December 10, 1939: The Packers' Domination at the Dairy Bowl

December 10, 1939: The NFL Championship Game is played. At the time, the site of the game was alternated between the home fields of the Eastern Division Champions and the Western Division Champions. It was an odd-numbered year, so the Western Champions were set to host. But that was the Green Bay Packers, and Green Bay City Stadium only seated 25,000 people.

So the NFL approved the Packers' request to move the game to the nearest big city, Milwaukee. Specifically, to a stadium built in the infield of an auto racing track at the Wisconsin State Fair Park, in West Allis, 8 miles west of downtown. The stadium was quickly nicknamed the Dairy Bowl.

A year earlier, the Packers had lost the NFL Championship Game to the New York Giants, 23-17 at the Polo Grounds in New York. This time, coach Early "Curly" Lambeau had the home-field advantage -- sort-of, and a full house of 32,379 attended.

The game kicked off at 1:30 PM, Central Time (2:30 Eastern). In the 1st quarter, Arnie Herber threw a 7-yard touchdown pass to Milt Gantenbein. The game remained 7-0 into the 3rd quarter, before Engebretsen kicked a 29-yard field goal.

The Packers had 2 good quarterbacks, both throwing passes to the original great football receiver, Don Hutson. Oddly, Hutson didn't catch a single pass during the game. Later in the 3rd quarter, the other quarterback, Cecil Isbell, threw a 31-yard touchdown pass to Joe Laws.

Don Hutson

In the 4th quarter, Ernie Smith kicked a 42-yard field goal, and Eddie Jankowski ran the ball in from the 1-yard line for a touchdown. Final score: Packers 27, Giants 0.

Auto racing has been held at the State Fair Park since 1903. The Packers continued to play the occasional game there until 1951, and the Milwaukee Chiefs of the 1940 and '41 edition of the American Football League played there.

In 1954, the stadium was knocked down and the grounds renovated. An asphalt track replaced the dirt track, and a new grandstand was built. The stadium is now known as the Milwaukee Mile, and the finish line is roughly where the 50-yard line was.

The Green Bay Packers have the largest team Hall of Fame of any team in the "Big Four" North American sports: The NFL, MLB, the NBA and the NHL. From their 1939 NFL Championship, they have inducted co-founder, owner, general manager and head coach Earl "Curly" Lambeau; co-founder George Whitney Calhoun; executives Frank Jonet, Gerald F. Clifford, Fred Leicht, Emil Fischer and Lee Joannes; backs Arnie Herber, Hank Bruder, Clarke Hinkle, Joe Laws, Eddie Jankowski, Cecil Isbell, Andy Uram and Larry Craig; ends Milt Gantenbein and Don Hutson, Carl Mullenaux and Harry Jacunski; tackles Charles "Buckets" Goldenberg and Buford "Baby" Ray; guards Paul "Tiny" Engebretsen, Russ Letlow and Pete Tinsley; centers George and Bud Svendsen and Charley Brock; trainer Carl "Bud" Jorgensen and team doctor W. Webber Kelly; band director Wilner Burke; and the team's 1st broadcaster, Russ Winnie.

When the Packers won the NFL Championship again in 1944, these players were holdovers: Laws, Craig, Hutson, Mullenaux, Harry Jacunski; Goldenberg, Ray, Tinsley and Charley Brock. They were joined by backs Lou Brock, Tony Canadeo, Ted Fritsch and Irv Comp; journalist Art Daley; and the earliest Packer fan inducted, Al Schneider.

Lambeau, Herbert, Hutson, Hinkle and Canadeo have also been inducted into the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame.

The Packers wouldn't win the title again until 1961. Playing for them in between, but not on either of, those 2 titles, and inducted into their Hall of Fame have been: Quarterback Tobin Rote; running backs Bob Forte, Fred Cone, Howie Ferguson and Al Carmichael; ends Bob Mann, John Martinkovic and Billy Howton; tackle Dick Wildung; linebacker Deral Teteak; and safety Bobby Dillon.

In 1999, Hutson ranked 6th on The Sporting News' 100 Greatest Football Players, and, in 2010, 65 years after his last game and 13 years after his death, Number 9 on the NFL Network's 100 Greatest Players. In each case, he was 2nd only to Jerry Rice among receivers.

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December 10, 1939 was a Sunday. Baseball was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet.

There were 3 games in the NHL. The New York Rangers beat the Boston Bruins, 3-2 at the old Madison Square Garden. The New York Americans beat the Detroit Red Wings, 3-2 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit. And the Chicago Black Hawks beat the Montreal Canadiens, 3-2 at the Chicago Stadium. The Toronto Maple Leafs were not scheduled.

November 29, 1931: The Packers' 1st "Threepeat"

Johnny "Blood" McNally

November 29, 1931: The Championship of the National Football League is clinched... at Ebbets Field. The Green Bay Packers beat the football team named the Brooklyn Dodgers, 7-0, to advance to 12-1 on the season.

Coached by Earl "Curly" Lambeau, the Packers' star player was John Victor McNally Jr., from New Richmond, Wisconsin, across the State, close to Minneapolis rather than to Green Bay or Milwaukee. He starred at St. John's University in Minnesota, and then at Lambeau's Alma Mater, Notre Dame.

In 1922, while at St. John's, he and a teammate, Ralph Hanson, were passing a Minneapolis movie theater, showing the movie Blood and Sand, starring Rudolph Valentino as a Spanish bullfighter. McNally turned to the teammate, and, knowing that they could secretly make money playing professional or semipro ball on Sundays, the day after playing for Notre Dame, if they used fake names, and said, "I'll be Blood, and you be Sand." Hanson, as Ralph Sand, never played in the NFL, but John McNally was "Johnny Blood" from then on.

He played in the NFL for the Milwaukee Badgers, the Duluth Eskimos and the Pottsville Maroons, before joining the Packers in 1929, eventually helping them win 4 NFL Championships. In this 1931 season, the two-way halfback scored 2 touchdowns rushing, a then-record 10 receiving, and another on an interception return. He later served as a player-coach with the football version of the Pittsburgh Pirates, before they changed their name to the Steelers; and returned to St. John's to coach. (St. John's is now an NCAA Division III school, and has no connection besides name to the one in New York City.)

The Packers benefited from having their 1st 7 games all at home, probably because most NFL teams then used the biggest stadium in their city, which tended to be not a college football stadium, including one of the many "Memorial Stadiums" built to honor the dead of World War I in the preceding decade, but a baseball park, and most of those parks were occupied in September.

City Stadium

The Packers beat the football version of the Cleveland Indians, 26-0; the Dodgers, 32-6; the team that would become their arch-rivals, the Bears, 7-0; the football version of the New York Giants, 27-7; the Chicago Cardinals, 26-7; the Frankford Yellow Jackets, 15-0; and the Providence Steam Roller (no "S" on the end), 48-20.

The Packers went to Wrigley Field to play the Bears again, and won, 6-2. They hosted the Staten Island Stapletons, and won, 26-0. They were finally beaten by Ernie Nevers and the Cardinals, 21-13 at Wrigley, where they played their home games that season, rather than at Comiskey Park, the usual home of the Cardinals and baseball's Chicago White Sox.

The Packers rebounded, beating the Giants, 14-10 at the Polo Grounds; beating the Steam Roller, 38-7 at the Providence Cycledrome on Thanksgiving; and clinching against the Dodgers at Ebbets Field. The following week, they lost to the Bears, 7-6 at Wrigley Field. But it didn't matter, because the Portsmouth Spartans finished at 11-3, and could not catch the Packers.

The Packers thus won their 3rd straight NFL Championship. It had never happened before. Through the 2021 season, it has happened only once since: The Packers again, in 1965, 1966 and 1967, including Super Bowls I and II.

This remains the last time the NFL Championship has been decided without some form of postseason play.

Lambeau and McNally were both charter inductees into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963. Lambeau died in 1965, and Green Bay's new City Stadium was renamed Lambeau Field in his memory. McNally was one of a few 1920s players interviewed by NFL Films for their 1976 documentary Old Leather, and lived until 1985.

UPDATE: The Green Bay Packers have the largest team Hall of Fame of any team in the "Big Four" North American sports: The NFL, MLB, the NBA and the NHL. From the team's founding era, 1919 to 1928, but not on the 1929, '30 or '31 title teams, they have inducted tackle Howard "Cub" Buck, back Charlie Mathys, and team executive Andrew Turnbull.

From the 1929-30-31 title teams, they have inducted co-founder, owner, general manager, head coach and back Earl "Curly" Lambeau; co-founder George Whitney Calhoun; executives Frank Jonet, Gerald F. Clifford, Fred Leicht, Emil Fischer and Lee Joannes; backs Johnny "Blood" McNally, Verne Lewellen, Arnie Herber, Hank Bruder and Joseph "Red" Dunn; ends Lavern "Lavvie" Dilweg and Milt Gantenbein; tackle Cal Hubbard; guards Mike Michalske and Howard "Whitey" Woodin; centers Francis "Jug" Earp, Bernard "Boob" Darling and Nate Barragar; trainer Carl "Bud" Jorgensen and team doctor W. Webber Kelly; and the team's 1st broadcaster, Russ Winnie.

Lambeau, Buck, Dilweg, Dunn, Goldenberg, Lewellen, McNally and Michalske have also been inducted into the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame.

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November 29, 1931 was a Sunday. Only 2 other games were played that day. The Giants and the Steam Roller played to a 0-0 tie at the Polo Grounds. This turned out to be the last game the Steam Roller ever played. They had won the NFL Championship in 1928, but the Great Depression did them in.

And the Spartans beat the Bears, 3-0 at Universal Stadium in Portsmouth, Ohio. It still stands, as Spartan Memorial Stadium.

The day before, the Cardinals beat the Indians, 21-0 at Wrigley Field. And, 2 days before that, on Thanksgiving Day, these games were played:

* The Giants lost to the Stapletons, 9-6 at Thompson Stadium on Staten Island.

* The Bears beat the Cardinals, 18-7 at Wrigley Field.

* And, as I said, the Packers beat the Steam Roller, 38-7 at the Cycledrome.

Baseball was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There were 2 games played in the NHL. The New York Rangers beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 5-0 at the Chicago Stadium. And the Detroit Falcons beat the Montreal Canadiens, 3-2 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit. Ebenezer "Ebbie" Goodfellow scored the winning goal, 3:33 into overtime. The next season, the Falcons became the Detroit Red Wings.

September 14, 1919: The Debut of the Green Bay Packers

Curly Lambeau

September 14, 1919: The football team of the Indian Packing Company of Green Bay, Wisconsin, coached and captained by local hero and former University of Notre Dame quarterback Earl "Curly" Lambeau, a Green Bay native, defeats the Menominee North End Athletic Club, 53-0 at Hagemeister Park.

Thus debuted the team that would come to be known as the Green Bay Packers, the most successful team in the history of professional football, with 13 NFL Championships.

Because they were made up of co-workers, the Packers were a "company team," or what the British would call a "works side." This would also be true of the team that would become their arch-rivals, the Chicago Bears, who began the following season as the Decatur Staleys, representing the A.E. Staley Starch Company of Decatur, Illinois.

The Staleys/Bears, run by George Halas, were a founding team of the NFL in 1920. The Packers were not, but joined in 1921. The Packers won the NFL Championship in the single-division, no-playoff era, 3 straight times: 1929, 1930 and 1931. They won the NFL Championship Game in 1936, 1939, 1944, 1961, 1962, 1965, 1966 and 1967, meaning they won 3 straight NFL Championships for a 2nd time. No other franchise has done this. Vince Lombardi coached them to those last 5 titles. They also lost NFL Championship Games in 1938 and 1960.

Those last 2 titles, 1966 and 1967, were won by defeating the Dallas Cowboys, the former on New Year's Day 1967 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, the latter on New Year's Eve 1967, in frigid conditions that got the game nicknamed "The Ice Bowl."

That game was played at their new stadium, built in 1957, which, like its predecessor, was named Green Bay City Stadium. Curly Lambeau, who played for them from 1919 to 1929, coached them from 1920 to 1949, and later coached the Chicago Cardinals and the Washington Redskins, died before the 1965 season. In his memory, the 2nd City Stadium was then renamed Lambeau Field.

Statue of Lambeau outside the stadium

Those last 2 NFL titles sent the Packers to the games that would retroactively be named the 1st 2 Super Bowls, and they won both. After a long down period, they won Super Bowl XXXI in 1997, and lost Super Bowl XXXII in 1998, both under head coach Mike Holmgren. They have usually been at least competitive since. In 2011, they won Super Bowl XLV, under head coach Mike McCarthy.

Because Green Bay is a small city -- population 62,888, according to a sign shown in a 1967 NFL Films documentary, and 107,395 according to the 2020 Census -- the Packers often played regular-season games in Milwaukee, including the 1939 NFL Championship Game at the State Fair stadium in suburban West Allis, now a racetrack known as the Milwaukee Mile; and at Milwaukee County Stadium, home of baseball's Braves and later the Brewers.

They stopped doing this in 1994, as Lambeau Field had been expanded to be bigger than County Stadium, and it had become more costly to move everything from one "home field" to another and back than it did to stage the games in the much bigger city.

Green Bay is the only one of the NFL's early small cities to survive -- R.I.P. Providence, Rhode Island; Hartford, Connecticut; Rochester, New York; Pottsville, Pennsylvania; Canton, Massillon and Dayton, Ohio; Muncie and Hammond, Indiana; Decatur and Rock Island, Illinois; Racine, Wisconsin; and Duluth, Minnesota.

How? Halas, despite his rivalry with Lambeau, stepped in to use his influence to keep the Packers in the League. And the NFL's TV revenue-sharing agreement means that the Packers can compete on an even level with big cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Without that, most likely, the Packers would have begun "groundsharing" with the Brewers at the Milwaukee domed stadium now named American Family Field.

Since the team now known as the Arizona Cardinals, despite claiming an official connection to a Chicago athletic club that began playing professional football in 1898, hasn't played continuously since then, the Packers are officially the NFL's oldest franchise, older than the NFL itself. And their rivalry with the Bears is the NFL's oldest, and probably its best, helping to give first the NFC Central Division (1970-2001), then the NFC North Division, the nickname "The Black and Blue Division."

Interestingly, while the Packers named their stadium for Lambeau, and dedicated a statue of him outside (along with one of Lombardi), they have never retired his Number 20.

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September 14, 1919 was a Sunday. Because the Commonwealths of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania still prohibited professional sports on Sunday, it was difficult for pro football leagues to gain traction, prior to the NFL's founding the next season. And some baseball teams were forced to take the day off. But these baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees beat the St. Louis Browns, 8-1 at the Polo Grounds. The newly-acquired Carl Mays went the distance for the win. Wally Pipp hit a home run. George Sisler went 0-for-4 for the Browns.

* The New York Giants lost to the St. Louis Cardinals, 3-1 at Robison Field in St. Louis. Rogers Hornsby went 1-for-4. The Giants got only 4 hits, 2 by Art Fletcher.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Washington Senators, 9-4 at National Park (later renamed Griffith Stadium) in Washington. Ty Cobb went 2-for-3 with 2 walks, a stolen base, and 2 RBIs. Harry Heilmann went 4-for-5 with 2 RBIs.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Boston Braves, 1-0 at Redland Field (later renamed Crosley Field) in Cincinnati. Ray Fisher pitched a 6-hit shutout. Edd Roush, the Hall of Fame center fielder about to lead the Reds to a World Series win over the Chicago White Sox -- and he insisted until his death that the Reds would have won even if the White Sox had played on the level -- went 4-for-4.

* And the Chicago Cubs beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 4-0 at Weeghman Park -- later renamed Cubs Park and Wrigley Field -- in Chicago. Elwood "Speed" Martin allowed the Phils 10 hits, but kept the shutout.