The normalizing of relations between the U.S. and Cuba should be a boon to major-league baseball. That’s the sport that immediately comes to mind, of course, when thinking about That Island 90 Miles South of Florida — baseball, then track and field, then maybe boxing.
Believe it or not, though, Cuba also has a football history — a distant one, perhaps, but fascinating nonetheless. In fact, in 1944, when the NFL was suffering from an acute manpower shortage, the Redskins had a Cuban player in training camp. Here’s the story that ran in newspapers across the country:
A later story corrected the spelling of Monoz’s name — it was Munoz, apparently — and claimed that, according to the Redskins, he was “the first Cuban-born athlete to play professional football in the United States.” There’s no record, after all, of Rivero ever playing for the Bears, though he was a star back at Columbia. That’s him in the photo below carrying the ball against Union College in 1930:
Wish I had a photo of Munoz to show you, but he disappeared from the Washington training camp without a trace. (He couldn’t have been too terrific. NFL clubs were so desperate in that war year — the Redskins included — that they suited up kids fresh out of high school.)
The University of Havana did indeed field a football team in those days, though, and continued to until the late ’50s. Havana also was the occasional site of a college bowl game, called at various times the Bacardi Bowl, the Cigar Bowl or the Rhumba Bowl. Some of these games pitted the University of Havana against a visiting American team. Check out the college scoreboard from Dec. 9, 1939:
(Georgia Teachers College, by the way, is now Georgia Southern.)
A few years earlier, on New Year’s Day 1937, Auburn and Villanova battled to a 7-7 tie in the Bacardi Bowl, held at Tropical Stadium. This is from The New York Times:
I wouldn’t count on the University of Havana restoring its football program any time soon, but it’s always a possibility down the road. Alberto Juantorena, I always thought, would have made a heckuva wideout.
Even if you’re not an NFL history buff, you’re probably familiar with the score of the 1940 title game: 73-0 (the Bears nipping the Redskins). Well, I’ve got a blowout that’s even bigger than that. It just didn’t happen in a league game. It happened during a postseason barnstorming tour in December 1936, when the Brooklyn Dodgers “shellacked” the semipro St. Louis Terriers, 100-0.
Such tours were fairly common in those Depression times. Before teams broke up for the season, they’d squeeze in a few more games — and paydays — against non-league clubs in warmer parts of the country. They didn’t always win them, either. The same afternoon the Dodgers trounced the Terriers in Wichita, the Chicago Cardinals lost to the Pacific Coast League’s Los Angeles Bulldogs in L.A., 13-10.
You know what else was played that day? The NFL championship game between the Packers and Redskins. Here’s your scoreboard for Dec. 13, 1936:
The ’36 Dodgers weren’t very good at all. They finished 3-8-1 and scored a grand total of 92 points. In other words, they scored more points in 60 minutes against the St. Louis Terriers than in 12 regular-season games.
Fortunately for them, their competition in Wichita was a scraggly bunch. In fact, it came out afterward that their opponents bore only a slight resemblance to the real St. Louis Terriers. One of the Terriers’ promoters, Jack Lally, told The Associated Press, “The scheduling of a National [Football] League team was ‘football suicide’ and a financially unsound idea this late in the season. And reports a St. Louis team was beaten so badly may hurt the sport here next year. Our objection is that we were not considered when plans for the game at Wichita were being drawn up — and Yates [James Yates, the promoter] represents only one-third of the team.”
According to the AP, “only three regular Terrier players were in the lineup.” Yates did supplement the St. Louis roster, though, with All-American back Ozzie Simmons, who had just finished his college career at Iowa. Simmons never played in the NFL because the league wasn’t hiring blacks then, but he managed to make his presence felt even in a 100-0 loss. He “turned in one run of 50 yards and completed one pass before leaving the game in the third period,” the wire service reported.
A sampling of the headlines that appeared over The 100-0 Story (in case you’re curious):
The New York Times:
The Boston Globe:
The Milwaukee Journal:
And finally, The San Antonio Light:
Now that’s the spirit. At least the Light grasped the utter ridiculousness of the game — one that was certainly worth an exclamation point or two. It’s also the only paper I’ve come across that provided much detail (courtesy of the wires):
Running wild, the Dodgers rang up 21 points in the first quarter, 12 in the second, 34 in the third and 33 in the fourth. The St. Louisans, led by the dark flash, Oze Simmons of the University of Iowa, were completely helpless, cowed and pulverized.
The 15 Brooklyn touchdowns were made by [Jeff] Barrett (5), [Joe] Maniaci (4), [Tony] Kaska (2), [John] Yezerski (1) and [Paul] Riblett (1). The Dodgers gained 274 yards by rushing and 300 on passes. In the last period, they bewildered the fans – and the Terriers more so – with seven laterals on one play.
Seven laterals on one play. Clearly, the Dodgers were enjoying themselves after the long slog of the NFL season. Yezerski, after all, was a tackle. (Wonder if he was the recipient of The Seventh Lateral — or if they threw him a touchdown pass on a tackle-eligible play.) Barrett and Riblett, for that matter, were ends. Which raises the question: Did Barrett actually have five TD receptions? Because that would match the NFL record shared by Jerry Rice, Kellen Winslow Sr. and Bob Shaw.
The game, by the way, attracted a crowd of 4,000. It figures out to 40 people per point, for those of you scoring at home.
With the holiday season upon us — and Festivus just a week away — I thought I’d throw out a few gift suggestions for That Special Someone (who also happens to be a pro football fanatic). Some of these items might be hard to come by but, trust me, it would be well worth the effort.
● A pair of Frenchy Fuqua’s fiberglass clogs with three-inch heels — complete with goldfish in the heels (air pump included).
Fuqua, a running back with the Giants and Steelers and the ’60s and ’70s, is remembered less for his ball carrying than for his cutting-edge fashion. His bright-red “caveman outfit” was a real head-turner. How he described it to the Pittsburgh Press in 1976: “It had a strap over one shoulder, and one leg was a bell bottom and the other had fringes on it. But the greatest thing about it was the purse. It was a white fur purse that was shaped like a club.”
Frenchy’s signature accessory, though, was the aforementioned shoes. They looked something like this:
Problem was, the fish lasted only a couple of hours before suffocating. “I was getting’ so much pub because of the goldfish, I hated to stop wearing the shoes,” he said. “But I’ll tell you, you kick up some dead goldfish at a banquet, and pretty soon you get a real foul odor. You start feeling terrible about it, too. When some people found out they were dyin’, they got on me about bein’ cruel to animals. I thought about running a tube down my leg with an air pump that would supply constant fresh water to the fish.”
The shoes also were potentially hazardous to the wearer’s health. As he once told The New York Times, they “were a little slippery to walk in, being glass, so you’d have to hold on to a rail when you went down stairs.”
● The Joe Namath Butter-Up Corn Popper. Namath hawked everything from shaving cream to pantyhose to this, which was popular in college dorms in the ’70s:
● A VHS tape of Sammy Baugh’s 12-part serial, “King of the Texas Rangers.” Slingin’ Sam could do more than just throw touchdown passes. Being a Texan, he also could ride horses, shoot guns and beat up bad guys.
● Rosey Grier’s “Committed” album (1986).
Grier, one of the tackles on the Rams’ legendary Fearsome Foursome defensive front in the ’60s, could sing a little. In 1965 he and the rest of the Foursome appeared on the TV show Shindig! (with the other three, as you’ll see, doing little more calisthenics behind him):
A year earlier, Rosey had sung solo on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. Here’s that clip:
Before 16-game seasons and 12-team playoff fields, the NFL played its championship game in the second or third week of December. Not much survives from those battles in the ’30s and ’40s, but there are a few clips available on YouTube. Here’s what I’ve found — from 1934, ’36, ’39 and ’41.
DEC. 9, 1934: GIANTS 30, BEARS 13
This was the celebrated Sneakers Game, so named because the Giants switched to “basketball shoes” (as they were called) in the second half to get better traction on an icy field. They then exploded for 27 points in the fourth quarter to ruin the Bears’ perfect season and keep them from winning a record-tying third straight title.
(It’s still the most points ever scored by a team in the fourth quarter of a playoff game. The ’92 Eagles are next with 26 vs. the Saints in this 36-20 win.)
We begin our film festival with back-to-back runs by the great Bronko Nagurski. Note the Bears are lined up in the T formation, with the quarterback taking the snap directly from center. They were only NFL club using the T in 1934. Everybody else opted for some variation of the single wing. Note also, on the first play, the man-in-motion flashing across the screen. That had been incorporated into the offense, too.
One more tackle-busting Nagurski run. What’s interesting about this play is that the Bears are in the single wing. They mixed it up, in other words — which must have been a nightmare for opposing defenses. Watch for the official slipping and falling at the end of the clip. The field was treacherous in spots.
Here’s a photo of Giants quarterback Ed Danowski (22) getting ready to crack the line. As you can see, he and his blockers are wearing sneakers, which were borrowed from nearby Manhattan College and rushed to the Polo Grounds by locker-room attendant Abe Cohen:
After the footwear change, it was all over for Chicago. The sneaks didn’t just give the Giants better footing, they enabled them to cut more sharply than the Bears could. Hall of Fame fullback Ken Strong scored the final two New York touchdowns — the first over the right side, the second up the middle. In the last part of the clip, he touches the ball down in the end zone, just like in the old days. (Thus the term “touchdown.”)
“Strong had been removed from the game in the first half with his left leg twisted,” Arthur Daley of The New York Times wrote. “He appeared out of it. But he came back in the second, apparently none the worse for wear.”
DEC. 13, 1936: PACKERS 21, REDSKINS 6
The ’36 title game should have been played in Boston, home of the Eastern champion Redskins. But the team didn’t draw well, so owner George Preston Marshall moved the game to New York’s Polo Grounds. (The next season, the franchise was in Washington.)
You’ll love the opening kickoff. According to the Milwaukee Sentinel, the Green Bay returner being picked up, carried back and slammed down is George Sauer (whose son, George Jr., starred for the Jets in Super Bowl III with eight catches for 133 yards, both game highs). Today, no doubt, Boston would have been hit with a personal-foul penalty.
The Packers led 7-6 at halftime thanks to this Hall of Famer-to-Hall of Famer heave from Arnie Herber to Don Hutson, good for a 48-yard touchdown:
Early in the second half Green Bay began to break it open. From the Sentinel: “Herber sent a long aerial down the field which Johnny Blood [another Hall of Famer] caught for a 51-yard gain, Don Irwin nailing him on the 9-yard line. After being halted three straight times on running plays, Herber found [end Milt] Gantenbein alone over the goal line and pegged one right in his arms for a touchdown.”
As the clip shows, Herber dropped back quite a ways before throwing the ball to Blood — 10 or 11 yards by my count. This was to give Johnny time to get downfield, but it’s also an indication of how unreliable pass protection was in that era. Linemen couldn’t use their hands yet, remember, and the concept of the pocket was still years off. (Plus, it was two years before there was a penalty for roughing the passer. Once the ball was released, the defense could pretty much whatever it wanted to the quarterback until the play was whistled dead.)
I’d be remiss if I didn’t insert this last screen shot. It’s of the Packers’ Lou Gordon — No. 53 — running around without a helmet. In 1936 headgear was still optional.
I’d also be shirking my responsibility if I didn’t include the lead paragraph of the game story that ran in the Boston Globe. It was written by John Lardner — Ring’s son — then 24 and working for the New York Herald Tribune. Can you believe it? The Globe didn’t even staff the game (probably because Redskins were abandoning the city). Imagine the Los Angeles Times not covering Super Bowls XXXIV and XXXVI because the Rams had forsaken L.A.
“. . . championship of the universe, and points south.” Classic.
DEC. 10, 1939: PACKERS 27, GIANTS 0
Steve Owen, the Giants’ Hall of Fame coach, missed the game because of his mother’s death. That left the team in the hands of assistant Bo Molenda, a former Packer. The site was switched from Green Bay’s City Stadium to Milwaukee’s larger State Fair Park because this was, after all, the Depression. If a few more tickets could be sold . . . . And indeed, the crowd of 32,279 produced a gate of over $80,000, a record for an NFL title game. The winning Packers reportedly earned $703.97 each, the losing Giants $455.57.
Green Bay turned it into a rout in the third quarter after Gantenbein (yes, him again) picked off a pass and ran it back to the New York 33. A touchdown — one that made it 17-0 — soon followed. The Sentinel again: “[Quarterback Cecil] Isbell, faking and veering the ball nicely, slipped back, wheeled and passed downfield to [back] Joe Laws, who was all alone to take the ball on the 6 and romp over without a man getting within yards of him.”
Aren’t those goalposts the greatest? They were the new, improved version that moved the posts off the goal line, where they could be an obstruction on running plays. (The goal posts weren’t moved to the back of the end zone until 1974.) The post-TD “celebration,” by the way, is just beautiful. A teammate comes up and . . . shakes Law’s hand.
In the fourth quarter, Packers linebacker Bud Svendsen intercepted another Giants pass and returned it to the New York 15. This time Green Bay turned to trickery. “A double reverse, with [Harry] Jacunski carrying on an end-around, brought the ball to the 1 yards,” the Sentinel reported, “and [fullback Ed] Jankowski pounded over the New York right guard for the score.”
Here’s that sequence – interception/double reverse/short touchdown plunge — that gave the Packers their final points:
DEC. 21, 1941: BEARS 37, GIANTS 9
Once again, the Giants took a licking. Of course, this Bears club — just a year removed from the 73-0 evisceration of the Redskins in the title game — was nigh unbeatable. The game was played two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, which might have had something to do with the disappointing attendance: 13,341.
Behind by four touchdowns in the final quarter, New York ran a gadget play in hopes of getting in a parting shot, but the Bears blew it up. The New York Times’ account:
Just before the end, 9 seconds away, [Steve] Owen inserted Andy Marefos into his lineup. The next play was the one that had worked against the Redskins in their first game with the Giants. Hank Soar rifled a lateral [pass] to Marefos, who was supposed to heave a long one down the field.
Before he could get rid of the ball, the entire Bear team hit him at once. The pigskin popped out of his hand and [end] Ken Kavanaugh picked it up and trotted 42 yards to the end zone.
And then America — and many of these players — went off to war.
The Rams made it two shutouts in a row today with an even-easier-than-it-looks 24-0 nullifying of the Redskins. (They eviscerated the Raiders, 52-0, last week.) I wrote about The Vanishing Shutout in the NFL at the start of the season. Here’s that post — and the clubs the Rams just joined.
Robert Quinn, the Rams’ Pro Bowl defensive end, cruisin’ for a bruisin’.
You stumble across some strange things in the cobwebbed corners of pro football history. They don’t get much stranger, though, than this particular episode.
It involves the 1934 Chicago Bears, one of the greatest teams ever assembled. The Bears were 13-0 that season and had five future Hall of Famers — Bronko Nagurski, Red Grange, Bill Hewitt, Link Lyman and George Musso — not to mention the NFL’s first 1,000-yard rusher, Beattie Feathers. Heading into the title game against the Giants, they’d won 18 in a row (and the last two championships), the longest winning streak in league history up to then.
But after beating the Giants in New York on Nov. 18 to run their record to 10-0, they came home to the following story in the Chicago Tribune:How’s that for an off-field distraction? Both players were rookies. Masterson was just a backup, but Feathers was one of the club’s best-known players and averaged an incredible 8.4 yards a carry in ’34.
An accompanying story provided more detail. The woman, “known as Nell Walker,” was 26 years old and “a former showgirl.”
Miss Walker, before her eight-story leap, dramatically attracted the attention of passersby by screaming as she stood in the window. Her falling body narrowly missed two persons.
Police hurried to question the occupants of the eighth-floor apartment. . . . They included Miss Walker’s sister, Mrs. Thelma Walker Smith, 22 years old; Lucille Moyse of 820 Grace Street, Mrs. Alice Bennett, former Detroit nightclub hostess, and Mary Frances Smith, 6-year-old niece of the dead woman.
The women told of having been celebrating the 10 to 9 victory of the Bears over the Giants in New York. They said Miss Walker was especially happy because “she had a sweetheart on the Bears team.”
After the radio reports of the game had ended, Miss Walker dispatched a telegram of congratulation to Bernie Masterson, former University of Nebraska star.
Then, the other women told police, Miss Walker insisted on having a celebration, opened a bottle of liquor and became intoxicated.
Just before she took the fatal leap through the window she because hysterical and Miss Moyse, who is a trained nurse, gave her a shower bath. Then Miss Walker donned a pair of black pajamas, apparently more composed.
Walker was reportedly estranged from her husband and “had been brooding over it,” Bennett, her roommate, told police. Bennett also said Walker was, in the words of the Tribune, “inordinately interested in Miss Nolan’s tragic plunge” and “once before had tried to climb through the window.”
There were two games left in the Bears’ regular season — both against the Lions, their chief competition in the West Division. After disposing of Detroit, they began preparing for the championship game against the Giants. On Thursday of that week — 80 years ago today — this short item ran in the Tribune:
Temporary insanity due to excessive drinking. You don’t see that every day.
The Bears’ trip to New York didn’t end so well, either. The Giants, who switched to sneakers in the second half because of the icy field, outscored them 27-0 in the fourth quarter to pull a 30-13 upset. Feathers didn’t play because of an injury; Masterson, meanwhile, saw only brief action off the bench. The loss kept Chicago from winning its third straight title, which would have tied the league mark (one that still stands).
Nobody’s suggesting the “showgirl death” had anything to do with the defeat. It’s just my way of saying: Pro football has always been a circus — even in the 1930s, when hardly anyone was watching.
Giants tailback Ed Danowski (22) gets ready to buck the line in The Sneakers Game.
Now that the NFL has revised its drug policy — and made punishments less penal — let’s revisit a piece Ira Berkow wrote for the Newspaper Enterprise Association in 1973 about pill popping in pro football’s early days. His source is Johnny Blood, the Packers’ legendary Hall of Fame back. I say “legendary” because there are sooooo many Johnny Blood tales (some of which might even be true).
The one and only Johnny Blood.
Blood played and partied with equal abandon. After Green Bay won the championship in New York in 1936, he must have really tied one on. “The last time I saw him,” a teammate once told me, “He was going around and around in the hotel’s revolving door.”
Another player from that period passed along this (second-hand) story: “One time some [NFL] players were at a whorehouse in St. Louis, sitting in the parlor. In walks the madam holding an armful of football equipment — helmet, pads, uniform, the whole bit. ‘Do you any of you guys know Johnny Blood?’ she asks. ‘He left this stuff the last time he was here.’”
That’s who Johnny Blood was — when he wasn’t, that is, scoring touchdowns for four title teams. In 1973 he talked with Berkow about, among other things, taking Benzedrine before games. It’s an amazing glimpse into a lost football world.
“He remembers popping Benzedrine pills, an ‘upper’ which reportedly has been in common use in the NFL, in 1935 or 1936,” Berkow writes. Blood’s explanation:
In the offseason I used to work as a feed salesman in Wisconsin. I’d have to make long drives at night across the state, from a client to my office. I remember reading in Time magazine about a drug that helped keep you awake — and made you feel good, too. I tried it, and it worked.
I thought, well, if it’s good enough for driving, maybe it’s good for football, too. So I experimented with the pill. I don’t think it had any effect on my play, but it sure did give a lift. Then I told some of the other players about it. One fella I remember telling was Clarke Hinkle, the great running back, when we both played for the Packers. After that, Clarke became known for taking pills.
In those days, nobody talked about drugs, nobody really took notice of them. Not like today. They were non-prescription drugs, available to most anybody.
Blood also talks about experimenting with opium during a visit to China but deciding it was “too risky.” Bennies were another matter, though. They “just kind of made you feel better.”
In the early days of football, with the light padding and the glove-sized helmets, as they were called, a player needed strong fortification to attain an ethereal frame of mind. Yes, some guys took a drink before the game to raise the spirits. And I guess I could drink with any man. I had the reputation, and sometimes I’d drink the night before a game. I was the manic type. And the next day I might show the effects, in my talk and responses.
After the 1932 season the Packers went on a barnstorming tour that included two games in Hawaii. Green Bay won the first — which it was supposed to do, of course. The night before the second, though, the Hawaiian players tried to give themselves more of a fighting chance by getting Blood drunk.
“They invited me to a luau,” he told Berkow. “That’s their big bash.
And they put me up against their toughest drinker, a big tackle for their team. We drank their national drink, okolehao, and we drank into the night and morning. I got an hour’s sleep, but I showed up at the game. Their big tackle didn’t. I remember I was not feeling too terrific as the game started. Then a shower burst through the sun. And I got my refresher, and then went on to score a couple of touchdowns.
I don’t know how I did it, but I know I paid for it. Games like that took a few years off my career.
Several years later, when he was working for The New York Times, Berkow went back to the Blood well. By then, Johnny had been sober for seven years.
“I thought I saw King Arthur’s Court,” he said, “and walked through a plate-glass window to get there. I decided then, either King Arthur had to go . . . or I was going. Some people can handle drugs better than others. But in the end, no matter how well you handle it, it ends up handling you.”
I just thought of one more Johnny Blood story. It’s from the late ’30s, when he was player-coach of the Pittsburgh Pirates (as they were called then). Seems Johnny had recently had his appendix removed, but he was determined to play in the big game against the Bears, fresh stitches or no fresh stitches.
George Halas’ ruffians didn’t usually treat opponents very tenderly, but on that day Papa Bear preached caution. “Be careful when you hit Blood,” he told his players. “I don’t want his guts spillin’ all over the field.”
It’s doubtful anybody in the Packers locker room Sunday will be shouting, “Let’s win this one for Curly!” But if Green Bay can’t stop the streaking Patriots, Bill Belichick will be one win away from tying Curly Lambeau on the all-time coaching victories list.
Lambeau had 229, good for fourth place, in 33 seasons (1921-53). Belichick has 227 in 20 much longer seasons. It isn’t an entirely fair fight, 12-game schedules vs. 16-game schedules, but that’s the NFL record book for you. Players and coaches from bygone days are just sheep to the slaughter.
Lambeau, I’ll merely point out, won six NFL titles, including three in a row (1929-31) in the years before championship games were staged. Belichick has won three titles, two of them back-to-back (2003-04). Will much be made of this when Bill blows by Curly? You’d like to think so, but I wouldn’t count on it. The league — and its chroniclers — tend to live in the here and now.
What’s interesting is that nobody has passed Curly — or even come close — in three decades, since the Dolphins’ Don Shula won No. 230 in 1984 en route to his record total of 347. That, by the way, was Shula’s last Super Bowl season, his sixth. If the Patriots get to the Super Bowl this year, it’ll be Belichick’s sixth as a head coach as well.
In a meat-grinder profession like this, it’s pretty clear what you have to do to rack up that many victories: start early and try to keep from burning out. Shula got his first head-coaching gig at 33. Halas (324) and Lambeau were even younger because they were player-coaches. Tom Landry (270) was 36 in his rookie season with the expansion Cowboys. Belichick, meanwhile, was 39 when the Browns gave him his first shot.
It’s reasonable to wonder whether it’ll be another three decades, if not longer, before the next Belichick stirs Lambeau’s ghost. After all, the job, which has always taken a tremendous toll, is unrelenting now — 24/7/365. It simply isn’t conducive to a lengthy career, the kind you’d need to win 229 games. Then, too, coaches’ salaries have improved enough to allow them to retire early and duck into TV or administrative jobs (see Tony Dungy, Bill Cowher, Mike Holmgren, etc.). As Bruce Ogilvie, the famed sports psychologist, put it, “When you are discussing a successful coach, you are not necessarily drawing a profile of an entirely healthy person.”
Some would say: And that goes double for Belichick, who maintains a level of secrecy in Foxborough that falls somewhere between George Allen and a CIA black site. The difference with him is that it’s in his DNA. His father, Steve, was a longtime college assistant, and young Bill spent hour after hour in meeting rooms, the smell of chalk in the air. It’s not so much that he’s become a coach; he’s always, in a sense, been a coach. That, I’m convinced, helps explain his longevity — that and having a quarterback like Tom Brady fall in his lap.
But back to “The Belgian,” as Lambeau was called. A player once told me that, during the offseason, when Curly was driving around Wisconsin making speeches, he’d always stop at the local sporting goods store and check out its selection of footballs. If he found one that felt a little slimmer than the others, a little more suited to passing — especially in the era of the fat ball — he’d buy it to use in games. (And fans think today’s coaches are detail-oriented.)
One more Curly story. After the 1932 season, the Packers’ barnstorming tour took them all the way to Hawaii, where they played a couple of games against local teams. On the trip there — via the SS Mariposa — two players got into an argument over a Young Lovely they’d met on the ship, a former Miss California named Billie Copeland.
Lambeau — worried that the next words he’d hear would be “Man overboard!” — quickly defused the situation. “If that’s the way you’re going to behave,” he said, “then neither of you can talk to her.”
We pause now for dramatic effect — just as the early Packer who told me this tale did. The punch line:
“That woman,” he said, “became Mrs. Lambeau No. 2.”
The second of three Mrs. Lambeaus, for those of you scoring at home. The Belgian loved the ladies.
Arthur “Tarzan” White was semi-famous even before he made his NFL debut with Giants in 1937. After all, not many players are nicknamed Tarzan — or have the personality White possessed. When his Alabama team went west to play in the Rose Bowl after the 1934 season, the Los Angeles Times couldn’t help writing about him, despite the fact he was just a “sub” on a line that had Don Hutson at one end and Bear Bryant at the other.
”Tarzan” weighs 200 pounds despite his abbreviated stature of 5 feet, 7 inches. His real name is Arthur, which sounds harmless and in direct contrast to the “Tarzan” nickname. As a youngster White became tremendously interested in the so-called comic strip, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, featuring the exploits of the famous man of the jungle. So impressed was the Alabama youth by these pictures and yarns that he built himself a house in the trees. He actually practiced swinging through the trees . . . and is said to have been very proficient. White also practiced with the bow and arrow and achieved such perfection that he could go out and bring down wild game with these primitive weapons. Whether he ever wrestled with a lion or tried to ride an alligator bareback is something they neglected to tell me.
Speaking of Burroughs, he once tried to stop White and other wrestlers from appropriating Tarzan’s name, believing they lacked the virtue, athleticism and unspoiled innocence normally associated with his character. (What do you suppose gave him that idea?)
“The other self-christened Tarzans are apes, all right,” he told the United Press, “only they’re muscle-bound and have broken noses. Tarzan is a copyrighted trademark, and if these plug uglies insist on using it, I’m going to insist on the right to license them and stencil the copyright number on their chests.”
Naturally, the “self-christened Tarzans” ignored him.
Tonight’s bout, from the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, pits Tarzan against the aptly named Chest Bernard. (As broadcaster Russ Davis says, “This guy is called The Chest, and with justifiable reason. Hel-looooo!”) If Bernard was The Chest, then White could just as easily have been The Back. The fur on it was so thick it could have been mistaken for the the Real Tarzan’s native habitat.
“Tarzan White sits around the dressing room and plays solitaire by the hour,” Davis says. “[I] walked in tonight to see him before the bout. There he was, playing solitaire and whistling a tune. . . . And he never cheats with himself.”
No, Tarzan always played the good guy in the ring. Bernard was the villain, refusing to shake his hand at the outset and constantly pulling his hair and grabbing hold of his trunks. (Davis: “Mr. Bernard, sir, you are a stinker, sir.”)
Tarzan gave away 37 pounds in the match, weighing 225 to The Chest’s 262, which wasn’t unusual, apparently. According to Davis, he was “one of the smallest of the heavyweights.” He was naturally strong, though, and dead-lifted Bernard — in the days, mind you, before iron-pumping was in vogue — several times.
Wrestlingdata.com says Tarzan’s career spanned from 1939 to ’64. The following bout took place Jan. 25, 1952, when he was 36 and had been out of pro football for six years. He spent his first three seasons with the Giants, the next two with the Chicago Cardinals, then returned to the Giants in 1945 after a serving in the Air Force during World War II.
Tarzan was never busier in the ring, in fact, than in ’52, wrestling (at least) 75 times. His bout with The Chest was one fall with a 30-minute time limit. All set? Here we go . . .
Broadcaster Davis was right. “He’s a mean one, this Bernard.”
Thought we could celebrate the holiday by setting the Wayback Machine for Nov. 27, 1930. Why Nov. 27, 1930, you ask? Oh, why not?
For the record, nine of the NFL’s 11 teams played on that Thanksgiving Day, which wasn’t the least bit unusual. It was, after all, the Depression. If a team could squeeze in an extra game before winter arrived, preferably one against a nearby opponent, it could fill the stadium with both fan bases and possibly break even for the season.
In Portsmouth, Ohio, the Spartans, in their first year in the league, faced the Ironton Tanks, an independent club and their fiercest rival. Spartans-Tanks games had an anarchy all their own. Here’s a link to a piece I wrote about their 1930 Turkey Day battle — memorable in every way — for Sports on Earth last year. (Reader advisory: At one point in the hostilities, a Portsmouth player has his pants torn off.)
But I want to do more with this post than just go over old ground. I want to give you a sense of what a day in the NFL was like in those times. So I’ve gathered newspaper stories about the other four games on Thanksgiving 1930 in case you want to read them. If you went to the newsstand the next day, this is the coverage you would have found in The New York Times, Brooklyn Eagle, Milwaukee Journal and Chicago Tribune.
Two of the games were in New York. The first, at Thompson’s Stadium on Staten Island, pitted the Giants against the Stapletons. The Giants, who were leading the league with an 11-2 record, had Benny Friedman, the greatest of the early passers. But the Stapes, 4-4-2 coming in, had a Hall of Fame back of their own: Ken Strong (who moved to the Giants after the Staten Island franchise folded and spent most of his career with them). The Times’ account:
The “Wilson” mentioned in the story, by the way, was Mule Wilson, one of the Stapletons’ running backs. Can you imagine leaving that out of the play-by-play – a fabulous name like Mule? Of course, Moran’s first name, Hap, also was omitted. He, too, was a back — for the Giants.
The difference in the game, as you read, was that the Stapes made their one PAT try and the Giants missed theirs. But the Giants, interestingly, didn’t attempt a kick. Instead, the Times reported, their “pass from Friedman to Moran for the extra point was grounded [meaning incomplete].” Teams sometimes did that back then. What would have been nice is if the paper had explained the Giants’ strategy. Was the field too torn up for a dropkick? Was there a problem with the snap that forced Friedman, the Giants’ primary kicker, to throw the ball instead? We’ll never know. But it proved incredibly costly.
The second game in New York was between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Providence Steam Roller, the 1928 champs, at Ebbets Field. As with the Times, the Eagle’s coverage was less than exhaustive: five paragraphs plus a box score that provided the starting lineups, scoring summary, substitutions and officiating crew. Note that only three officials worked these games: a referee, umpire and head linesman. Think a few penalties — if not felonies — might have gone unnoticed?
So in the Giants game we have Mule and Hap, and in this one we have Stumpy (Thomason, “the stocky little halfback who has become so popular with the Brooklyn fans”). What can I tell ya? They were big on nicknames in the ’30s. One of the reasons the Dodgers won by such a large margin — 21, which was a sizable spread in the NFL’s dead-ball era — is that the Steam Roller were playing shorthanded. After dropping out of the race, they’d released five players to reduce payroll (and Portsmouth happily signed them to load up for the Ironton grudge match).
Let’s move on to Philadelphia — and the Frankford Yellow Jackets-Green Bay Packers matchup. The Packers were a veritable all-star team with future Hall of Famers in the backfield (quarterback Arnie Herber, back Johnny Blood) and the line (tackle Cal Hubbard, guard Mike Michalske). They also had a center, Jug Earp, who was related to Wyatt Earp, the famous lawman (just in case there was any trouble).
The Frankford franchise, on the other hand, was in its death throes — yet another victim of the hard economic times. The Yellow Jackets had won the championship four years earlier and were one of the strongest teams in the ’20s, but 1931 would be their last season in the league (as it would for the Steam Roller).
This was a huge victory for the Packers. Not only did it stop a two-game skid, it enabled them — because of the Giants’ loss — to reclaim first place. They went on to win their second of three straight titles (an NFL record later tied by Vince Lombardi’s Packers in the ’60s). Despite their success, though, it looks like the Journal hired a stringer to cover the game in Philly. I’m guessing the paper didn’t have the healthiest travel budget the year after the stock market crashed.
My favorite passage in the story: “With the wind at their backs the Jackets kicked far into Green Bay territory. One of the many fumbles, all of which can be readily excused because of frozen fingers, occurred at this time.”
It wasn’t unheard of for players to wear gloves in the 1930s — even if some of them did disdain helmets. But it appears everybody toughed it out in the Packers-Yellow Jackets game. Thus, the “many fumbles.”
We finish this Day in the Life of the NFL at Wrigley Field, where the Bears and Cardinals collided with Chicago bragging rights at stake. The game is particularly notable because of a late addition to the Bears roster: fullback Joe Savoldi, who had been booted out of Notre Dame in midseason after it was discovered he was married. By week’s end, the Bears were $1,000 poorer — the fine they were assessed for signing a player before his college class had graduated. The Tribune’s take:
You’ll love this: The Wilfrid Smith who wrote the game story and the “Smith [De Pauw]” who served as the head linesman are the same person. A number of sportswriters in that era double-dipped as officials — and would sit in the press box afterward, still wearing their zebra outfits, and type their deathless prose. (The linesman in the Giants game was “J. Reardon.” That would be Jack Reardon of the Times. He may well have covered the game, too, but we can’t be 100 percent sure because the story didn’t have a byline.)
Smith, who also played some tackle in the NFL with the Cardinals and three other clubs, was one of the best football writers of his generation — knowledgeable, instructive and funny. Wasn’t it classic how he described Savoldi’s touchdown?
Red [Grange, the Bears’ halfback] carried within inches of the [goal] line. . . . Here, [quarterback Carl] Brumbaugh remembered his professional etiquette and Savoldi banged into the line, falling with the ball squarely on the final strip[e].
Did you catch, too, that the Cardinals completed six passes to their own receivers and six to the Bears? Putting the ball in the air could be a risky proposition in those days, much like plane travel.
So ends our field trip to Thanksgiving 1930. According to my calculations, the attendance at the five games was 37,500 — about half the capacity of AT&T Stadium, where the Cowboys will host the Eagles today. Eighty-four years later, the Stapes, Dodgers, Steam Roller and Yellow Jackets no longer exist, the Spartans have moved to Detroit and become the Lions and the Cardinals have relocated to Arizona after a stop in St. Louis.
Even worse, there’s nobody in the league named Mule or Hap or Stumpy.
The 1930 Staten Island Stapletons — all 19 of them.
(Georgia Teachers College, by the way, is now Georgia Southern.)
