Chicago opened the scoring with a 68-yard touchdown pass in the first quarter, but the Steagles answered in the second frame. Halfback Johnny Butler, a rookie from the University of Tennessee, returned an interception deep in Steagles territory to the Phil-Pitt 32. From there, Butler and fellow halfback Jack Hinkle took turns carrying the ball downfield. On fourth-and-goal from the Bears three-yard line, Butler plowed into the end zone behind left tackle Vic Sears. A few minutes later the half ended. Much to the surprise and delight of the home crowd, the score was 7-7.
During the interval there was a war bond drive. President Roosevelt had launched the third major bond drive of the war just eight days earlier, during one of his famous fireside chats. The war was largely financed through the sale of such bonds, which came in denominations ranging from $10 to $1,000. They were sold at 75 percent of their face value and could be redeemed for their full value, plus 2.9 percent interest, in ten years. Eight out of every 13 Americans—more than 60 percent of the population, including children—chipped in and bought $185 billion in bonds during the war. (By removing that money from the economy, the sale of war bonds also helped stem inflation.)
Bond drives were a staple of life on the home front. Movie stars and sports heroes were dispatched to the smallest villages and hamlets to drum up sales. One of the most memorable drives took place in September 1942, when more than 300 movie stars, including Bette Davis, Rita Hayworth, and Dorothy Lamour, fanned out across the country, attending rallies in hundreds of towns and selling more than $800 million in bonds.
One of the most unusual bond drives took place at the Polo Grounds in New York on June 26, 1944, when the Yankees, Dodgers, and Giants played a three-way baseball game. The Dodgers and Yankees played the first, fourth, and seventh innings, the Dodgers and Giants played the second, fifth, and eighth, and the Yankees and Giants played the third, sixth, and ninth. The price of admission was a war bond. The exhibition raised more than $56 million. The final score was Dodgers 5, Yankees 1, Giants 0.
Pro football did its part, too. The NFL sponsored rallies generating more than $4 million in sales in 1942, and the halftime rally at the Steagles-Bears game on September 16, 1943, raised an additional $364,150.
After the bond drive wrapped up, the teams returned to the soggy field. Early in the third quarter the Steagles missed a chance to take the lead when Zimmerman shanked a 30-yard field goal attempt. Then the Bears pounced. On the ensuing drive, quarterback Sid Luckman lobbed a 17-yard touchdown pass to Harry Clark to give Chicago a 14-7 lead. Luckman threw another touchdown pass in the fourth quarter. The final score was Bears 20, Steagles 7.
When the game ended, the Steagles collapsed, exhausted, on the field. They’d played two games in two cities in five days, against two of the league’s best teams, working in war plants all the while. This was the downside of the war-work requirement. Some of the players were working eight hours a day, six days a week, in addition to playing professional football. It was a grueling, exhausting schedule. Steelers co-owner Bert Bell recognized it.
“If all the clubs were playing under the same conditions,” Bell said, “we’d have a better chance. But we are the only club with 100 percent of our personnel in war work. As a result, some of our inexperienced players may look greener and make more mistakes than they would if they had plenty of time to practice…. The players are tired, too, and the coaches can’t bear down on them as they would otherwise.”
Once again the Steagles’ linemen and running backs played well but the passing game was awful. Roy Zimmerman completed just one pass, though it wasn’t entirely his fault: Steagles receivers dropped several passes, at least two of which might have resulted in touchdowns. By all accounts the Steagles were a mediocre football team. Despite getting off to a good start in both preseason games, they ended up losing them by a combined score of 48-17. Even the most optimistic fans in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh had low expectations for the upcoming season.
8
Birds of Steel
WHEN THE STEAGLES’ TRAINING CAMP ENDED in late September, so scarce were competent players that Kiesling and Neale decided to keep only 25 men on the roster, even though the limit had been raised to 28. What was the point in having three extra players if they weren’t any good? Just seven of the 25 players were under contract to the Steelers. Just two (tackle Al Wistert and center Al Wukits) had been selected in the NFL draft the previous April. (A third, guard Rocco Canale, would join the team after the season started.) Steelers co-owner Bert Bell begged the military to assign Pittsburgh’s No. 1 pick, University of Minnesota halfback Bill Daley, to a Navy training program at Penn or Villanova, but to no avail. Daley ended up at the University of Michigan, where he played football for Fritz Crisler and was named an all-American. (The NCAA routinely allowed servicemen stationed on campuses to play college football.)
With the twice-daily training sessions over, the Steagles practiced Tuesday through Saturday nights for the rest of the season, usually for three hours beginning at six o’clock. The practices were held in Philadelphia at either Shibe Park or Parkside Field, a small ballpark near Fairmount Park that was the home of the Philadelphia Stars Negro League baseball team. The players arrived by trolley, bus, or subway, weary from their war jobs. Many worked at the shipyards that lined the Delaware River.
“I worked in a shipyard over in Camden,” recalled Al Wistert. “I was a company inspector—I didn’t know what I was inspecting, but I was supposed to be checking to make sure that a ship when it was ready to be launched had all of the equipment in it that it was supposed to have.”
Several other players worked at Bendix Aviation, which manufactured airplane parts, while others worked at smaller factories. During the war, the standard workweek was as long as 48 hours: eight hours a day, Monday through Saturday. The players spent at least another 15 hours a week on football.
“You worked all day, and you practiced all night, and by the end of the day you were tired as hell,” remembered Jack Hinkle, who worked at Bendix.
The Steagles would open the regular season at Shibe Park on October 2, against the Dodgers. On the eve of the game, Greasy Neale was cautiously optimistic about the forthcoming campaign. He told sportswriter Grantland Rice, “With the pick of both teams, meaning the Eagles and Steelers, we’ll have a chance.” Neutral prognosticators had mixed expectations. Philadelphia Record columnist Red Smith predicted “wartime sports’ strangest hybrids” would be “a pretty good ball club.” But the United Press was less positive, picking the Steagles to finish third in the four-team Eastern Division, behind the Redskins and the Giants, and ahead of only the dreadful Dodgers.
The Steagles did have a great line and good ball carriers. But their passing game was anemic and they had butterfingered receivers, who dropped passes and fumbled the ball with alarming regularity. If past seasons were any indicator, the team would stink. Since joining the league in 1933, the Eagles had never had a winning season and the Steelers had had just one, in 1942, and that squad had been dismantled by the war. As Red Smith put the question, “Take two teams which in most years past have rated a sub-zero figure on the form charts, add them together, and does the sum equal a passing grade?” In the jumbled world of wartime sports, the answer was anybody’s guess.
THE RESCHEDULED FATHER DRAFT was supposed to begin on October 1. But just as they had in July, local draft boards refused to cooperate, despite Selective Service director Lewis Hershey’s pleas. Hershey had written beseechingly to every member of every draft board:
Your work as a local board member has been most outstanding in our war effort, and I know that you will maintain that record by continuing to defer the necessary men and fill the calls of the armed forces. That being so, we have but one alternative: To complete our calls by taking fathers as they may be needed after all other available men have been exhausted…. We are challenged as never before. Let us be guided by the greatest good in determining our course. The decisions will be difficult and many times unple
asant, but we can bear the burden, knowing that these decisions will bring the end we are all seeking—the early and complete surrender of our enemies.
But many boards still refused to call fathers, even if it meant failing to meet their monthly induction quotas.
“We found that we would have to call four fathers to fill our quota,” said a board official in Philadelphia. “We decided just to be short four men and call none at all.”
The Philadelphia Record said, “Several board chairmen expressed indignation at Selective Service headquarters’ plans to proceed with drafting fathers. They said that instead they will take as many from war plants as they can before inducting a single father. ‘And we will disregard the War Manpower Commission’s manning table plans to do it,’ they added.”
Military planners were aghast. During the three months ending September 30, the Army had requested 585,000 men but only 447,000 were inducted, a 24-percent shortfall. Generals in the field were complaining about the shortage. The war, the planners said, could not be won without fathers. The Army’s deputy chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Joseph McNarney, warned gravely of the consequences of “ignoring the considered judgment of our military leaders, arrived at after careful and prolonged study.”
Once again, Congress got involved. Texas Representative Paul Kilday and Montana Senator Burton Wheeler reintroduced their bills to delay the induction of fathers. Kilday’s called for a permanent delay, Wheeler’s a temporary one.
Public opposition to the Father Draft was still strong. If anything, opponents had more ammunition than they’d had back in July. Italy had surrendered since then. Wasn’t the end of the war, in Europe at least, imminent? And couldn’t the Axis Powers be bombed into submission anyway? It seemed to opponents of the Father Draft that the military simply wanted too many men. To them the drafting of fathers also represented the superfluous and dangerous crossing of a threshold—into “total war.”
Hershey, who was well liked by many in Congress (and was a nimble politician himself), worked behind the scenes to help draft legislation that would simultaneously kick-start the Father Draft and pacify its opponents. In December, both houses passed a bill requiring local draft boards to call pre-Pearl fathers, but only after all eligible nonfathers in their jurisdiction had been called. It was called the “Take Fathers Last” bill, but in actuality it merely codified what had been Hershey’s position all along: fathers would be drafted last, but fathers would be drafted.
The bill also included a provision separating Selective Service from the War Manpower Commission, thereby removing Lewis Hershey from the supervision of Paul McNutt. Other than ending what Hershey called his “bondage time,” the bill didn’t change a thing.
“What kind of legislation is that?” a bemused President Roosevelt asked. “The answer, of course,” wrote historian George Q. Flynn, “was political legislation.” Although he considered the bill rather silly, Roosevelt signed it. The Father Draft would finally begin on December 10, 1943. By then, of course, the NFL season would nearly be over. The long and largely pointless debate had saved pro football for 1943.
To the Steagles, however, the issue was irrelevant. They weren’t just playing football. They were also doing essential war work.
WHEN THE BROOKLYN DODGERS finally got around to hiring Pete Cawthon to be their head football coach in June 1943, there actually were no Brooklyn Dodgers: the team had no players under contract. Off to a late start, with the cream of the sparse crop of available talent already harvested by other teams, Cawthon resorted to desperate measures. Like many wartime employers, he took out half-page advertisements in major newspapers, seeking employees—the last and perhaps only “help wanted” ads ever placed by an NFL team looking for players.
Lew Jones nearly spit out his coffee when he saw one of the ads in a Dallas paper one morning in July. Jones had played for Cawthon at Texas Tech and was still fiercely loyal to his old coach. Jones, who was 31 and hadn’t played football for nearly ten years, telephoned Cawthon immediately.
“I’m out of shape,” he said. “And I’m thirty pounds overweight. But if you want me, I’ll take the weight off and come to Brooklyn to help out.”
Cawthon let out a whoop of joy. “Do I want you! Man, those are the sweetest words I’ve heard in years. If I have you, I’ll have one good guard I can depend on. Get that blubber off and get up here the first minute you can.”
Jones quickly recruited several other former Red Raiders to join him in Brooklyn: G.L. “Country” Webb, Bill Davis, Floy “Pete” Owens. The Dodgers training camp turned into a veritable Texas Tech reunion.
It’s surprising that Cawthon managed to cobble together a team at all. Less surprising is the fact that it wasn’t a very good one. The Texas Tech bunch was old and flabby and, apart from a handful of veterans (Pug Manders, Bruiser Kinard, Dean McAdams), the rest of the team consisted of untested and untalented rookies.
“We simply do not have enough experienced players,” Cawthon moaned. It didn’t help matters that on the first day of camp McAdams tripped over his helmet and tore a muscle in his left shoulder.
When the Dodgers came to Philadelphia to play the Steagles, the two teams already had a feud going. Back in July, Brooklyn general manager Dennis Shea had called the Steagles a “town team” for requiring its players to work war jobs.
“We’re not going to operate with any part-time players who work at other jobs during the week,” Shea sniped. “It labels us as Humpty Dumpty outfits. We’re still going to charge big league prices so we ought to have big league teams.” For good measure, Shea added that “there was no good reason for the Philadelphia-Pittsburgh combine” in the first place.
Shea’s words were the 1943 equivalent of billboard material. They grated on the Steagles, who were busting their butts five or six days a week in defense factories and five nights a week on the practice field. They certainly didn’t consider themselves “part-time players,” and they were determined to show the Dodgers just what a “town team” could do.
The weather was perfect, but on the night of Saturday, October 2, barely 11,000 fans came to Shibe Park in Philadelphia to watch the Steagles take flight for the first time in a regular season contest. The game had not been as heavily promoted as the Inquirer-sponsored exhibition game against the Bears, but the main reason for the low turnout was competition. Earlier that afternoon, 30,000 fans had packed Franklin Field to watch Penn rout Yale, 41-7. (Penn led the nation in college football attendance in 1943.) Then there were the baseball A’s, who had played a doubleheader against the Indians earlier in the day at Shibe Park, losing their 103rd and 104th games of the season. With all that going on, it’s not surprising that so few Philadelphians were willing to shell out $3.50 for a reserved seat to watch a team that was only half theirs. The Steagles’ opponent was a factor, too: The Dodgers, who had been shut out by Detroit 27-0 a week earlier, were not exactly a big draw.
Roy Zimmerman was still the Steagles starting quarterback. He had not thrown the ball particularly well during training camp—in the two exhibition games he completed just five passes for 35 yards—but Greasy Neale thought Zimmerman had taken to the T formation “like a cat takes to milk.” Zimmerman executed the complicated running plays like a magician, faking handoffs with a legerdemain that befuddled opposing defenses. Besides, with the way the front line was blocking and the backs were running—the Steagles had racked up more than 500 rushing yards in the two exhibition games—it was clear that passing was not to be the team’s primary offensive weapon.
Understandably, Allie Sherman was disappointed by Neale’s decision. But Sherman, who aspired to be a head coach one day, took advantage of his time on the sidelines by becoming Neale’s de facto assistant. Sherman shadowed Neale constantly, studying his every move. Neale encouraged his young protégé. He recognized that Sherman was “a serious student of the game” and that he “had real possibilities as a coach.”
At 8:45 p.m., Zimmerman kicked off and the Birds of Steel too
k wing.
About four minutes into the game, the Steagles had the ball on their own 20-yard line. Rookie halfback Johnny Butler took a handoff from Zimmerman, sliced through a yawning hole in the line, and ran 69 yards to the Brooklyn 11.
Butler had been drafted by the Steelers in 1941 but spurned the team to take a job with Western Union in Charleston, South Carolina. He was convinced to join the Steagles by Eagles center Ray Graves, who had been Butler’s roommate at the University of Tennessee. Butler had explosive speed; he could shoot through holes in the blink of an eye. He had so impressed Neale in training camp that he earned a starting position at left halfback. Only problem was, he was due to report for his Army physical in six days.
Butler’s run set up a 22-yard field goal by Zimmerman. Later in the first quarter Zimmerman recovered a Dodgers fumble on the Brooklyn 17. Butler carried the ball into the end zone from the ten, dragging a Brooklyn tackler with him the last two yards. Zimmerman kicked the extra point to give the Steagles a 10-0 lead. Early in the second quarter, Zimmerman completed a nice 40-yard pass to myopic end Tony Bova. Three plays later, pre-Pearl father Ernie Steele bulled his way into the end zone from the Brooklyn ten, culminating a lovely 78-yard drive. The score was 17-0 and the sparse crowd was roaring itself hoarse.
The rest of the game was scoreless, but the Steagles dominated until the final gun. Especially magnificent was the performance of the three Eagles and two Steelers who made up the front line: left tackle Vic Sears, left guard Elbie Schultz, center Ray Graves, right guard Eddie Michaels, and right tackle Ted Doyle. (Equally impressive were their respective substitutes: Bucko Kilroy, Gordon Paschka, Al Wukits, Ed Conti, and Al Wistert.) The Steagles’ linemen simply manhandled their Brooklyn counterparts. On offense they opened holes that the running backs sailed through for more than 200 total rushing yards. On defense they were even more spectacular. They completely shut down the Dodgers’ running game, continually tackling Brooklyn ball carriers before they even reached the line of scrimmage. In fact, it was one of the most impressive defensive performances in NFL history. The Dodgers were held to -33 (yes, minus 33) yards rushing—still the third lowest total ever recorded. The Steagles also intercepted three Brooklyn passes and allowed the Dodgers to get inside the Phil-Pitt 40-yard line only twice. Not bad for a Humpty Dumpty outfit.
Last Team Standing Page 12
