December 18, 1926: Philadelphia's 1st NFL Championship

Henry "Two-Bits" Homan

December 18, 1926: The Frankford Yellow Jackets can only manage a 0-0 tie against the Pottsville Maroons, despite being at home at Frankford Stadium in Northeast Philadelphia. But it's enough to win them the NFL Championship.

The Yellow Jackets were founded in 1899, as the Frankford Athletic Association. This was a community-based non-profit organization of local residents and businesses. In keeping with its charter, which stated that "all profits shall be donated to charity," all of the team's excess income was donated to local charitable institutions. The beneficiaries of this generosity included Frankford Hospital, the Frankford Day Nursery, the local Boy Scouts, and the local American Legion Post 211. The officers of the Association never received a salary or compensation for their work on behalf of the team.

In 1922, Frankford absorbed the Philadelphia City Champion team, the Union Quakers, and won the unofficial City Championship. Over the course of the 1922 and '23 seasons, they compiled a 6-2-1 record against teams from the National Football League. The NFL thus offered them a franchise for 1924, making them the 1st Pennsylvania-based team in the League.

They played at Frankford Stadium, a small stadium located at 6101 Frankford Avenue, also bordered by Devereaux Avenue, Hawthorne Street and Benner Street. It was 8 miles northeast of City Hall.

They were coached by Guy Chamberlin. The Nebraska native, just 32 years old, also played end on both offense and defense. He is the only man to play on 4 consecutive NFL Champions: The 1921 Chicago Staleys (who became the Bears the next season), the 1922 and '23 Canton Bulldogs, and the 1924 Cleveland Bulldogs. So the Jackets made it 5 in 6 years. And he was player-coach for all but the 1st of these.

His best player was his smallest: At 5-foot-5 and 150 pounds, quarterback and safety Henry Homan was known as "Two-Bits." He only played 6 seasons in the NFL, all for Frankford, but there are those who believe there is an unfair bias against the pioneer players of the NFL when it comes to voting for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and that Homan should be among the players elected. If he ever is, he will be the smallest player in it.

They were immediately one of the NFL's better teams, going 11-2-1 in 1924, to finish 3rd; and 13-7 in 1925, to finish 6th. They began the 1926 season on September 25, with a 6-6 home tie against the Akron Indians. To get around Pennsylvania's "blue laws," they often scheduled back-to-back games: A home game on a Saturday, and an away game against the same team the next day, Sunday. They hosted the Hartford Blues, beating them 13-0; then went to Hartford, and beat them again, 10-0.

They beat the Buffalo Rangers, 30-0 at home, then swept a home-and-home with the New York Giants, winning each game by a 6-0 score. They beat the Canton Bulldogs, 17-0 at home. Then came a home loss to the Providence Steam Roller (no S on the end), 7-6, followed the next day, Halloween, by a 6-3 win in Providence.

The loss to Providence would prove to be the only one of the season. They beat the defending NFL Champions, the Chicago Cardinals, 33-7 at Frankford. They beat the Duluth Eskimos, 10-0 at home; then the Dayton Triangles, 35-0 at home. On November 25, Thanksgiving, they hosted the Green Bay Packers, and won, 20-14. Two days later, they beat the Detroit Panthers, 7-6 at home.

The demand for tickets was too much for Frankford Stadium, and so their December 4 game with the Chicago Bears was moved to Shibe Park, home of baseball's Philadelphia Athletics. (It was later home to the Phillies and the Eagles as well, and renamed Connie Mack Stadium.) The Jackets won, 7-6, and that game effectively decided the title.. They avenged their loss again by beating the Steam Roller, 24-0 at home, before closing the season with the tie with Pottsville.

The day after that game, the Bears and the Packers played to a 3-3 tie at Wrigley Field in Chicago, but it wouldn't have mattered: The Yellow Jackets were 14-1-2, while the Bears were 12-1-3, and a win would only have brought them to 13-1-2. Under the format that was put in place in 1933, the Jackets and the Bears would have met somewhere in Philadelphia in the NFL Championship Game. (This being an even-numbered year, the Eastern Division Champions would have hosted.) But the Championship Game hadn't been developed yet, and the NFL was still a single-division League, so the Jackets were the Champions. Philadelphia had its 1st NFL title.

Guy Chamberlin was offered more money by the Cardinals, and so he left for them for 1927. The Jackets fell to 6-9-3 in 1927. They bounced back, going 11-3-2 in 1928, to finish 2nd; and 10-4-5 (that's right, 5 ties) in 1929, to finish 3rd.

Then came the Great Depression. The Jackets were just 4-13-1 in 1930. On July 27, 1931, Frankford Stadium burned down. Retail shops are now on the site. For the 1931 season, the team played their 1st 2 home games at Municipal Stadium (later renamed John F. Kennedy Stadium), and their last 2 at the Phillies' Baker Bowl, and finished only 2-6-1. Their last home game was, appropriately, on Halloween, a 14-0 loss to the Portsmouth Spartans. Their farewell was on November 8, a 13-0 loss to the Giants at the Polo Grounds. The Frankford Athletic Association turned ownership of the team back over to the League.

Under the belief, confirmed in November 1933, that Pennsylvania would legalize professional sports on Sundays, former University of Pennsylvania teammates and assistant coaches Bert Bell and James Ludlow "Lud" Wray bought the rights to the NFL franchise in Philadelphia; while Art Rooney did so for Pittsburgh, which had not previously had one. Rooney named his team the Pirates, and renamed them the Steelers in 1940. Bell and Wray named their team the Eagles, for the "Blue Eagle" logo of the National Recovery Administration, and the original colors were blue and yellow, before switching to green and white in 1935.

Contrary to popular belief, although playing in the same city, and their 1st home being Baker Bowl, the Yellow Jackets' last home, the Eagles are not the same franchise as the Yellow Jackets: Bell and Wray had bought only the right to operate an NFL team in Philadelphia, not the team itself. They never approached the Frankford Athletic Association with an offer to buy the Yellow Jackets' name or any of the team's assets, and no player on the '33 Eagles had ever played for the Yellow Jackets. 

The Eagles won the NFL Championships for the seasons of 1948, 1949, 1960 and 2017, but they properly do not claim the Frankford title of 1926, any more than the Philadelphia Phillies claim the Pennants and World Series won by the Athletics, or the Philadelphia 76ers claim the 1947 and 1956 NBA titles won by the Philadelphia Warriors, or MLS' Philadelphia Union claim the 1973 NASL title won by the Philadelphia Atoms.

*

December 18, 1926 was a Saturday. There was 1 other football game, a college game: The University of Utah beat the University of Hawaii, 17-7 at Honolulu Stadium. That ballpark was brand-new, and UH would play there until the opening of Aloha Stadium in 1975, while the Pacific Coast League's Hawaii Islanders played there from 1961 to 1975, before also moving to the new stadium. It was demolished in 1976.

Baseball was out of season, and the NBA hadn't been founded yet. There were 4 games in the NHL:

* The New York Americans lost to the Chicago Black Hawks, 4-2 at the Chicago Coliseum.

* The Ottawa Senators and the Montreal Maroons played to a tie, 0-0 at the Montreal Forum.

* The Boston Bruins beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 3-0 at the Boston Arena (now the Matthews Arena, used by Northeastern University, the oldest remaining arena in the country).

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 2-0 at the Mutual Street Arena in Toronto.

* And the New York Rangers and the Detroit Cougars -- forerunners of the Red Wings -- were not scheduled.

November 28, 1925: The "Old" Madison Square Garden Opens

November 28, 1925: Madison Square Garden, the 3rd building with the name, opens between 49th and 50th Streets, between 8th and 9th Avenues, in Midtown Manhattan, at the northern end of the Theater District. The front entrance is on 8th Avenue, topped by a marquee that will soon be world-famous.

Note: This was also the day that The Grand Ole Opry radio show premiered on Nashville radio station WSM. I have a separate entry for that event.

The 1st Garden was built at the northeast corner of 26th Street and Madison Avenue, catty-corner from Madison Square Park, in 1879. It had no roof. 

It was replaced in 1890 with a Moorish-style building, designed by the renowned architect Stanford White, that not only had a roof, but a tower with a roof garden where shows were hosted, and an apartment for White atop that.

Atop that was a statue of Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt. This statue, sculpted of gilt copper by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, was nude, and the hoity-toity critics of the day hated it.

One of the nastiest reviews came from a Philadelphia newspaper. Ironically, when the 2nd Garden was demolished, the Diana statue was taken to the Philadelphia Museum of Art (you know, the one whose steps Rocky Balboa ran up), and is still there. A copy now stands in New York's equivalent, the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

For both versions, the bowstring has been lost.

Otherwise, they are intact.

White would take showgirls up to his rooftop apartment, for a pre-movies version of a "casting couch." One was Evelyn Nesbit, whom he then made a star. She left him for a man named Harry Thaw. 

On June 25, 1906, jealous over Evelyn still having feelings for "Stanny," Thaw went to the roof garden during a show, and shot White. Evelyn's star faded: Late in life, she said, "Stanny White died. My fate was worse: I lived."

The New York Life insurance company owned the mortgage on the 2nd Garden, and decided to tear it down to build their new headquarters. George "Tex" Rickard, the top boxing promoter of the era, decided to build his own arena, where he wouldn't have to worry about anybody else's whims. He was lucky that New York Life was willing to sell him the rights to the name "Madison Square Garden": It was already a valuable brand name, which is a big reason why the "new Garden" has never sold naming rights.

When his Garden proved successful, he decided to build 6 copies, all over America. It didn't work out that way: He built the Boston Madison Square Garden in 1928 -- soon, it became simply "The Boston Garden" -- but died early the next year. He had gone to Miami to escape the cold New York weather, and to make a deal on a prizefight featuring up-and-coming heavyweight Jack Sharkey (who would hold the title from mid-1932 to mid-1933), but came down with appendicitis. This was before antibiotics, and he was dead at age 59.

The 1st event at The Garden was a six-day bicycle race. It sounds ridiculous today, but this kind of competition was huge in the "Roaring Twenties," especially in Europe, where it's still popular 100 years later. Teams of 2 men take turns riding for 6 days straight, from 6:00 PM to 2:00 AM, and the winner is the team that completes the most laps.

The 1st prizefight was held on December 8, for the Light Heavyweight Championship of the World. Paul Berlenbach defended the title by winning a unanimous decision over Jack Delaney. The following July, Delaney took the title from Berlenbach in a rematch at Ebbets Field.

Also in 1926, James. A. Farley, Commissioner of the New York State Athletic Commission, got the Madison Square Garden Corporation to allow racially-mixed fights. It was also Farley's insistence that Heavyweight Champion Jack Dempsey fight Harry Wills, the black man who was then ranked the Number 1 contender, or else not fight in the State of New York at all, that led to Dempsey caving in to an audience that didn't want to see such a fight. That led to his epic fights with Gene Tunney being held in Philadelphia and Chicago. Farley went on to become Chairman of the Democratic Party of the State of New York, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and the U.S. Postmaster General.

The Garden became known as "The Mecca of Boxing." Heavyweight Joe Louis, light heavyweight Archie Moore, middleweight Sugar Ray Robinson, lightweight Henry Armstrong, and more became internationally-known superstars from their fights at The Garden.

It would also be known as "The Mecca of Basketball," with collegiate doubleheaders starting in 1934. It became a secondary home court for the City's college teams: New York University (NYU), City College of New York (CCNY), Long Island University (LIU), Columbia, Fordham and St. John's.

It also hosted the annual National Invitational Tournament (NIT), starting in 1938. And it hosted what would now be called the NCAA Final Four in 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948 and 1950, the last of these won by CCNY, which also won the NIT that year, the only time this "double" was ever achieved. 

The point-shaving scandal the next year crippled college basketball in New York City, and not only led to St. John's, not accused in the scandal, being the only major program that has survived on that level, but the NCAA ruling that teams could no longer compete in both their tournament and the NIT. The Final Four did not return to the New York Tri-State Area until 1996, when it was held at the Meadowlands.

That scandal coincided with the 1st trip to the NBA Finals for the New York Knicks, who debuted at The Garden in 1946. The scandal may have saved the Knicks, and thus may also have saved the NBA: Hoop fans needed something to turn to.

Rickard, who didn't always do things on the up-and-up, offered use of The Garden to Big Bill Dwyer, a bootlegger, who founded a hockey team, the New York Americans. The 1st NHL team in New York debuted on December 15, 1925, losing to the Montreal Canadiens 3-1.

The "Amerks" did so well at the box office that Rickard, noting that New York had 3 Major League Baseball teams, decided that it could support 2 hockey teams. So he founded his own team, and when the media found out, they nicknamed the new team "Tex's Rangers." He decided to go with it, and the New York Rangers debuted at The Garden on November 16, 1926, beating the Montreal Maroons 1-0.

With Rickard's promotional skills, the Rangers proved even more successful than the Americans. World War II knocked the Amerks out, as the manpower drain caused by the American and Canadian military drafts forced them to suspend operations after the 1941-42 season, and they never returned.

But the Rangers, the Knicks, college basketball games, prizefights, circuses, musical performances, ice skating shows, rodeos, and an event that predated even the 1st Garden, the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, continued at The Garden through the 1930s, the '40s, and the '50s. Madison Square Garden was right up there with the Empire State Building and Grand Central Terminal as the most famous building in the City.

But poor sight lines, and the need for more space and more dates, proved the arena's undoing. In 1960, the Pennsylvania Railroad, desperate for money, sold the air rights above Pennsylvania Station, between 31st and 33rd Streets and 7th and 8th Avenues, to the Madison Square Garden Corporation. The plan was to build a new station on the site, and a new arena on top of that.

On the afternoon of February 11, 1968, the Rangers played their last game at "the Old Garden," a 3-3 tie with the Detroit Red Wings, which was followed by a final skate with several NHL legends, including the Wings' still-active Gordie Howe. That night, "the New Garden" opened with "The Night of the Century," a salute to the USO, the United Service Organizations, which since 1941 has worked with the armed forces to provide supplies and entertainment. The co-hosts were old film partners and golfing buddies Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.

The last event at the Old Garden was 2 days later, February 13, the Westminster Dog Show. Demolition soon began. The site became a parking lot while various parties haggled over what to build on the site. Finally, in 1989, the 778-foot office and residential tower Worldwide Plaza opened there. The Subway station at 50th Street includes a mural dedicated to the Old Garden.

Worldwide Plaza

*

November 28, 1925 was a Saturday. Baseball season was over. There was no NBA yet. It was the 1st season for the American Basketball League, but that could hardly be called "major league," and I can't find a list of games played there that day. For all I know, there might not have been any.

Three games were played in the NHL. The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Montreal Canadiens, 1-0 at the Mount Royal Arena in Montreal. The Ottawa Senators beat the Montreal Maroons, 3-2 at the Ottawa Auditorium. And the Boston Bruins beat the Toronto St. Patricks, 3-2 at the Mutual Street Arena. (The St. Patricks became the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1927.)

There were also college football games played that day. Most of them did not involve teams currently in major conferences. But one was the Army-Navy Game, played at the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan. Army won, 10-3.

Montana beat Montana State, 28-7 at Montana State's Dornblaser Field in Missoula. Baylor and Rice tied, 7-7 at Rice Field in Houston. And 2 games were played in the Pacific Coast Conference, the league that would eventually evolve into the Pac-12. Washington beat Oregon, 15-14 at Husky Stadium in Seattle. And Washington State beat USC, 17-12 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

There was 1 NFL game played on that Saturday. The Frankford Yellow Jackets beat the Green Bay Packers, 13-7 at Frankford Stadium in Northeast Philadelphia. The Jackets won the NFL Championship in 1926, but the Great Depression did them in, and they folded in 1931. The Pennsylvania law banning professional sports on Sunday wasn't repealed until 1933, making the founding and profitability of the Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburgh Steelers possible.

The Cleveland Bulldogs were then an NFL team. The Atlantic City Roses were not: They were a semipro team run by the Melrose Athletic Club of Atlantic City, New Jersey. But the Bulldogs played the Roses on this day, winning 12-0 at Bader Field, a minor-league ballpark next to the airport of the same name, where The Sandcastle, later the home of the minor-league Atlantic City Surf, was built.

And in English soccer, Arsenal beat North-East team Sunderland, 2-0 at the Arsenal Stadium, a.k.a. Highbury, in North London.

October 8, 1927: The Yankees' Murderer's Row, "The Greatest Team Ever"

The 1927 New York Yankees. In the top row,

Lou Gehrig is furthest to the left.

and Babe Ruth is 5th from the left.

October 8, 1927: The 1927 Yankees, considered one of the best teams in baseball history, live up to their reputation as they beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-3, to sweep the World Series in 4 straight.

But this Game 4 concludes in an unusual fashion: In the bottom of the 9th, with the score tied, Pirate pitcher Johnny Miljus loads the bases with no out. He begins to work out of it, striking out Lou Gehrig swinging and Bob Meusel looking. Facing Tony Lazzeri with 2 outs and an 0-and-1 count, Miljus uncorks a wild pitch, and Earle Combs races home with the winning run, to give the Bronx Bombers the sweep and their 2nd World Championship.

This is the only time the winning run of a World Series has scored on a wild pitch. Flip the last 2 digits, and in 1972 the Pirates became the 1st (and still only) team to lose a League Championship Series on a wild pitch, by Bob Moose against the Cincinnati Reds.

The team was known as "Murderer's Row" as early as 1926, when they won the 1st of 3 straight Pennants, but lost the World Series before winning it in 1927 and 1928. Right fielder Babe Ruth was the greatest player in the history of the game. Gehrig was the greatest 1st baseman ever. 2nd baseman Lazzeri, center fielder Combs, and pitchers Waite Hoyt and Herb Pennock joined Ruth and Gehrig in the Baseball Hall of Fame, as did manager Miller Huggins, general manager Ed Barrow, and owner Jacob Ruppert. Left fielder Meusel was a heavy hitter, and shortstop Mark Koenig and 3rd baseman Joe Dugan were decent players.

Dugan was circumspect about his role on the team: "It's always the same: Combs walks. Koenig singles. Ruth hits one out of the park. Gehrig doubles. Meusel singles. Lazzeri triples. Then Dugan goes in the dirt on his can." In other words, pitchers were tired of pitching to these guys, so they threw Dugan a brushback pitch.

Oddly, the team was the weakest at the most important position: They never settled on a starting catcher, with Pat Collins playing 92 games, Mike Gazella 54, and Benny Bengough 31.

Gehrig was the last active member of the Yankees' 1927 and 1928 World Champions, playing unti 1939. Koenig was the last living member, living until 1993.

On a 1998 episode of the ABC sitcom Sports Night, Casey McCall, the anchor of the eponymous show-within-the-show (played by Peter Krause), was asked to compare the Yankee team that had just gone 125-50 and swept the World Series with the 1927 edition. He remarked that the 1998 Yankees would win, because the 1927 Yankees would have been too confused by the airplanes flying overhead to focus on beating the 1998 version. Series creator and writer Aaron Sorkin must have forgotten that there were airplanes in 1927. Or maybe he thought the '98 Yanks played home games at Shea Stadium.

UPDATE: Among the Yankees' many traditions is Monument Park at Yankee Stadium. From the 1920s Dynasty, they have honored manager Miller Huggins, right fielder George "Babe" Ruth, and 1st baseman Lou Gehrig with Monuments. Huggins never wore a number, but the team retired Number 3 for Ruth a 4 for Gehrig, although they didn't start wearing the numbers until the 1929 season. They have also honored team owner Jacob Ruppert and general manager Ed Barrow with Plaques.

Despite having been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, pitchers Waite Hoyt and Herb Pennock have never been honored in Monument Park.

*

October 8, 1927 was a Saturday. There were no other baseball games. The NHL season wouldn't start for another month. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There was an NFL game played, but it wasn't worth watching: The Frankford Yellow Jackets and the Dayton Triangles played to a 0-0 tie at Frankford Stadium in Northeast Philadelphia.

However, there were college football games, including these:

* Illinois beat Butler, 58-0 at Memorial Stadium in Champaign, Illinois. The Illini went on to win the Big Ten Conference title, and were retroactively awarded the National Championship.

* The University of Pittsburgh beat West Virginia, eventually their arch-rivals, 40-0 at Pitt Stadium in Pittsburgh.

* Notre Dame beat the University of Detroit, 20-0 at Titan Stadium in Detroit. Now known as the University of Detroit Mercy, the Catholic school dropped their football program after the 1964 season. In their 1st season with the "Fighting Irish" name being official -- they had previously been the "Ramblers" -- Notre Dame went 7-2-1.

* Mississippi College, the team that went on to win the Southeastern Intercollegiate Athletic Association, forerunner of the Southeastern Conference were idle. Not to be confused with "Ole Miss" or Mississippi State, Mississippi College now play in NCAA Division II.

* Missouri beat Nebraska, 7-6 at Memorial Stadium (now Faurot Field) in Columbia, Missouri. The Tigers went on to win the Missouri Valley Conference, a precursor to the Big 8/Big 12.

* Texas A&M beat Sewanee, 18-0 at Fair Park Stadium in Dallas. The Aggies went on to win the Southwest Conference title, finishing undefeated at 8-0-1.

* Stanford beat Nevada, 20-2 at the old, but then-new, Stanford Stadium in the San Francisco suburb of Palo Alto, California. Stanford, then known as the Indians but later as the Cardinal, won the Pacific Coast Conference title, and beat Pittsburgh in the Rose Bowl.

* Army beat Marquette, 21-12 at Michie Stadium in West Point, New York.

* Navy beat Drake University, 27-0 at Thompson Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland.

* Among New York City teams, Columbia beat Wesleyan University, 28-0 at Baker Field in Manhattan. New York University beat Alfred College, 65-0 at Ohio Field in The Bronx. City College of New York and St. Lawrence University played to a tie, 14-14 at Weeks Field in Canton, New York. Fordham were idle. Columbia and Fordham now compete in NCAA Division I FCS (formerly Division I-AA); while NYU, Wesleyan and St. Lawrence compete in NCAA Division III; and CCNY no longer play football.

* Among New Jersey teams, Rutgers lost to Lafayette, 56-0 at Fisher Field in Easton, Pennsylvania. And Princeton beat Lehigh, 42-0 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton. Rutgers and Princeton used to be arch-rivals, while Lafayette and Lehigh still are. Princeton, Lafayette and Lehigh now compete in NCAA Division I FCS.

And in English soccer, North London's Arsenal beat Portsmouth, 3-2 at Fratton Park in Portsmouth, Hampshire.