Last Team Standing (35 page)

Because the Giants double-teamed Hutson throughout the championship game, Green Bay used him as a decoy and passed the ball to other receivers, who were usually wide open. Hutson only caught two passes, but his mere presence was instrumental in Green Bay's victory.

On December 9, 1944, the drafting of men 26 and older was resumed. With the fighting still raging on two fronts and preparations under way for a possible invasion of Japan, the Army's appetite for able-bodied men once again turned ravenous. Attendant with the renewed demand for manpower was an even greater scrutiny of 4-F athletes. James F. Byrnes, the head of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion (and later secretary of state), asked Lewis Hershey to re-examine all professional athletes who were deferred for physical reasons.

“It is difficult for the public to understand, and certainly it is difficult for me to understand, how these men can be physically unfit for military service and yet be able to compete with the greatest athletes of the nation in games demanding physical fitness,” Byrnes said.

What ensued was blatantly discriminatory. A professional athlete—a “P.A.” in Selective Service jargon—was likely to be inducted whatever his infirmities. On January 15, 1945, Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Ron Northey was ordered to report for induction, even though he was 4-F with a perforated eardrum, a heart ailment, and high blood pressure. Frank Sinkwich, the Detroit Lions' star halfback, beat Selective Service to the punch. As he'd hoped, Sinkwich found a way back into the military. He joined the Army Air Forces, which, being more concerned about flying than marching, didn't consider flat feet to be an issue. Sinkwich, however, didn't spend much time in the air. He played football for the AAF team in Colorado Springs, where he suffered a serious knee injury that ended his promising football career.

On April 12, 1945, Franklin Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the winter White House in Warm Springs, Georgia. He was succeeded by his vice president, Harry Truman, who as a senator had occasionally attended Redskins games at Griffith Stadium. Truman authorized the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and on Tuesday, August 14, 1945, Japan surrendered unconditionally. World War II was over. The headline in the next day's
Philadelphia Inquirer
read, simply, “PEACE.” Immediately the nation began the painful process of reconverting to a peacetime economy. The armed forces began demobilizing. Over the next year, more than seven million men and women would be discharged. Conscription continued, but inductions were slashed nearly in half and all men 26 or older were made exempt. The military cancelled contracts worth more than $23 billion. Unemployment soared overnight. In the four days after the surrender, more than 70,000 workers were laid off from war plants in Philadelphia alone. The government-funded day-care centers were closed. Manpower controls were lifted. Rationing ended for most goods (though some, including sugar, would continue to be rationed until 1947, when the Office of Price Administration was finally disbanded).

Three days after the surrender, the Office of Defense Transportation lifted all travel restrictions affecting athletic events. ODT director J. Monroe Johnson thanked sports organizations for their cooperation during the war. He said, “The example set by athletic leaders, both professional and amateur, in voluntarily cutting travel was probably the strongest single factor in impressing upon the general public the urgency of the wartime transportation situation.” Monroe thanked in particular the commissioner of the National Football League, Elmer Layden.

On August 22, in a sign of professional football's growing prominence and influence, Layden called on Harry Truman at the White House. Layden presented Truman with a gold-engraved lifetime pass, which the smiling president promised to use. (Truman, as it turned out, was too busy. A sitting president
wouldn't attend an NFL game until 1966, when Lyndon Johnson took in a preseason affair at D.C. Stadium.)

The Philadelphia Eagles did some reconverting of their own in the days after the war ended. General manager Harry Thayer announced that players could quit their day jobs if they so desired.

“It is not necessary,” Thayer said. “But the club itself will no longer demand they keep outside jobs.”

Art Morrow, who covered the Eagles for the
Philadelphia Inquirer,
lamented the end of compulsory moonlighting.

“Players did not have so much leisure between games for the type of extracurricular activities that make for Sunday fumbles,” Morrow wrote, apparently forgetting that the Steagles had led the league in fumbles in 1943.

When Japan surrendered, NFL training camps were just getting under way. Players who'd gone off to war began trickling back. Sometimes they went right to work. Ken Kavanaugh played two seasons with the Bears before joining the Army Air Forces in 1942. He flew 25 missions over Germany. Kavanaugh was mustered out shortly after V-J Day and reported back to the Bears the day before they played the Eagles in an exhibition game in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

“George Halas made me play, and I scored three times,” Kavanaugh recalled with a laugh.

Among the returning servicemen was Jack Sanders, a lineman who had played for the Steelers in 1942. Sanders lost part of his left arm in the fighting at Iwo Jima. While recuperating at the Naval Hospital in South Philadelphia, he decided to try out for the Eagles. He appeared in three games in 1945.

Many former soldiers were unable to reacclimatize themselves to professional football. Physically and psychologically, it was a difficult transition. After missing three seasons while in the Navy, Eagles tackle John Eibner reported to training camp in 1946. He knew he was out of shape, so he asked his friend and teammate Vic Sears for help. When Eibner was playing defense in
scrimmages, Sears would give him a signal to let him know which play was going to be run. The coaches were impressed with Eibner's seemingly telepathic ability to find the ball carrier, and he made the team.

“This was the only time I ever did anything like that,” said Sears. “I just loved the guy and never was sorry for it.”

In 1945, Tommy Thompson, who'd been the Eagles starting quarterback before the war, returned from the service only to find his position already occupied by Roy Zimmerman. Thus began the first quarterback controversy in Eagles history. It ended after the 1946 season, when the Eagles traded Zimmerman to the Detroit Lions.

Zimmerman retired from football after the 1948 season to pursue his first love: pitching. He became one of the country's top fast-pitch softball hurlers. He once struck out 30 batters in a 14-inning game, and his team, the Fresno Hoak Packers, won the International Softball Congress championship in 1950 and 1952. On August 22, 1997, Zimmerman died of cancer. He was 79.

The waves of returning servicemen did not displace all the 4-Fs who'd replaced them during the war. That's because professional football was one sector of the postwar economy where jobs were plentiful. Not only had the NFL increased the maximum roster size to 33 again; there was a whole new league looking for players.

In 1946, Arch Ward, the
Chicago Tribune
sports editor and sports impresario, launched the All-America Football Conference with franchises in eight cities. At first, NFL Commissioner Elmer Layden did not take the new rival seriously. When AAFC officials approached Layden before their inaugural season to discuss issues of mutual concern, including territorial rights, Layden dismissed them out of hand.

“Let them get a football and play a game,” Layden quipped, “and then maybe we'll have something to talk about.” He miscalculated badly. Arch Ward promoted the league relentlessly, in the
Tribune
and elsewhere, and when Dan Topping announced he was moving his Brooklyn Tigers (nee Dodgers) from the NFL to the
AAFC, the upstart gained instant credibility. (By switching leagues, Topping was finally able to achieve his goal of playing in Yankee Stadium. To further confuse sports historians, he renamed his team the New York Yankees.)

Players were offered big raises to jump to the AAFC. Salaries went up overnight, and a full-fledged war broke out between the two leagues. One of its first casualties was Layden himself. Partly because of his weak response to the new competitor, Layden's contract was not renewed in 1946. His replacement was none other than Bert Bell, founder of the Philadelphia Eagles and co-owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Before taking the job, Bell sold his interest in the Steelers to Art Rooney, who once again became the team's sole proprietor. The two leagues finally made peace before the 1950 season, when three AAFC franchises (the Baltimore Colts, the Cleveland Browns, and the San Francisco 49ers) were admitted to the NFL.

A welcome postwar development in pro football was integration. In 1946, former Ohio State University and Great Lakes Naval Station head coach Paul Brown signed two African-Americans, Marion Motley and Bill Willis, for his Cleveland Browns franchise in the AAFC. The new league, like the early NFL, had no “gentlemen's agreement” barring blacks, and no way to enforce one if it did. As sports historian Alan H. Levy writes, “Brown was a meticulous individual who, in his desire to bring the game of football to a more precise scientific level, cared little about the pigment of a man's skin.” Brown knew good football players when he saw them. Both Motley and Willis ended up in the Hall of Fame.

The National Football League also integrated in 1946, though under less noble circumstances. When the Rams moved into the Los Angeles Coliseum, the city's African-American leaders made an interesting argument: Since the Coliseum was a public facility, and the NFL was segregated, wasn't the city required to build a “separate but equal” stadium for blacks? Los Angeles had no intention of building a second 90,000-seat stadium, of course, and city leaders pressured the Rams to integrate, which they did, much to the chagrin of George Preston Marshall. (Coincidentally,
a similar tactic would be used to force Marshall to integrate his Redskins 16 years later.) The Rams signed two former UCLA stars, Kenneth Washington and Woodrow “Woody” Strode. Neither performed exceptionally well. Washington was 28 and had bad knees. Strode was 32 and lasted just one season. Like Jackie Robinson, who integrated major league baseball the following year, pro football's black pioneers were forced to endure cheap shots and verbal abuse on the field.

“If I have to integrate heaven,” Strode once mused, “I don't want to go.” To say they opened doors would be an understatement. In 2004, 69 percent of the players in the NFL were black.

In 1947—just four years after merging as two of the weakest teams in the league—the Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburgh Steelers tied for first place in the Eastern Division. The Eagles won the playoff at Forbes Field, 21-0, but lost the championship game to the Chicago Cardinals, another surprisingly resurgent team. The Steelers would not appear in another playoff game for 25 long years and they wouldn't win their first title until January 12, 1975, at the conclusion of the franchise's forty-third season. By then, of course, the championship game was known as the Super Bowl (and had been since 1967). The Steelers would win three more Super Bowls for Art Rooney before their beloved owner died in 1988 at age 87. They won another Super Bowl in 2006.

In 1948 the Eagles won their first NFL championship, defeating the Cardinals in a blizzard at Shibe Park, 7-0. Five former Steagles were on the roster: tackle Bucko Kilroy, fullback Ben Kish, tackle Vic Sears, halfback Ernie Steele, and tackle Al Wistert. A year later the Eagles won the title again, beating the Rams 14-0 in a pouring rain at the Los Angeles Coliseum. At Greasy Neale's insistence, the team returned to Philadelphia by train.

Despite their success on the field, the Eagles still struggled financially. Lex Thompson claimed the team lost more than $30,000 in 1947 and $80,000 in 1948, mainly due to the bidding war with the AAFC.

“Salaries have gone crazy,” Thompson complained in a 1948 article in
Sport
magazine:

My payroll in '41 was $41,000. Last year it inflated to $225,000. Now it's up past $250,000 and still climbing. The average starting wage for a first-year man in the National [Football] League used to be $1,500…. After December, we operated job-placement bureaus that provided good off-season employment. Today, ballplayers laugh at you if you suggest they work in the off-season…. Tackles and guards have no drawing power, but I'm paying mine $7,000 a season.

On January 15, 1949, Thompson sold the Eagles to a syndicate of 100 Philadelphia businessmen for $250,000. A little less than six years later, on December 20, 1954, Thompson, 40, was found dead of a heart attack outside the door of his suburban New York apartment.

The syndicate that bought the Eagles was known as the “100 Brothers.” It was headed by James P. Clark, a trucking company tycoon and inveterate meddler. Clark got along with Greasy Neale about as well as Walt Kiesling had. After a 7-3 loss to the Giants near the end of the 1950 season, Clark burst into the locker room and berated Neale in front of his players.

“The team made plenty of mistakes,” Clark exclaimed, “and you made mistakes.” Typically, Neale's response included a copious amount of colorful profanity. Clark fired Neale after the season. At 59, Greasy Neale, one of the greatest football coaches of all time, was unemployed.

“I had a reputation for being a great handler of men,” Neale said. “The only one I couldn't handle was Jim Clark.” When he'd taken the job in Philadelphia, Neale had promised his much-traveled wife Genevieve—his “driving force,” as he called her—that it would be his last. Two months after he was unceremoniously fired, Genevieve died. Neale was shattered. But, true to his word, he never coached again. In 1969 Greasy Neale was
inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He died on November 2, 1973, three days shy of his eighty-second birthday. He held the Eagles' record for most wins by a head coach (66) until Andy Reid surpassed him in 2004.