Celebrating 100 Years of Giants Football: The Untold Stories of Tuffy Leemans

We're going to combine today in this episode, a couple episodes and some people that we've talked to and talked about and it's going to affect the New York Giants 100th anniversary.

We're coming up with the second Just Talk More about Tuffy Lehman's in this episode.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darren Hays is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And welcome to another edition of New York Giants 100, the 100th season of the New York Football Giants.

And boy, we have a lot to talk about tonight.

We are going to go back and review a little bit of a player.

But before we do that and tell you a little bit about the book and what Myron wrote, I want to make sure that you are aware we have our second book came out.

And it's out on Amazon right now.

And I think it's something you're really going to enjoy.

It's got some great football history, history and I think it's going to be really exciting for you to read about.

These two great coaches, Andy Smith and.

So please make sure you check that out on Amazon.

When Greasy Met the Wonder Coach.

Now some books that we've read.

You know, we talked with Dan Joseph, author, who was a co author with Elizabeth Cope on Behind the Yoy, which was a biography about Myron Cope, an announcer that I listened to quite a bit, you know, through my, my time.

Of listening to the Steelers.

So had, you know, 36, 37 years of listening to him and I listened.

To him a good chunk of that.

In my lifetime and loved Myron Cope.

And I didn't realize his writing prowess until Dan pointed out in his book and in talking to Dan and boy, what an exciting writer he is.

Well, one of my friends pointed out to me when I was talking in the vfc, the Vintage Football Forum, vintage Collectors Forum, that, you know, Mike Moran, who's.

Hat Moran, was his father.

Mike Moran is the son of Hat Moran.

Mike pointed out to me that Myron.

Cope had the book out and it's called the Game that Was.

And he talked me into getting a copy of it.

This is by Myron Cope.

Make sure we get the author's name in here.

Too hard to see a little bit the reflection.

But Myron took and wrote this about.

It's titled A beautifully illustrated, lovingly written account of great early days of pro.

Football by Myron Cope, where it says.

The Game that was.

And what Myron did is he went and he interviewed a bunch of these.

Former players of the early NFL.

Of them that he got to interview.

Was Tuffy Lehmans of the Giants.

Now we talked about Tuffy's career and, you know, had some great images that Larry Schmidt shared with us and some great history of them.

But Myron goes beneath all that and really talks about some interesting things with Huffy.

So Tuffy, you know, came from more of a rural background and, you know, seems like he, by his own description.

He loved the outdoors and loved doing things outdoors.

So when he ended up going to the Giants, one of the interesting things.

Is he found it was boring.

Him and some of his teammates, they said there was nothing to do.

You went to practice at 9:30 in the morning and you practice for a few hours and you didn't have to practice till the next day at 9:30 was nothing to do.

They're in the city that doesn't sleep, don't they?

Didn't they hear the Sinatra song?

And yet they say it was kind of boring.

And maybe if you went bowling or something like that, but there was nothing to go out.

And I think they meant like going out in the woods or go hunting or fishing or things like that, go, you know, boating.

There wasn't a whole lot to do in a city unless you.

One of the friends had a boat every once in a while.

So I thought that was kind of interesting.

He.

After football, Tuffy went and he owned some bowling lanes and did that for.

As a business.

So that's.

That's kind of a.

A cool thing.

But one of the.

The neat things he talks about is.

During World War II.

They're kind of manpower short with all.

The men going into the service and.

Fighting in the war.

And they're Playing the Washington Redskins at Griffith stadium in Washington D.C.

and Steve Owen is a coach and Tuffy and Ward cut for on the team, you know, a bunch of other, you know, veterans of the Giants and they, Tuffy gets out there and Steve Owens, you know, very conservative, say, you know, make sure you take care of the ball and everything.

And Tuffy back then the running backs.

You know, the wing, the T formation was just getting ready to start it.

So this is more of single wing.

So in the single wing running backs, halfbacks would throw the passes more so than the quarterback.

So Tuffy was one of the main passers on the the team.

He would call the plays and he ended up looking up at the stadium sky and they got the ball first, the Giants did.

He saw it was like the dark cloud was coming over and he said oh my gosh, it's going to rain like the dickens all day long.

So Tuffy decides to call his own play, ignores what the coaches have to say.

He's going to fake one to, to Ward Cuff and behind Ward Cuff he's going to run one of his receivers, Willie, forget the last name right now.

And really fast guy though and you know, just to take the, the coverage off of him and what lo and behold, first play the game, Tuffy Lemans throws the pass over there, it's caught and it goes for a 50 some yard touchdown.

His teammates in the huddle are saying.

Hey, don't do that, you get picked off or something, you know, Steve Owen, the head coach is going to go ballistic.

But they do it and they score a touchdown.

Right after they scored a touchdown, the floodgates open.

It's, it's a washout.

I mean rain, it's hard to do anything out there.

Sloppy mess on a grass field.

So that's, you know, scores seven, nothing.

Washington eventually scores, ties it up and the Giants can't do anything on offense.

Well lo and behold that later in the game they throw another pass, it's caught and the guy takes off for 65 yards, scores a touchdown.

So that doesn't sound, you know, too unusual.

But Tuffy Lehman says they'd Never had a first down the entire game.

The Giants won 14 to 7.

Never converted a series for a first down.

50 yard touchdown, 65 yard touchdown, but nothing in between.

It was three and outs the whole way through the rest of the way.

And this is a game where Steve Owen told him, he goes, if it gets really bad just punt on third down.

He wanted them to quick hit it.

Can try to find opportunities and breaks and boy they get the breaks with those two long touchdowns.

But just some interesting things to do.

It's a great book if you get a chance to There's a lot of great other folks that Myron Cope gets a chance to talk to.

Legends of the Game going to cover.

Some of those in some future episodes.

But I wanted to talk about Tuffy Lehman's here because it's a great point and great piece of Giants history and great thing to talk about in our 100th anniversary.

Hope you enjoyed it and I hope you tune back next Monday for some more Giants history.

And we have a lot of different shows going on during the week talking about other football history.

We're talking about college, high school and other pro teams as well.

And you know we have a lot.

Of things going on there.

Also, our YouTube channel has something coming.

Out every single day.

We just reignited our Cleat Marks comics, our Bench Warmer series where we get a couple one pain one liners coming out.

We put them in video form and share them with you.

You can find them on Pigskin Dispatch on the front page.

You'll see them popping up here and there.

You can also find them on YouTube and other social media like Twitter and Reels, Facebook and Instagram.

I believe they're going on also.

Look for that Cleat Marks comics, the Bench warmers by pigskind dispatch.com and drawn by ears.

Truly.

So hope you enjoy that.

I hope you enjoy our youtubes on our short football history minutes and some of our archived guests talking about some great pertinent football items as well.

Every Tuesday we have Timothy P.

Brown Talking about his footballarcheology.com tidbits and some great insight on there.

And we have some lot of guests along the way with some great vintage books and modern books on football history.

So lots, lots of football and you like to talk it, you like to enjoy it and have fun with football.

You're at the right place.

Pigskin dispatch.com Till next time everybody.

Have a great gridiron day.

That's all the football history we have today, folks.

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