Charlie Berry
Charlie Berry was a great athlete. He played MLB baseball as a catcher and umpire in Major League Baseball and as an end and official in the National Football League. He also played on the famous Pottsville Maroons NFL teams of 1925 and 1926. He was the Captain of the Lafayette football team and eventually was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Berry is the only man to have officiated the World Series, the NFL Championship and the College All-Star game during the same year!
The Anthracite League of Football
Forget the bright lights and million-dollar contracts – today, we're taking a trip back to a time when professional football was a blue-collar affair, played in mining towns and fueled by the raw grit of its players. This podcast episode dives headfirst into the legendary Anthracite League, a forgotten chapter in gridiron history.
Imagine a league where coal miners toiled on the field with the same intensity they brought to the mineshaft. A league where innovation and improvisation ruled, and the line between player and coach was often blurred. The Anthracite League was a breeding ground for future stars, a proving ground where legends were born.
Join us as we unearth the stories of these forgotten heroes. We'll explore the league's rough-and-tumble origins, the fierce rivalries that burned brighter than any stadium lights, and the iconic figures who left their mark on the game. We'll also dissect the strategies and tactics that defined Anthracite League football, a style of play as unique and rugged as the landscape it called home.
So, put on your virtual hard hat and grab a pickaxe – we're heading into the coal mines of history for a podcast episode unlike any other. Get ready for the forgotten battles, the audacious plays, and the unfiltered passion that made the Anthracite League a grimy, glorious chapter in the story of professional football!
-Transcription on the Anthracite Football with Joe Zagorski
Darin Hayes
Hello, my football friends; this is Darin Hayes at www .pixieanddispatch .com. Welcome once again to the Pigpen, your portal to positive football history. And we have a really special evening tonight planned because we're going to be talking to a great football historian and author of multiple books and a podcast host here on Sports History Network, Joseph Gorsky. You've heard him here before, and tonight, we're going to talk about something special. Joseph Gorsky, welcome back to the Pigpen.
Joe Zagorski
Hey, thanks for welcoming me. I appreciate being here.
Darin Hayes
Well, we're sure glad to have you, Joe. And just a little bit of a side note. I know I told you before we came on, but just so the audience knows, a few weeks ago, I was doing some research on some football from the pro leagues of the coal mining region of Pennsylvania. And I came across an article from the PFRA from 1987's Coffin Corner, and it was authored by one Joe Zegorsky. And I said, oh my goodness, what an honor. I can talk to Joe again about the article that he wrote a few decades ago.
Joe Zagorski
Yeah, it's hard to believe that I've been at this in one way, shape, or form for that many years. It certainly hasn't been a full-time job or anything, but I've enjoyed exploring the history of pro football. And a lot of people don't realize that, you know, just because you're in a separate section of the country, the coal regions of Pennsylvania, it had its own flavor. And the NFL at that time in the mid-1920s was basically still a brand new league. And not a whole lot of thought was given to, hey, this league has been the last 50 or 60 years. Nobody thought about that at the time. So, nobody really had any preconceived notions about the coal region league, either. And so, you know, these guys would go, and they would play for whoever would pay them more money. Yeah, it's not uncommon to see that there are people who played in the coal region that would play for up to three or four different teams in one season. They'd be hopping around the league. Whoever paid them more money, that's who they would play for on any given weekend.
Darin Hayes
Well, that is, I mean, that's incredible. And what is the geographic area? Now, I know it's Eastern Pennsylvania, but what do they sort of call that the coal mining region?
Joe Zagorski
Schuylkill County is the main county with a lot of people; the main town in Schuylkill County is Pottsville. And it gets a lot of notoriety because Pottsville had an NFL team for three years, no, four years, 25 through 28, the Pottsville Maroons. And a lot of other teams in that era still played, but they weren't on the Pottsville level. And a lot of people confuse Pottsville. I grew up, and I was born and raised in a town called Potts Town. And a lot of people think they're right next to each other, but they're not. Potts Town is about an hour and 20 minutes southeast of Pottsville, and as far as, you know, driving time. But they might have been. I know Potts Town was named after John Potts, and he may have been the same guy who named Pottsville. I'm not sure; maybe it's a relative of his or not. However, the Pottsville Maroons had a very strong pro football team, and they had some players on them who not only played in the other teams in the NFL but also were in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Wilbur Fat Henry comes to mind. John Blood McNally, those guys are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and they played for those Pottsville teams. So it was a, they had no variety. The theory was that the whole region's teams really played a tough, rough, tough brand of football, and I'm sure they did. But a lot of people believe that it was just filled with guys who worked in the coal mines and then came out and played football. Well, that's not completely true. There were some who did. One famous guy was Tony Latone, and he played; he worked in the coal mines and then played for the Pottsville Maroons. But most of the guys actually were college, college-educated, and they played for college teams before they went pro. So, you know, they didn't just come on out and beat the crap out of each other. There was some sophistication to their stories.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, you've mentioned Tony LaTone. We wrote an article about him probably about a month ago. One thing that amazed me was that I didn't really know much about him until I was doing that podcast. One thing that I read is that George Halas said something to the effect that if Tony LaTone had played college ball, he might have been one of the best pro players ever. And there were a lot of comparisons made to the yardage that LaTone did when he played for Pottsville compared to what Red Grange did in the same era. And it was actually their statistics were kind of comparable if you look at it from some of the things that I saw. But, of course, he didn't play much college ball. He went right into the semi-pros and played for the teams of his coal mining company, I guess.
Joe Zagorski
I heard the same story. I guess it was in the early 1990s. I drove from Pennsylvania down to Florida, and I got a chance to spend a couple of days with Tony's son, who was living in Florida at the time and was originally from Michigan. I got a chance to talk to him about his father, you know, his father long since passed, but he was an interesting character, Tony LaTone. I lost touch with Tony's son. I think he moved back to Michigan because he got tired of the Pelicans landing on his roof at night in Florida. Very few pelicans in Michigan. Very few.
Darin Hayes
They don't like the cold of Lake Michigan, do they?
Joe Zagorski
No, no. If you see a pelican in Michigan, it's probably a plastic one in somebody's yard or something like that. He gave me some really good stories about Tony LaTona. I think I wrote an article about him for the PFRA prior to the article that you were talking about with the suicide football league. He was an interesting character, but they were all interesting characters. I got a chance to meet a couple of them, but sadly, most of them were so old that their memories were shot. You really couldn't get too much out of them, which is a shame, but that's what happens, unfortunately.
Darin Hayes
That's sad. It happens to all of us from all walks of life all around the world. It's one of those things, you know, death and taxes and old age sort of deteriorates. It's uh, they say that What the youth is spoiled on the young or something that fact, you know, well.
Joe Zagorski
I got a chance to interview another guy who was a child at the time, and he had good memories of it. He was actually in a program that NFL Films did about the 1920s in the NFL. I got a chance to meet him, and I interviewed him. He was a very interesting fellow, a guy by the name of Bill Dimmerling. He gave me some really good information that I didn't know at the time, but it served as some information for my eventual screenplay that I wrote about Cold Region football.
Darin Hayes
Are you able to talk about your screenplay at all, about what the basic premise is of it, or would you rather not discuss that?
Joe Zagorski
Well, I'll just briefly talk about it. It's set in the year 1924, and it's about a rivalry between two teams. It basically covers the week before the game, then the game, and then the aftermath of the game, and it's based on a true story. So most of it is true, and it really happened, and I have corroboration from a lot of different newspaper articles that I was able to find in the Potsdale Historical Society. You know, I think I better stop with that. When I get more information as far as if I'm able to sell it to a producer or a film company, I'll definitely post that information, and once I know that it's being made into a film, then I can talk more freely about it, I think.
Darin Hayes
Okay, well, in the meantime, are there any producers out there or directors looking for a good film? We know how to get in contact with a guy who has a great screenplay for you. So, you know, you can contact the Sports History Network, and we'll get in touch with Joe or Pixie and Dispatch, and we'll get Joe on the line and get you hooked up. So it sounds like a great film to watch, something I'd want to watch, that's for sure.
Joe Zagorski
Well, you know, it's funny because when I tell people about it, they say the same thing. They say, well, yeah, that sounds really good, but, you know, if you're, if you don't have like solicitation, if you don't have a manager, nobody in Hollywood wants to give you the time of day. So it's just being lucky enough to get one person to look at it. That's the key. And it has to be the right person, you know. There's somebody with contacts.
Darin Hayes
That seems to be the case in a lot of things in life to succeed, isn't it? Yeah, you're not kidding. Well, going back to the Anthracite League, so was it an official league of teams, or was it one of those that was sort of like a mythological or an idea or just a bunch of teams that commonly played each other?
Joe Zagorski
It's a good question. In name only, really, in the newspaper in 1924, it was listed as the Anthracite Football League, but that was only one year, and in 1925, nobody mentioned it anymore. So, really, it was a one-year league, and not every team played every week. That's one thing I wanted to mention is that some teams didn't know if they were gonna play that weekend until about two days before the game. We're just a few weeks away from the NFL schedule being broadcast on television for 2022. Well, in 1924 and 1925, I mean, those guys didn't know from one week to the next who they would be playing, some of them. That just goes to show how disorganized that league and region were in getting teams to be played. Pottsville, in 1924, played 14 games. Wilkes -Ferry played one game. Gilberton played eight games, as did Shenandoah, and Coaldale played ten games. So, you know, and some of the teams that they played weren't even a part of the league. Gilberton beat a town called Palmerton, a team. You know, I mean, it's like some of these teams you'd never heard of, Hobart Athletic Club, lost to Shenandoah, you know. Now, Reading had a team. They were a bigger town, but they weren't part of the Anthracite League. Atlantic City, New Jersey, was considered a team that was not in the Anthracite League, but they beat Coldale. So they would play whoever they could find, and they would count it as a league game, even though it's not.
Darin Hayes
Now, did they have a postseason, a championship, or a champion from that region declared?
Joe Zagorski
They did, and it wasn't a championship game. It was just whoever had the most wins, and that was Poxville. They finished with a record of 12, 1, and 1. So. That's pretty good. Yeah, I mean, and the next closest team percentage-wise was Gilbertin, and they finished with a record of 4, 3, and 1. So, you know, you get eight more wins. Yeah, you're going to be declared a champion. That 24 season was a springboard for Poxville because they kind of said, okay, we won 12 games this year. Let us join this National Football League that just started a few years ago. And they put up the money, and they, you know, George Hollis let them in, and they played in 1925, and that was a whole different story in regards to Poxville. And if you ever do any research on them, you'll hear about the stolen championship.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, we've talked about that a couple of times with a few of our guests have come on and Potsville is kind of an interesting thing, especially 1925 when they came in and along with the Frankfurter played, I believe in that same era, there's two Pennsylvania teams that played during Pennsylvania's Blue Laws that weren't supposed to play on Sundays. I think one of the teams did. I forget which one did.
Joe Zagorski
Well, Frankfurt got upset because Poxville went down to Philadelphia to play these Notre Dame all-stars who were well past their prime. And it was just more or less an exhibition game, but Frankfurt got upset because they figured you're in our territory, you're taking spectators away from our gate receipts, and that's not fair. And the commissioner at the time, I think it was Burke Bell.
Darin Hayes
Joe Carr at the time.
Joe Zagorski
That was Joe Carr, okay, my mistake. Joe Carr, and he said, you know, Franklin's got a case here. And so he penalized Pottsville and made them; he took away their championship. And he kind of made the Chicago Cardinals play two extra games to give them a better record. And, you know, that gave them the championship, the Chicago Cardinals. Even though those two extra games were against, I think one of them was against high school kids. You know, it wasn't really always on the up and up. And I know over the years, Pottsville has tried to get the NFL to change their minds and give them back the championship, but the Cardinal organization is never gonna surrender that championship. They're just not. So that's, and the league doesn't want, I mean, nobody's alive from 1925 that really remembers that. I don't.
Darin Hayes
It's interesting because I've heard you're probably about the fourth guest, so we've talked about that game and that whole situation. And we've talked, of course, Joe Ziemba's been talked up from the Cardinal's perspective. Chris Willis has been talking about it from the sort of the NFL's person, the Joe Carr, and Columbus Panhandle's approach or that whole situation. That's how I knew it was Joe Carr. It wasn't because I was smart. It was just because I remember Chris talking about it. We've also talked about some guests who support Pottsville. She gets the championship awarded to them and everything. It's an interesting concept. I don't know if we'll ever be resolved. I know it was just a few years ago; I think they petitioned the NFL and lost the case, too. So it's been pretty recent, almost a hundred years.
Joe Zagorski
If you ever get a chance to go to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, they have a pretty neat display on it that explains it all. You know, and I, every now and then, I mean, I'm going up there in a couple of weeks to do some more research, but it's, you know, they try to address everything that happened back in that era, and although I have to admit, I think the Hall of Fame that the Green Bay Packers have is a little bit better. So, I think so. Mr. Roy, I've never.
Darin Hayes
I've never been to Green Bay. Yeah, I've never been up in Canton, but I was in Canton twice last year. Well, the PFRA convention was there last year, so I was there for that. I went to the Hall of Fame weekend and had the opportunity to go down; of course, there were five Steelers going in between the two classes, so it definitely was a great one to attend there. And the Steelers played that weekend, too. Yeah. But yeah, you're right; that display is awesome. The whole museum has really, really improved over the last six to seven years.
Joe Zagorski
If you ever get to Lambeau Field, check out their museum and their Hall of Fame. It's really neat. I mean, it's not as big as the Pro Football Hall of Fame because you're only dealing with one team, but the displays are really neat. Yeah, it's definitely worth it. I mean, there isn't much around Green Bay. There's a casino. You know, there's a walking tour through town and stuff like that, but Lambeau Field is the main attraction in Green Bay, and it always has been, I think. If it wasn't for the Packers, I don't know what kind of tourism that town would have. I shudder to think that it would have any, but they get visitors all the time, and their gift shop is like two stories tall.
Darin Hayes
Wow. I bet you really know that the population spikes about eight times a year there, right? Yeah, yeah.
Joe Zagorski
With preseason games, yeah.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, that's what's really interesting. So I want to talk about you. You've had a recent podcast on your pro football in the 1970s podcast, which is very well done. And one that I just talked about in your most recent podcast is on the 1974 Steelers draft class and rookie class; I guess it was a better term for it. And great job on that. And I was talking, I was talking last Saturday, I do every Saturday; I have a release on some Northwestern Pennsylvania football history. So I was talking about the 69 drafts with Joe Green and John Cole, but Elsie Greenwood and Terry Hanratty and a few other, you know, minor players. And, you know, sort of comparing those two drafts, but I referenced quite a bit of what you said in your 74 Steelers draft. But I think I agree with you. I don't know if there will ever be any team that, before or after that, will have a rookie class like that with five Hall of Famers.
Joe Zagorski
I highly doubt it. I really do. You know, when you consider the fact that, you know, today in this day and age, what are there like seven or eight rounds? Maybe, I think, you know, to think that five selections that your team made are in the Hall of Fame, and they equated to, at that time, four World Championships. That's really just astounding. Just really incredible that one team was able to do that well in the draft. And I'm good friends with Terry Hanretty and Rockie Bleier today. So, yeah. Yeah. Rocky wrote the foreword to my first book about the NFL in the 1970s. And I've been friends with Terry for several years, and I've interviewed him quite a few times.
Darin Hayes
Wow, you have a great circle of friends, I'll tell you.
Joe Zagorski
Well, you know, I mean, I'm not married, so that's, you know, you've got to have a friend somewhere, you know, and I was telling another podcast last night that if I was married, I probably wouldn't be able to do all the writing that I've been doing, because there's just not enough time, you know, and then you get 24 hours in a day, how do you use it, you know?
Darin Hayes
Yeah, that's that's very true. Very try. I'm very blessed. I have a very understanding wife, and she knows my football addiction, So I get away with some things. Yeah
Joe Zagorski
Well, you got to mention that upfront before you, you know, you get serious. That's for sure, you know. That's for sure. You know, it's like anything else, though. I mean, I would prefer that you get all the information out before you make any decision. It's the same thing with buying a car, you know.
Darin Hayes
You've got to have all those skeletons out of the closet up front, right? That's right. Now, you talk about writing as a good segue. I know that you were telling me before we came on the air that you have a book that is about ready to go into print. And I don't know if maybe you want to talk about that a little bit and give us a little tease on the horizon in the Joe Zegorski writing role.
Joe Zagorski
Well, I just finished writing a book on the 1973 Buffalo Bills. I guess you can sense that I've got a lot of love for the '70s, and I do because that's when I grew up watching pro football. And I knew that nobody had ever written about the 73 Bills before. And I thought, you know, this is the 50-year anniversary of that team. They were a very historic team. They finished 9 and 5. They almost made the playoffs. They didn't, but they came within a wister of making the playoffs. So what was really great about them was all the different records that they set. They set the team rushing record that had only been set the year before by the Dolphins. Well, they broke that largely because O.J. Simpson became the first man ever, in fact, the first man only, to rush for 2,000 yards in one 14-game season. It's since been equipped by several people, but they all did it in a 16-game season. And it'll get broken again because now we're at 17 games of a regular season. So, you know, I kind of think that it'll get broken again. But O .J. Simpson's the only man who has ever rushed for over 2,000 yards in a 14-game season. And that'll never change. I got a chance to interview him a few weeks ago. And I've been trying to interview him for many years. And I finally struck gold and got a chance to interview him. So I was very fortunate and got a lot of good quotes from him for the book.
Darin Hayes
Well, gosh, that sounds very intriguing. I can't wait. You'll have to let us know when that gets ready to come out and hits the print so we can all get it in our hands and read up on what you have to say about that.
Joe Zagorski
Sure will. Yeah. It's, you know, I had to address certain things about it. I wasn't allowed to ask Mr. Simpson any questions about what happened to him in the 1990s. I couldn't even, you know, vaguely address that, which I agreed to. I wasn't going to go there, and I promised both him and his manager that I wouldn't. I gave him a list of questions ahead of time, and he signed off on them. He was okay with them, so that was important, and I got some good information from him. Two of his most of teammates that I interviewed for the book didn't want to talk about him after football, but two of them did. One of them said that he felt that he was innocent, and the other one said he felt he was guilty. So that was, and they said a little bit more than that, but, you know, that was the extent of it. All the other ones wouldn't go on the record, and that's to be expected. I don't think a publisher is going to really fault me for that because it's such a taboo subject.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, that's walking on eggshells, that's for sure.
Joe Zagorski
But the book is finished, and I'm trying to get a publishing company to, you know, say yes and publish it.
Darin Hayes
Well hopefully you'll be hearing from a publisher real soon and a movie producer or a movie house or something whoever does that kind of work and get your works out there because they both sound extremely exciting and speaking of that are you able to tell us what we can look forward to on the next Pro Football in the 1970s podcast?
Joe Zagorski
No, I can't because I don't know what it's going to be. You see, Arnie, I gave Arnie about three of them, and I don't know which ones or what order they're in. So, you know, I wrote them, I put them together. I guess it was over a month ago, and I can't remember. So, you know, I'm 59 now, so I'm not able to remember like I used to think. So, you'll just have to wait with everybody else, including me.
Darin Hayes
So, somewhere up in Michigan. Mr. Chapman has a hat with three pieces of paper in it, along with your podcast. He's gonna draw one out here one of these days, and that's right. We'll see what's going on there. Yeah, All right, well Joe, I really appreciate you spending the time and sharing. You know, information from this article you wrote, you know, 30, some years ago, and all the other great conversations We had in this short time. We appreciate you taking the time to visit us here in the Pigpen once again
Joe Zagorski
Well, I'm very thankful for the opportunity, Darin. You take care of yourself and have a great NFL draft coming up.
Imagine a league where coal miners toiled on the field with the same intensity they brought to the mineshaft. A league where innovation and improvisation ruled, and the line between player and coach was often blurred. The Anthracite League was a breeding ground for future stars, a proving ground where legends were born.
Join us as we unearth the stories of these forgotten heroes. We'll explore the league's rough-and-tumble origins, the fierce rivalries that burned brighter than any stadium lights, and the iconic figures who left their mark on the game. We'll also dissect the strategies and tactics that defined Anthracite League football, a style of play as unique and rugged as the landscape it called home.
So, put on your virtual hard hat and grab a pickaxe – we're heading into the coal mines of history for a podcast episode unlike any other. Get ready for the forgotten battles, the audacious plays, and the unfiltered passion that made the Anthracite League a grimy, glorious chapter in the story of professional football!
-Transcription on the Anthracite Football with Joe Zagorski
Darin Hayes
Hello, my football friends; this is Darin Hayes at www .pixieanddispatch .com. Welcome once again to the Pigpen, your portal to positive football history. And we have a really special evening tonight planned because we're going to be talking to a great football historian and author of multiple books and a podcast host here on Sports History Network, Joseph Gorsky. You've heard him here before, and tonight, we're going to talk about something special. Joseph Gorsky, welcome back to the Pigpen.
Joe Zagorski
Hey, thanks for welcoming me. I appreciate being here.
Darin Hayes
Well, we're sure glad to have you, Joe. And just a little bit of a side note. I know I told you before we came on, but just so the audience knows, a few weeks ago, I was doing some research on some football from the pro leagues of the coal mining region of Pennsylvania. And I came across an article from the PFRA from 1987's Coffin Corner, and it was authored by one Joe Zegorsky. And I said, oh my goodness, what an honor. I can talk to Joe again about the article that he wrote a few decades ago.
Joe Zagorski
Yeah, it's hard to believe that I've been at this in one way, shape, or form for that many years. It certainly hasn't been a full-time job or anything, but I've enjoyed exploring the history of pro football. And a lot of people don't realize that, you know, just because you're in a separate section of the country, the coal regions of Pennsylvania, it had its own flavor. And the NFL at that time in the mid-1920s was basically still a brand new league. And not a whole lot of thought was given to, hey, this league has been the last 50 or 60 years. Nobody thought about that at the time. So, nobody really had any preconceived notions about the coal region league, either. And so, you know, these guys would go, and they would play for whoever would pay them more money. Yeah, it's not uncommon to see that there are people who played in the coal region that would play for up to three or four different teams in one season. They'd be hopping around the league. Whoever paid them more money, that's who they would play for on any given weekend.
Darin Hayes
Well, that is, I mean, that's incredible. And what is the geographic area? Now, I know it's Eastern Pennsylvania, but what do they sort of call that the coal mining region?
Joe Zagorski
Schuylkill County is the main county with a lot of people; the main town in Schuylkill County is Pottsville. And it gets a lot of notoriety because Pottsville had an NFL team for three years, no, four years, 25 through 28, the Pottsville Maroons. And a lot of other teams in that era still played, but they weren't on the Pottsville level. And a lot of people confuse Pottsville. I grew up, and I was born and raised in a town called Potts Town. And a lot of people think they're right next to each other, but they're not. Potts Town is about an hour and 20 minutes southeast of Pottsville, and as far as, you know, driving time. But they might have been. I know Potts Town was named after John Potts, and he may have been the same guy who named Pottsville. I'm not sure; maybe it's a relative of his or not. However, the Pottsville Maroons had a very strong pro football team, and they had some players on them who not only played in the other teams in the NFL but also were in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Wilbur Fat Henry comes to mind. John Blood McNally, those guys are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and they played for those Pottsville teams. So it was a, they had no variety. The theory was that the whole region's teams really played a tough, rough, tough brand of football, and I'm sure they did. But a lot of people believe that it was just filled with guys who worked in the coal mines and then came out and played football. Well, that's not completely true. There were some who did. One famous guy was Tony Latone, and he played; he worked in the coal mines and then played for the Pottsville Maroons. But most of the guys actually were college, college-educated, and they played for college teams before they went pro. So, you know, they didn't just come on out and beat the crap out of each other. There was some sophistication to their stories.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, you've mentioned Tony LaTone. We wrote an article about him probably about a month ago. One thing that amazed me was that I didn't really know much about him until I was doing that podcast. One thing that I read is that George Halas said something to the effect that if Tony LaTone had played college ball, he might have been one of the best pro players ever. And there were a lot of comparisons made to the yardage that LaTone did when he played for Pottsville compared to what Red Grange did in the same era. And it was actually their statistics were kind of comparable if you look at it from some of the things that I saw. But, of course, he didn't play much college ball. He went right into the semi-pros and played for the teams of his coal mining company, I guess.
Joe Zagorski
I heard the same story. I guess it was in the early 1990s. I drove from Pennsylvania down to Florida, and I got a chance to spend a couple of days with Tony's son, who was living in Florida at the time and was originally from Michigan. I got a chance to talk to him about his father, you know, his father long since passed, but he was an interesting character, Tony LaTone. I lost touch with Tony's son. I think he moved back to Michigan because he got tired of the Pelicans landing on his roof at night in Florida. Very few pelicans in Michigan. Very few.
Darin Hayes
They don't like the cold of Lake Michigan, do they?
Joe Zagorski
No, no. If you see a pelican in Michigan, it's probably a plastic one in somebody's yard or something like that. He gave me some really good stories about Tony LaTona. I think I wrote an article about him for the PFRA prior to the article that you were talking about with the suicide football league. He was an interesting character, but they were all interesting characters. I got a chance to meet a couple of them, but sadly, most of them were so old that their memories were shot. You really couldn't get too much out of them, which is a shame, but that's what happens, unfortunately.
Darin Hayes
That's sad. It happens to all of us from all walks of life all around the world. It's one of those things, you know, death and taxes and old age sort of deteriorates. It's uh, they say that What the youth is spoiled on the young or something that fact, you know, well.
Joe Zagorski
I got a chance to interview another guy who was a child at the time, and he had good memories of it. He was actually in a program that NFL Films did about the 1920s in the NFL. I got a chance to meet him, and I interviewed him. He was a very interesting fellow, a guy by the name of Bill Dimmerling. He gave me some really good information that I didn't know at the time, but it served as some information for my eventual screenplay that I wrote about Cold Region football.
Darin Hayes
Are you able to talk about your screenplay at all, about what the basic premise is of it, or would you rather not discuss that?
Joe Zagorski
Well, I'll just briefly talk about it. It's set in the year 1924, and it's about a rivalry between two teams. It basically covers the week before the game, then the game, and then the aftermath of the game, and it's based on a true story. So most of it is true, and it really happened, and I have corroboration from a lot of different newspaper articles that I was able to find in the Potsdale Historical Society. You know, I think I better stop with that. When I get more information as far as if I'm able to sell it to a producer or a film company, I'll definitely post that information, and once I know that it's being made into a film, then I can talk more freely about it, I think.
Darin Hayes
Okay, well, in the meantime, are there any producers out there or directors looking for a good film? We know how to get in contact with a guy who has a great screenplay for you. So, you know, you can contact the Sports History Network, and we'll get in touch with Joe or Pixie and Dispatch, and we'll get Joe on the line and get you hooked up. So it sounds like a great film to watch, something I'd want to watch, that's for sure.
Joe Zagorski
Well, you know, it's funny because when I tell people about it, they say the same thing. They say, well, yeah, that sounds really good, but, you know, if you're, if you don't have like solicitation, if you don't have a manager, nobody in Hollywood wants to give you the time of day. So it's just being lucky enough to get one person to look at it. That's the key. And it has to be the right person, you know. There's somebody with contacts.
Darin Hayes
That seems to be the case in a lot of things in life to succeed, isn't it? Yeah, you're not kidding. Well, going back to the Anthracite League, so was it an official league of teams, or was it one of those that was sort of like a mythological or an idea or just a bunch of teams that commonly played each other?
Joe Zagorski
It's a good question. In name only, really, in the newspaper in 1924, it was listed as the Anthracite Football League, but that was only one year, and in 1925, nobody mentioned it anymore. So, really, it was a one-year league, and not every team played every week. That's one thing I wanted to mention is that some teams didn't know if they were gonna play that weekend until about two days before the game. We're just a few weeks away from the NFL schedule being broadcast on television for 2022. Well, in 1924 and 1925, I mean, those guys didn't know from one week to the next who they would be playing, some of them. That just goes to show how disorganized that league and region were in getting teams to be played. Pottsville, in 1924, played 14 games. Wilkes -Ferry played one game. Gilberton played eight games, as did Shenandoah, and Coaldale played ten games. So, you know, and some of the teams that they played weren't even a part of the league. Gilberton beat a town called Palmerton, a team. You know, I mean, it's like some of these teams you'd never heard of, Hobart Athletic Club, lost to Shenandoah, you know. Now, Reading had a team. They were a bigger town, but they weren't part of the Anthracite League. Atlantic City, New Jersey, was considered a team that was not in the Anthracite League, but they beat Coldale. So they would play whoever they could find, and they would count it as a league game, even though it's not.
Darin Hayes
Now, did they have a postseason, a championship, or a champion from that region declared?
Joe Zagorski
They did, and it wasn't a championship game. It was just whoever had the most wins, and that was Poxville. They finished with a record of 12, 1, and 1. So. That's pretty good. Yeah, I mean, and the next closest team percentage-wise was Gilbertin, and they finished with a record of 4, 3, and 1. So, you know, you get eight more wins. Yeah, you're going to be declared a champion. That 24 season was a springboard for Poxville because they kind of said, okay, we won 12 games this year. Let us join this National Football League that just started a few years ago. And they put up the money, and they, you know, George Hollis let them in, and they played in 1925, and that was a whole different story in regards to Poxville. And if you ever do any research on them, you'll hear about the stolen championship.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, we've talked about that a couple of times with a few of our guests have come on and Potsville is kind of an interesting thing, especially 1925 when they came in and along with the Frankfurter played, I believe in that same era, there's two Pennsylvania teams that played during Pennsylvania's Blue Laws that weren't supposed to play on Sundays. I think one of the teams did. I forget which one did.
Joe Zagorski
Well, Frankfurt got upset because Poxville went down to Philadelphia to play these Notre Dame all-stars who were well past their prime. And it was just more or less an exhibition game, but Frankfurt got upset because they figured you're in our territory, you're taking spectators away from our gate receipts, and that's not fair. And the commissioner at the time, I think it was Burke Bell.
Darin Hayes
Joe Carr at the time.
Joe Zagorski
That was Joe Carr, okay, my mistake. Joe Carr, and he said, you know, Franklin's got a case here. And so he penalized Pottsville and made them; he took away their championship. And he kind of made the Chicago Cardinals play two extra games to give them a better record. And, you know, that gave them the championship, the Chicago Cardinals. Even though those two extra games were against, I think one of them was against high school kids. You know, it wasn't really always on the up and up. And I know over the years, Pottsville has tried to get the NFL to change their minds and give them back the championship, but the Cardinal organization is never gonna surrender that championship. They're just not. So that's, and the league doesn't want, I mean, nobody's alive from 1925 that really remembers that. I don't.
Darin Hayes
It's interesting because I've heard you're probably about the fourth guest, so we've talked about that game and that whole situation. And we've talked, of course, Joe Ziemba's been talked up from the Cardinal's perspective. Chris Willis has been talking about it from the sort of the NFL's person, the Joe Carr, and Columbus Panhandle's approach or that whole situation. That's how I knew it was Joe Carr. It wasn't because I was smart. It was just because I remember Chris talking about it. We've also talked about some guests who support Pottsville. She gets the championship awarded to them and everything. It's an interesting concept. I don't know if we'll ever be resolved. I know it was just a few years ago; I think they petitioned the NFL and lost the case, too. So it's been pretty recent, almost a hundred years.
Joe Zagorski
If you ever get a chance to go to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, they have a pretty neat display on it that explains it all. You know, and I, every now and then, I mean, I'm going up there in a couple of weeks to do some more research, but it's, you know, they try to address everything that happened back in that era, and although I have to admit, I think the Hall of Fame that the Green Bay Packers have is a little bit better. So, I think so. Mr. Roy, I've never.
Darin Hayes
I've never been to Green Bay. Yeah, I've never been up in Canton, but I was in Canton twice last year. Well, the PFRA convention was there last year, so I was there for that. I went to the Hall of Fame weekend and had the opportunity to go down; of course, there were five Steelers going in between the two classes, so it definitely was a great one to attend there. And the Steelers played that weekend, too. Yeah. But yeah, you're right; that display is awesome. The whole museum has really, really improved over the last six to seven years.
Joe Zagorski
If you ever get to Lambeau Field, check out their museum and their Hall of Fame. It's really neat. I mean, it's not as big as the Pro Football Hall of Fame because you're only dealing with one team, but the displays are really neat. Yeah, it's definitely worth it. I mean, there isn't much around Green Bay. There's a casino. You know, there's a walking tour through town and stuff like that, but Lambeau Field is the main attraction in Green Bay, and it always has been, I think. If it wasn't for the Packers, I don't know what kind of tourism that town would have. I shudder to think that it would have any, but they get visitors all the time, and their gift shop is like two stories tall.
Darin Hayes
Wow. I bet you really know that the population spikes about eight times a year there, right? Yeah, yeah.
Joe Zagorski
With preseason games, yeah.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, that's what's really interesting. So I want to talk about you. You've had a recent podcast on your pro football in the 1970s podcast, which is very well done. And one that I just talked about in your most recent podcast is on the 1974 Steelers draft class and rookie class; I guess it was a better term for it. And great job on that. And I was talking, I was talking last Saturday, I do every Saturday; I have a release on some Northwestern Pennsylvania football history. So I was talking about the 69 drafts with Joe Green and John Cole, but Elsie Greenwood and Terry Hanratty and a few other, you know, minor players. And, you know, sort of comparing those two drafts, but I referenced quite a bit of what you said in your 74 Steelers draft. But I think I agree with you. I don't know if there will ever be any team that, before or after that, will have a rookie class like that with five Hall of Famers.
Joe Zagorski
I highly doubt it. I really do. You know, when you consider the fact that, you know, today in this day and age, what are there like seven or eight rounds? Maybe, I think, you know, to think that five selections that your team made are in the Hall of Fame, and they equated to, at that time, four World Championships. That's really just astounding. Just really incredible that one team was able to do that well in the draft. And I'm good friends with Terry Hanretty and Rockie Bleier today. So, yeah. Yeah. Rocky wrote the foreword to my first book about the NFL in the 1970s. And I've been friends with Terry for several years, and I've interviewed him quite a few times.
Darin Hayes
Wow, you have a great circle of friends, I'll tell you.
Joe Zagorski
Well, you know, I mean, I'm not married, so that's, you know, you've got to have a friend somewhere, you know, and I was telling another podcast last night that if I was married, I probably wouldn't be able to do all the writing that I've been doing, because there's just not enough time, you know, and then you get 24 hours in a day, how do you use it, you know?
Darin Hayes
Yeah, that's that's very true. Very try. I'm very blessed. I have a very understanding wife, and she knows my football addiction, So I get away with some things. Yeah
Joe Zagorski
Well, you got to mention that upfront before you, you know, you get serious. That's for sure, you know. That's for sure. You know, it's like anything else, though. I mean, I would prefer that you get all the information out before you make any decision. It's the same thing with buying a car, you know.
Darin Hayes
You've got to have all those skeletons out of the closet up front, right? That's right. Now, you talk about writing as a good segue. I know that you were telling me before we came on the air that you have a book that is about ready to go into print. And I don't know if maybe you want to talk about that a little bit and give us a little tease on the horizon in the Joe Zegorski writing role.
Joe Zagorski
Well, I just finished writing a book on the 1973 Buffalo Bills. I guess you can sense that I've got a lot of love for the '70s, and I do because that's when I grew up watching pro football. And I knew that nobody had ever written about the 73 Bills before. And I thought, you know, this is the 50-year anniversary of that team. They were a very historic team. They finished 9 and 5. They almost made the playoffs. They didn't, but they came within a wister of making the playoffs. So what was really great about them was all the different records that they set. They set the team rushing record that had only been set the year before by the Dolphins. Well, they broke that largely because O.J. Simpson became the first man ever, in fact, the first man only, to rush for 2,000 yards in one 14-game season. It's since been equipped by several people, but they all did it in a 16-game season. And it'll get broken again because now we're at 17 games of a regular season. So, you know, I kind of think that it'll get broken again. But O .J. Simpson's the only man who has ever rushed for over 2,000 yards in a 14-game season. And that'll never change. I got a chance to interview him a few weeks ago. And I've been trying to interview him for many years. And I finally struck gold and got a chance to interview him. So I was very fortunate and got a lot of good quotes from him for the book.
Darin Hayes
Well, gosh, that sounds very intriguing. I can't wait. You'll have to let us know when that gets ready to come out and hits the print so we can all get it in our hands and read up on what you have to say about that.
Joe Zagorski
Sure will. Yeah. It's, you know, I had to address certain things about it. I wasn't allowed to ask Mr. Simpson any questions about what happened to him in the 1990s. I couldn't even, you know, vaguely address that, which I agreed to. I wasn't going to go there, and I promised both him and his manager that I wouldn't. I gave him a list of questions ahead of time, and he signed off on them. He was okay with them, so that was important, and I got some good information from him. Two of his most of teammates that I interviewed for the book didn't want to talk about him after football, but two of them did. One of them said that he felt that he was innocent, and the other one said he felt he was guilty. So that was, and they said a little bit more than that, but, you know, that was the extent of it. All the other ones wouldn't go on the record, and that's to be expected. I don't think a publisher is going to really fault me for that because it's such a taboo subject.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, that's walking on eggshells, that's for sure.
Joe Zagorski
But the book is finished, and I'm trying to get a publishing company to, you know, say yes and publish it.
Darin Hayes
Well hopefully you'll be hearing from a publisher real soon and a movie producer or a movie house or something whoever does that kind of work and get your works out there because they both sound extremely exciting and speaking of that are you able to tell us what we can look forward to on the next Pro Football in the 1970s podcast?
Joe Zagorski
No, I can't because I don't know what it's going to be. You see, Arnie, I gave Arnie about three of them, and I don't know which ones or what order they're in. So, you know, I wrote them, I put them together. I guess it was over a month ago, and I can't remember. So, you know, I'm 59 now, so I'm not able to remember like I used to think. So, you'll just have to wait with everybody else, including me.
Darin Hayes
So, somewhere up in Michigan. Mr. Chapman has a hat with three pieces of paper in it, along with your podcast. He's gonna draw one out here one of these days, and that's right. We'll see what's going on there. Yeah, All right, well Joe, I really appreciate you spending the time and sharing. You know, information from this article you wrote, you know, 30, some years ago, and all the other great conversations We had in this short time. We appreciate you taking the time to visit us here in the Pigpen once again
Joe Zagorski
Well, I'm very thankful for the opportunity, Darin. You take care of yourself and have a great NFL draft coming up.
Hap Moran An Iconic Early NFL Player
Before Daniel Jones’ touchdown-less run, there was Hap Moran’s 91-yard run for the Giants.Francis Dale "Hap" Moran wasn't just a football player; he was a chameleon, adeptly switching positions and leagues while leaving an indelible mark on the gridiron. Though his name might not be as prominent as others, his 12-year career (1924-1933) was filled with versatility, leadership, and record-breaking feats.
Moran started his college career at Carnegie Tech before transferring to Grinnell, showcasing his athletic prowess in both basketball and football. He entered the NFL in 1924 with the Frankford Yellow Jackets, transitioning from halfback to quarterback and leading them to their first-ever championship in 1926.
His journey continued with stints in Chicago, Pottsville, and finally, the New York Giants. Throughout his career, he seamlessly switched between halfback, tailback, wingback, quarterback, blocking back, defensive back, and linebacker, a testament to his adaptability and talent.
In 1930, while with the Giants, Moran etched his name in history with a 91-yard run, a record that stood for 75 years and solidified his nickname "the Greyhound." He was also the Giants' leading scorer in 1931 and an All-Pro selection.
Beyond statistics, Moran's leadership qualities were undeniable. He captained teams and inspired teammates with his work ethic and competitive spirit. His quiet strength and humble demeanor resonated with fans, making him a role model beyond the field.
While his career ended prematurely due to injuries, Moran's legacy transcends his stats. He embodied versatility, leadership, and adaptability, paving the way for future multi-dimensional players. He wasn't just a number on a jersey; he was a testament to the spirit of hard work and resilience, leaving his mark on a golden age of football.
-Transcript of Hap Moran podcast with Mike Moran
Darin Hayes
A name that comes up constantly in researching early pro football is that of Hap Moran. Hap was a star of four different top-tier franchises in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and his son Mike Moran visits a pig pen to share his dad's fantastic story coming up in a moment. Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes at pigskindispatch.com. Welcome back to the Pigpen. We have our normal Monday show. We're talking about early pro football teams, but we have got such a treat today. We're gonna talk about four different early pro football teams prior to World War II. And it's all centering around one great player from that era. And we have his son here today. The player is Hap Moran. And his son Mike is here today to give us a great biography of his father. Let's bring him in right now. Mike Moran, welcome to the Pigpen.
Mike Moran
Thanks, Darin. Glad to be here. Mike, you know, you, before we came on the air, you were telling me some stories of how your early experiences of football.
Darin Hayes
And maybe you could just share some of that with us. Tell us how you became a great football fan and historian.
Mike Moran
My dad retired from the NFL in 1933 and of course they had no benefits or pension plan then but he did get a lifetime pass to any NFL football game excluding championships and so as a kid I grew up in Queens, New York about 40 minutes on the train from the polo ground so we would hop on the train and go to the polo grounds and my dad would show the pass, we'd walk through the turnstile and we'd go sit in the press box and we watched the game then he felt that he still knew some of the press guys so but I have to admit as a kid I wasn't paying much attention, I was looking for the next hot door or the peanuts or something but it was and it was a little intimidating because there's all these guys in their fedoras and their dark overcoats and their typewriters or whatever and it's kind of a fond memory and then later when the Giants went to Yankee Stadium we could go in there and actually I met some of the players because on election day which was a holiday in New York City a couple times my dad took me up to practices and we sat around and we watched some practice, now we went into the clubhouse and the thing I remember is shaking hands with these guys and I come away like numb up to my elbow but I got to meet some of them and I became like I mean it was the era of Connor Lee and but my favorite was Ray Witek of the center so I always had a soft spot for him. I didn't know you knew much about football history at that time, and that really didn't come into play till after my father died and I got a Well, the first thing that happened was I started getting letters from all these people saying, do you have any equipment? Did your father have any equipment? Can we buy anything from you? But then I got one guy who wrote to me, and he was from the Professional Football Researchers Association, and he asked me if I would write an article for their newsletter, which is called The Corner and about my father, and I said I would, and I started doing a little research and I realized really how little I knew so it kind of this was also just when eBay was beginning so it was like a grief counseling eBay I got my father's nfl pension and I metastasized into this obsession really yeah I guess one.
Darin Hayes
One big question is, where was the going to any NFL game? Was that transferable to you, or was it just?
Mike Moran
Now, I don't know what happened to that pass, you know, that's, that's another thing I've, I've searched, I, I've, one of the things I collect is NFL passes probably because I lost that one. And I haven't found a lifetime pass signed by Joe Carr. And I have a lifetime pass for a guy who was in a trainer, Andy Latula, and it's signed by Elmer Layden, one of the four horsemen, but I've not found one signed by Joe Carr yet.
Darin Hayes
And that's probably the one that your father would have ever been a Joe.
Mike Moran
Clark was still running the show in 1933.
Darin Hayes
Wow. That is amazing. Now, you referred to that coffin corner article from 1999 that you wrote, and I found it extremely interesting. And by the way, to our listeners, Mike has a great tribute website to his father called HapMaran .org. H -A -P -M -O -R -A -N dot O -R -G. And, you know, it's a wealth of information on the man. My hat's off to you how much work you put into this. It is really tremendous. But in that coffin corner article, you start off by saying that you didn't really know that you knew your father. You're aware your father played football, but you didn't realize what a big deal he was. He was somewhat humble about that and didn't share a lot of that. Is that right?
Mike Moran
we had there was one thing in our house that would make you think my father was a football coach because after he retired from the Giants and moved out to this apartment house in Queens there was a park right next to our Sunnyside Park and as soon as the story I heard was as soon as my father moved in like two days later some kids knocked on the door and said we have a football team would you come and coach us and so there was an article in a newspaper about him coaching this youth football squad and there was a drawing that somebody did to accompany the article and that was what was on the wall there was nothing about pro football or anywhere and I didn't really realize I think I found out when I was in Cub Scouts and someone said something to me and I was like uh what I mean I didn't and also I wouldn't have I was like what seven at that time I didn't understand what it meant I had no I had no clue but no I I think uh you know part of my father's story is that he his father was killed when he was seven his father was a railroad man out in Iowa and he uh got run over in a rail yard accident oh my goodness yeah so my father I mean football at least was less dangerous than railroading and uh and but after that my father had a career as a professional and I he was a um a buyer for western electric which was the supplier for the entire bell system so at one point he was buying all of the telephone poles that the bell system used in the whole United States or all of the typewriters or all of the pencils pens canvas safety bags and when I was growing up every day put on a suit and tie and got on the subway went down to Broadway and the financial district then you know I think his uh he saw football as a uh a step up to a career and what he had in mind for my brother and me was the career you know no calluses white shirts that kind of thing so yeah I didn't he never talked about it as the good old days and in fact he never really talked about it at all it was uh I guess you know when he got into the late 80s and 90s he started telling us more but you know I don't know it wasn't wasn't the defining moment of his life it was a step on the way to something pro more prosperity and security and safety and the capacity to raise a family you know
Darin Hayes
Well, I mean, that's part of the mystique that makes him so interesting. I mean, his whole story is interesting, but that's just another layer of this story that just makes it really interesting. Now, before we start press record here, you were telling me, OK, you just talked on air about your dad, who was coaching a youth team in a neighborhood when you first moved to a place, but you were telling me earlier about your experiences with playing youth football at a younger age if you could share some of that.
Mike Moran
cut out to be a football player; I'll tell you the first. I remember, yeah, I was telling you, I went to this little high school in Manhattan, and we only had a six six club man football team, which I think was developed by the Navy or something so they could play football on ships. I'm not sure about the whole story. And if you look at the 1937 Wheaties, you know, they had those Wheaties panels with football players, and then they had some about six-man, they had one or two about six-man football. And the director of athletics thought I must know everything about football. He knew my dad; he'd been a Giants fan. He drove me to football camp. And, you know, we all got in a circle, and somebody went in the middle, and everybody hit them. And I was in the middle. I thought, no, this is; I want nothing to do with this. This is just not for me. I, I love to swim. And I thought I think I'll pick a sport where the pain level is entirely in my control. So I swam in high school, I wrote, and my father was my father actually encouraged me to row in college. And I don't know if anybody's read that book, The Boys in the Boat. It's a great book about a crew from the University of Washington that competed in the Olympics in Berlin in 1936. The ones were Jesse Owens, and the Nazis, and that whole big story. And Mel Hein was from Washington and was a crew fan. And he used to tell the guys on the Giants that if they thought football was rough, they should try rowing. I think my father was introduced to it because Mel Hein and he went up to watch those Olympic trials at Poughkeepsie, New York. So, my father never set foot in a boat. But when I went to Rutgers, he said to me, you should try rowing. That's a tough sport. I think you might like it, you know, so indirectly, from the University of Washington rowing team to Mel Hine to my father, to me, there was a connection there. So, I also coached rowing at Rutgers for a while and always enjoyed it.
Darin Hayes
Wow, that's. I'm from Erie, Pennsylvania, so rowing is quite a big sport around here. Also, we have quite a few competitions at Mercyhurst University here in town that do quite a bit on that. So I'm familiar with that. So it is a tough sport. I've never done it myself, but it looks very strenuous. That's for sure. Now, I guess maybe let's go back to where you think your father's football career started. You know, is that the high school level college level? Yeah, well, I think.
Mike Moran
I think where it started was really on the railroad because in the summers in high school, he would work as a railroad kind of track man, and they would get on these railroad cars and they would go out and repair track, and he would be swinging these 16 -pound sledgehammers for weeks in the summer and then when he went to high school in Boone, Iowa which is a big railroading town and I have pictures of him playing football there but really basketball was his sport. He was an all-American basketball player. In those days, it was considered wrong for college coaches to visit high schools and recruit. So Amos Alonzo Stagg, who was a famous Yale player and coach, was hired by the University of Chicago to build up a football. There's a great book called Stagg's University about the interaction between money, football, and alumni, and it goes way back. This is not a new issue, so what he did was he set up these inner scholastic tournaments at the University of Chicago so that the best athletes and throughout the Midwest, I don't know how many Eastern schools came, came to him and he could see them, and I have some of the track and field and basketball programs from those tournaments, and you see a lot of future great football players in there doing in those sports because there were no football tournaments so Stagg picked my father as an all -American basketball player and I think football was kind of secondary and then he went to Grinnell College for a year and I think he played on the freshman football and basketball teams, but then he was recruited by Carnegie Tech and my brother went to Carnegie which is now Carnegie Mellon.
Darin Hayes
Mm hmm.
Mike Moran
And, you know, we went to a football game there, and the crowd was less than my daughter's field hockey team got in high school. I mean, football was nothing at Carnegie in the 60s. But in the 20s, I mean, their schedule, they played Notre Dame regularly. They were a real powerhouse of football. So he played, he played for them in 1922. And I think I, you know, it's in the article, I'm sure you read it, but they when they played Notre Dame, the Notre Dame Carnegie game in 1922 is the first time the four horsemen of Notre Dame were ever on the field together. And that was, and so my father was against, was the halfback for Carnegie against, you know, the four horsemen. And, but he got hurt. He got injured. And they went back to Grinnell, and he played; he had to take a year off. He played for two years at Grinnell before going into the NFL. But Grinnell was, you know, a small school in Iowa. But an interesting note is two of his friends were a guy named Morgan Taylor, who was the end on the football team and also won the gold medal in the 440 hurdles in the 1924 Olympics. Wow. And committed to the 24 Olympics, the 28 Olympics, and the 32 Olympics in the hurdles. And another friend of his, there was a guy named Frank Cooper, who brought a horse onto the campus, took it up into a building, took it up a couple of flights, and couldn't get it to go down. And he got thrown out of the school. And he went out to do stunt work in Hollywood. And they said, there's already a Frank Cooper; you got to change your name. So he changed his name to Gary. And you got a big, you know, I was like, these three guys were there at Grinnell all at the same time, my father, Morgan Taylor, and Gary Cooper.
Darin Hayes
Wow, that is tremendous.
Mike Moran
It's a funny little story, but uh, and then I guess I don't. I don't know. Well, I have the letter that his football coach at Grinnell wrote to the coach of the Frankford Yellow Jackets recommending him as a player, but I don't know the mechanism of that. I mean, he had some big runs in college. Was he listed in the NCAA guide as, like, they have this thing of great runs from 1869 to 1926, and he's like on the first, you know, maybe he's number 12? I don't know. He had some big runbacks that always got the stories retold in every biography or, you know, a little blurb they'd write about him, right, and so I got a chance with the Frankford Yellow Jackets, which was the Philadelphia franchise before the Eagles. Yeah, that's the progress there.
Darin Hayes
Well, what a tremendous year to go to the Frankford Yellow Jackets in 1926 because they had a pretty good season that year.
Mike Moran
You know, and I think I'm not sure if it was 25 or 26 that they brought Guy Chamberlain as their coach. It might have been the year before, but I mean, a lot of people never heard of Guy Chamberlain, but Guy Chamberlain was like the, you know, the Bill Belichick of the 20s. He was; he had been on the original Decatur Stales with Halas before it was the Bears. He was the coach of the Canton team. He won in the first ten years of the NFL. I think he won five of the championships or was involved with five championship teams. So Chamberlain pulled it all together in 26, and they won the NFL title that year, but the NFL title back then was determined by your winning percentage. They had no championship playoff game. So it was a little different, and there was no money, and you didn't get a big ring. My father did get a watch, but yeah, they had the best record in the NFL, and the big game was they and the Bears were pretty close, had pretty close percentage numbers when the Bears came to Philadelphia to play them, and they won that game. My father was injured. He was in the game a little bit, but one of the stars of the game was a guy from Gonzaga named Houston Stockton. Who's Stockton? His grandson is John Stockton. So there's a little athleticism in that family, but yeah, they won the NFL championship that year.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, I guess if I remember correctly, didn't they? The Frankford Yellow Jackets won the NFL championship, and they had the rival league, and the Red Grange original AFL was going on. And the Philadelphia Quakers, which, you know, Frankfurt is just a suburb of Philadelphia. And the Quakers were the champions of the AFL. And they, you know, I think it was in the press and the media, they wanted to have these two teams play to see who was the best in a nation that didn't come to fruition. But they did end up having an exhibition game; Frankfurt did against the New York Giants. Is that correct?
Mike Moran
No, no, the Quakers did.
Darin Hayes
The Quakers did. OK, that's what Quakers ended up having.
Mike Moran
a game, and they got whipped solidly, and then the Yellow Jackets had whipped the giant solidly, so you never know game to game, but that makes you think they would have done very well.
Darin Hayes
Any given Sunday theory applies, right? Yeah.
Mike Moran
You know, the year before, in 1925, maybe the Yellow Jackets didn't want to play them because the Pottsville Maroons had the biggest percentage in 1925, but they got disqualified from winning the championship because they played an exhibition game against the Notre Dame Wall Stars in Philadelphia, which violated the territorial rights of the Yellow Jackets, and Joe Carr disqualified them. So that's a bitter pill, which is still being in Pottsville, you know, you don't want to mention that. So maybe they were gun-shy after that, or maybe they just wanted to give the AFL any legitimacy. I mean, it was it was everything was on a shoestring at that point anyway, you know.
Darin Hayes
That's true. I mean, you're only. The league was only in existence for six or seven years at that point. So it's, it's understandable. It wasn't some hard times there. Now. OK. In 1926, he played for the Frankfurt Yellow Jackets. 1927, he went to a different franchise. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about that.
Mike Moran
started out 26, 27 with the Yellow Jackets, but for an inexplicable reason, I've never read a good explanation of it, although I think there was some; they, the committee, and the Yellow Jackets were a nonprofit team, but they had a committee that ran them, thought they were spending too much money, and they let Guy Chamberlain go. And they got a coach guy named Charlie Moran, but there is no relationship as far as we know. But Charlie Moran made, his day job was, he was an umpire, major league umpire, and he got called into umpire the World Series. So he really didn't get to the Yellow Jackets until partway into the season, his son was doing it, and they had a terrible, they were having a terrible season, and a lot of turmoil, and eventually it was, you know, they lost their coach, and, but anyway, the story I heard was that Guy Chamberlain had gone to the Chicago Cardinals, and the Cardinals needed somebody who was a solid kicker, and he got my father to come from the Yellow Jackets, like, my father played all the games through the end of October in Philadelphia, and then he went to Chicago. And so he finished the season with the Yellow Jackets. And I know in the first game, the Yellow, I mean, the finished season with the Cardinals, he had, the Cardinals had another kicker named Bub Weller, and I read one newspaper article that said, Weller's attempt at the extra point came closer than usual but still failed. I don't know why my father kicked that extra point. But anyway, yeah, so he finished that season with the Cardinals, and that's all I know about it. I've never been able to find a team picture of the Cardinals. It's very hard to find their home programs. They're, they, you know, they labored in the shadow of the Bears. I mean, the up, the, the, the, the one notable thing was that that was the, I like to sort of research my father's teammates, and he was a teammate on the Cardinals with Duke Slater, who was just inducted into the Profupal Hall of Fame, another great Iowa, Iowa player. So, I mean, I feel like it wasn't totally unproductive for him, but
Darin Hayes
Well, I know we've got one person who's going to be listening to this program, and that's Joe Ziemba, who I'm sure you're aware of as a great Chicago Cardinals historian. So maybe Joe can have some connections to find that photo that you're looking for.
Mike Moran
read a knife. I've written a joke. OK, OK, years ago. Yeah, it's a great book. He wrote about what it was called when the grass was green or when someone was playing football. I forget the name.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, when football was football, the story of the Chicago Cardinals. Yeah, that's a great book.
Mike Moran
One of the things I bought on eBay, a connection I made there, was a contract for the last game played by the Duluth Eskimos. And it was against the Bears, and it was the sign by Ole Haugsrud, who was the manager and eventually the owner of the Duluth Eskimos, and it was all about, there was an All-American named Howard Maple, and it was about, you know, you got to show up at the bus station on this day, and you got to have a little supply with the football, but bring your own equipment for one of the first training camps. So I went to Joe's book, and I was trying to figure out; he helped me figure out who Haugsrud was, if I'm saying it right. I'm not good with Swedish names, and it was just a wealth of information.
Darin Hayes
Yeah. And I better, I better correct my wrong here because I've been digging as you've been talking for Joe's book. I got it. I butchered the name of it. So, let me get it right here. When football was football, the Chicago Cardinals and the birth of the NFL by Joe Ziemba. I'm so sorry about that, Joe, butchering the name there at first.
Mike Moran
You know that the Ole Haugsrud is interesting story because he sold that franchise back to the NFL with a provision that if there was ever another Minnesota franchise, he could buy a part of it for a set amount of money. So he became an original owner of the of the Vikings. Interesting. He lived long enough to cash that in, yeah.
Darin Hayes
Wow, that's a great history.
Mike Moran
A lot of guys, if you read the guys like Ernie Nevers and say he really should be in the Hall of Fame because when Red Grange, as you mentioned, went to the, formed a separate league, the NFL was really lacking a marquee star from the college years. Ole Haugsrud and Ernie Nevers went to high school together, and Haugsrud convinced Nevers to come and get back into pro football. And so even though, you know, they didn't play any home games, it was a traveling team, adding Nevers name to the NFL roster was probably, might've been, you know, some people think that's what tipped the balance in favor of the NFL as opposed to the AFL, the original, the Grange-Pyle League.
Darin Hayes
Now we're, were they, was it Nevers and Ole with the Cardinals when your dad played, or was that after your dad?
Mike Moran
They were with the Eskimos.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, I think it must have been a year or two later. And then they went over it.
Mike Moran
Yeah, later afterward.
Darin Hayes
But your father had another team transfer that next season or shortly thereafter.
Mike Moran
Well, next season, in 1928, he went to Pottsville, Pennsylvania, and played for those Pottsville Maroons. And, you know, I don't know, I've never seen, I have his contract. That's one thing I do have: his contract from that year. But I don't have any correspondence. I don't know how it came to be that he ended up in Pottsville. My father told me about Pottsville that the field was like the basis of the field, which was all this slag coal because Pottsville was, you know, the Anthracite District. It was the Anthracite League. It was a tough league. It got out of the Anthracite League and got into the NFL. And he said, if you cut yourself on that field, you have to like to pour iodine over. It was like bacterially infected. And the other story he told, and I'm not sure if it was from that year or later, but just about those coal mining towns and the intense rivalries that existed, was he got hired to play for some local coal mining town, you know, maybe Shenandoah, Gilberton. I don't know the name. He was a ringer. He was brought in as a ringer. And he got there, and half the players on both teams were NFL players. They all knew each other. They'd all been brought in because there was such heavy betting on these games. And he said they played to a tie and like they'd never even got their clothes back. They had to get on directly from the field onto the train. People were going to, you know, strangle them because nobody made any money. They didn't lose any money, but nobody made any money. So that was a pretty tough team and a tough league.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, pretty tough crowd, you know, when they say tough crowd, that's a tough crowd. Yeah. Football players off the field.
Mike Moran
know, they had a terrible year; they didn't do well. And they had four future Hall of Famers on that team. They had, let's see if I remember, well, Johnny Blood, John Blood McNally was on it. Right. Walter Kiesling was on it. Peter Fats Henry, Pete Henry was on it. Maybe those were the only three I don't remember. Now, if there was a fourth, it seemed to me there was, but, you know, they did not have a good year. Again, I think it was management and coaching because, after that season, the franchise moved to Boston for one year and then folded. Yeah, they became the Boston Bulldogs, and then they didn't do very well. They folded. But, you know, it was the thing that happened for my father in Pottsville was the story, and I don't have documentation of it, I just kind of remember it, was that in a game against the Giants, he and Steve Owen had a collision and Steve Owen was knocked unconscious.
Darin Hayes
Really? Oh, yeah.
Mike Moran
So, at the end of that season, the Pottsville ended their season in 1928 before the Giants. And the Giants had this Yale All-American on their team named Bruce Caldwell. And Bruce Caldwell was a great runner, you know, a really good player, but he wouldn't block for anybody. And at one point, the other Giants just stopped blocking for him, and he was just getting clobbered. And, you know, he'd been a marquee player at an Ivy League school, and the Giants released him right before the end of the season, and they brought my father in to take his place. And my father was a good blocker. I know he didn't; he was not a prima donna, so I got some; I got a great picture of him blocking for Friedman. It's just classic. So they brought my father in for the last game. It was against Red Granger's New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium, and my father scored the touchdown for the Giants that day. And that's how he got to New York. So, being in Pottsville, have you ever had a job that was a terrible job, but it got to your next job, you know, that's...
Darin Hayes
It's one of those stepping-stone jobs. Let's pause for a second because you're saying how your father had a collision with Steve Owen, who's a well-known Giants coach, but he was a pretty good-sized man in his playing days. And your father, when you look at your website, you're seeing all these things: the longest run from scrimmage in this game and the most receiving yards. And when I first was reading that, I was sitting there picturing in my mind, you know, somebody like, you know, Christian McCaffrey or something like some small, fast guy that's a planner. Then I'm looking at some of the films you have on there in his Giants games, which we'll talk about here in a minute, and looked at the size that the pro football reference has them down as six foot one, 190 pounds, which is playing size. Now, that doesn't sound big to us today, but in the 1920s, the average American male was five foot seven, 147 pounds. So your dad was a large man, and he had some great athleticism to boot and, you know, and a two-way player, actually a three-way player, because he was punting and kicking as well. I'm playing offensive defense, and I'm just a tremendous athlete here. Yeah.
Mike Moran
Yeah, I really had no choice then. You know, if you were taken out in the first quarter, you couldn't go back into the second quarter. There was no running people in and out. So you had no choice. I mean, everybody played, you know, both ways till I think till like the late 30s or, you know, I'm not sure exactly when colleges did it first, but you had no choice but to play both ways back then. And, you know, you couldn't run in if you ran in somebody who just knew how to punt. I don't think people I read all these who's the greatest of all times, like who's the greatest quarterback of all times. And they're comparing things. And I often wonder, like Tom Brady, about comparing him to Benny Friedman on the Giants. When Friedman, through 1929, set the NFL record for touchdown passes, if you threw a pass into the end zone and it was incomplete, the ball turned over to the other team.
Darin Hayes
Hm.
Mike Moran
That's a basic rule change that makes, and plus, you had to play defense. I find these great, you know what I like about sports is you go, and you do something. It's at a set time. If it's a football game, it's an hour. If it's a crew race, it's like eight minutes or whatever. And when it's over, it's done. But sports talk, you know, it's never over. It's never done. So I don't, and I'm trying to compare people from the different eras, eras is.
Darin Hayes
You really can't. Especially the game of football. Maybe something like baseball you can do because there are subtle changes, but football has had so many morphic changes that have really changed the landscape probably four or five times during the course of the history of the game. It's just amazing, but you can't compare. You can't even compare a quarterback from the 1970s to the same game altogether. So, you know,
Mike Moran
the Giants did not have a very good year in 1928. So Mr. Mera, Tim Mera, the owner, went and bought an entire franchise, the Detroit Wolverines. And so he could get the number one quarterback in the NFL in New York City, Benny Friedman. And most, a lot of the guys from the Giants in 1928 weren't there in 29. My father was one of the few. However, although some of them did pretty well in other places, one of the Giants from 1928 was Cal Hubbard, who, you know, went on to Green Bay. Right. Pretty good.
Darin Hayes
I'd say so. Hall of Famer.
Mike Moran
the only man in the Football Hall of Fame and the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Darin Hayes
That's right. Yeah. Right.
Mike Moran
I know his granddaughter was trying, was working on getting him a stamp, you know, a US postal stamp. I don't know if she's made any luck with it. But anyway, so yeah, he was, he went back, he was he was invited back to New York in 1929. So, that was a good year for them.
Darin Hayes
Yeah. Now he, uh, you got some great footage on your website. Uh, again, that's HapMoran.org and, you know, the 1929 game against the Packers. And you also have, I believe, a 1934 game against, uh, Portsmouth and, uh, 32 32, I'm sorry. 32. And I believe defensive play and your father comes in, I believe, just like crushes, uh, Dutch Clark, I believe.
Mike Moran
You know that the 29 game was, again, they went by percentages. That was effectively the championship playoff game in 29. The Packers won, and they won the championship by 4%, no 2%, maybe two-tenths of 1% percentage point. I don't know what it was. And yeah, that was a great game for the Packers.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, right. Before I forget, I've got to ask this question. This is like the $100 question here. Where did your father get the nickname HAP from?
Mike Moran
there was a cartoon character named Happy Hooligan, and that is my understanding of where he got the nickname. I think it might have had to do something with being sent to get a bucket of beer. I'm not sure about that part, but yeah, there was a Happy Hooligan, and so my grandmother realized his middle name was Dale, which I don't even know how he spelled it. I mean, I spelled it more than one way: d -a -y -l -e or d -a -l -e. She called him Dale or Happy, and occasionally, in the programs, he's listed as Happy, not Hap, but Hap was what he used as an adult, anyway, that I know of. I never heard anybody call him Frank.
Darin Hayes
Very interesting.
Mike Moran
Francis, so.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, I had to make sure I asked that question because that's the one that popped up to me right away. So
Mike Moran
When you look up Happy Hooligan, you'll see he was a very funny little guy.
Darin Hayes
Oh, I have to. I'll make sure I have to. OK, so tell me a little bit about him with the Giants because that's where he spent most of his NFL career, six seasons, I believe, with the New York Giants.
Mike Moran
Yes. The Giants had a; I'm in touch with the great-grandson of Dr. Harry March. Dr. Harry March was from Canton, Ohio, and had been on the team always loved football, might have played football in college a little bit, and was kind of the team doctor for the Bulldogs when Thorpe was playing. He ended up being a theatrical man and a medical doctor, and he ended up in New York City. Joe Carr wanted to find a buyer, a New Yorker who could finance and manage an NFL franchise in New York City. There was a Giants in New York City in 1922 -23 called Brickley's Giants, in which Charles Brickley was a famous Harvard American who had failed. So they hadn't been able to get a good franchise in New York City. I was reading an interesting thing by Dutch Clark. Speaking of Dutch Clark the other day, he said the same thing was true in Detroit. There were so many great college teams in Detroit that it was hard for the NFL to get a foothold there. And there were a lot of great college football teams in New York City. So, it was hard for the NFL to get a football team there. And Tim Merritt was a bookmaker and was trying to get a piece of, I think, Gene Tunney or a boxer. And he was having no luck with it. And Harry March knew him, and he took Joe Carr to his office and said, look, you can't, sorry, you can't get this boxer you want, but here's an opportunity for what, $500, you can have an NFL franchise. And the story is that Tim Merritt has never even seen a football game. He was into the horses and then into boxing. But he said, look, an empty storefront in New York City is worth 500 bucks. I'll take it. But to Mr. March, Dr. March, he said, you got to run it. I'm not running it. So March was the man, and I think he was a part owner originally. He was the man who did all the recruiting for the Giants for, like, the first, maybe seven years of their existence until Tim Merritt's son, Jack Merritt, got out of school and came on board as the vice president of the club. And so Dr. March was the one who got my father in, and my father even lived with Dr. March and a couple of other giants in his rooming house somewhere. And we're largely the result of this Dr. March's initiative. And I'm so glad I'm in touch with the grandson because you have ever heard of Doc March. No, probably not. He's very important in the history of the NFL. And nobody's heard of him. And the grandson is writing a book about it. So his name will become better known.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, I think you'll have to give me his contact information if you can. When you get this book, I'd love to get them on. And that sounds like a very interesting story. So, but, you know, you brought up quite another question I had, and you somewhat answered it here. Now your, your father, you know, went to four different teams, and matter of fact, in the first, you know, 15 years of the NFL and APFA, these are four of the biggest franchises going, you know, they all competed for championships and that era, you know, but how was it for a player in that era to transfer to a different city, especially, you know, he's going from Chicago to, you know, Frankfurt, you know, you know, Philadelphia area to New York.
Mike Moran
things. I know I the yellow jackets. Well, it was really an athletic club, an athletic association, and they had a golf course. And so they were in a bowling alley, I believe, or all I know is that my father worked. They also provided work for him at the golf course and at the bowling alley. And I would assume I don't know where they lived in Frankfurt and Philly. But when he went to Pottsville, they all stayed in a hotel. There was the Nico Allen Hotel in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. And that was where the team and the players lived. And I know when he went to New York City, he lived with Dr. March for a while. And then they also lived in a hotel, the Hotel Paris. And my father, you know, basically lived out of a suitcase for a lot of his life. They used to stay well; when he was on the railroads, I'd stay in YMCAs or things like that. I mean, it was not. He never owned a home his entire life. He was like, he lived in hotels, and I was an apartment guy. So I think a lot of the guys from the Giants lived in this Hotel Paris in Manhattan. In fact, there was a guy named Jack Cavanaugh who wrote a book about the 1958 Giants. And I think anybody who didn't live in New York City, a lot of those Giants all still lived in a hotel because he talks about after games, they would go to different floors, and then they'd all get on the subway and go into Manhattan out to, you know, I took chores or something. It was I was. I mean, Andy Robustelli took the train home to Stanford, Connecticut, but I don't think it was a nomadic life. Let's put it that way at that time.
Darin Hayes
I'm sure it probably was. Mike, I appreciate you coming on and spending some time sharing this great story about your father. And I want to share with the listeners, once again, you know, if you want to learn more about Hap Moran, Mike's website, HapMaran .org, will have a link for it in our show notes for this podcast. We'll also have it on pigskin -dispatch .com, so you can go and enjoy this great website, the videos, and all the other articles around there. It's really tremendous.
Mike Moran
for one more story? Oh, absolutely. So this guy, Harry March, bought a refitted submarine chaser from World War One. And I have no idea why. And then there were articles in the newspaper that the Giants were going a la Huck Finn down the Mississippi River with this boat with a Harry March on. And they took it down the Mississippi and into Miami. And they put it into the hands of a captain, a real real, a real guy. They left, and the captain stole the boat. Then, my father, the owner, asked my father to go down to Miami and investigate where our boat was. So my father went down there, and he found out that it was called the Kingfisher, that the captain was part of this international scheme to smuggle Chinese out of Mexico into the United States. And the whole thing unraveled because this woman aviator crashed her plane, which was loaded with gold. And anyway, my father's remembrance of this was how seasick he got trying to get to Cuba, where the boat was. A guy ended up in jail. And that was my father's last seamanship thing. And then, like, 20 years later, this guy shows up on the TV show. Like, you know, merchant marine stuff. And then, my father ran into him on the street near where we lived. And we lived in Sunnyside, Jackson Heights, where he went and did your shopping. And my father said, I just looked at him. I said, Hello, captain. And he said, yeah, I just turned and ran the other way. But that's a story that this kid or this kid is the grandson or great-grandson of Harry March. He's been doing he's been doing a lot of research into this crazy story that involved the giant New York Giants and gold and illegal immigrants.
Darin Hayes
Oh my God, my head's spinning, my jaw's on the ground. That story had a lot of pieces moving there. Yeah, well, airplanes filled with gold-crushing and Chinese immigrants from Mexico and the New York Giants. Yeah, there you go. Six degrees of separation. Yeah, my goodness. My goodness, gracious. Well, sir, I really appreciate your taking the time to share your family's story. He is truly an integral part of football history, and we're sure glad that we were able to have you on and share this great story with them. And please continue your great work with your website in spreading the great story of Hap Morant to the world because it is truly remarkable, and we appreciate your time.
Mike Moran
All right, Darin. Thank you.
Moran started his college career at Carnegie Tech before transferring to Grinnell, showcasing his athletic prowess in both basketball and football. He entered the NFL in 1924 with the Frankford Yellow Jackets, transitioning from halfback to quarterback and leading them to their first-ever championship in 1926.
His journey continued with stints in Chicago, Pottsville, and finally, the New York Giants. Throughout his career, he seamlessly switched between halfback, tailback, wingback, quarterback, blocking back, defensive back, and linebacker, a testament to his adaptability and talent.
In 1930, while with the Giants, Moran etched his name in history with a 91-yard run, a record that stood for 75 years and solidified his nickname "the Greyhound." He was also the Giants' leading scorer in 1931 and an All-Pro selection.
Beyond statistics, Moran's leadership qualities were undeniable. He captained teams and inspired teammates with his work ethic and competitive spirit. His quiet strength and humble demeanor resonated with fans, making him a role model beyond the field.
While his career ended prematurely due to injuries, Moran's legacy transcends his stats. He embodied versatility, leadership, and adaptability, paving the way for future multi-dimensional players. He wasn't just a number on a jersey; he was a testament to the spirit of hard work and resilience, leaving his mark on a golden age of football.
-Transcript of Hap Moran podcast with Mike Moran
Darin Hayes
A name that comes up constantly in researching early pro football is that of Hap Moran. Hap was a star of four different top-tier franchises in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and his son Mike Moran visits a pig pen to share his dad's fantastic story coming up in a moment. Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes at pigskindispatch.com. Welcome back to the Pigpen. We have our normal Monday show. We're talking about early pro football teams, but we have got such a treat today. We're gonna talk about four different early pro football teams prior to World War II. And it's all centering around one great player from that era. And we have his son here today. The player is Hap Moran. And his son Mike is here today to give us a great biography of his father. Let's bring him in right now. Mike Moran, welcome to the Pigpen.
Mike Moran
Thanks, Darin. Glad to be here. Mike, you know, you, before we came on the air, you were telling me some stories of how your early experiences of football.
Darin Hayes
And maybe you could just share some of that with us. Tell us how you became a great football fan and historian.
Mike Moran
My dad retired from the NFL in 1933 and of course they had no benefits or pension plan then but he did get a lifetime pass to any NFL football game excluding championships and so as a kid I grew up in Queens, New York about 40 minutes on the train from the polo ground so we would hop on the train and go to the polo grounds and my dad would show the pass, we'd walk through the turnstile and we'd go sit in the press box and we watched the game then he felt that he still knew some of the press guys so but I have to admit as a kid I wasn't paying much attention, I was looking for the next hot door or the peanuts or something but it was and it was a little intimidating because there's all these guys in their fedoras and their dark overcoats and their typewriters or whatever and it's kind of a fond memory and then later when the Giants went to Yankee Stadium we could go in there and actually I met some of the players because on election day which was a holiday in New York City a couple times my dad took me up to practices and we sat around and we watched some practice, now we went into the clubhouse and the thing I remember is shaking hands with these guys and I come away like numb up to my elbow but I got to meet some of them and I became like I mean it was the era of Connor Lee and but my favorite was Ray Witek of the center so I always had a soft spot for him. I didn't know you knew much about football history at that time, and that really didn't come into play till after my father died and I got a Well, the first thing that happened was I started getting letters from all these people saying, do you have any equipment? Did your father have any equipment? Can we buy anything from you? But then I got one guy who wrote to me, and he was from the Professional Football Researchers Association, and he asked me if I would write an article for their newsletter, which is called The Corner and about my father, and I said I would, and I started doing a little research and I realized really how little I knew so it kind of this was also just when eBay was beginning so it was like a grief counseling eBay I got my father's nfl pension and I metastasized into this obsession really yeah I guess one.
Darin Hayes
One big question is, where was the going to any NFL game? Was that transferable to you, or was it just?
Mike Moran
Now, I don't know what happened to that pass, you know, that's, that's another thing I've, I've searched, I, I've, one of the things I collect is NFL passes probably because I lost that one. And I haven't found a lifetime pass signed by Joe Carr. And I have a lifetime pass for a guy who was in a trainer, Andy Latula, and it's signed by Elmer Layden, one of the four horsemen, but I've not found one signed by Joe Carr yet.
Darin Hayes
And that's probably the one that your father would have ever been a Joe.
Mike Moran
Clark was still running the show in 1933.
Darin Hayes
Wow. That is amazing. Now, you referred to that coffin corner article from 1999 that you wrote, and I found it extremely interesting. And by the way, to our listeners, Mike has a great tribute website to his father called HapMaran .org. H -A -P -M -O -R -A -N dot O -R -G. And, you know, it's a wealth of information on the man. My hat's off to you how much work you put into this. It is really tremendous. But in that coffin corner article, you start off by saying that you didn't really know that you knew your father. You're aware your father played football, but you didn't realize what a big deal he was. He was somewhat humble about that and didn't share a lot of that. Is that right?
Mike Moran
we had there was one thing in our house that would make you think my father was a football coach because after he retired from the Giants and moved out to this apartment house in Queens there was a park right next to our Sunnyside Park and as soon as the story I heard was as soon as my father moved in like two days later some kids knocked on the door and said we have a football team would you come and coach us and so there was an article in a newspaper about him coaching this youth football squad and there was a drawing that somebody did to accompany the article and that was what was on the wall there was nothing about pro football or anywhere and I didn't really realize I think I found out when I was in Cub Scouts and someone said something to me and I was like uh what I mean I didn't and also I wouldn't have I was like what seven at that time I didn't understand what it meant I had no I had no clue but no I I think uh you know part of my father's story is that he his father was killed when he was seven his father was a railroad man out in Iowa and he uh got run over in a rail yard accident oh my goodness yeah so my father I mean football at least was less dangerous than railroading and uh and but after that my father had a career as a professional and I he was a um a buyer for western electric which was the supplier for the entire bell system so at one point he was buying all of the telephone poles that the bell system used in the whole United States or all of the typewriters or all of the pencils pens canvas safety bags and when I was growing up every day put on a suit and tie and got on the subway went down to Broadway and the financial district then you know I think his uh he saw football as a uh a step up to a career and what he had in mind for my brother and me was the career you know no calluses white shirts that kind of thing so yeah I didn't he never talked about it as the good old days and in fact he never really talked about it at all it was uh I guess you know when he got into the late 80s and 90s he started telling us more but you know I don't know it wasn't wasn't the defining moment of his life it was a step on the way to something pro more prosperity and security and safety and the capacity to raise a family you know
Darin Hayes
Well, I mean, that's part of the mystique that makes him so interesting. I mean, his whole story is interesting, but that's just another layer of this story that just makes it really interesting. Now, before we start press record here, you were telling me, OK, you just talked on air about your dad, who was coaching a youth team in a neighborhood when you first moved to a place, but you were telling me earlier about your experiences with playing youth football at a younger age if you could share some of that.
Mike Moran
cut out to be a football player; I'll tell you the first. I remember, yeah, I was telling you, I went to this little high school in Manhattan, and we only had a six six club man football team, which I think was developed by the Navy or something so they could play football on ships. I'm not sure about the whole story. And if you look at the 1937 Wheaties, you know, they had those Wheaties panels with football players, and then they had some about six-man, they had one or two about six-man football. And the director of athletics thought I must know everything about football. He knew my dad; he'd been a Giants fan. He drove me to football camp. And, you know, we all got in a circle, and somebody went in the middle, and everybody hit them. And I was in the middle. I thought, no, this is; I want nothing to do with this. This is just not for me. I, I love to swim. And I thought I think I'll pick a sport where the pain level is entirely in my control. So I swam in high school, I wrote, and my father was my father actually encouraged me to row in college. And I don't know if anybody's read that book, The Boys in the Boat. It's a great book about a crew from the University of Washington that competed in the Olympics in Berlin in 1936. The ones were Jesse Owens, and the Nazis, and that whole big story. And Mel Hein was from Washington and was a crew fan. And he used to tell the guys on the Giants that if they thought football was rough, they should try rowing. I think my father was introduced to it because Mel Hein and he went up to watch those Olympic trials at Poughkeepsie, New York. So, my father never set foot in a boat. But when I went to Rutgers, he said to me, you should try rowing. That's a tough sport. I think you might like it, you know, so indirectly, from the University of Washington rowing team to Mel Hine to my father, to me, there was a connection there. So, I also coached rowing at Rutgers for a while and always enjoyed it.
Darin Hayes
Wow, that's. I'm from Erie, Pennsylvania, so rowing is quite a big sport around here. Also, we have quite a few competitions at Mercyhurst University here in town that do quite a bit on that. So I'm familiar with that. So it is a tough sport. I've never done it myself, but it looks very strenuous. That's for sure. Now, I guess maybe let's go back to where you think your father's football career started. You know, is that the high school level college level? Yeah, well, I think.
Mike Moran
I think where it started was really on the railroad because in the summers in high school, he would work as a railroad kind of track man, and they would get on these railroad cars and they would go out and repair track, and he would be swinging these 16 -pound sledgehammers for weeks in the summer and then when he went to high school in Boone, Iowa which is a big railroading town and I have pictures of him playing football there but really basketball was his sport. He was an all-American basketball player. In those days, it was considered wrong for college coaches to visit high schools and recruit. So Amos Alonzo Stagg, who was a famous Yale player and coach, was hired by the University of Chicago to build up a football. There's a great book called Stagg's University about the interaction between money, football, and alumni, and it goes way back. This is not a new issue, so what he did was he set up these inner scholastic tournaments at the University of Chicago so that the best athletes and throughout the Midwest, I don't know how many Eastern schools came, came to him and he could see them, and I have some of the track and field and basketball programs from those tournaments, and you see a lot of future great football players in there doing in those sports because there were no football tournaments so Stagg picked my father as an all -American basketball player and I think football was kind of secondary and then he went to Grinnell College for a year and I think he played on the freshman football and basketball teams, but then he was recruited by Carnegie Tech and my brother went to Carnegie which is now Carnegie Mellon.
Darin Hayes
Mm hmm.
Mike Moran
And, you know, we went to a football game there, and the crowd was less than my daughter's field hockey team got in high school. I mean, football was nothing at Carnegie in the 60s. But in the 20s, I mean, their schedule, they played Notre Dame regularly. They were a real powerhouse of football. So he played, he played for them in 1922. And I think I, you know, it's in the article, I'm sure you read it, but they when they played Notre Dame, the Notre Dame Carnegie game in 1922 is the first time the four horsemen of Notre Dame were ever on the field together. And that was, and so my father was against, was the halfback for Carnegie against, you know, the four horsemen. And, but he got hurt. He got injured. And they went back to Grinnell, and he played; he had to take a year off. He played for two years at Grinnell before going into the NFL. But Grinnell was, you know, a small school in Iowa. But an interesting note is two of his friends were a guy named Morgan Taylor, who was the end on the football team and also won the gold medal in the 440 hurdles in the 1924 Olympics. Wow. And committed to the 24 Olympics, the 28 Olympics, and the 32 Olympics in the hurdles. And another friend of his, there was a guy named Frank Cooper, who brought a horse onto the campus, took it up into a building, took it up a couple of flights, and couldn't get it to go down. And he got thrown out of the school. And he went out to do stunt work in Hollywood. And they said, there's already a Frank Cooper; you got to change your name. So he changed his name to Gary. And you got a big, you know, I was like, these three guys were there at Grinnell all at the same time, my father, Morgan Taylor, and Gary Cooper.
Darin Hayes
Wow, that is tremendous.
Mike Moran
It's a funny little story, but uh, and then I guess I don't. I don't know. Well, I have the letter that his football coach at Grinnell wrote to the coach of the Frankford Yellow Jackets recommending him as a player, but I don't know the mechanism of that. I mean, he had some big runs in college. Was he listed in the NCAA guide as, like, they have this thing of great runs from 1869 to 1926, and he's like on the first, you know, maybe he's number 12? I don't know. He had some big runbacks that always got the stories retold in every biography or, you know, a little blurb they'd write about him, right, and so I got a chance with the Frankford Yellow Jackets, which was the Philadelphia franchise before the Eagles. Yeah, that's the progress there.
Darin Hayes
Well, what a tremendous year to go to the Frankford Yellow Jackets in 1926 because they had a pretty good season that year.
Mike Moran
You know, and I think I'm not sure if it was 25 or 26 that they brought Guy Chamberlain as their coach. It might have been the year before, but I mean, a lot of people never heard of Guy Chamberlain, but Guy Chamberlain was like the, you know, the Bill Belichick of the 20s. He was; he had been on the original Decatur Stales with Halas before it was the Bears. He was the coach of the Canton team. He won in the first ten years of the NFL. I think he won five of the championships or was involved with five championship teams. So Chamberlain pulled it all together in 26, and they won the NFL title that year, but the NFL title back then was determined by your winning percentage. They had no championship playoff game. So it was a little different, and there was no money, and you didn't get a big ring. My father did get a watch, but yeah, they had the best record in the NFL, and the big game was they and the Bears were pretty close, had pretty close percentage numbers when the Bears came to Philadelphia to play them, and they won that game. My father was injured. He was in the game a little bit, but one of the stars of the game was a guy from Gonzaga named Houston Stockton. Who's Stockton? His grandson is John Stockton. So there's a little athleticism in that family, but yeah, they won the NFL championship that year.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, I guess if I remember correctly, didn't they? The Frankford Yellow Jackets won the NFL championship, and they had the rival league, and the Red Grange original AFL was going on. And the Philadelphia Quakers, which, you know, Frankfurt is just a suburb of Philadelphia. And the Quakers were the champions of the AFL. And they, you know, I think it was in the press and the media, they wanted to have these two teams play to see who was the best in a nation that didn't come to fruition. But they did end up having an exhibition game; Frankfurt did against the New York Giants. Is that correct?
Mike Moran
No, no, the Quakers did.
Darin Hayes
The Quakers did. OK, that's what Quakers ended up having.
Mike Moran
a game, and they got whipped solidly, and then the Yellow Jackets had whipped the giant solidly, so you never know game to game, but that makes you think they would have done very well.
Darin Hayes
Any given Sunday theory applies, right? Yeah.
Mike Moran
You know, the year before, in 1925, maybe the Yellow Jackets didn't want to play them because the Pottsville Maroons had the biggest percentage in 1925, but they got disqualified from winning the championship because they played an exhibition game against the Notre Dame Wall Stars in Philadelphia, which violated the territorial rights of the Yellow Jackets, and Joe Carr disqualified them. So that's a bitter pill, which is still being in Pottsville, you know, you don't want to mention that. So maybe they were gun-shy after that, or maybe they just wanted to give the AFL any legitimacy. I mean, it was it was everything was on a shoestring at that point anyway, you know.
Darin Hayes
That's true. I mean, you're only. The league was only in existence for six or seven years at that point. So it's, it's understandable. It wasn't some hard times there. Now. OK. In 1926, he played for the Frankfurt Yellow Jackets. 1927, he went to a different franchise. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about that.
Mike Moran
started out 26, 27 with the Yellow Jackets, but for an inexplicable reason, I've never read a good explanation of it, although I think there was some; they, the committee, and the Yellow Jackets were a nonprofit team, but they had a committee that ran them, thought they were spending too much money, and they let Guy Chamberlain go. And they got a coach guy named Charlie Moran, but there is no relationship as far as we know. But Charlie Moran made, his day job was, he was an umpire, major league umpire, and he got called into umpire the World Series. So he really didn't get to the Yellow Jackets until partway into the season, his son was doing it, and they had a terrible, they were having a terrible season, and a lot of turmoil, and eventually it was, you know, they lost their coach, and, but anyway, the story I heard was that Guy Chamberlain had gone to the Chicago Cardinals, and the Cardinals needed somebody who was a solid kicker, and he got my father to come from the Yellow Jackets, like, my father played all the games through the end of October in Philadelphia, and then he went to Chicago. And so he finished the season with the Yellow Jackets. And I know in the first game, the Yellow, I mean, the finished season with the Cardinals, he had, the Cardinals had another kicker named Bub Weller, and I read one newspaper article that said, Weller's attempt at the extra point came closer than usual but still failed. I don't know why my father kicked that extra point. But anyway, yeah, so he finished that season with the Cardinals, and that's all I know about it. I've never been able to find a team picture of the Cardinals. It's very hard to find their home programs. They're, they, you know, they labored in the shadow of the Bears. I mean, the up, the, the, the, the one notable thing was that that was the, I like to sort of research my father's teammates, and he was a teammate on the Cardinals with Duke Slater, who was just inducted into the Profupal Hall of Fame, another great Iowa, Iowa player. So, I mean, I feel like it wasn't totally unproductive for him, but
Darin Hayes
Well, I know we've got one person who's going to be listening to this program, and that's Joe Ziemba, who I'm sure you're aware of as a great Chicago Cardinals historian. So maybe Joe can have some connections to find that photo that you're looking for.
Mike Moran
read a knife. I've written a joke. OK, OK, years ago. Yeah, it's a great book. He wrote about what it was called when the grass was green or when someone was playing football. I forget the name.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, when football was football, the story of the Chicago Cardinals. Yeah, that's a great book.
Mike Moran
One of the things I bought on eBay, a connection I made there, was a contract for the last game played by the Duluth Eskimos. And it was against the Bears, and it was the sign by Ole Haugsrud, who was the manager and eventually the owner of the Duluth Eskimos, and it was all about, there was an All-American named Howard Maple, and it was about, you know, you got to show up at the bus station on this day, and you got to have a little supply with the football, but bring your own equipment for one of the first training camps. So I went to Joe's book, and I was trying to figure out; he helped me figure out who Haugsrud was, if I'm saying it right. I'm not good with Swedish names, and it was just a wealth of information.
Darin Hayes
Yeah. And I better, I better correct my wrong here because I've been digging as you've been talking for Joe's book. I got it. I butchered the name of it. So, let me get it right here. When football was football, the Chicago Cardinals and the birth of the NFL by Joe Ziemba. I'm so sorry about that, Joe, butchering the name there at first.
Mike Moran
You know that the Ole Haugsrud is interesting story because he sold that franchise back to the NFL with a provision that if there was ever another Minnesota franchise, he could buy a part of it for a set amount of money. So he became an original owner of the of the Vikings. Interesting. He lived long enough to cash that in, yeah.
Darin Hayes
Wow, that's a great history.
Mike Moran
A lot of guys, if you read the guys like Ernie Nevers and say he really should be in the Hall of Fame because when Red Grange, as you mentioned, went to the, formed a separate league, the NFL was really lacking a marquee star from the college years. Ole Haugsrud and Ernie Nevers went to high school together, and Haugsrud convinced Nevers to come and get back into pro football. And so even though, you know, they didn't play any home games, it was a traveling team, adding Nevers name to the NFL roster was probably, might've been, you know, some people think that's what tipped the balance in favor of the NFL as opposed to the AFL, the original, the Grange-Pyle League.
Darin Hayes
Now we're, were they, was it Nevers and Ole with the Cardinals when your dad played, or was that after your dad?
Mike Moran
They were with the Eskimos.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, I think it must have been a year or two later. And then they went over it.
Mike Moran
Yeah, later afterward.
Darin Hayes
But your father had another team transfer that next season or shortly thereafter.
Mike Moran
Well, next season, in 1928, he went to Pottsville, Pennsylvania, and played for those Pottsville Maroons. And, you know, I don't know, I've never seen, I have his contract. That's one thing I do have: his contract from that year. But I don't have any correspondence. I don't know how it came to be that he ended up in Pottsville. My father told me about Pottsville that the field was like the basis of the field, which was all this slag coal because Pottsville was, you know, the Anthracite District. It was the Anthracite League. It was a tough league. It got out of the Anthracite League and got into the NFL. And he said, if you cut yourself on that field, you have to like to pour iodine over. It was like bacterially infected. And the other story he told, and I'm not sure if it was from that year or later, but just about those coal mining towns and the intense rivalries that existed, was he got hired to play for some local coal mining town, you know, maybe Shenandoah, Gilberton. I don't know the name. He was a ringer. He was brought in as a ringer. And he got there, and half the players on both teams were NFL players. They all knew each other. They'd all been brought in because there was such heavy betting on these games. And he said they played to a tie and like they'd never even got their clothes back. They had to get on directly from the field onto the train. People were going to, you know, strangle them because nobody made any money. They didn't lose any money, but nobody made any money. So that was a pretty tough team and a tough league.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, pretty tough crowd, you know, when they say tough crowd, that's a tough crowd. Yeah. Football players off the field.
Mike Moran
know, they had a terrible year; they didn't do well. And they had four future Hall of Famers on that team. They had, let's see if I remember, well, Johnny Blood, John Blood McNally was on it. Right. Walter Kiesling was on it. Peter Fats Henry, Pete Henry was on it. Maybe those were the only three I don't remember. Now, if there was a fourth, it seemed to me there was, but, you know, they did not have a good year. Again, I think it was management and coaching because, after that season, the franchise moved to Boston for one year and then folded. Yeah, they became the Boston Bulldogs, and then they didn't do very well. They folded. But, you know, it was the thing that happened for my father in Pottsville was the story, and I don't have documentation of it, I just kind of remember it, was that in a game against the Giants, he and Steve Owen had a collision and Steve Owen was knocked unconscious.
Darin Hayes
Really? Oh, yeah.
Mike Moran
So, at the end of that season, the Pottsville ended their season in 1928 before the Giants. And the Giants had this Yale All-American on their team named Bruce Caldwell. And Bruce Caldwell was a great runner, you know, a really good player, but he wouldn't block for anybody. And at one point, the other Giants just stopped blocking for him, and he was just getting clobbered. And, you know, he'd been a marquee player at an Ivy League school, and the Giants released him right before the end of the season, and they brought my father in to take his place. And my father was a good blocker. I know he didn't; he was not a prima donna, so I got some; I got a great picture of him blocking for Friedman. It's just classic. So they brought my father in for the last game. It was against Red Granger's New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium, and my father scored the touchdown for the Giants that day. And that's how he got to New York. So, being in Pottsville, have you ever had a job that was a terrible job, but it got to your next job, you know, that's...
Darin Hayes
It's one of those stepping-stone jobs. Let's pause for a second because you're saying how your father had a collision with Steve Owen, who's a well-known Giants coach, but he was a pretty good-sized man in his playing days. And your father, when you look at your website, you're seeing all these things: the longest run from scrimmage in this game and the most receiving yards. And when I first was reading that, I was sitting there picturing in my mind, you know, somebody like, you know, Christian McCaffrey or something like some small, fast guy that's a planner. Then I'm looking at some of the films you have on there in his Giants games, which we'll talk about here in a minute, and looked at the size that the pro football reference has them down as six foot one, 190 pounds, which is playing size. Now, that doesn't sound big to us today, but in the 1920s, the average American male was five foot seven, 147 pounds. So your dad was a large man, and he had some great athleticism to boot and, you know, and a two-way player, actually a three-way player, because he was punting and kicking as well. I'm playing offensive defense, and I'm just a tremendous athlete here. Yeah.
Mike Moran
Yeah, I really had no choice then. You know, if you were taken out in the first quarter, you couldn't go back into the second quarter. There was no running people in and out. So you had no choice. I mean, everybody played, you know, both ways till I think till like the late 30s or, you know, I'm not sure exactly when colleges did it first, but you had no choice but to play both ways back then. And, you know, you couldn't run in if you ran in somebody who just knew how to punt. I don't think people I read all these who's the greatest of all times, like who's the greatest quarterback of all times. And they're comparing things. And I often wonder, like Tom Brady, about comparing him to Benny Friedman on the Giants. When Friedman, through 1929, set the NFL record for touchdown passes, if you threw a pass into the end zone and it was incomplete, the ball turned over to the other team.
Darin Hayes
Hm.
Mike Moran
That's a basic rule change that makes, and plus, you had to play defense. I find these great, you know what I like about sports is you go, and you do something. It's at a set time. If it's a football game, it's an hour. If it's a crew race, it's like eight minutes or whatever. And when it's over, it's done. But sports talk, you know, it's never over. It's never done. So I don't, and I'm trying to compare people from the different eras, eras is.
Darin Hayes
You really can't. Especially the game of football. Maybe something like baseball you can do because there are subtle changes, but football has had so many morphic changes that have really changed the landscape probably four or five times during the course of the history of the game. It's just amazing, but you can't compare. You can't even compare a quarterback from the 1970s to the same game altogether. So, you know,
Mike Moran
the Giants did not have a very good year in 1928. So Mr. Mera, Tim Mera, the owner, went and bought an entire franchise, the Detroit Wolverines. And so he could get the number one quarterback in the NFL in New York City, Benny Friedman. And most, a lot of the guys from the Giants in 1928 weren't there in 29. My father was one of the few. However, although some of them did pretty well in other places, one of the Giants from 1928 was Cal Hubbard, who, you know, went on to Green Bay. Right. Pretty good.
Darin Hayes
I'd say so. Hall of Famer.
Mike Moran
the only man in the Football Hall of Fame and the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Darin Hayes
That's right. Yeah. Right.
Mike Moran
I know his granddaughter was trying, was working on getting him a stamp, you know, a US postal stamp. I don't know if she's made any luck with it. But anyway, so yeah, he was, he went back, he was he was invited back to New York in 1929. So, that was a good year for them.
Darin Hayes
Yeah. Now he, uh, you got some great footage on your website. Uh, again, that's HapMoran.org and, you know, the 1929 game against the Packers. And you also have, I believe, a 1934 game against, uh, Portsmouth and, uh, 32 32, I'm sorry. 32. And I believe defensive play and your father comes in, I believe, just like crushes, uh, Dutch Clark, I believe.
Mike Moran
You know that the 29 game was, again, they went by percentages. That was effectively the championship playoff game in 29. The Packers won, and they won the championship by 4%, no 2%, maybe two-tenths of 1% percentage point. I don't know what it was. And yeah, that was a great game for the Packers.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, right. Before I forget, I've got to ask this question. This is like the $100 question here. Where did your father get the nickname HAP from?
Mike Moran
there was a cartoon character named Happy Hooligan, and that is my understanding of where he got the nickname. I think it might have had to do something with being sent to get a bucket of beer. I'm not sure about that part, but yeah, there was a Happy Hooligan, and so my grandmother realized his middle name was Dale, which I don't even know how he spelled it. I mean, I spelled it more than one way: d -a -y -l -e or d -a -l -e. She called him Dale or Happy, and occasionally, in the programs, he's listed as Happy, not Hap, but Hap was what he used as an adult, anyway, that I know of. I never heard anybody call him Frank.
Darin Hayes
Very interesting.
Mike Moran
Francis, so.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, I had to make sure I asked that question because that's the one that popped up to me right away. So
Mike Moran
When you look up Happy Hooligan, you'll see he was a very funny little guy.
Darin Hayes
Oh, I have to. I'll make sure I have to. OK, so tell me a little bit about him with the Giants because that's where he spent most of his NFL career, six seasons, I believe, with the New York Giants.
Mike Moran
Yes. The Giants had a; I'm in touch with the great-grandson of Dr. Harry March. Dr. Harry March was from Canton, Ohio, and had been on the team always loved football, might have played football in college a little bit, and was kind of the team doctor for the Bulldogs when Thorpe was playing. He ended up being a theatrical man and a medical doctor, and he ended up in New York City. Joe Carr wanted to find a buyer, a New Yorker who could finance and manage an NFL franchise in New York City. There was a Giants in New York City in 1922 -23 called Brickley's Giants, in which Charles Brickley was a famous Harvard American who had failed. So they hadn't been able to get a good franchise in New York City. I was reading an interesting thing by Dutch Clark. Speaking of Dutch Clark the other day, he said the same thing was true in Detroit. There were so many great college teams in Detroit that it was hard for the NFL to get a foothold there. And there were a lot of great college football teams in New York City. So, it was hard for the NFL to get a football team there. And Tim Merritt was a bookmaker and was trying to get a piece of, I think, Gene Tunney or a boxer. And he was having no luck with it. And Harry March knew him, and he took Joe Carr to his office and said, look, you can't, sorry, you can't get this boxer you want, but here's an opportunity for what, $500, you can have an NFL franchise. And the story is that Tim Merritt has never even seen a football game. He was into the horses and then into boxing. But he said, look, an empty storefront in New York City is worth 500 bucks. I'll take it. But to Mr. March, Dr. March, he said, you got to run it. I'm not running it. So March was the man, and I think he was a part owner originally. He was the man who did all the recruiting for the Giants for, like, the first, maybe seven years of their existence until Tim Merritt's son, Jack Merritt, got out of school and came on board as the vice president of the club. And so Dr. March was the one who got my father in, and my father even lived with Dr. March and a couple of other giants in his rooming house somewhere. And we're largely the result of this Dr. March's initiative. And I'm so glad I'm in touch with the grandson because you have ever heard of Doc March. No, probably not. He's very important in the history of the NFL. And nobody's heard of him. And the grandson is writing a book about it. So his name will become better known.
Darin Hayes
Yeah, I think you'll have to give me his contact information if you can. When you get this book, I'd love to get them on. And that sounds like a very interesting story. So, but, you know, you brought up quite another question I had, and you somewhat answered it here. Now your, your father, you know, went to four different teams, and matter of fact, in the first, you know, 15 years of the NFL and APFA, these are four of the biggest franchises going, you know, they all competed for championships and that era, you know, but how was it for a player in that era to transfer to a different city, especially, you know, he's going from Chicago to, you know, Frankfurt, you know, you know, Philadelphia area to New York.
Mike Moran
things. I know I the yellow jackets. Well, it was really an athletic club, an athletic association, and they had a golf course. And so they were in a bowling alley, I believe, or all I know is that my father worked. They also provided work for him at the golf course and at the bowling alley. And I would assume I don't know where they lived in Frankfurt and Philly. But when he went to Pottsville, they all stayed in a hotel. There was the Nico Allen Hotel in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. And that was where the team and the players lived. And I know when he went to New York City, he lived with Dr. March for a while. And then they also lived in a hotel, the Hotel Paris. And my father, you know, basically lived out of a suitcase for a lot of his life. They used to stay well; when he was on the railroads, I'd stay in YMCAs or things like that. I mean, it was not. He never owned a home his entire life. He was like, he lived in hotels, and I was an apartment guy. So I think a lot of the guys from the Giants lived in this Hotel Paris in Manhattan. In fact, there was a guy named Jack Cavanaugh who wrote a book about the 1958 Giants. And I think anybody who didn't live in New York City, a lot of those Giants all still lived in a hotel because he talks about after games, they would go to different floors, and then they'd all get on the subway and go into Manhattan out to, you know, I took chores or something. It was I was. I mean, Andy Robustelli took the train home to Stanford, Connecticut, but I don't think it was a nomadic life. Let's put it that way at that time.
Darin Hayes
I'm sure it probably was. Mike, I appreciate you coming on and spending some time sharing this great story about your father. And I want to share with the listeners, once again, you know, if you want to learn more about Hap Moran, Mike's website, HapMaran .org, will have a link for it in our show notes for this podcast. We'll also have it on pigskin -dispatch .com, so you can go and enjoy this great website, the videos, and all the other articles around there. It's really tremendous.
Mike Moran
for one more story? Oh, absolutely. So this guy, Harry March, bought a refitted submarine chaser from World War One. And I have no idea why. And then there were articles in the newspaper that the Giants were going a la Huck Finn down the Mississippi River with this boat with a Harry March on. And they took it down the Mississippi and into Miami. And they put it into the hands of a captain, a real real, a real guy. They left, and the captain stole the boat. Then, my father, the owner, asked my father to go down to Miami and investigate where our boat was. So my father went down there, and he found out that it was called the Kingfisher, that the captain was part of this international scheme to smuggle Chinese out of Mexico into the United States. And the whole thing unraveled because this woman aviator crashed her plane, which was loaded with gold. And anyway, my father's remembrance of this was how seasick he got trying to get to Cuba, where the boat was. A guy ended up in jail. And that was my father's last seamanship thing. And then, like, 20 years later, this guy shows up on the TV show. Like, you know, merchant marine stuff. And then, my father ran into him on the street near where we lived. And we lived in Sunnyside, Jackson Heights, where he went and did your shopping. And my father said, I just looked at him. I said, Hello, captain. And he said, yeah, I just turned and ran the other way. But that's a story that this kid or this kid is the grandson or great-grandson of Harry March. He's been doing he's been doing a lot of research into this crazy story that involved the giant New York Giants and gold and illegal immigrants.
Darin Hayes
Oh my God, my head's spinning, my jaw's on the ground. That story had a lot of pieces moving there. Yeah, well, airplanes filled with gold-crushing and Chinese immigrants from Mexico and the New York Giants. Yeah, there you go. Six degrees of separation. Yeah, my goodness. My goodness, gracious. Well, sir, I really appreciate your taking the time to share your family's story. He is truly an integral part of football history, and we're sure glad that we were able to have you on and share this great story with them. And please continue your great work with your website in spreading the great story of Hap Morant to the world because it is truly remarkable, and we appreciate your time.
Mike Moran
All right, Darin. Thank you.
Johnny Blood McNally The Vagabond Halfback
John McNally Jr., better known by his colorful nickname "Johnny Blood," wasn't your typical Hall of Fame football player. He wasn't a bruising fullback or a record-breaking passer. Instead, McNally carved out a unique legacy as a versatile backfield threat, a journeyman with a knack for finding the end zone, and a personality as vibrant as his nickname. This essay explores the career of Johnny Blood McNally, examining his nomadic journey through the early years of the NFL and his lasting impact on the game.
-Early Days and a Basketball Buzzer Beater (Early 1920s)
Born in 1895, McNally's athletic journey began on the basketball court. Playing for Saint John's University in Minnesota, he earned a reputation for clutch plays, famously sinking a game-winning shot at the buzzer. However, football beckoned, and McNally's speed and elusive running style attracted the attention of the Pottsville Maroons of the fledgling NFL.
-A Nomadic Star in the Early NFL (1925-1928)
McNally's professional career was a whirlwind of movement. He played for four different teams in his first four seasons, including the Pottsville Maroons, the Chicago Cardinals, the New York Giants, and finally, the Philadelphia Quakers (later renamed the Eagles). Despite the constant change of scenery, McNally consistently impressed. He could run, throw, and catch with exceptional skill, becoming a fan favorite for his on-field theatrics and infectious personality.
-Championship Glory with the Green Bay Packers (1929-1933, 1935-1936)
McNally finally found a semblance of stability in 1929 when he joined the Green Bay Packers. Here, his versatility found a perfect fit within Coach Curly Lambeau's innovative offense. McNally's contributions were crucial as the Packers captured three consecutive NFL championships from 1929 to 1931. He formed a formidable backfield duo with Don Hutson, another future Hall of Famer.
-A Winding Road and a Coaching Stint (1937-1941)
McNally's later career saw him bounce between teams once again, playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates (later Steelers) and even returning briefly to the Buffalo Tigers in a minor league. He eventually retired as player-coach for the Kenosha Cardinals in a minor league. McNally's coaching stint was short-lived, but it cemented his dedication to the game.
-A Legacy of Versatility and Entertainment
Johnny Blood McNally's legacy goes beyond statistics. He was a true "iron man" of the early NFL, playing in an era before the luxuries of modern equipment and training methods. His versatility on the field and his larger-than-life personality made him a fan favorite and a key contributor to the rise of professional football's popularity in the early 20th century. While his career was defined by nomadic stints with various teams, his impact on the game, particularly his role in the Green Bay Packers' championship runs, is undeniable.
-Early Days and a Basketball Buzzer Beater (Early 1920s)
Born in 1895, McNally's athletic journey began on the basketball court. Playing for Saint John's University in Minnesota, he earned a reputation for clutch plays, famously sinking a game-winning shot at the buzzer. However, football beckoned, and McNally's speed and elusive running style attracted the attention of the Pottsville Maroons of the fledgling NFL.
-A Nomadic Star in the Early NFL (1925-1928)
McNally's professional career was a whirlwind of movement. He played for four different teams in his first four seasons, including the Pottsville Maroons, the Chicago Cardinals, the New York Giants, and finally, the Philadelphia Quakers (later renamed the Eagles). Despite the constant change of scenery, McNally consistently impressed. He could run, throw, and catch with exceptional skill, becoming a fan favorite for his on-field theatrics and infectious personality.
-Championship Glory with the Green Bay Packers (1929-1933, 1935-1936)
McNally finally found a semblance of stability in 1929 when he joined the Green Bay Packers. Here, his versatility found a perfect fit within Coach Curly Lambeau's innovative offense. McNally's contributions were crucial as the Packers captured three consecutive NFL championships from 1929 to 1931. He formed a formidable backfield duo with Don Hutson, another future Hall of Famer.
-A Winding Road and a Coaching Stint (1937-1941)
McNally's later career saw him bounce between teams once again, playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates (later Steelers) and even returning briefly to the Buffalo Tigers in a minor league. He eventually retired as player-coach for the Kenosha Cardinals in a minor league. McNally's coaching stint was short-lived, but it cemented his dedication to the game.
-A Legacy of Versatility and Entertainment
Johnny Blood McNally's legacy goes beyond statistics. He was a true "iron man" of the early NFL, playing in an era before the luxuries of modern equipment and training methods. His versatility on the field and his larger-than-life personality made him a fan favorite and a key contributor to the rise of professional football's popularity in the early 20th century. While his career was defined by nomadic stints with various teams, his impact on the game, particularly his role in the Green Bay Packers' championship runs, is undeniable.
The Stolen Glory of the Pottsville Maroons A Football Championship Heist?
In 1925, a small-town Pennsylvania team, the Pottsville Maroons, achieved gridiron glory. They dominated the season, boasting the best record in the National Football League (NFL). But their championship dreams were shattered in a controversial move that still sparks debate today.
Did the Pottsville Maroons have the title unfairly ripped away? Join us as we delve into the murky details of the 1925 NFL Championship controversy. Was it a case of a small-town team defying the odds, only to be robbed by a powerful league? Or was their championship fate sealed by their own actions? Uncover the truth behind this legendary football scandal and decide for yourself!
Did the Pottsville Maroons have the title unfairly ripped away? Join us as we delve into the murky details of the 1925 NFL Championship controversy. Was it a case of a small-town team defying the odds, only to be robbed by a powerful league? Or was their championship fate sealed by their own actions? Uncover the truth behind this legendary football scandal and decide for yourself!
The Collectibles of the Pottsville Maroons with Jeff Payne
Football history is woven with tales of legendary teams and iconic players. But tucked away in the archives of time lie lesser-known stories, waiting to be rediscovered. Today, we embark on a journey into the past with collector Jeff Payne, who has dedicated himself to preserving the legacy of a powerhouse few remember – the Pottsville Maroons.
The Maroons, hailing from Pennsylvania's coal country, were a dominant force in the early days of professional football. Their story, however, is one of triumph and controversy, marked by a championship victory later stripped due to a league dispute.
But for Jeff Payne, the Maroons' legacy transcends wins and losses. It's about a community rallying behind its team, about blue-collar athletes etching their names in gridiron history. Jeff, with his impressive collection of Pottsville Maroons memorabilia, will act as our guide.
Through Jeff's prized possessions – vintage jerseys, faded photographs, and maybe even a program from a pivotal game – we'll unveil the Pottsville Maroons' captivating story. We'll learn about their legendary players, their innovative strategies, and the cultural significance they held for their hometown.
So, join us as we delve into Jeff Payne's collection and rediscover the forgotten glory of the Pottsville Maroons. Prepare to be transported back to a bygone era of football, where passion burned bright and underdogs dared to challenge the status quo.
The Maroons, hailing from Pennsylvania's coal country, were a dominant force in the early days of professional football. Their story, however, is one of triumph and controversy, marked by a championship victory later stripped due to a league dispute.
But for Jeff Payne, the Maroons' legacy transcends wins and losses. It's about a community rallying behind its team, about blue-collar athletes etching their names in gridiron history. Jeff, with his impressive collection of Pottsville Maroons memorabilia, will act as our guide.
Through Jeff's prized possessions – vintage jerseys, faded photographs, and maybe even a program from a pivotal game – we'll unveil the Pottsville Maroons' captivating story. We'll learn about their legendary players, their innovative strategies, and the cultural significance they held for their hometown.
So, join us as we delve into Jeff Payne's collection and rediscover the forgotten glory of the Pottsville Maroons. Prepare to be transported back to a bygone era of football, where passion burned bright and underdogs dared to challenge the status quo.
Steamrollered 1928
The National Football League (NFL) of today, awash in billion-dollar franchises and national attention, bears little resemblance to its humble beginnings. In the early decades of the 20th century, the league was a ragtag collection of teams, some based in small towns with quirky nicknames like the Providence Steamrollers and the Pottsville Maroons. This essay explores how the NFL moved on from these early franchises, transforming itself into the sports juggernaut it is today.
According to the report read by President Joe Carr at the annual league meeting, held at Cleveland's Statler Hotel on February 11 and 12, 1928, the previous season had been the greatest in attendance in league history, but you couldn't prove it in Cleveland, Buffalo or Pottsville.
Growing Pains and Unsustainable Models:
Many of the early NFL teams, like the Steamrollers and Maroons, struggled financially. Small-town markets couldn't support the growing costs of professional football. Limited infrastructure, lower attendance figures, and difficulty attracting top-tier talent hampered their ability to compete. These factors, coupled with the lack of a centralized television deal, meant that financial stability was a constant struggle.
A Vision for Expansion and Consolidation:
Forward-thinking commissioners like Joseph Carr in the 1960s recognized the limitations of the small-town model. They envisioned an NFL with franchises in major metropolitan areas boasting established media markets, robust infrastructure, and a wider potential fanbase. This strategic shift aimed to increase revenue, attract bigger name players, and ultimately, propel the NFL to national prominence.
The path from small towns to big cities wasn't smooth. Expansion meant competition for existing franchises, and consolidation became a key theme. Weaker teams were forced to leave. This process, though painful for fans of these early teams, was a necessary step towards financial stability and a more competitive league.
According to the report read by President Joe Carr at the annual league meeting, held at Cleveland's Statler Hotel on February 11 and 12, 1928, the previous season had been the greatest in attendance in league history, but you couldn't prove it in Cleveland, Buffalo or Pottsville.
Growing Pains and Unsustainable Models:
Many of the early NFL teams, like the Steamrollers and Maroons, struggled financially. Small-town markets couldn't support the growing costs of professional football. Limited infrastructure, lower attendance figures, and difficulty attracting top-tier talent hampered their ability to compete. These factors, coupled with the lack of a centralized television deal, meant that financial stability was a constant struggle.
A Vision for Expansion and Consolidation:
Forward-thinking commissioners like Joseph Carr in the 1960s recognized the limitations of the small-town model. They envisioned an NFL with franchises in major metropolitan areas boasting established media markets, robust infrastructure, and a wider potential fanbase. This strategic shift aimed to increase revenue, attract bigger name players, and ultimately, propel the NFL to national prominence.
The path from small towns to big cities wasn't smooth. Expansion meant competition for existing franchises, and consolidation became a key theme. Weaker teams were forced to leave. This process, though painful for fans of these early teams, was a necessary step towards financial stability and a more competitive league.
Pottsville Maroons 1925
The National Football League isn't welcome in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. Not unless it sends back that championship it stole from the little coal city's beloved Maroons more than 60 years ago. Pottsville is not completely alone in its outrage. Every couple of years -- just when the rest of the football world is about to forget -- somebody writes an article called "The Stolen Championship" or "The Tragedy of Pottsville" or "The Anthracite Antic", and the whole story -- or rather, Pottsville's version of it -- returns like those onions you had for lunch.
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