 1941 season, Dad and Bell pulled a switcheroo and traded the Eagles to Thompson for the Steelers, which Thompson had renamed the “Iron Men.” Dad threw out the name Iron Men and kept the Steelers in Pittsburgh, which is all he ever wanted, and Bert Bell became half owner and coach.

/>   Bert Bell was quite a character and oddly complemented my father. The son of a wealthy Philadelphia family, Bell received the unlikely name of deBenneville, which out of necessity he shortened to Bert. Like the “boy named Sue,” deBenneville learned to fight in schoolyards and locker rooms and grew up tough and strong. He excelled as an athlete, especially in football. Cut off from the family fortune once it was clear he was going to make a career of football, Bert always had money problems. He borrowed cash from his fiancée, Frances Upton (who had starred with Eddie Cantor in the popular film Making Whoopee) to purchase the Eagles franchise in the summer of 1933, the same year Dad bought the Steelers. Dad and Bert hit it off from the first, and I believe the whole Eagles-Steelers flip was a result of Bert’s financial difficulties and my father’s desire to help him out.

  Now, I was just a kid when this was going on. My mother tried to explain these dealings to me, but no matter what she said, I fretted about Pittsburgh losing the Steelers.

  Mother got Dad on the phone and said, “You’d better talk to Danny, he’s worried you’re going to sell the team.”

  I listened while they talked for a while.

  Finally, Mother said in a firm voice, “No, I think you should talk to him.”

  So she handed the phone to me, and Dad said, “Don’t worry, Danny. We’re not going to sell the team. This is just something we have to work out.”

  To this day, the complexity of this crazy deal makes my head spin. But I can tell you, I was sure relieved when Dad told me he wouldn’t sell the team. Then and there, I realized just how much football meant to me.

  I was nine years old when all this happened. I played football every day after school. In fact, we called our sandlot team the “Rooneys.” Joe Goetz, the man who sold Dad uniforms and equipment for the Steelers, fixed us up with brown jerseys with “Rooneys” printed on the front and a big number on the back. I can’t tell you how excited we were when the jerseys first arrived and we pulled them from the box. The first one out was number 98. This was Michigan all-American Tommy Harmon’s number and we all wanted it. Then Art pulled out a second shirt, and it had the same number: 98. The kids began pulling out the jerseys—all had 98 on the back. Every single shirt had the number 98 printed on it. Did Goetz’s supplier make a mistake? No, there was no mistake. Goetz had an oversupply of Tommy Harmon shirts and he just wanted to get rid of them. At first we didn’t know what to do. But then it came to us. We’d call ourselves the “Rooney 98s.”