Last Team Standing (37 page)

“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.

U
NLESS 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).