Last Team Standing (29 page)

The schedule-makers were kind to the Lions. The following week they played Brooklyn and dispatched the Dodgers with ease, 27-0. Reality intervened on October 3 in the form of the Chicago Bears, though the loss was not as substantial as might have been expected: 27-21. By the time they met the Steagles in Pittsburgh on November 21, Detroit's record was 3-5-1—not spectacular, but a drastic improvement over the previous season. (Due to the league's unusual scheduling, their game against the Steagles would be the Lions' tenth and final contest of the season. By contrast, the Redskins and Giants had played just six each.)

Frank Sinkwich had lived up to his advance billing. He led the Lions in rushing and passing. Harry Hopp was the team's leading scorer, primarily as the beneficiary of Sinkwich's passes. If you discounted that 0-0 game against the Giants in the quagmire, the Lions were averaging three touchdowns a game. Not bad for a team that had not scored more than seven points in a single game the previous season. Improved, too, was attendance: at 30,750 per game, the Lions were averaging more than twice as many fans as in 1942.

The Steagles were not taking the Lions lightly, particularly after the previous week's fiasco in Brooklyn. They still had a lot to play for. If they lost, all hope of catching the Redskins and winning the division would be lost as well. There was also second place to think about. The third-place Giants were only percentage points behind the Steagles, and this week they were playing the Chicago Cardinals, practically an automatic win.

Second place was not just a moral victory. The runner-up in each division got a share of the championship game pot. A year earlier, each of the Steelers had collected $108.06 for finishing second in the East. That was nothing to sneeze at. The Steagles
were also eager to maintain their standing as the best defensive team in the league, having yielded to their opponents an average of just 182.1 yards per game. There were personal goals to achieve as well. Heading into the game, Jack Hinkle was the sixth leading rusher in the league with 263 yards, and Johnny Butler was right behind him in seventh place with 256. A rushing title was not out of the question for either player.

Just before the game, the Steagles got some good news: Lions center/linebacker Alex Wojciechowicz would not be able to play due to an injured knee. As far as the Steagles were concerned, his timing was perfect. Their receivers could breathe a little easier. The Steagles, on the other hand, would be at full strength. The gash in quarterback Roy Zimmerman's leg had healed so well that he was expected to play the entire game. Only Ernie Steele, who had suffered a bad charley horse in the Dodgers game, was questionable.

Steelers co-owner Art Rooney was hoping even harder than usual for a big crowd for what would be the Steagles' final appearance at Forbes Field. Bert Bell had been ribbing him mercilessly about the record-breaking attendance at the Redskins game in Philadelphia two weeks earlier. Ever since the two men had become partners after the 1940 season, Bell, the Philadelphian, had chided Rooney, the Pittsburgher, about Philadelphia's superiority as a football city. When he saw the crowds waiting to get into Shibe Park before the Redskins game, Rooney had moaned sarcastically, “I was hoping for a nice little rain, but look how the sun is shining. I can hear Bell poppin' off already.” Rooney even joked about going door to door to ensure an impressive turnout for the Lions game. He didn't need to. Interest in the game was high in Pittsburgh, mainly because it marked the local debut of Frank Sinkwich, who hailed from just across the border in Youngstown. At least a thousand fans from Sinkwich's hometown were expected to attend the game.

Rooney couldn't have asked for better weather on Sunday, November 21. It was an unusually clear, crisp day in Pittsburgh,
and when the Lions kicked off to the Steagles at 2:30 that afternoon the stands were filled with more than 23,000 fans, 7,000 more than had seen the Steagles' previous game at Forbes Field. They were treated to what one sportswriter called “one of the wildest games ever played in the National Football League.” High up in the University of Pittsburgh's 42-story Cathedral of Learning building, the school's basketball coach, Henery “Cliff” Carlson, was settling in for an afternoon's work when he went to a window and glanced down at Forbes Field. The game was just getting under way:

There was the kickoff and another play, I believe. Then suddenly a backfield man was streaking out in the open. Afterwards I learned that was Jack Hinkle loose on a 56-yard run with Frankie Sinkwich tackling him from behind. Somehow, I sensed that this was to be “the ball game” of the year. I made a beeline for the elevator, borrowed an overcoat from a friend and rushed to the ballpark. My hunch was right, too. That was some battle.

The Lions scored touchdowns on a 98-yard kickoff return, a two-yard run, an 88-yard pass-and-lateral, a 71-yard pass, and a one-yard run—five in all. The Steagles' touchdowns were less spectacular but equally numerous: a four-yard run, a one-yard run, a two-yard run, a seven-yard pass, and another two-yard run. It was an offensive display rarely seen before in pro football. The ten total touchdowns were just one short of the league record at the time. The lead changed hands four times. It was a game that either team could have won. And it all came down to an extra point.

T
HE IMPORTANCE OF KICKING IN FOOTBALL
has waxed and waned. Before 1900 a field goal was actually worth more points (five) than a touchdown (four). (A kicked goal after a touchdown was
worth two points.) Players were prized for their kicking abilities, a vestige of the game's hazy origins in soccer and rugby. Most players employed the dropkick, where the ball is dropped and booted at the moment it hits the ground. Since the ball was shaped like a watermelon, it bounced true and was easy to kick. Stories of early pros dropkicking field goals of 50 yards or more are common (though difficult to verify). But by the time the National Football League was formed in 1920, the touchdown (six points) had long supplanted the field goal (three points) as the preferred mode of scoring, and by 1932 kicking had fallen so out of favor that just six field goals were made all season—an average of only one every ten games!

Kicking enjoyed a brief renaissance when the goalposts were moved forward to the goal line in 1933, but it took a big step backward the following year, when the shape of the ball was changed to encourage more forward passing.

The maximum circumference around the short axis—the middle of the ball—was reduced to 21.25 inches. That was 1.75 inches slimmer than the ball that was used in the 1920s. (The maximum circumference around the long axis was unchanged at 28.5 inches.) The new, bullet-shaped ball—the familiar prolate spheroid—was much easier to throw, but it was nearly impossible to dropkick. Dropkicking specialists faded from the game. Detroit's Dutch Clark was the last player to dropkick a field goal in the NFL, in a game against the Cardinals on September 19, 1937. And until Doug Flutie of the New England Patriots did it as a stunt in a game on New Year's Day 2006, the last player to drop-kick an extra point successfully was the Bears' Ray McLean in the 1941 championship game.

By 1943, the familiar placekick—where the ball is snapped to a kneeling holder who places it upright on the ground for the kicker—was the only means employed to score points by foot. Not that it was employed very often. Green Bay's Don Hutson led the league in field goals in 1943—with three. And with coaches underutilizing free substitution and rosters reduced by the war,
there was no room for a kicking specialist. The duty fell to players as a secondary responsibility. It was an afterthought.

Some of the most renowned kickers in league history played other positions primarily. Don Hutson was an end, the Cleveland Browns' Lou Groza was a tackle, and George Blanda, who played for four teams between 1949 and 1975, was a quarterback. And they kicked the ball straight on, with their toes. It was a practical, unpretentious style. It wasn't until rosters were expanded in the 1960s that teams began hiring kicking “specialists,” often Europeans who kicked the football the same way they kicked a soccer ball. Pete Gogolak, who was signed by the Buffalo Bills in 1964, was the first soccer-style kicker in the pros. The son of Hungarian refugees, Gogolak played football only because his high school in Ogdensburg, New York, had no soccer team. Soccer-style kickers proved so accurate that in 1974 the goalposts were returned to the back of the end zone.

W
ITH THE
S
TEAGLES LEADING
14-7 late in the second quarter, the Lions mounted an 11-play, 64-yard drive that culminated with Elmer Hackney plunging over the goal line from the two. The two teams lined up for the extra point. Detroit's kicker was a six-foot, 234-pound lineman named Augie Lio, who, despite his bulk, was fairly accurate. He converted 21 of 23 extra point attempts in 1943, a success rate of 91 percent, not far off the league average of 93 percent. (Today the success rate is 99 percent—and the goalposts are ten yards farther away.) The ball was snapped. Ernie Steele—who wasn't even expected to play because of a charley horse—slipped through a gap in the Detroit line. He raised his meaty right hand and the ball deflected off it.

“I remember blockin' that kick,” Steele said. “I remember goin' up and getting the ball.” The half ended with the score 14-13 Steagles.

Halfway through the third period the Lions were leading 20-14 when the Steagles engineered a 67-yard drive that ended with a two-yard Bobby Thurbon touchdown run. Roy Zimmerman converted the extra point, but the Steagles were offside. The ball
was moved five yards back and Zimmerman had to try again. His second attempt sailed wide of the uprights, but this time it was the Lions who were offside. The ball was moved five yards forward to its original position. Zimmerman's third kick was perfect, neither team was offside, and the score was 21-20 Steagles. Each team scored two more touchdowns in the fourth quarter, successfully converting the extra points each time. The Steagles won the game, 35-34. William “Red” Friesell, a retired NFL referee who'd officiated the Bears' 73-0 win in the 1940 championship game, watched the game in the press box.

“I guess I've seen everything now,” Friesell said as the final gun sounded.

Art Rooney couldn't have asked for a better way to end the season in Pittsburgh.

“I've waited ten years for a game like that,” he said, “and I'm certainly glad it happened this season.”

Jack Hinkle had his best game of the season, rushing for 132 yards, enough to move him into third place among the league leaders. But Johnny Butler stayed right on his tail, rushing 55 yards to move up to fourth place. On defense, the Steagles surrendered 379 total yards and their ranking dropped from first to third behind the Redskins and the Bears. Still, they held Frank Sinkwich to negative yards rushing, and he completed just seven of 11 passes for 125 yards, no touchdowns, and two interceptions.

It was an exhilarating victory. The feeling in the steamy locker room afterwards was the opposite of the previous week at Ebbets Field. But there was disappointing news from Washington: Even with Sammy Baugh sidelined with an abscessed tooth and a bruised knee, the Redskins still managed to upset the Bears 21-7. It was Chicago's first regular season defeat in 23 games. The star of the game was Baugh's substitute, George Cafego, whom the Redskins had purchased from the Dodgers for $100 a week earlier. If he hadn't been traded, it would have been Roy Zimmerman's chance to shine in Washington. But he would get that opportunity the following Sunday, when the Steagles played the Redskins at Griffith Stadium.

As expected, the Giants easily dismissed the Cardinals, 24-13, to keep pace with the Steagles in the battle for second place:

The following Thursday, November 25, was Thanksgiving Day. In Cairo, Roosevelt and Churchill met with Chiang Kai-shek to coordinate operations in South Asia. Roosevelt and Churchill also spent part of the day preparing for their upcoming meeting with Stalin in Tehran. That night Roosevelt hosted a feast for Churchill that included two huge turkeys.

“Let us make it a family affair,” Roosevelt said as he carved the birds, which he had brought from Washington for the occasion. After dinner, the president offered a toast.

“Large families are usually more closely united than small ones,” he said, raising his glass, “and so this year, with the peoples of the United Kingdom in our family, we are a large family, and more united than ever before. I propose a toast to this unity, and long may it continue!”

Then a military band entertained the guests and played the requests of Roosevelt (“Home on the Range”) and Churchill (“Carry Me Back to Old Virginny”). Roosevelt even sang “a little ditty of his own composition,” the Associated Press reported. It was in the key of E flat but the words and music were unrecorded.

“I had never seen the President more gay,” Churchill later recalled.

“All in all,” historian Doris Kearns Goodwin writes, “it was a delightful evening, one that would remain a high point in Churchill's mind for years.”