America's Game The Epic Story Of How Pro Football Captured A Nation

Chapter 1 Going West Bundled in a heavy winter coat and sporting a beaverskin hat, Daniel Farrell Reeves dug his hands into his pockets and marched from the gate bordering the stands out onto the field in the cavernous Cleveland Stadium. In a matter of hours, his Cleveland Rams would take the field to play the Washington Redskins for the championship of the National Football League. But as he surveyed the field in the numbing chill of this overcast morning two days before Christmas, Reeves could see nothing on the gridiron but thousands of bales of straw, and a small army of men laboring to move them. This was pro football in 1945. Compact and slender, no more than 5-foot-8 and 140 pounds, Reeves was a man of reserved nature but wry wit. In four seasons, he had grown accustomed to the perennial financial losses"Irish dividends," as he called themcommon to owning a pro football team. But the 1945 season had been uniquely rewarding and frustrating. Reeves had returned home just two months earlier, after a three-year tour of duty with the Army Air Corps, to what would become a season-long victory celebration. America's triumph in World War II had been officially consecrated during August two-a-days, and the long lines that greeted the end of gas rationing dissipated by the season-opening win over the Chicago Cardinals. Just one season after the 1944 squad lost six of its last seven games, the Rams had rebounded to become the surprise of the NFL, and win their first Western Conference title. In early December, rookie quarterback Bob Waterfield, soon to be named the league's Most Valuable Player, was profiled in Life magazine. And though the article spent less time on Waterfield than his wifeHollywood bombshell Jane Russell, star of Howard Hughes's "sex western" The Outlaw, which censors still hadn't allowed to be screened in the U.S.the mere thought that a player for the Cleveland Rams would merit space in Life seemed to Reeves a miracle in itself. After the Washington Redskins beat the New York Giants in the regular season finale, Reeves's dream match-up was set. For the title game, the Redskins would make their first trip to Cleveland in eight seasons, bringing along their famed 110-piece marching band to perform a special Christmas-themed halftime show. Interest was high for the match-up between the rookie Waterfield and perennial All-Pro Slingin' Sammy Baugh. And so Reeves had bravely decided to move the championship game from the Rams' regular stadium, the deteriorating League Park, with its cramped capacity of 30,000, to Cleveland Stadium, which seated 80,000. Six days before the game, the National Weather Service had forecast a major winter storm hitting the Cleveland area in midweek, so the Rams had spent the early part of the week searching for enough bales of straw to cover the tarpaulin, to prevent the field from freezing. It was general manager Charles "Chile" Walsh who finally located 9,000 bales of straw from around Elyria, and had it delivered to the stadium at a cost of $7,200. In the days leading up to the game, eighteen inches of snow fell on Cleveland, leaving the stadium resembling an arctic snowscape, with drifts piled several feet high in the aisles. On Sunday morning, the Rams lined up 275 workers, many of them off-duty city employees, to remove the bales. While the Rams were responsible for the field, the city of Cleveland was responsible for the stadium and the parking lots, which were left unshoveled. Despite the weather and conditions, the Associated Press projected the game would draw 50,000, and the New York Times wrote that "a crowd of better than 40,000 is almost certain with a capacity audience of 77,569 possible in caMacCambridge, Michael is the author of 'America's Game The Epic Story Of How Pro Football Captured A Nation', published 2005 under ISBN 9780375725067 and ISBN 0375725067.