Last Team Standing (9 page)

Thompson was also aware that the merger would, in his words, “contribute substantially toward ironing out the sport's difficulties.” Without the merger the Steelers might have no choice but to fold, and the league was anxious to prevent that from happening to a second team.

Thompson told Thayer he'd have to think about it a while.

On June 15, 1943, at a press conference at the Racquet Club of Philadelphia, the Eagles publicly addressed the merger proposal for the first time. General manager Harry Thayer, making it clear that he was speaking for Thompson, said “on the whole” the Eagles would prefer to go it alone. However, Thayer continued, the team was willing to merge with Pittsburgh—but only if the combine was known as the Philadelphia Eagles and played the Eagles' regular number of home games in Philadelphia.

It was a lot to ask, but Steelers co-owners Bert Bell and Art Rooney were in no position to quibble. The details could be hammered out later. The next day Rooney sent Commissioner Elmer Layden a “formal application for permission to merge the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia clubs,” which would be acted upon at the league's special meeting the following weekend in Chicago.

A
S IF COMMISSIONER LAYDEN
didn't have enough to worry about that spring, the NFL was also in danger of losing one its few remaining sources of personnel: fathers. Draft boards routinely deferred married men with children born or conceived before Pearl Harbor. (Children who entered the world before September 15, 1942—nine months and one week after Pearl Harbor—were presumed to have met the conception deadline.) As long as they maintained “bona fide family relationships” with their wives and children, “pre-Pearl” fathers, as they were known, were classified 3-A: deferred due to dependency. They were, for all practical purposes, exempt from the draft. The reasoning, as explained in paragraph 354 of the Selective Service regulations, was that the “maintenance of the family as a unit is of importance to the national well-being.” If fathers were drafted, it was widely held, mothers would be forced to find work outside the home, leaving unsupervised children to fall inevitably and irretrievably into delinquency. Of all the nations that fought the war, the United States alone granted fathers this benefit. By 1943, some six million dads had been deferred. To the NFL, this was an irreplaceable talent pool. The 3-As were the veteran players who knew the
game best, and they gave the league a modicum of stability. It was no surprise that the Redskins and the Bears had met in the 1942 championship game. They were the teams with the most fathers.

The NFL desperately needed dads. But the man in charge of the draft, Lewis B. Hershey, needed them more.

Hershey looked like a football player himself, barrel-chested and broad-shouldered with a thick head of closely cropped red hair. In reality he wasn't much of an athlete—he was cut from his high school basketball team in Fremont, Indiana—but, as a major general in the Army and the head of Selective Service, Hershey held great sway over professional football. His job was to give military leaders as many men as they needed to win the war. And by the beginning of 1943 it was apparent they would need a lot. Simultaneous offensives in Europe, Africa, and the Pacific were stretching the ranks to the breaking point. Yet to come were much bigger battles, including the seemingly inevitable invasions of France and Japan. The War Department wanted 11 million men in the armed forces by the end of the year. That would require the conscription of another three million men.

Steps had already been taken to meet the demand. The length of service had been extended from one year to the duration of the war plus six months. The draft age had been lowered from 21 to 18. Lowered, too, were the lofty physical standards that President Roosevelt had championed. In 1942, a draftee with fewer than six pairs of opposing teeth was classified 4-F. A year later, toothless draftees were inducted as long as they could be fitted with dentures. But it still wasn't enough.

In early April, Hershey announced that fathers would be drafted beginning July 1. Only those whose induction would cause “undue hardship” would be deferred. Family size would not be a consideration. The father of seven was as likely to be called as the father of one, though Hershey also urged draft boards to call all eligible non-fathers first.

Public opinion was squarely opposed to the Father Draft, as it came to be known. In one poll, 81 percent of all respondents
said single women should be drafted before fathers. Predictably, Congress got into the act. Texas Representative Paul Kilday introduced a bill requiring that no father be drafted before a single man in any state—a bureaucratic nightmare as far as Hershey was concerned. Kilday said the draft was threatening “the preservation of the family in American life.” Montana Senator Burton Wheeler introduced a similar measure.

“Taking men with several children will be breaking down morale at home,” Wheeler said at a Congressional hearing. “Home morale may be more important than a big army.” (To which Lt. Gen. Joseph McNarney, the Army's deputy chief of staff, replied dryly, “Better a big army than defeat by the Axis.”)

Local draft boards, ever protective of their autonomy, rebelled. Some posted the names of single men with deferments—lists that came to be known as “rat files.” Others said they would simply ignore Hershey's directive. The chairman of a Philadelphia draft board said, “We certainly can't throw children in the streets without supervision. If a father is forced into the Army, then the mother will have to get a job. This leaves children to shift for themselves.”

Like all good soldiers, Hershey knew when to retreat but refused to surrender. He postponed the Father Draft, hoping to buy more time to convince the public, lawmakers, and draft boards of its necessity. In the meantime, he ordered the boards to reexamine and, if at all possible, reclassify previously deferred draftees. He also ordered the immediate induction of draft “slackers,” men who flouted draft regulations by, for example, failing to report for a physical. There were even calls to begin drafting prison inmates. Anybody but dads.

But Hershey warned the Father Draft was inevitable—and in August he set a new date for it to begin: October 1. In a letter to local draft boards Hershey said the military's need for manpower was so acute that “one-half million fathers must be inducted before January 1, 1944.” As far as NFL Commissioner Elmer Layden was concerned, the timing couldn't have been worse: October 1 was practically pro football's Opening Day.

In the days leading up to the league's June meeting, Layden was upbeat—in public, anyway.

“There is a more optimistic feeling in the league than there was a year ago that we can go through the season,” he told a New York sportswriter. Privately, though, Layden was deeply concerned. Training camps were due to open in less than two months. About 40 percent of the 349 players on NFL rosters in 1942 were off to war—even more than were lost after the 1941 season. And if—or, more likely, when—the Father Draft went through, that percentage would rise dramatically. To salvage the 1943 season, Layden told the owners they would have to be “ingenious” and “display the ultimate in initiative.”

Chester Smith, the sports editor of the
Pittsburgh Press,
reported that “New York, Washington, Green Bay and Detroit are the only clubs in the National Football League that feel they will be able to put adequate teams on the field next fall.” The Brooklyn Dodgers, according to Smith, had “lost just about everything but the water bucket.” Owner Dan Topping was in the Marines. He was believed to be overseas, but his exact whereabouts were unknown. The team's two vice-presidents were also in the service. Head coach Mike Getto had quit to manage his father-in-law's hotel in Lawrence, Kansas. To replace him, Dodgers general manager Dennis Shea took it upon himself to hire Pete Cawthon, a former Texas Tech coach. Topping knew nothing of the change.

The Chicago Cardinals were in similar straits. Their roster was in tatters. Head coach Jimmy Conzelman had abandoned the team to work in the front office of baseball's St. Louis Browns. His replacement, Phil Handler, was sniffing around the Great Lakes Naval Station to see who might be available, come fall—even though the league did not yet permit active duty servicemen to play. There were rumors that the Cards, like the Rams, would have to throw in the towel. But owner Charlie Bidwill wasn't ready to give up just yet. He had something up his sleeve.

Once again, the owners met in Chicago. This time they convened in a ballroom at the Blackstone, a grand, 21-story hotel just
south of the Loop on Michigan Avenue. Layden called the meeting to order at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, June 19, 1943. It was a warm day and most of the men in the un-air-conditioned room were in their shirtsleeves. The mood was tense. At the request of Bears owner George Halas—who had once again managed to get leave from his obligations at the Navy base in Norman, Oklahoma—the meeting began with a roll call of teams and their intentions for the upcoming season:

Detroit:
Operating

Philadelphia:
Requesting merger with Pittsburgh

Chicago Cardinals:
Requesting merger with Chicago Bears

Brooklyn:
Operating

New York:
Operating

Pittsburgh:
Requesting merger with Philadelphia

Washington:
Operating

Chicago Bears:
Requesting merger with Chicago Cardinals

Green Bay:
Operating

That the two Chicago teams wanted to merge was a surprise, but hardly a shock. Though they were bitter rivals on the field, their owners were old friends. Back in 1931, Charlie Bidwill had helped George Halas save the Bears from creditors by purchasing a 16-percent stake in the team for $5,000. Bidwill even served as the Bears' secretary until he bought the Cardinals in 1933, and he still held his Bears stock, a conflict of interest that would not be permitted today. Bidwill, it was widely believed, was still a Bears fan at heart, his ownership of the Cardinals notwithstanding.

Like Art Rooney, Bidwill made a fortune on the horses—but not by gambling. Bidwill owned two racetracks and a company that printed racing programs and betting slips (as well as Cardinals and Bears tickets). He bought the Cardinals on a lark for $50,000 in cash. In 1936, he and Halas signed the Madison Street agreement, which delineated each team's territory within Chicago. The Cardinals would play only on the south side of Madison, in
Comiskey Park, the Bears only on the north side, in Wrigley Field. (Before the agreement, the Cardinals had occasionally rented Wrigley, much to Halas's consternation.)

A Cardinals-Bears union would not be a marriage of equals. The Bears had finished the regular season undefeated (11-0) in 1942 and had lost fewer players to the military than most other teams. The Cardinals went 3-8 in 1942 and had already said goodbye to their top passer (Bud Schwenk) and their top receiver (Pop Ivy). Charlie Bidwill had much more to gain from the merger than George Halas. Halas likely agreed to pursue it out of loyalty to Bidwill. The fact that Bidwill was also a Bears shareholder might have had something to do with it, too.

Logistically, a Cardinals-Bears merger made more sense than a Steelers-Eagles merger. After all, Wrigley Field and Comiskey Park were separated by only a 30-minute El ride. Competitively, though, it was a different story. As woeful as the Cardinals were, they still had a couple of good players (namely back Marshall Goldberg and end Eddie Rucinski), while the Bears had won three straight Western Division crowns. The Windy City amalgam would be much more formidable than the Pennsylvania pairing.

Over the next five hours, the owners (or, in the cases of Brooklyn and Philadelphia, their representatives) debated the merger requests in increasingly testy terms. One group, led by obstreperous George Preston Marshall, adamantly opposed both mergers. This coalition—Marshall (Washington), Curly Lambeau (Green Bay), Dennis Shea (Brooklyn) and Fred Mandel (Detroit)—wanted to “crack down” on owners seeking an “easy out” of their wartime problems. They were convinced it had been a mistake to let Cleveland withdraw at the April meeting, and they opposed further contraction.

Their views were shared by the influential Arch Ward, the
Chicago Tribune
sports editor. On the eve of the meeting, Ward wrote, “Is it fair to the teams which, thru enterprise, good luck or what have you, are able to carry on to have to meet a club made up of the combined talent of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia or of the two Chicago teams? It doesn't make sense to let owners
operate teams when the prospects of enjoying a profit are good and to relieve them of responsibilities when the situation is reversed.”

In an attempt to block the mergers, the Marshall coalition made a motion that, if two teams merged, one of the teams would have to disperse its players among all the remaining teams in the league—just as Cleveland had done in April. That, of course, would defeat the whole purpose of merging in the first place. The motion passed 5-2, with Jack Mara, the president of the Giants (and the son of owner Tim Mara), voting with the Marshall coalition. (Steelers co-owner Art Rooney and Eagles general manager Harry Thayer voted no. Bidwill and Halas abstained.)

At 3:30 p.m., the meeting was adjourned so Thayer could call Lex Thompson down at Camp Davis to talk things over. Rooney and his partner Bert Bell used the break to lobby their colleagues. They begged the two Chicago owners to abandon their joint-operating proposal. They pleaded their case with Jack Mara, who seemed less strenuously opposed to a merger than the Marshall coalition. Elmer Layden, the commissioner, also argued on behalf of the Pennsylvanians, believing their combine would be in the best interests of the league, financially as well as competitively.

When the meeting resumed at 5:00 p.m., the Cardinals and Bears withdrew their merger request. Then Bert Bell made a motion: