“End Tom Miller.”
Shortly before the 1945 season, the Eagles traded Tom Miller to the Redskins. The following summer, Miller went to visit his in-laws, who happened to live in Green Bay. In a barbershop he bumped into Packers head coach Curly Lambeau, who was surprised to learn that Miller’s wife was a local girl. A month later, Lambeau, apparently convinced Miller’s relations with his in-laws were sound, bought his contract from Washington.
“Not that I was very good,” Miller joked. “The Redskins were glad to get rid of me.” Miller ended up playing just two games for the Packers, but in 1955 he was appointed the team’s publicity director. He was promoted, first to assistant general manager under Vince Lombardi, then to assistant to the president. He retired from the Packers in 1988 and was inducted into the team’s Hall of Fame in 1999. After a lengthy illness, Tom Miller died on December 2, 2005. He was 87.
At this point in the ceremonies, six old men, all stooped but sturdy, emerged from a tunnel beneath the stands and slowly made their way to midfield as the PA announcer called their names.
“Center, No. 52, Ray Graves!”
After retiring from pro football for good following the 1946 season, Ray Graves took a job as an assistant coach at Georgia Tech, where he worked under the legendary Bobby Dodd. In 1960 he became the head coach at the University of Florida. He coached the Gators to five bowl appearances, winning four, including a 27-12 victory over his mentor Dodd in the 1967 Orange Bowl. Graves retired from coaching after the 1969 season with a record of 70-31-4. He was the winningest coach in Florida history until 1996, when he was surpassed by one of his former players, Steve Spurrier. But his most lasting contribution to the school came in 1965, when he was approached by four university researchers who wanted to test a concoction they’d developed for alleviating dehydration.
“One of the reasons I have respect for Coach Graves was that when we explained to him what we had found he professed no ability to really understand what we were saying, but he accepted it,” Robert Cade, one of the researchers, later recalled. “But he hedged his bets a bit. He said we could try it only on the freshman team.” So far the University of Florida has collected more than $80 million in royalties from sales of the resulting product, which the researchers, in honor of the school’s football team, named Gatorade.
“Tackle, No. 76, Frank ‘Bucko’ Kilroy!”
A knee injury ended Bucko Kilroy’s playing career after the 1955 season but he never left the NFL. He became a scout, first for the Eagles, then for the Washington Redskins, Dallas Cowboys, and New England Patriots. Kilroy was instrumental in developing many of today’s standard scouting techniques.
“I used to go out and time people and measure them, and some of the other scouts used to ridicule me,” he said. “When we started giving them IQ tests, they really started in on me. We were the first to do any of that, and the other scouts would say, ‘Aw, why the hell are you doing that? Just look at the guy.’”
Kilroy joined the Patriots as director of player personnel in 1971. He was twice promoted, first to general manager, then to vice president. He helped assemble the teams that won three Super Bowls in four seasons from 2001 to 2004, and he still works for the Patriots as a consultant. The year 2005 was his sixty-third in the National Football League, equaling George Halas’s record of longevity.
“Tackle, No. 79, Vic Sears!”
Even after two-platoon football became the norm with the permanent implementation of unlimited substitution in 1950, soft-spoken tackle Vic Sears still played both ways for the Eagles. During most games he never left the field; he even covered kick-offs and punts. As a result, he probably put in more actual playing time than any other player in Eagles history and was truly one of the last of the “60-minute men.” (Eagles legend Chuck Bednarik played “only” 58 minutes in the 1960 championship game.) Sears finally retired after the 1953 season but stayed in the Philadelphia area, working as a manufacturer’s representative.
“I did a lot of traveling along the East Coast,” Sears said. “It was a good way to make a living and I enjoyed it.”
“Quarterback, No. 10, Allie Sherman!”
Allie Sherman never did get a chance to be a first-string quarterback, but his time on the sidelines with Greasy Neale paid off in 1949, when longtime New York Giants coach Steve Owen finally decided to switch to the T formation.
“Take Allie Sherman to help you,” Neale said to his old friend Owen. “He’s the smartest young man in football.” After five seasons as an assistant with the Giants, Sherman became the head coach of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the Canadian Football League. In 1957 he returned to the Giants as a scout. Two years later he was promoted to offensive coordinator, replacing Vince Lombardi, who had left to take the top job in Green Bay. In 1961, at age 38, Sherman was named head coach of the Giants. Greasy Neale would often come out to watch his protégé run practices, standing silently on the sidelines, his white poodle Bianco tucked under one arm. Sherman coached the Giants to the Eastern Division title in each of his first three seasons but lost the championship game each time, twice to Green Bay and once to the Bears. As stars like Frank Gifford and Y.A. Tittle retired, however, the Giants slumped into mediocrity. Fans began serenading Sherman with choruses of “Goodbye Allie,” sung to the tune of “Good Night, Ladies.” On the eve of the 1969 season Sherman was dismissed. He never coached again. Instead he pursued lucrative business ventures on Wall Street. Now comfortably retired in New York, Sherman frequents the Friars Club, where he is known, simply, as “Coach.”
“Defensive back and halfback, No. 37, Ernie Steele!”
Pre-Pearl father Ernie Steele was finally drafted in 1945 but was classified 4-F. He’d accidentally cut his left wrist while chopping wood as a teenager, severely damaging the tendons. He was left with limited mobility in his left hand. To this day he is unable to open it all the way. That didn’t prevent him from carrying a football, however, and in 1948 he averaged 7.6 yards per rushing attempt to help the Eagles win their first championship. He retired after that season and moved back to Seattle, where he opened a cocktail lounge in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Ernie Steele’s, as it was known, became a Seattle landmark and was one of the favorite haunts of the grunge scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Steele sold the business in 1993 and Ernie Steele’s is, sadly, no more, though it lives on in a song by the band The Presidents of the United States of America called “Candy Cigarette”:
Three p.m. and we’re slow to recover
We’re hangin’ out and well hungover
’Cause Ernie Steele’s makes a mean martini
So pass the fire and light me sweetie.
“Tackle, No. 70, Al Wistert!”
Al Wistert never did develop osteomyelitis, the bone disease for which he was rejected by the military. He did, however, develop a deep and abiding affection for Greasy Neale, the coach he couldn’t stand in his rookie season.
“He was a wonderful man when I finally got to know him,” Wistert said. “My opinion of him is very high. I’d lost my dad when I was just a kid and I’d often searched for somebody else to take my dad’s place—and I feel that man was Greasy Neale.”
In 1947 Wistert was named the Eagles’ team captain, an honor he held until his retirement after the 1951 season. He was an all-pro every season but his first and he was the first Eagle to have his number retired. He is widely regarded as the best lineman not in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, an opinion that he does not disavow.
“I’d like to be in there,” Wistert said. “I’m still ticked off about that.” After football he sold life insurance. Wistert now lives on a farm outside Grants Pass, Oregon.
“Steeler fans,” the PA announcer thundered, “please welcome home the 1943 Pittsburgh Steagles!” The crowd, standing now, erupted in long, warm, appreciative applause. The six Steagles stood beaming at midfield, weathered octogenarians basking one last time in the adulation of football fans. Some of them had tears in their eyes—as did a
lot of other people in the stadium.
Notes
UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED, all quotes attributed to Harriet Doyle, Ted Doyle, Ray Graves, Jack Hinkle, Frank “Bucko” Kilroy, Tom Miller, Vic Sears, Ernie Steele, and Al Wistert were drawn from the author’s conversations with them.
Preface: 1941
ix The Tuffy Leemans biographical information comes from Carroll, et al., Total Football II (pp. 326–327) and Cope, The Game That Was (pp. 151–157). Leemans’ performance against Alabama was described in the Washington Star, October 6, 1935.
x “Fans, teammates …” (Leemans): New York Times, December 8, 1941.
xii My account of Pearl Harbor Day is based on contemporaneous newspaper reports, as well as Goldstein, “Football Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941: Suddenly the Games Didn’t Matter,” Maiorana, “Battle Cry: ‘Infamy.’ A Day to Remember,” Povich, “At Redskins-Eagles Game, Crowd Was Kept Unaware That War Had Begun,” and Prange, et al., December 7, 1941.
xiii “For a few …” (Povich): Povich, “At Redskins-Eagles Game, Crowd Was Kept Unaware That War Had Begun.”
xiii “We don’t want …” (Espey): Washington Post, December 8, 1941.
xiii “I didn’t want …” (Marshall): Povich, “At Redskins-Eagles Game, Crowd Was Kept Unaware That War Had Begun.”
xiv “By the end …” (Povich): Povich, “At Redskins-Eagles Game, Crowd Was Kept Unaware That War Had Begun.”
xiv “We didn’t know …” (Baugh): Maiorana, “Battle Cry: ‘Infamy.’ A Day to Remember.”
xiv Fans listening to the games on the radio were better informed than those in the stands. In New York, for example, WOR abruptly cut away from the Dodgers-Giants game with this announcement: “We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this important bulletin from the United Press: Flash. Washington. The White House announces Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.”
xiv “The American people …” (Roosevelt): Goodwin, No Ordinary Time (p. 295).
xv “I don’t know …” (Owen): Goldstein, “Football Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941: Suddenly the Games Didn’t Matter.”
xv The statistics concerning NFL players in the armed forces are taken from Claassen, The History of Professional Football (pp. 80–81). In addition to the nineteen players killed, John O’Keefe, who worked in the front office of the Eagles, and Jack Chevigny, a former head coach of the Chicago Cardinals, also died in the service of their country.
xvi My valuation of the 32 NFL franchises is based on Forbes magazine’s estimate that the average value of an NFL franchise in 2005 was $819 million. Estimated valuations for each franchise are posted on the Forbes website: http://www.forbes.com/business/2005/09/01/sports-football-gambling-cz_05nfland.html.
One: A Bad Break
1 I based my account of Al Wistert’s ill-fated rushing attempt on interviews with him, as well as reports in the Chicago Tribune, October 18–19, 1941.
2 Information about the Wistert family came from interviews with Al Wistert, as well as Spoelstra, “The Michigan Tackle That Time Forgot.” It’s worth noting that the middle Wistert brother, Alvin, also was an all-American tackle at Michigan–but after his baby brother, Al. After a four-year hitch in the Marines, Alvin was working in a Massachusetts soap factory when his brothers encouraged him to go to college on the GI Bill. He was 31 when he enrolled at Michigan in 1947. He was an all-American at 33.
3 “I must confess …” (Crisler): Spoelstra, “The Michigan Tackle That Time Forgot.”
5 For more information about Arch Ward, see Littlewood, Arch.
5 Al Wistert recounted the story of his contract negotiations in interviews with the author.
6 My account of the 1943 Chicago Tribune college all-star game is based on reports in the Tribune, August 25–26, 1943.
7 The examination a typical draftee faced is described by Christina S. Jarvis in The Male Body at War: “From his feet to his ears, he was poked, prodded, and measured. His height, weight, chest size, and other physical statistics were recorded, and blood and urine samples were taken for tests. He encountered opthalmoscopes, stethoscopes, chest x-ray machines, and other diagnostic aids, which allowed the gaze of the doctors to penetrate beneath the skin…. [He was] examined by a psychiatrist who asked him if ‘he liked girls’ and screened for problems of the nervous system.”
8 My account of the draft lottery is based on reports in the New York Times, October 30, 1940, as well as Flynn, The Draft, 1940–1973. My history of conscription is largely drawn from Flynn, The Draft, 1940–1973 and Flynn, Lewis B. Hershey.
9 “The men themselves …” (Roosevelt): Goodwin, No Ordinary Time (p. 144).
9 “some form of selection” (Roosevelt): Flynn, The Draft, 1940–1973 (p. 10).
10 “Chinaman’s chance” (Byrnes): Flynn, The Draft, 1940–1973 (p. 16).
10 My description of Selective Service regulations is based on Petersen and Stewart, Conscription Manual; as well as Flynn, The Draft, 1940–1973; Flynn, Lewis B. Hershey; and United States Selective Service System, Selective Service as the Tide of War Turns.
Two: Keystoners
12 My account of the blue laws is based largely on Warrington, “The Fight for Sunday Baseball in Philadelphia.” The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin clip files at the Urban Archives at Temple University were also a valuable source of information.
12 “We cannot meet …” (Mack): Warrington, “The Fight for Sunday Baseball in Philadelphia.”
13 My histories of the Frankford Yellow Jackets and the Pottsville Maroons are based on Carroll, et al., Total Football II (pp. 99–109).
14 Art Rooney’s early years are described in Cope, The Game That Was (pp. 121–139). The legendary $20 bet at Saratoga is described in Anderson, “An Old Gambler Finally Collects.”
14 “Racing’s not the same …” (Rooney): Anderson, “An Old Gambler Finally Collects.”
14 “I bought the franchise …” (Rooney): Cope, The Game That Was (pp. 127–128).
14 The Bert Bell biography is drawn largely from material contained in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin clip files, especially Day, “Bert Bell Collapses and Dies At Eagles Football Game.” Also helpful was Pro Football Hall of Fame, “Bert Bell: The Commissioner.”
14 “If I can lick …” (Bell): Didinger and Lyons, The Eagles Encyclopedia (p. 6).
15 “Bert will go …” (elder Bell): MacCambridge, America’s Game (pp. 41–42).
15 My accounts of the first legal Sunday professional football games in Pennsylvania are based on reports in the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 8–13, 1933. Art Rooney told of inviting police superintendent Franklin T. McQuade to the game in Cope, The Game That Was (p. 128).
15 For Connie Mack, the man who led the fight against the blue laws in Pennsylvania, their repeal was a hollow victory. By the time the 1934 baseball season came around his team’s finances had been so thoroughly decimated by the Depression that there weren’t enough Sundays on the calendar to make up the difference. He’d been forced to sell off his best players—including future baseball Hall of Famers Mickey Cochran, Lefty Grove, and Al Simmons—to help pay off a $700,000 loan. The A’s finally limped to Kansas City in 1954. Today the franchise is based in Oakland.
16 All team records throughout the book are drawn from Carroll, et al., Total Football II, Neft, et al., The Football Encyclopedia, and Liu and Marini, 2005 NFL Record & Fact Book.
16 The Lex Thompson biography is based on material contained in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin clip files, as well as Stump, “Get Smart—or Go Bust?” Thompson described his search for a “sports hobby” in Kauffman, “Football a Hobby of Eagles’ Prexy.”
16 The swapping of the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh franchises is superbly described in Braunwart, et al., “Pennsylvania Polka.” My account is based largely on that article, as well as contemporaneous newspaper reports.
17 “I certainly hated …” (Rooney): Braunwart, et al., “Pennsylvania Polka.”
18 “Rooney and I have been �
�” (Bell): Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, December 9, 1940.
18 “He can sell …” (Marshall): Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, December 9, 1940.
18 “Then I got …” (Rooney): Braunwart, et al., “Pennsylvania Polka.”
19 “I know we’ve …” (Rooney): Braunwart, et al., “Pennsylvania Polka.”
19 Rooney’s exchange with Bell about “changing coaches” is from MacCambridge, America’s Game (p. 45).
Three: New Priorities
20 “In dramatic lore …” (Rice): Heisler, Echoes of Notre Dame Football (p. 222).
20 Amos Alonzo Stagg’s anti–pro football quote comes from Peterson, Pigskin (p. 6).
21 Al Ennis’ lament about the lack of local coverage is contained in a fascinating booklet on file at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. The booklet was written by Ennis (and, certainly, Greasy Neale) and distributed to members of the Eagles during training camp in 1948. It contains long lists of rules for training camp and road trips, as well as frank assessments of everything from the team’s public relations efforts to the quality of various hotels in NFL cities. (“For the 1947 Championship Game at Chicago, we elected to stay at the Hotel Sherman, in downtown Chicago, and had a most unpleasant experience there. At no time did any member of the management … evince the slightest interest in our behalf.”)
21 My account of Elmer Layden’s reign as NFL commissioner (and his sometimes peculiar preoccupations) is based largely on MacCambridge, America’s Game and Peterson, Pigskin.
21 Layden’s efforts to move pro football to a “high, dignified plane” are described in MacCambridge, America’s Game (p. 9) and Peterson, Pigskin (pp. 136–137).
Last Team Standing Page 25
