Impressions of Papa Bear, Part 2

GEORGE HALAS IN THE 1950s

     During the 1937 NFL championship game, one of the Bears hit Washington Redskins star Sammy Baugh with what Redksins owner George Preston Marshall perceived as unnecessary vigor. Enraged, Marshall stormed down from his box and confronted Bears head coach and owner George Halas in front of the Chicago bench, where the two hurled the most profane insults back and forth until one of the Bear players stepped in and made a move toward Marshall. At that point, Marshall wisely retreated from the sideline and returned to the safety of his box. When he sat down beside his wife, movie actress Corinne Griffith, she said, “Oh, that was awful!”
     “What was awful?” Marshall replied.
     “That horrible language,” Griffith said. “We heard every word.”
     “Well, you shouldn’t listen.”
     “And as for that man Halas—”
     “Don’t you dare say anything against Halas!” Marshall cried. “He’s my best friend!”

     Halas’s sideline outbursts were legendary. Irv Kupcinet, the Chicago newspaperman who later teamed with Jack Brickhouse on the Bears’ radio broadcasts, was an NFL official for several years (he was head linesman for the incredible 1940 championship game). “Halas was known to take great delight in screaming at the officials,” Kupcinet said, “berating them with the vilest language known to man when he felt a decision went against his team. I was, myself, subject to his rantings. Yet after many games, we sat down to dinner together, without a word passing between us about our encounters on the field.”

     After the Bears annihilated the Redskins 73-0 for the 1940 world championship, Sid Luckman went to see Halas about getting a bonus. Although he was one of the highest paid players in the league at $5,000 a year, Luckman felt that an extra $1,000 would be fair given his tremendous success that season. “I went to Halas’s office and asked him straight out,” Luckman recalled many years later. “He just looked at me. I looked back at the man who was the Bears’ founder, owner, coach, general manager, and treasurer, and saw him turn white. But as he regained his composure, he pulled an envelope out of a pocket and started reading his scribblings on its backside: ‘In the first game against Green Bay you threw an interception...’
     “‘But Coach,’ I interrupted, ‘we won that game by 30 points!’
     “‘... in the next game against Detroit you fumbled...’
     “‘But Coach, we beat the Lions by a wide margin! I must have done something right because I played 55 minutes in both of those games, on offense and defense!’
     “It was no use. He went on and on, listing chronologically all of the lousy plays I had made that season. Finally I said, ‘Jeez, Coach, maybe I should pay you some money for as bad as it sounds like I played.’ Coach Halas eyed me and told me he’d give me $250—and that was more than I deserved and more than he wanted to pay me.
     “I drove home to New York where I had grown up and where I was living during the offseason. Sometime in April, he wrote me a wonderful letter in which he stated that many things were going to change with the Bears’ offense that coming year, and he suggested that I come back a month earlier than planned. If I did, he would pay me $750. So I ended up getting the bonus after all. He just had to arrange it his way.”

     Under Halas, the Bears were responsible for many innovations over the years. For example, they were the first team in pro football to hold daily practice sessions, to study game films of future opponents, to use a stadium announcer, to broadcast games on radio, and to deploy an assistant coach in the press box (connected by telephone to the coaches on the sideline). In 1955, Halas installed miniature radios in the helmets of his quarterback and defensive captain so he could speak directly to them while they were out on the field. The NFL got wind of it after three games and outlawed the practice, but today it is standard procedure throughout the league.

     Although he enjoyed his bourbon as well as the next fellow and could swear like a longshoreman, Halas was nonetheless a devout Catholic and dedicated family man who was appalled by the unabashed philandering of some of his players. “Guys would get on the airplane with a garment bag,” Mike Ditka wrote. “The Old Man would be right in front. If he saw a big garment bag, he would say, ‘You dirty whore. This is not a two-suit trip.’ It was a big joke after that. We always wondered whether we were going on a two-suit trip or a one-suit trip.”
     Halas even hired detectives to keep watch over his players, some of whom altered their behavior accordingly. One who never changed was defensive end Doug Atkins, who came to the Bears from Cleveland after the austere Paul Brown gave up trying to control him. Atkins often called Halas at home in the wee hours of the morning, invariably after consuming a number of cocktails. He would let loose a torrent of obscenities, telling his boss exactly what he thought of him. Halas gave it right back, and then some. The next morning, Atkins would be at practice on time and ready to go.

Part 2 of 3.

The Homer in the Gloamin'

 

GABBY HARTNETT NEARS HOME PLATE AFTER HIS GAME-WINNING HOME RUN.

Seventy-two years ago today, on September 28, 1938, the Cubs and the Pittsburgh Pirates met in perhaps the most dramatic game ever played at Wrigley Field. The Cubs were finishing fast under player/manager Gabby Hartnett, and they had sliced Pittsburgh's lead in the National League pennant race to but half a game. What happened next was, in Hartnett's words, “the greatest thrill of my life.”

     On the gloomy afternoon of September 28, the Cubs trailed 3-1 when Gabby Hartnett opened the bottom of the sixth with a double to center. Rip Collins followed with a double off the right-field wall to score Hartnett. Collins advanced to third on a single by Billy Jurges and scored the tying run on a forceout. The Cubs missed a chance to go ahead when Jurges, trying to score from second on a single to left-center, was thrown out at the plate by shortstop Arky Vaughan.
     The skies continued to darken as the game remained tied through the seventh. In the eighth, the Pirates scored twice, and only an inning-ending double play prevented further damage.
     Leading 5-3, the Pirates needed only six more outs to all but knock the Cubs out of the pennant race. But the Cubs came right back in their half of the eighth. Collins led off with a single. Bill Swift relieved Pirates starter Bob Klinger and walked Jurges. Tony Lazzeri was sent up to bunt the runners to second and third. His first attempt was foul. He missed the second pitch altogether, but the ball got away from catcher Al Todd, and Collins went sliding into third. Lazzeri, having failed to sacrifice, then swung away and delivered a double to right, scoring Collins and sending Jurges to third.
     The tying and lead runs were now in scoring position for the Cubs. After Stan Hack drew an intentional walk to load the bases, Billy Herman singled to right. The fans were delirious—for an instant. Herman’s hit scored Jurges with the tying run, but Joe Marty (pinch running for Lazzeri) was out at the plate on a perfect throw by right fielder Paul Waner. Now Hack was on second with the go-ahead run, and Herman on first. But Mace Brown came on to pitch for the Pirates and induced Frank Demaree to tap into a double play to end the inning.
     By now it was very dark (it would be 50 more years before lights were installed at Wrigley Field). The umpires conferred and decided to let the teams play one more inning, after which it would certainly be impossible to continue.
     Charlie Root, the Cubs’ sixth pitcher of the day, got through the ninth unscathed, thanks in part to Hartnett, who nailed Paul Waner trying to steal second for the third out. In the bottom half of the inning, Cavarretta hit a long drive to center that was caught by Lloyd Waner. Then Carl Reynolds grounded out to the second baseman. One more out and the game would go into the books as a tie, and the Pirates would still be in first place. The teams would have to play a doubleheader the next day, with the Cubs needing a sweep to move into first place.
     Up to the plate strode Gabby Hartnett. “I swung once and missed,” he later recalled. “I swung again, and got a piece of it, but that was all. A foul and strike two. I had one more chance. Mace Brown wound up and let fly; I swung with everything I had and then I got that feeling you get when the blood rushes out of your head and you get dizzy.”
     “Hartnett swung,” Paul Waner remembered, “and the damn ball landed in the left-field seats! I could hardly believe my eyes. The game was over, and I should have run into the clubhouse. But I didn’t. I just stood out there in right field and watched Hartnett circle the bases, and take the lousy pennant with him. I just watched and wondered, sort of objectively, you know, how the devil he could ever get all the way around to touch home plate.”
     Hartnett’s home run gave the Cubs a 6-5 victory. There was pandemonium in the stands and on the field. “When I got to second base I couldn’t see third for the players and fans there,” Hartnett said. “I don’t think I walked a step to the plate—I was carried in. But when I got there I saw [umpire] George Barr taking a good look. He was going to make sure I touched that platter.”
     “The crowd was in an uproar,” said Waner, “absolutely gone wild. They ran onto the field like a bunch of maniacs, and his teammates and the crowd and all were mobbing Hartnett, and piling on top of him, and throwing him up in the air, and everything you could think of. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
     It took dozens of Andy Frain ushers, as well as the entire complement of Cub players, to protect Hartnett from the hundreds of fans who had swarmed onto the field. The ushers and the other players tugged and shoved and elbowed their way through the mob to the Cubs’ clubhouse. A mailman who had caught the home run came and presented the ball to Hartnett, who gratefully gave him an autographed ball in return.
     For the first time since July 12, Pittsburgh was out of first place. The next day, the Cubs routed the demoralized Pirates 10-1 for their 10th straight win and their 20th in the last 23 games. Appearing on the mound for the fifth time in a week (including three complete game victories and two relief stints), Bill Lee had an easy time of it as he went the distance. “The heart was gone out of Pittsburgh,” Hartnett said. Two days later, the Cubs clinched the pennant with a victory at St. Louis. It was their fourth flag in the past 10 seasons, each coming at three-year intervals.
     On the evening of October 3, thousands of fans greeted the Cubs when their train pulled into the Illinois Central station. The following day, a ticker-tape parade down LaSalle Street drew tens of thousands.

Excerpted from Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports
(c)2009, 2010 by Christopher Tabbert.

The Merkle Game

FRED MERKLE

     One hundred and two years ago yesterday, on September 23, 1908, the Cubs and the Giants were in a virtual tie for first place in the National League when the two clubs took the field at the Polo Grounds in New York for what became one of the most famous games in major-league history.
     The game was scoreless until the fifth, when Cub shortstop Joe Tinker’s line drive into the gap eluded right fielder Mike Donlin and went for an inside-the-park home run. Donlin made amends the next inning by singling in the tying run. The Cubs’ Jack Pfiester held his own against Mathewson, and the game remained deadlocked 1-1 into the bottom of the ninth. With two out and Moose McCormick on first, Fred Merkle came to bat for the Giants. Merkle, a 19-year-old rookie, was in the lineup only because regular first baseman Fred Tenney was hurt.
     Merkle came through with a single to right, sending McCormick around to third. That brought Al Bridwell to the plate. “Well, the first pitch came into me,” Bridwell recalled, “a fastball, waist high, right over the center of the plate, and I promptly drilled a line drive past Johnny Evers and out into right center field. Bob Emslie was umpiring on the bases and he fell on his can to avoid being hit by the ball. I really socked that one on the nose. A clean single.”
     McCormick crossed home plate, and New York had seemingly won the ballgame. Merkle jogged only about halfway to second base before he became unnerved by the thousands of jubilant fans who were swarming onto the field. He peeled off and sprinted for the Giants’ clubhouse. Evers immediately recognized the youngster’s mistake; if he could get hold of the ball and step on second base, Merkle would be forced out to retire the side, and the game would still be tied. He began yelling for center fielder Solly Hofman to throw him the ball.
     Three weeks earlier in Pittsburgh, another rookie, Warren Gill, had failed to touch second base on an apparent game-winning hit against the Cubs. On that occasion, Evers screamed bloody murder but umpire Hank O’Day was unmoved, and the Pirates’ victory was allowed to stand.
     O’Day now found himself confronted with the exact same situation. Rather than leave the field, he watched intently as Hofman grappled with fans for the ball and threw it toward the infield. Realizing what the Cubs were up to, third-base coach Joe McGinnity grabbed the ball and chucked it into the crowd, where it was caught, according to Evers, by “a tall, stringy middle-aged gent with a brown bowler hat on.” The Cubs’ Harry Steinfeldt and Rube Kroh chased this fellow, Kroh finally knocking him to the ground and retrieving the ball. (Kroh, a seldom-used pitcher, had been in charge of the bag in which the Cubs stored their valuables for safekeeping. He forgot all about it when he left the bench to pursue the man in the bowler hat. The bag and its contents, about $5,000 in cash and jewelry, were never seen again.)
     Kroh flipped the ball to Tinker. “I was yelling and waving my hands by second base,” said Evers, “and Tinker relayed it over to me and I stepped on the bag and made sure O’Day saw me.” O’Day ruled that Merkle was out and the run did not count. Accordingly, the game should have continued into extra innings, but clearing the field was out of the question. While the Cubs and the umpires ran a gauntlet of irate Giants fans to the clubhouse, Chance took the opportunity to berate O’Day, claiming that because the chaos on the field prevented extra innings, the Cubs should be declared the winners by forfeit.
     Neither team was satisfied by the outcome, although the Cubs were well aware that they had gotten the better of it. Evers, for one, understood that O’Day could have taken the easy way out by assuming that Bridwell’s hit had ended the game. He said that O’Day’s call was “one of the greatest examples of individual heroism the game has known.”

     After hearing all the arguments and counter-arguments, league president Harry C. Pulliam ruled that the disputed game would go into the books as a tie. Meanwhile, the season continued. When it was all said and done, the Cubs and Giants found themselves again tied for first place. The Cubs went back to New York for a special playoff game on October 8, and their ace pitcher Mordecai “Three-Finger” Brown subdued the Giants 4-1 to wrap up the Cubs’ third straight pennant. They were also headed towards their second consecutive World Series championship.
     “My team,” said John McGraw, “merely lost something it had honestly won three weeks ago.” Thus he blamed the Merkle incident of September 23, but not Merkle himself, for the loss of the pennant. Merkle’s teammates also understood that any one of them could have made the same mistake. Even Al Bridwell, the man who was deprived of the biggest hit of his career and credited with a fielder’s choice instead, had only empathy for the rookie. “I think anyone would have done the same thing that Fred Merkle did,” he said.
     New York fans, though, blamed Merkle’s “bonehead” play and the “villainy” of the Cubs for giving Chicago the title. Although he played usefully in the majors for a dozen more years (including four with the Cubs), Merkle never lived it down. “I wish I’d never gotten that hit,” Bridwell said many years later. “I wish I’d struck out instead. If I’d have done that, then it would have spared Fred a lot of unfair humiliation.”

Adapted from Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports
(c) 2009, 2010 by Christopher Tabbert

The Long Count

GENE TUNNEY ON THE SEAT OF HIS PANTS WHILE
REFEREE DAVE BARRY SHOOS JACK DEMPSEY AWAY. 

    
     Eighty-three years ago today, on September 22, 1927, champion Gene Tunney and challenger Jack Dempsey fought for the world heavyweight title at Soldier Field. Tunney had taken the title from Dempsey by unanimous decision 364 days earlier, and fans had been clamoring for a rematch ever since. The rematch remains one of the most famous bouts in boxing history.
     People who were there said what they remembered most was the brilliant light in which the fighters were bathed. Dozens of cone-shaped fixtures were suspended directly above the ring, sending columns of white light onto the canvas. “All is darkness in the muttering mass of crowd beyond the spotlight,” Graham McNamee intoned to the radio audience. “The crowd is thickening in the seats. It’s like the Roman Colosseum.”
     Estimates of the crowd varied widely, from a low of 105,000 to a high of 150,000. This mass of humanity produced gate receipts of $2,658,600—establishing a record that stood for over 40 years. Dempsey received $450,000, Tunney slightly less than $1 million.
     The weather was cool, around 55 degrees, with a gentle breeze from the lake. The crowd paid almost no attention to the four preliminary bouts, but came to life when Dempsey appeared at 9:55 p.m. He bounced around the ring and chatted nonchalantly with Mayor Big Bill Thompson while waiting for Tunney, who made his entrance some five minutes later. Dempsey and Tunney shook hands and said a few words to one another.
     “They’re getting the gloves out of a box tied with pretty blue ribbon,” McNamee informed his listeners. Then it was time to get down to business. “Robes are off,” he cried. “The bell!” As in the earlier fight, Dempsey was the aggressor. The methodical Tunney was content to backpedal and feint, patiently looking for openings. When he saw one, he struck quickly and danced away before Dempsey could effectively retaliate. Throughout the early rounds, Tunney stayed out of trouble and piled up points. Time and again, he lured Dempsey in too close, then nailed him with a straight left to the forehead followed by a right cross to the jaw. By general consensus, the champion won each of the first five rounds.
     Dempsey emphasized body blows early in the fight, but these had little impact. He went for the head from the sixth round on, realizing that he would probably need a knockout in order to win. He scored twice in the sixth with wicked lefts to the jaw, and most observers gave him a narrow edge in that round.
     Dempsey continued to attack in the seventh. He came out of his corner with renewed enthusiasm and caught Tunney against the west ropes almost at once. Tunney missed with a right cross. Then Dempsey delivered a left hook to the jaw, followed by a right cross that landed as Tunney was already falling to the canvas. “What a surprise!” Tunney wrote in his autobiography. Dazed, Tunney sat on his haunches with his left arm looped around the middle rope. Dempsey stood over him menacingly, eager to finish him off if and when he got back to his feet.
     Referee Dave Barry did not begin to count over Tunney until Dempsey retreated to a neutral corner, per the rule that is meant to prevent a man from being struck while he’s down. Between four and five seconds elapsed before Barry began counting. “Meantime,” Harvey Woodruff wrote in the Tribune, “champion Gene, whose title seemed [to be] slipping from his grasp, rose on one knee and, with his senses rapidly recuperating, coolly awaited the count of nine before arising to his feet.”

     The notorious “long count” was that simple. There was no question that Tunney was on the floor for 13 to 14 seconds—when 10, of course, is enough to register a knockout. But there was also no question that Dempsey was tardy in moving away from his fallen opponent. He had stood over Tunney for several seconds with his right arm cocked. Barry correctly interpreted the rule which stated, “Should the boxer on his feet fail to stay in the [neutral] corner, the referee and the timekeeper shall cease counting until he has so retired.”
     Tunney always maintained that he could have gotten up whenever he pleased. “I was not hurt,” he claimed, “but considered it just as well to take my time about arising.” When the fight resumed, Dempsey attacked relentlessly, but Tunney held him off with body blows. Dempsey chased Tunney around the ring, derisively motioning for him to stand and fight. Tunney kept on moving. Soon his head was clear of cobwebs, and he managed to deliver a right to Dempsey’s jaw and a left to the midsection just before the bell.
     By surviving the seventh round, Tunney had recovered the momentum. He scored a knockdown of his own in the eighth with an overhand right to Dempsey’s head. Jack popped back up after a count of one, but he was wobbly as the bout continued. Tunney shot a series of lefts to the jaw, then rocked Dempsey with lefts and rights to the head. The bell sounded with the two fighters toe-to-toe in the center of the ring and the fans on their feet, roaring.
     Tunney was in command the rest of the way. Dempsey, desperate by now, repeatedly resorted to illegal “rabbit punches” to the back of the champion’s head throughout the later rounds. Like his legitimate blows, however, they did little damage. Most uncharacteristically, Tunney threw caution to the wind. Sensing that Dempsey was tired and wounded, he abandoned his dancing and forced the issue. He advanced on the challenger and banged away virtually at will in the ninth round, opening a nasty cut above Dempsey’s left eye. In the 10th, the frustrated Dempsey wrestled Tunney to the floor. When he got back up, Tunney landed five left jabs to the face without being hit in return.
     Dempsey knew he needed a knockout, but as the clock ticked down he simply did not have the strength to throw anything but a few token punches. Tunney showered him with a barrage of left and right hooks in the closing seconds. If the bell had come any later, Dempsey almost certainly would have ended up on the canvas.
     Tunney won a unanimous decision. “It simply was a case,” Walter Eckersall wrote in the Tribune, “of a boxer, who was much faster, winning a 10-round decision over a fighter who always commands respect because of his punching power.”
     Dempsey and his supporters, naturally, complained bitterly about the long count. “It appeared they gave Tunney a generous count in the seventh,” Dempsey said, “just enough extra time to let him get his bearings and climb back on his bicycle.” Dempsey’s manager, Leo P. Flynn, declared that Tunney had retained the title “by grace of what was either a queer decision or a colossal case of inefficiency in the simple matter of counting seconds.” Flynn was just warming up. “Even if Tunney could have got to his feet at the end of an up-and-up count,” he said, “Jack would have floored him again. He needed those extra five seconds mighty bad.”
     Flynn filed a formal protest, which was denied. At the time, his and Dempsey’s grievances were written off as sour grapes. Over the years, though, the controversy surrounding the long count grew until it nearly overshadowed the estimable careers of the two principals, both of whom deserved to be ranked among the great heavyweights.
     “Some folks are saying that I should fight Dempsey again,” Tunney said the day after the fight in Soldier Field. “I don’t agree with them. I have beaten him twice and I see no reason why the public should want to see us matched again.” With that, Dempsey retired; his record was 62-6-10, with 49 knockouts. He became a sort of professional celebrity and opened a successful nightclub in New York. Tunney fought only once more, earning a technical knockout of Tom Heeney on July 26, 1928. He then hung up his gloves, married a Connecticut society woman, and embarked on a tour of Europe’s art museums and literary haunts. His record was 65-1-1, with 47 knockouts.

Adapted from Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports
(c) 2009, 2010 by Christopher Tabbert.

1985 Bears Flashback: McMagic

JIM McMAHON LOOKS DOWNFIELD FOR WILLIE GAULT.

    
     September 19, 1985. The Bears are at Minnesota for a Thursday night game against the Vikings.
     Jim McMahon doesn’t start at quarterback because a combination of ailments has kept him out of practice. Backup Steve Fuller is behind center for the first two and a half quarters. “I was in [Mike] Ditka’s ear most of the time about putting me in,” McMahon says later. “Steve wasn’t playing all that bad; we just needed a spark.”
     The Bears are trailing 17-9 with 7:22 left in the third quarter when McMahon enters the game. On his first play, at the Bears’ 30-yard line, McMahon stumbles taking the snap, regains his footing, then sees that the Vikings’ linebackers are blitzing. “What I also saw,” he recalls, “was Willie Gault running free down the middle, so I just unloaded it to him, and it was a 70-yard touchdown.”
     What the national TV audience also saw was Walter Payton obliterating one of the blitzing linebackers with a perfect--and perfectly devastating--block.
     After a Wilber Marshall interception, McMahon fires a 25-yard touchdown pass to Dennis McKinnon. He has now taken two snaps and thrown two touchdowns.
     On the next possession, McMahon completes passes to Ken Margerum and Gault to move the Bears from their own 32 into Minnesota territory. Then he finds McKinnon streaking downfield for a 43-yard touchdown. There are 33 seconds remaining in the quarter, and the Bears now lead 30-17.
     In less than seven minutes, McMahon has completed five of seven passes for 166 yards and three touchdowns, all on improvised plays that bear little resemblance to what Ditka has called. The Bears win 33-24. “The guy, I can’t explain,” says Ditka. “I don’t know what he sees or how he sees what he sees.”
     The Bears are 3-0 for the young season.

Excerpted from Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports
(c) 2009, 2010 by Christopher Tabbert.