Decatur Staleys

Before they were the monsters of the Midway, the Chicago Bears had their start in a different Illinois town and somewhat took a much different evolution from most of the other original APFA teams. Joe Ziemba visits the Pigpen to guide us through the History  of the Decatur Staleys.

Joe Ziemba, the author of numerous books including the famous When Football was Football: The Chicago Cardinals and the Birth of the NFL, gives a forshadow of his upcoming novel Bears versus Cardinals: The NFLs Oldest Rivalry. The predecessor of the one of these teams, the Chicago Bears is our topic in this episode, the Decatur Staleys.

The football teams startd in 1919 for the A.E Staley Company, a starch manufacturer in Decatur, Illinois but the company started their baseball team in 1917. Joe's reasearch says that the company wanted to brand the baseball team early on with a mascot so they polled their employees and the moniker of the "Squirrels" won out, but executives dicided that that was not a befitting nickname for their team so they stayed with the Staleys. 

The early 1917 company baseball team played squads like the Cheap Charlies of Bloomington, Illinois. All the players of this traveling team were employees of A.E. Staley and the company also had intramural teams to play inhouse games. Outside competition also included the Mueller Corporation. Each division of the large Decatur employer seemed to have a baseball nine to represent them. Jo says he found teams from the Carpenter Divisions, the Plumbers, the Lump Starch group and even one entry called the "Nut Blasters." I think we will leave that one alone for now. Needless to say athletic competion was thriving at the Staley Corporation. In 1918 Staley officials beleived that the rival companies they played were bringing in ringers, where as the Staleys were also accused of the same. Staleys baseball even had a chance to play the Chicago White Sox in Decatur losing 8-1 to the professional ball club.

The football team had some success in 1919 but the small taste they got from that season left them wanting more. The man leading the charge of the company sports, Jack Fletcher became too busy and his supervisory skills were needed full time in other areas of the production of the plant so the reigns of starch manufacturer's athletics was handed over to a former pro baseball player, Joe “Iron Man” McGinnity. The 1919 team as coached by a fomer University of Illionois coach, James Cook, who practiced the team hard each day after the final work whistle blew. Cook was a contruction supervisor at the starch plant. The semi-pro Staleys lost their first game to the Peoria Tractors says Joe Z. The next game against the Rand Tool Aviators was cancelled and then the team went on a 6-game winning streak. Knocking off  the like of the heavily favored Taylorville Independents, Champaign Eleven amogst others.

The tipping point of turning the intramuralish company sposored team in to a semi-professional and then later a fully professional team begins oddly enough with the final game that was played in 1919 against an local area team called the Arcola Independents. The Staley eleven at that time were made up of regular company employees who had shown interest in the sports program. The first time the Staleys played against Arcola the the Starch workers scorched their opponents 41-0. The embarassing defeat caused the management of Arcola to have their competitive juices flow on high and they were spurned to create a more competitive team before their next scheduled game with the Staleys. Arcola contacted Dutch Sternaman, University of Illinois’s top player and running back and asked the stud collegian to find players among the collegiate ranks of stars to build a more competitive team. Dutch did build a team but when the day of the game came round, the Decatur Staleys were a no-show. The Staley company got win of it and did not want their people embarassed by such shady tactics. The Taylorville team that they upset earlier was rumored to have been using illegal college players. (See our Scandals and Scoundrels series on this Taylorville scandal.)

Football was becoming a serious affiliation at the company. Cook, other coaches and some other players were cleaned off the roster and a new coaching and player regime were brought in. The Staley Museum's website agrees with Joe Ziemba that McGinnity had a plan to take the sports of Staley Mfg. to a whole new level. They wanted to mirror the success of the baseball team at the company being run professionally. The website says;

"Halas had played end on the University of Illinois football team and had then gone on to play with the Great Lakes Navy team during WWI. This team played and won the January 1, 1919 Rose bowl game against the Mare Island Marines. Halas then went on to try his luck at baseball.  He tried out and was contracted by the New York Yankees but was injured in an exhibition game against the Brooklyn Dodgers. This injury would keep him out of major league baseball. He ended up taking a job with Chicago, Burlington & Quincy (CBQ) Railroad. It was at this time that A.E. Staley sent his general superintendent George Chamberlain to meet with and make an offer to George Halas. Halas was hired by Staley to coach and play football as well as play baseball under the management of ... “Iron Man” McGinnity. Halas was paid a weekly wage of $50."

The 1920 Decatur Staleys football team. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons taken by an unknown photographer.

It was the spring of 1920 when Halas was hired and he took imediate action. By August he was at the famous APFC/APFA orgainizational meetings in Canton, Ohio. That first season they were competitive too defeating Rock Island, the Minneapolis Marines and others. Their record of 10-1-2 was good enough for second place, and their chance to get the better of the eventual Champion Akron Pros ended up in an early December stalemate giving the title to the Pros. For the 1921 season Halas had the team playing at the much larger Cubs Park and thus A.E. Staley indiscussions with Halas gave the young player coach the rights to the team along with fellow player Dutch Sternaman and $5000 of "seed money" for expenses as long as they kept the Staley name for one season. Thus the rebranding of the team into the Chicago Staleys took place. 

The Halas was excited after playing a long baseball season on the Staley baseball club, so that he could once again remaster the roster of the gridiron club and with a 10-1-1 record they won the second APFA season of 1921, playing every game in Chicago. In July of 1921 Halas also had a controversial partnership not only with Dutch but also with Ohio State Chic Harley and his brother Bill Harley. Joe has mor to say about this in his book as well as his research on the departure from Decatur.

The next season, out of the obligation of the agreement with A.E. Staley, Halas fully disassociated the team with the company and the franchise officially became the Chicago Bears.

The picture in the banner above titled the 1920 Decatur Staleys football team. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons taken by an unknown photographer.