Last Team Standing (17 page)

Hewitt was also having a hard time playing with a helmet on. Returning to the sidelines, he would often throw it off, in frustration and contempt. Said Steagles end Tom Miller, “He'd take that helmet off and he'd throw it into the sidelines and Greasy would pick it up and tell him, ‘Put this on! You gotta wear it!' He hated that helmet.”

On the whole, though, Greasy Neale pronounced himself pleased with the Steagles' showing against the Packers.

“The mistakes we made were all honest ones,” he said after the game. “I really cannot blame the players for them. I think they learned a lot from this one.”

The Steagles would get another crack at the Packers in the regular season, and the stakes would be much higher.

Neale and Kiesling didn't have much time to prepare for the Steagles' second and final preseason game, which was the following Thursday night in Philadelphia against the fearsome Chicago Bears. To win, the Steagles would have to play much better than they had against Green Bay. Still, Neale was confident: “Any team that can outgain the Packers by nearly 100 yards must be regarded as a threat. I would not go so far as to predict a victory over the Bears, but I certainly feel that the Eagles”—Neale couldn't bring himself to call his team anything else—“have a chance.”

P
HILADELPHLA, LIKE
P
ITTSBURGH,
was a wartime boomtown, and the city's factories were specially retooled for the times. Instead of steam engines, the Baldwin Locomotive Works turned out light tanks. Instead of railroad cars, the Budd Company made airplane parts and ammunition. Four shipyards along the Delaware River churned out vessels for the Navy and the Merchant Marine. More than 500 companies in and around Philadelphia held defense contracts totaling more than $1 billion. By 1944, one of every four workers in the city was directly employed in war production.
Probably even a greater proportion had, at one time or another, visited Shibe Park.

Opened in 1909 (the same year as Forbes Field) and named for one of the owners of the Philadelphia Athletics, the ballpark was the city's primary civic venue, a kind of secular cathedral. Built in the Beaux Arts style, with a magnificent domed tower rising five stories over the main entrance at 21st and Lehigh, it hosted political rallies and religious revivals as well as sporting events. Shibe Park was a gathering place for bluebloods and the new blood alike.

Despite hot, sticky weather and a persistent rain, more than 30,000 fans packed the ballpark on the night of Thursday, September 16, to watch the Steagles make their Philadelphia debut in an exhibition game against the Bears. The unusually high turnout was the result of the visiting team's renown, as well as a relentless promotional campaign on the part of the
Philadelphia Inquirer,
which sponsored the game as a fund-raiser for its charitable arm. As pro football games went, it was a glittery affair.
Inquirer
publisher Walter Annenberg was there, of course, as were Philadelphia Mayor Bernard Samuel and most of the City Council. Washington Redskins owner George Preston Marshall also attended, as did New York Giants owner Tim Mara. Eagles owner Lex Thompson was present too. Thompson had just completed officer training school and was now a second lieutenant in the Army. According to the papers, he was able to get a “brief leave” to watch the game.

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

W
HEN THE
S
TEAGLES' 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.

T
HE RESCHEDULED
F
ATHER
D
RAFT
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 unpleasant, 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.”