Last Team Standing

by Matthew Algeo

  Founded in Chicago in 1899 as the Morgan Athletic Club, the team became known as the Cardinals in 1901 when its owner, Chris O’Brien, bought a pile of used uniforms from the University of Illinois. The jerseys had faded from a deep maroon to a dull red, which O’Brien cheerfully pronounced “cardinal red.” Later known as the Racine Cardinals (because they played at a ballpark on Racine Avenue), the team was a charter member of the National Football League and, now based in Phoenix, Arizona, is one of only two founding members still in the league. The other is the Bears, a team as different from the Cardinals as night from day. While George Halas built the Bears into a powerhouse, the Cardinals became laughingstocks, an afterthought in their own city, not merely perennial losers but cannon fodder for the rest of the league.

  In 1929, O’Brien sold the Cardinals to a Chicago dentist named David Jones, who briefly made the team reputable by signing the legendary halfback Ernie Nevers. But that respectability proved fleeting. In 1933, Jones sold the Cardinals to Charlie Bidwill, who restored them to their usual place at the bottom of the Western Division. By 1943 the Cardinals had had just one winning season since Bidwill bought them, going 6-4-2 in 1935—and still managing to finish last. The war siphoned off what little talent the team had, and after the 1942 season the head coach, Jimmy Conzelman, abandoned the franchise for a front-office job with baseball’s lowly St. Louis Browns, an indication of just how far the Cardinals had sunk.

  After their attempted merger with the Bears was thwarted in June, the Cardinals finally got around to hiring Conzelman’s replacement, Phil Handler, who was in pretty much the same boat as Pete Cawthon in Brooklyn—except Handler, who had been Conzelman’s assistant for 11 seasons, didn’t have the same reservoir of talent from which to draw as Cawthon did (through his Texas Tech connections). Then, in an early season exhibition game, the Cardinals’ best player, Marshall Goldberg, broke his ankle. Handler was reportedly reduced to recruiting personnel from the nearby Great Lakes Naval Station, who played under assumed names. The Cardinals lost their first five games by an average score of 21-6. Their sixth game would be in Pittsburgh against the Steagles.

  To Greasy Neale, losing to the Bears and Giants, while unacceptable, was at least understandable. They were good teams. But losing to the Cardinals—that would be genuinely embarrassing. That was Neale and Walt Kiesling’s constant refrain as they prepared their charges for the game. A reckoning was at hand. Either the Steagles would rise to 3-2 and stay in the Eastern Division race or fall to 2-3 and, for all intents and purposes, be eliminated from it. The two coaches emphasized the gravity of the situation by carrying out their threat to make changes. When the lineup was posted on Saturday, Tony Bova replaced Bill Hewitt at left end and Tom Miller replaced Larry Cabrelli at right end. The coaches explained that they were sacrificing “experience to gain the speed necessary to rush the passer. “ It was a remarkable comedown for Hewitt. Once a perennial all-pro, so quick his nickname was the Offside Kid, he’d been usurped by a half-blind Steeler.

  The Steagles left Philadelphia on Saturday morning. Again, the visiting team beat them to Pittsburgh by nearly a week. The Cardinals had come to the city on their way home from a loss in Washington the previous Sunday and worked out at Forbes Field all week. Indeed, the Cardinals spent more time practicing at Forbes Field that week than the Steagles did all season.

  On October 31, 1943—Halloween—more than 16,000 fans streamed into Forbes Field to watch their Steelers play football in the green-and-white costume of the Philadelphia Eagles. The crowd was bigger than at either of the Steagles’ two regular season games in Philadelphia, an indication of the keen interest in the team in Pittsburgh.

  “Our Steagles are coming home!” wrote Chet Smith in the Pittsburgh Press on the eve of the game.

  The game began ominously for the home team. On the Steagles’ first play from scrimmage, Zimmerman, still hobbled by a bruised hip, was sacked and fumbled the ball. The Cardinals recovered on the Phil-Pitt 17. Two plays later, though, Steagles defensive back Ben Kish intercepted a Chicago pass on the 14 and raced 86 yards straight down the right sideline for a touchdown. The Steagles caught the Cardinals unawares on the ensuing kick-off, with Jack Hinkle recovering a perfectly executed onside kick on the Chicago 42. Three plays later Zimmerman fired a 32-yard touchdown pass to Tony Bova. Just like that it was 14-0.

  This time the Steagles kicked deep. The Cardinals’ Don Cahill tried to catch the ball on his own ten, but it deflected off his hands and rolled into the end zone. Cahill casually went back to down the ball for a touchback but, just as he touched it, Jack Hinkle swooped in and snatched it. Cahill didn’t know the rule, but Hinkle did: Having already touched the ball before it entered the end zone, Cahill could not merely down it. He had to return it. It was a live ball. The Steagles were awarded a touchdown. The Cardinals protested bitterly to linesman Charley Berry, but the call stood.

  Four minutes into the first quarter the score was 21-0 and the game was effectively over. The Cardinals never put up a fight and the Steagles won easily. The final score was 34-13. The linemen had returned to top form, holding the Cardinals to just 31 rushing yards while the Steagles racked up 167. Tony Bova, Bill Hewitt’s replacement, scored two touchdowns. It was not a flawless performance by any means—the Steagles fumbled four times—but it was satisfactory. And with the Giants losing to the Packers, the Steagles had recaptured sole possession of second place. Washington remained undefeated atop the division by dispatching Brooklyn, 48-10. Sammy Baugh set a new NFL record by passing for six touchdowns in that game. When they heard about that, the Steagles must have groaned: They were playing the Redskins the following week in Philadelphia.

  But as the fans streamed out of Forbes Field that Sunday, their minds were not long occupied by thoughts of their triumphant Steagles: The nation’s coal miners were threatening to go on strike in less than seven hours, at midnight. If they did, Pittsburgh’s factories would grind to a halt. War production everywhere would be imperiled. Homes would go unheated. It would make for a very long, cold November.

  COAL PROVIDED HALF THE NATION’S ENERGY during the war. It fired the mighty foundries that smelted ore at 3,000°F to make iron and steel. It fueled the factories that shaped those metals into everything from battleships to bullets, and it was burned in humble basement furnaces in millions of homes. The country couldn’t run without coal, and the war certainly couldn’t be won without it, which is why John L. Lewis, the president of the United Mine Workers union, joined other labor leaders in making a “No-Strike Pledge” immediately after Pearl Harbor.

  “Our nation is at war and coal production must not cease,” he explained to wildcat strikers in July 1942. “Our every effort must be directed toward this end.” Less than a year later, though, Lewis was singing a different tune.

  In the spring of 1941, the UMW had won a 16 percent wage increase for miners. But in April 1942 the government announced that, as part of its anti-inflation program, industrial workers were allowed to make no more than 15 percent above their pay on New Year’s Day 1941. Miners were therefore ineligible for further increases. Yet prices, despite all the government’s efforts, continued to rise, especially at company stores in the coalfields, where the OPA was simply ignored.

  “Two months ago we paid 45 cents per peck of potatoes, now we must pay 75 cents for same thing,” Steve Kerlik, a Russian-born miner in western Pennsylvania, complained in the spring of 1943. “If you work and can’t buy food, then one day you strike.”

  Many miners were also heavily in debt to the company stores as a result of the Depression. By the time their accounts were settled on payday, some were left with no more than two dollars in hand.

  At the same time, the miners were making many sacrifices. Lewis biographers Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine write, “The longer hours and increased mechanization imposed by the wartime demand for coal made mining—already one of the most dangerous jobs in America—even more dangerous. The statistics of miners dead and i
njured offered Lewis an ultimate justification for wartime strikes. He understood … that for miners the battle for production on the home front produced its own body count.”

  In January 1943, half of eastern Pennsylvania’s anthracite miners went on strike, demanding a raise of two dollars a day to nine dollars. Lewis did not authorize the walkout, and he ordered the miners back to work. But it taught him a valuable lesson.

  “Lewis,” Dubofsky and Van Tine write, “recognizing that the membership had decided the direction it would march, artfully maneuvered his way to the head of the parade.”

  The no-strike pledge was history. Besides a two-dollar raise, Lewis demanded double time for working Sundays, compensation for the tools that miners were required to buy, and, most controversially, “portal-to-portal” pay for the time it took miners to descend the shafts into the mines at the beginning of the day and return aboveground at the end. (For some miners, the trip took upwards of an hour each way.) Mine operators were not happy, nor was the government, which said the demands, if met, would light the fuse on inflation.

  Miners went on strike once in May and twice in June, and in each instance temporary agreements were reached to get them to return to work. The latest agreement would expire at 12:01 a.m. on Monday, November 1.

  Although many Americans sympathized with the miners—in one survey, 58 percent said they recognized “some justice” in their demands—the strikes made Lewis one of the most hated men in America.

  “Speaking for the American soldier,” said an editorial in Stars and Stripes, “John L. Lewis, damn your coal-black soul!”

  On Monday, November 1, with no new contract in place, 500,000 miners stayed home from work. There were no picket lines or pep rallies, no whistles or chants. There was no need for any of that. The miners were united. None needed convincing to stay home. Given the wartime labor shortage, the strikers were, quite literally, irreplaceable. Roosevelt briefly considered jailing them until his Interior Secretary, Harold Ickes, reminded the president that “a jailed miner produces no more coal than a striking miner.” Roosevelt couldn’t send troops in either, because, as the union’s rallying cry went, “You can’t mine coal with bayonets.”

  Panic buying in the days leading up to the strike had depleted coal reserves, and by Monday afternoon, the first day of the strike, there was already talk of imposing a national blackout to conserve the combustible rocks. In Pittsburgh, the Press reported, “there is not a single lump of coal available for retail sale.” In the city’s fashionable Squirrel Hill neighborhood, desperate homeowners descended on a construction site where a seam of coal had been unearthed. In Philadelphia, a coal rationing plan went into effect, and no household with a supply of ten days or more already on hand was permitted to buy any more.

  More ominously, the strike threatened to cripple war production nationwide. The Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corporation announced that the strike would force it to begin reducing iron and steel production Wednesday or Thursday. Mills that had been operating at 100 percent of capacity prepared to reduce to zero. Shortly before 5:00 p.m. on Monday, President Roosevelt seized control of the nation’s 3,000 mines and put Interior Secretary Ickes in charge of them. Roosevelt also ordered the strikers back to work the following day, an order the miners refused to obey. They would only answer to another president: John L. Lewis. Meanwhile, Lewis and Ickes began negotiating a settlement.

  On Wednesday, U.S. Steel announced that it was shutting down nine blast furnaces in Pittsburgh and Youngstown. Shortly after six o’clock that night, Lewis and Ickes announced that a settlement had been reached.

  The miners won a raise of $1.50 a day to $8.50. (Anthracite miners received a slightly smaller increase.) They also won a 45-minute allowance for portal-to-portal travel. The papers immediately hailed the settlement as a smashing victory for Lewis and the miners, but the fine print told a different story. The agreement increased the miners’ workday by one hour and reduced their lunch break from 30 minutes to 15, prompting one commentator to quip, “Lewis bargained for eight months and the miners lost their lunch.” Before the strike the miners had worked seven hours a day for seven dollars. After the strike they worked eight-and-a-half hours—for eight-and-a-half dollars.

  The details did not concern most Americans, though. All that mattered was that coal would be mined again.

  However questionable their victory, the miners’ militancy emboldened other workers, and, for the rest of the war, strikes would plague vital industries.

  The strife would not affect professional football, however. Each player signed a contract with a “reserve clause” that bound him to his employer in perpetuity. There was no free agency. If the player and the club could not agree on a salary, then the salary would be “such as the Club may fix.” The players had no benefits: no health insurance, no life insurance, no pension. There was no minimum salary, and players were usually not paid for exhibition games (the source of Roy Zimmerman’s dispute with Redskins owner George Preston Marshall). The owners would not formally recognize a players’ union until 1968.

  AT TRAINING CAMP IN 1937, Redskins head coach Ray Flaherty was showing a hotshot rookie named Sammy Baugh how to throw a pass.

  “Sammy, you’re in the pros now,” Flaherty said to the strapping cowboy from Sweetwater, Texas, “and they want the football where they can catch it. Hit ’em in the eye.”

  Baugh looked at his coach and asked, “Which eye?”

  He wasn’t joking.

  An all-American football player at Texas Christian University in 1935 and 1936, Samuel Adrian Baugh was planning to pursue a baseball career until George Preston Marshall enticed him to Washington with a contract believed to be worth $8,000. Marshall got a bargain. By the time “Slingin’ Sammy” retired after the 1952 season, he was the NFL’s career leader in passing attempts (2,995), completions (1,693), completion percentage (56.5), touchdown passes (188), and passing yardage (21,886). Those records have since been eclipsed, but Baugh’s influence has not. Almost single-handedly Baugh dragged professional football into the modern era. When he came into the league, passing was an act of desperation. When he left, it was de rigueur.

  Baugh is remembered as one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history, but he wasn’t even a quarterback for his first seven seasons in the league. The Redskins didn’t adopt the T formation until 1944. Before then Baugh was a tailback, usually in the wing formation, which afforded the passer little protection.

  Baugh’s extraordinary talents were not limited to passing. He was also one of the greatest punters in NFL history. His lifetime average of 45.1 yards per punt still ranks second all-time. He was an outstanding defensive back as well, intercepting 31 passes before he stopped playing both ways after the 1945 season. And he did it all with good humor and grace and not a trace of pride.

  In 1943, Sammy Baugh was at the height of his considerable powers—and the opposition was bereft of talent. (Since he owned a cattle ranch in Texas, Baugh was deferred from the draft.) He would end the season leading the league in passing, punting, and interceptions—football’s version of the “triple crown,” and a feat never to be duplicated in today’s game of specialized players. In 1943, Sammy Baugh was practically unstoppable.

  But Greasy Neale and Walt Kiesling thought they could stop him.

  Persistent rain limited the Steagles to just two full practice sessions in the week before the Redskins game. At those practices and in the nightly “skull sessions” at the Hotel Philadelphian, Neale and Kiesling drilled into their team the importance of harassing, hampering, and harrying Sammy Baugh. The coaches believed “the best way to stop an aerial attack is to rush the passer so that he must get his tosses off hurriedly.” The Steagles would rush Baugh relentlessly to put him off his game.

  Redskins head coach Arthur “Dutch” Bergman had his own strategy for winning, and it seemed to be working. Bergman inherited the team when his predecessor, Ray Flaherty, joined the Navy after the 1942 season. Bergman, who had played
for Knute Rockne at Notre Dame, immediately replaced Flaherty’s single-wing formation with something called the Notre Dame box. (Suffice it to say that it involved a lot of players moving around in the backfield before the snap, but Sammy Baugh still passed a lot.) Considering that the Redskins had just won the championship with the single wing, it was a risky move. But the Redskins responded positively to the new formation and reeled off four straight wins to begin the season. Including the previous year, they had won 13 games in a row.

  Philadelphia had not seen the Steagles since their unexpected victory over the Giants at Shibe Park four weeks earlier. Absence, apparently, had made the heart grow fonder: Advance ticket sales for the game were said to be the highest in the history of the Eagles franchise.

  Nobody was anticipating the game more keenly than Steagles quarterback Roy Zimmerman. He’d been looking forward to it since the day he was traded from the Redskins to the Eagles. While the Washington Times-Herald claimed Zimmerman “was never completely popular with his teammates” in Washington, he seemed to have no trouble making friends on his new team.

  “Zim was a nice person,” said halfback Ernie Steele. His teammates also appreciated Zimmerman’s leadership.

  “He came up and did a pretty good job,” said center Ray Graves. “I think he was a good quarterback and took charge pretty good.” In Washington, though, Zimmerman was not missed.

  “If he were still with Washington,” the Times-Herald sniffed, “he’d still be sitting out most of the Redskin games.” Shortly before the game, a rumor circulated that the Redskins intended to “do a job” on their old teammate. The Steagles intended to do likewise on Sammy Baugh.

  Bookmakers made the Redskins ten-point favorites. The point spread was a relatively new concept in 1943. Previously, most bookies set odds. For example, the odds of the Redskins winning would have been 5-to-7, while the odds of the Eagles winning would have been 5-to-1. The point spread was popular with gamblers because it allowed them to bet on underdogs without having to worry about the underdogs actually winning—all they had to do was lose by fewer points than the spread. Bookies liked it too. Under the odds system they could be wiped out if, say, a 100-to-1 long shot actually won. The point spread minimized risk. By adjusting the spread according to the wagering, a shrewd bookie could balance his bets on either side of it and collect his commission—the “vigorish” or “vig.” The point spread led to an explosive growth in gambling on pro football and, not coincidentally, in the game’s popularity.