The Red Smith Reader Page 14

  “There was never any question that George was tough,” Red Grange writes in the foreword to a handsome book, The Chicago Bears—An Illustrated History by Richard Whittingham (Rand McNally). “At times there were factions on the team . . . one time in 1934, before going out to practice, he said he wanted to talk to us. Instead he started to call certain players by name and told them to line up in two different groups. Then George said, ‘Here are the guys who are breaking up the team into factions, and I’ll fight you all, one by one or all together.’ And that was the end of the factions.”

  George was seventy-three the last time he retired as coach. “I knew it was time to quit,” he said, “when I was chewing out the referee and he walked off the penalty faster than I could keep up with him.”

  As with most athletes, it was the legs that went first, not the spirit, not the capacity for rage. In his foreword, Grange tells of George’s clashes with his friend Jim Durfee, a referee in the 1920’s:

  When Halas was riding him hard one day, Jim began marching off a five-yard penalty. Halas got really hot. “What’s that for?” he hollered.

  “Coaching from the sideline,” Jim yelled back. (You couldn’t do that in those days.)

  “Well,” said George, “that just proves how dumb you are. That’s fifteen yards, not five.”

  “Yeah,” said Jim, “but the penalty for your kind of coaching is only five yards.”

  Another day Jim was penalizing the Bears 15 yards, and Halas cupped his hands and yelled, “You stink!” Jim just marched off another fifteen yards, then turned and shouted, “How do I smell from here?”

  George’s eyes still flash when he remembers how a referee robbed the Bears in 1920, when they were the Decatur Staleys. They played 13 games that first season, and the only team that scored against them legitimately was the Hammond Pros, whom Decatur whipped, 28-7. In Chicago the Staleys were leading the Racine Cardinals, 6-0, late in the game when the Cardinals completed the sideline pass. The receiver ducked behind a knot of spectators who had crowded onto the field and with his civilian interference ran in for a touchdown. Not wishing to become suddenly dead, the referee allowed the score, and the Cardinals won, 7-6.

  In 1975, W. B. Wolfan of Chicago forwarded a letter from George. And it began: “Yes, I did make an offer to now President Gerald Ford to join the Bears after the 1935 College All-Star game against our team. I might add that the Bears’ bid exceeded the $50 per game offer from Curly Lambeau of Green Bay. However, Jerry Ford turned both of us down with the explanation that he intended to go on to Yale for his law degree and wasn’t interested in pro football.”

  The Halas memory remains keen for details like those. Eleven teams were represented when the league was formed in that Canton auto agency, and after the meeting it was announced that the franchise fee was $100 each. Actually, George says, nobody paid anything. “I doubt if there was a hundred bucks in the whole room.”

  Whittingham’s lively history borrows an anecdote from My Life with the Redskins by Corinne Griffith, the star of silent films who married George Preston Marshall, the late owner of the Washington club. She tells of a sidelines’ shouting match between Marshall and Halas during the 1937 championship game after Marshall, infuriated because a Bear had taken a punch at Sammy Baugh, stormed down to the playing field:

  George [Marshall] stomped back to the box, snorted as he sat down and, of course, took it out on me.

  “What’s the matter with you? You look white as a sheet!”

  “Oh, that was awful!”

  “What was awful?”

  “That horrible language. We heard every word.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t listen.”

  “Oh, you. And right in front of the ladies . . . And as for that man Halas!” Every hair of George’s raccoon coat bristled. “He’s positively revolt—”

  “Don’t you dare say anything against Halas.” George was actually shaking his finger under my nose. “He’s my best friend!”

  THE MOST IMPORTANT THING

  NEW HAVEN, 1947

  “Gentlemen,” the sainted Tad Jones is alleged to have said in the cathedral hush before a Yale-Harvard game, “you are about to play football for Yale. Never again in your lives will you do anything so important—”

  America has been through two world wars, a world-wide depression, and had a couple of flings at inflation since then and yet, corny as it seems, the young Yales appeared actually to feel that T. Jones was right when today’s 31-21 affair with the Harvards ended.

  As the last whistle blew, a great passel of Yales swarmed onto the field to hug the combatants to their bosoms and even from the press box you could see grins as broad as Kate Smith upon the soiled faces of the belligerents. There was a brief, ecstatic huddle, and then Levi Jackson, the tall, dark, and handsome fullback of the Yales, broke away from his companions and raced across the field to pump any and all Harvard hands within reach. Meanwhile, a small boy snatched the cap of G. Frank Bergin, the umpire, and fled with the official in pursuit.

  The cap-snatch was brought off on Harvard’s twenty-yard line. The small miscreant fled to Yale’s goal line on a long, clean, eighty-yard dash, circled to his right and raced back ten yards, then angled off into the crowd with the stolen haberdashery still in his possession. Mr. Bergin, puffing, gave up.

  This was far and away the most spectacular play of the long, gray day. But such post-game shenanigans were no more than frosting on an extraordinarily fancy cake. The show itself was the thing, and it was the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel.

  Here were two teams that had made a career of failure and had enjoyed staggering success at it. One had lost four games, the other three. Neither had beaten anyone of importance. And so, between them, they drew a crowd of 70,896, biggest gathering this holy of holies has attracted in seventeen years.

  It was a hairy crowd, wrapped thickly in the skins of dead animals and festooned with derby hats, pennants and feathers of crimson and blue. It wore the pelts of mink and beaver and raccoons. Indeed, counting the coon coats in any section of the Bowl, you could be excused for assuming Coolidge was still President. Here and there a moth took wing as some fur-bearing customer flapped his arms in an effort to keep warm. It was concluded that although the science of offensive football was advanced by every play, the entertainment set the fur industry back thirty years. There were enough crew haircuts in evidence to supply the Fuller Brush Company for the next generation.

  All the appurtenances of elegance were present. The bands paraded and postured between halves according to the strictest dictates of tradition. The Harvard tootlers wore crimson jackets and ice cream pants. From the waist up they looked like a road company chorus out of Rose Marie. From there down, they suggested Good Humor men on holiday.

  The Yales came oompah-ing onto the scene after their guests were done. Yale costumes its bandsmen to impersonate bellhops in a good but unpretentious hotel. The somber ranks of blue shifted and twitched and maneuvered, deploying into fascinating but undecipherable formations. The only one which could be spelled out from the press loft seemed to be a salute to the Reliable Jersey House. It appeared to read: “Yale minus 7.”

  Critics agreed the Yale band was two steps faster than Harvard’s. This was approximately the difference between the two teams. Harvard passed, but Yale ran. Rather, Yale marched, driving relentlessly in short, savage bursts, chewing out yardage with a persistence which Harvard couldn’t resist. Thus Yale scored first, and was tied scarcely more than a minute later when Harold Moffie raced down from his flanker position on the right side, got behind Ferd Nadherny and made a casual catch of Jim Kenary’s pass into the end zone.

  Yale clawed down for another touchdown and Harvard responded with one of its own, fashioned chiefly on two plays. One was a for-ward pass to Chip Gannon, who faked two tacklers out of their underwear on a slick run. The other was a bolt through the middle by Paul Lazzaro on a fake pass-and-buck play which is called the bear trap because the
Chicago Bears no longer use it.

  So the score was tied again, but it stood to reason it wouldn’t stay that way. You couldn’t expect Harvard to keep on coming up with one-play touchdowns to match a team that could grind out gains as Yale was doing. Harvard finally gave Yale an unearned chance by roughing the New Haven kicker and drawing a penalty for same. This resulted in the winning touchdown. A little later, a low snapback from center loused up a Harvard punt, giving the ball to Yale for the score that made the game safe.

  It was noted that the incredibly erudite Harvard coach, Dr. R. Harlow, made unique use of the free substitution rule. He would haul a guy out of the game, give him special instructions and run him back in again, all in one pause between plays. He did this with a couple of his key men just before the first half ended. The results were significant. On the next play, Yale intercepted a Harvard pass.

  ART ROONEY

  1972

  Arthur J. Rooney is a man of such reckless daring that he once entrusted his Pittsburgh Steelers to Johnny Blood, an unfettered soul whose tenure as playing coach Rooney would sum up later in two sentences: “On most teams the coach worries about where the players are at night. Our players worried about the coach.”

  Evidently Art’s five sons inherited their sire’s boldness, for even as New York racing cries havoc, they are buying Yonkers Raceway for $47 million. When they take over the world’s biggest harness track, the Rooneys’ sports enterprises will compare in magnitude with the Roman Empire. They operate thoroughbred racing in Philadelphia, at Liberty Bell Park pending construction of a new track; professional football in Pittsburgh; and dog racing at the Palm Beach Kennel Club. Art still bets blithely on steeds carrying the silks of his Shamrock Farm. He always bet blithely.

  “I didn’t necessarily know more about horses than the next guy,” he said the other day, “but I might have known a little more about playing. I never was afraid to bet.”

  He was retelling the tale of his big score at Saratoga in 1936, which has become a legend. According to most accounts, he slapped the bookmakers around for more than a quarter-million that day, but when Art tells the story he never mentions the amount.

  “I went to Harrisburg,” he said, “with Buck Crouse, the great middleweight fighter, and Harry Earl for a dinner the plumbers’ union was giving our friend Charlie Anderson, their international vice president. From there we kept on driving to New York and got to Empire City just before the first race. I bet $20 with a bookmaker in the grandstand ring and won $700 or $800. We’d moved into the clubhouse by that time, so I went back to the grandstand to give the bookie a chance to get even. I had three or four winners and wound up knocking him out of the box.

  “That was a Saturday and we went to Joe Madden’s restaurant where the football crowd hung out. The next morning Buck and Madden and I were driving to Saratoga in Madden’s old car. It broke down three or four times and the radiator kept boiling over going over the mountains.

  “Monday, opening day at Saratoga, was a terrible day. If I remember right, a couple of horses were killed by lightning. I had Tim Mara’s figures but sometimes I’d see something the charts didn’t see, like a change of jockeys or post position, and I’d use my own judgment. I was betting with Peter Blong, who was working in the ring for Frank Erickson that day, and after I’d hit him for about three winners he said, That’s enough.’ Peter was right up there with the big books like Tom Shaw, and very sharp. If Erickson had been there I’m sure he would have kept on taking my action.

  “Anyway, I came close to sweeping the card. In those days they ran only eight races, maybe only seven. I was sitting with Bill Corum, the sportswriter, who saw what I was doing and wrote a column about me breaking the books. He did it mostly to needle George Marshall down in Washington. By that time Marshall owned the Redskins and he was a reformed horseplayer. At least, he knew more about horses than any of us, and he was dead against anybody in the league betting.

  “After Corum wrote the story it got bigger and bigger. One of the Hearst papers assigned a reporter to go to the track with me every day. On days when I’d lose he’d play it down and when I won he’d make it much bigger than it was. He told me he liked the assignment and had to make me seem like a live guy because his paper wouldn’t be interested in a dead one.”

  The legend goes that Art sent most of his winnings to his brother Dan, a missionary priest in China.

  “I sent Dan some money,” he said, “but nowhere near the amount I’ve read about. In those days you could have bought most of China for that kind of money.”

  This was bread cast upon the waters, and it came back as soybeans. Some years after the Saratoga incident, Art and a Chicago friend, Jerry Nolan, were deep in the commodities market. They were selling soybeans short, gambling on a big crop and falling market.

  “Riding home from New York one day,” Art said, “I read a little item in the Times about floods in China. I called Father Dan, who was the superior in the Franciscan house in Boston. ‘You got any Chinese priests in the house?’ I asked him. Turned out there were a couple. They got in touch with the bishop in Hong Kong and sure enough, floods were playing hell with the soybean crop. I called Nolan and we switched our position and made a nice score.”

  Another time Art and a dozen others were trying to corner cocoa. Art confided in a friend who was connected with the Hershey, Pennsylvania, hockey team. The friend was aghast. “You’ve got more cocoa than we have in Hershey,” he said. Art took it as a warning and sold out. His partners rejected the advice and got burned.

  Then there was Westminster, who won the Double Event Handicap under Art’s colors at Tropical Park. This was really two races, run twelve days apart. Westminster won both divisions and legend says Art cleaned up just under a million.

  Maybe stories like these explain why his Steelers have never won a championship. Art has succeeded at so many things the law of compensation has to get in its licks somewhere. Son of a prosperous saloonkeeper, Art was a kid football player courted vainly by Knute Rockne of Notre Dame, a baseball player signed by the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox, an amateur boxing champion in both the lightweight and welterweight divisions, a successful fight promoter.

  “I could have gone to the Olympics,” he said, “but I turned pro. I fought a kid named, I think it was Joe Azevedo on a Pinkey Mitchell-Tommy O’Brien card in Milwaukee and my manager, Dick Guy, talked about matching me with Benny Leonard. But I don’t know, the style of fighter I was I might have wound up without all my buttons.”

  ARMY’S RED BLAIK

  1959

  When West Point’s football team was wiped out in that carnival of brassbound stupidity, military buckpassing and bureaucratic bungling which was erroneously called a “cribbing scandal,” Red Blaik wanted more than anything else in the world to chuck his job into the Hudson. He wasn’t merely discouraged, as any coach might be, at the prospect of starting all over without the fine football material that his organization had assembled and that he had trained painstakingly.

  He was passionately on the side of the kids. He did not try to conceal or condone the mistakes they had made but he defended them fiercely as boys of good character and he resented bitterly the slur upon their honor. They were, he felt, at least as much sinned against as sinning, and he knew of no other way to make his position clear than to leave the academy with them.

  In his distress, he consulted the man he has respected above all others, his old boss, General Douglas MacArthur.

  “Don’t quit under fire,” the general said, and the colonel said, “Very good, sir.”

  He stayed on the job and gave it his best, and there never was anything better than that. Now the job is done, and he has resigned. It is as simple as that. He gave all of himself that the job demanded, and it demanded a great deal, and he got it done, and now he is free.

  Because he dedicated himself to football without reservations, Earl Blaik understands better than most what the pressures of big-time coaching are. When
his younger son, Bob, went into coaching, Red didn’t actively oppose him, but he would have preferred that the boy—an honor graduate in physics at Colorado—employ his talents otherwise.

  “You can put the same amount of endeavor into something else,” he said, not to Bob but to friends, “and, from a selfish standpoint, be infinitely better off. It’s a rarity when an individual can take successive years of the pressure of this sort of thing.”

  He took more years of it than most. As far back as 1933 when he was an assistant at Army, he was keenly aware of the heartburn. Army played Illinois that year, and on the field before the game Blaik encountered Illinois’ realistic little Bob Zuppke. Red mentioned the nervousness he felt.

  “I’m burning up inside,” Zup said. “If I weren’t I’d have been out of this game long ago.”

  Blaik will miss football for a time, but there will be compensations. “Now,” he said, “I won’t have to expose myself to that cold November air.” There’ll be other things he won’t have to be exposed to, as another coach named Clipper Smith noted some years ago.

  Clipper was a lot like Red Blaik in the sense that he too was a perfectionist who drove himself without mercy. He coached for a long time, in college and among the pros, on the West Coast and the East, before retiring to a job in industry.

  “How do you feel now on Saturday afternoons?” he was asked. “Do you miss it badly?”

  “I did at first,” he said, “but after a while—well, you can’t imagine how it feels not to have to sit still and watch an eighteen-year-old kid run out on that field with your salary check fluttering between his fingers.”

  No doubt it’s corny, but it is also entirely true that if Red Blaik misses football for a while, football will miss him a great deal longer. He is a great coach, he has been a symbol of decency especially to the young men he helped grow up, and there never was a man more faithful to his principles or his friends.