October 9, 1924: Soldier Field Opens

October 9, 1924: Municipal Grant Park Stadium opens on Chicago's lakefront. It would be renamed Soldier Field the next year. It would host many big college football games, including the annual Chicago College All-Star Game between a team of recently graduated players and the defending NFL Champions (who nearly always won) from 1934 to 1976.

And the name is "Soldier" Field. Never "Soldiers" or "Soldiers' Field." There is a Soldiers Field in Boston, part of Harvard University's sports complex.

Its best-known event was the 2nd fight between Heavyweight Champion Gene Tunney and the man from whom he took the title, Jack Dempsey, on September 22, 1927. In the 7th round, Dempsey knocked Tunney down, but he forgot to obey a new rule (which he, himself, had demanded): The referee would not start the count until the standing fighter retreated to a neutral corner. This gave Tunney an extra 5 seconds to regain his bearings, and he got up at the count of 9 (14), and went on to beat Dempsey in a decision.

It became known as the Long Count Fight, and, to this day, some people think Dempsey was robbed. He wasn't: The film clearly shows Tunney watching the referee's count. He could have gotten up at the count of 4, which should have been 9. Dempsey wasn't robbed. He didn't even blow it. He got beat, fair and square. may have had what remains the greatest attendance ever for a U.S. sporting event, with figures ranging from 104,000 to 130,000, depending on who you believe.

It definitely was the site of the largest football crowd ever, 123,000, to see Notre Dame play USC a few weeks after the Long Count. That record stood until a 2016 Tennessee-Virginia game was staged at Bristol Motor Speedway in front of 156,990. The 1926 Army-Navy Game was played there, in front of over 100,000.

The original south side gate. Along with the columns,

it was the only thing saved from the original stadium.

The Chicago Rockets of the All-America Football Conference played at Soldier Field in 1946, '47 and '48, changing their name to the Chicago Hornets in '49. They were not admitted into the NFL with their AAFC brethren in Cleveland, San Francisco and Baltimore. The Chicago Cardinals played their last season there, in 1959, before moving to St. Louis. The Chicago Fire of the World Football League played there in 1974. And the Chicago Blitz of the United States Football League played there in 1983 and 1984.

Amazingly, the Chicago Bears played at Wrigley Field from 1921 to 1970, with the occasional single-game exception. The story I heard is that Bears founder-owner-coach George Halas was a good friend of both the Wrigley and Veeck families, and felt loyalty to them, and that's why he stayed at Wrigley even though it had just 47,000 seats for football.

But I heard another story that Halas was a Republican, and didn't like Chicago's Democratic Mayor, Richard J. Daley (whose son Richard M. later broke his father's record for longest-serving Mayor), and didn't want to pay the city Parks Department a lot of rent. This is believable, because Halas was known to be cheap. The real reason the Bears moved to Soldier Field in 1971 was Monday Night Football: Halas wanted the revenue, and Wrigley didn't have lights until 1988.

Games of the 1994 World Cup and the 1999 Women's World Cup were also held at the old Soldier Field. MLS' Chicago Fire made it their 1st home ground, playing at the old version from 1998 to 2001, and the new version from 2003 to 2005, and returning there starting in 2020.

Soldier Field during the 1994 World Cup

A 2002-03 renovation, during which the Bears played "home" games at the University of Illinois' Memorial Stadium in Champaign, demolished all but the south gate, and the iconic (if not Ionic, they're in the Doric style) Greek-style columns that used to hang over the stadium, and are now visible only from the outside. It doesn't look like "Soldier Field" anymore: One critic called it The Eyesore on the Lake Shore.

Capacity is now roughly what it was in the last few years prior to the renovation, 61,500. And while the Bears won 8 Championships while playing at Wrigley (it took the Cubs until 2016 to win even 1 title there), they've only won one more at Soldier Field, the 1985 title capped by Super Bowl XX. The Monsters of the Midway have been tremendous underachievers since leaving Wrigley, having been to only 1 of the last 35 Super Bowls, and losing it.

The reduced atmosphere, and thus the reduced home-field advantage, may be a part of that, much as similar reductions in atmosphere, passion and on-field performance has been blamed by Washington Redskins fans on the 1997 move from the in-the-District Robert F. Kennedy Stadium to the suburban FedEx Field, Yankee Fans on the 2009 move from the old Yankee Stadium to the new one, and Arsenal fans on the 2006 move from Arsenal Stadium (a.k.a. "Highbury") to the Emirates Stadium.

UPDATE: In 2023, the Bears announced a plan to tear down the Arlington Park horse-racing track, 27 miles northwest of the Loop in Arlington Heights -- nearly twice as far from downtown as O'Hare International Airport -- and build a dome there, possibly groundsharing with baseball's White Sox. Nearly every Bears fan was against this.

So an alternative plan was drawn up, to build a stadium on the parkland just south of the current one, keeping the only parts that remained from the original stadium: The columns on each sideline, and the southern gate with its dedication to the military personnel.

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October 9, 1924 was a Thursday. There was only one score on this historic day. Game 6 of the World Series was played at Griffith Stadium in Washington. The Washington Senators beat the New York Giants, 2-1. The next day, the Senators won the World Series for what turned out to be the only time.

September 22, 1927: The Long Count Fight

September 22, 1927: One of the most legendary prizefights ever takes place at Soldier Field in Chicago. The crowd has been listed at as high as 150,000, but was, officially, 104,943.

Jack Dempsey became Heavyweight Champion of the World on July 4, 1919, right after World War I. He was a polarizing figure, a devastating puncher known for his early knockouts, but also for being called a "slacker," because he had worked in a shipyard and continued to box during the war. 

Gene Tunney, grew up a poor Irish-American kid as well. That aside, he couldn't have been much more different from Dempsey: Instead of a rural area, he grew up in Manhattan, and was a highly intelligent, very cultured, well-read man. He enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, and that's where he learned to box, earning him the rather redundant nickname "The Fighting Marine."

He was no stereotypical gruff "leatherneck" (an old term for Marines). He decided to treat boxing as a science. The term "the sweet science" had not yet been used, but Tunney treated it as such. He even preferred to call it "pugilism" rather than "boxing" or even "prizefighting."

On September 23, 1926, Dempsey got into the ring with Tunney, at the 105,000-seat Municipal Stadium in Philadelphia, later renamed John F. Kennedy Stadium. The crowd was listed at 120,557, which is still the highest official total for a prizefight, ever, anywhere in the world. Dempsey was not in shape, and was incredibly rusty. Tunney sensed this before the fight, and saw his suspicions confirmed during it. Tunney won the fight on a decision.

A rematch was set for Soldier Field in Chicago a year later, on September 22, 1927, in front of 104,000 people. Tunney led for the 1st 6 rounds. But in the 7th, Dempsey made a breakthrough, and knocked Tunney down. against the ropes. The Mauler smashed 2 right hands and 2 lefts into Tunney's chin, and he was staggered. Four punches later, and Tunney's knee had hit the canvas. For the 1st time in his boxing career, Gene Tunney had been knocked down.

People listening on the radio reported that they couldn't hear any of what happened next, such was the noise from the crowd in the stadium. Talk about the "Roaring Twenties": That term first came about in regard to the rising stock market, but the decade may never have had a louder roar than this one.

But Dempsey did not immediately go to his corner when Tunney went down. As he had usually done in his previous fights, he just stood there. Referee Dave Barry remembered the new rule, and told Dempsey to get to a neutral corner. Dempsey still didn't do so: He just stood there, watching Tunney, waiting for him to get up.

Finally, Barry seemed to give Dempsey a little push, and point, and Dempsey got the hint. Only then did Barry turn back to Tunney, and swing his arm down, with his index finger pointed, and yell, "One!"

The fight was filmed, and, at some point, an early expert in film graphics put a graphic of a stopwatch in the corner of the screen. From the moment Tunney's knee hit the floor until Barry counted, "One!" it was a full 5 seconds. In other words, Tunney got 4 seconds more than he should have.

Tunney was clear-headed and clear-eyed, and he was going to stay down until the count of, "Nine!" so that he could get all the rest to which he was legally entitled. Having done exactly that, Tunney got up before Barry could bring his arm back down and yell, "Ten!" He had spent a total of 14 seconds down, 4 more than the usual limit.

In the 8th round, Tunney managed to knock Dempsey down. Interestingly, Barry began counting without checking that Tunney had reached a neutral corner -- and he hadn't gotten there yet. Dempsey got up, and finished the round and the fight, but it was no contest. When the bell rang to end the 10th and final round, Dempsey knew he'd lost. 

Dempsey's fans, and people who may not have liked him much but bet money on him, were furious. It became known as "The Long Count Fight." At the time, there was a federal law prohibiting the transportation of boxing movies across State Lines, meaning that most people never actually saw the fight until years later. People who heard the legend of the Long Count presumed it was true, based solely on hearsay, not on seeing the film.

And people who didn't previously like Dempsey began to sympathize with him. The sense that he may have been treated unfairly actually helped him: He had lost the fight, but won over a lot of fans, many of whom began appreciating him more in hindsight than they did when he was knocking out Jess Willard, Georges Carpentier and Luis Firpo.

Tunney defended his title once more, and retired as Champion, never making a comeback. He and Dempsey, like many other pairs of boxing rivals, became and remained good friends. Tunney lived until 1978, Dempsey until 1983.

In 1950, the Associated Press named Dempsey the greatest boxer of the 1st half of the 20th Century. Their other honorees: Babe Ruth for baseball, George Mikan for basketball, Howie Morenz for hockey, Bill Tilden -- despite his recent scandal -- for men's tennis, Suzanne Lenglen for women's tennis, Man o' War as the greatest racehorse; and Jim Thorpe for football and track and field, and as greatest athlete overall.

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September 22, 1927 was a Thursday. Tommy Lasorda, the Hall of Fame manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, was born.

Often a travel day in Major League Baseball, this time, there was a full slate of games:

* The New York Yankees beat the Detroit Tigers, 8-7 at Yankee Stadium -- the old one, but still new. The Yankees led 6-4 going into the 9th inning. The Tigers took a 7-6 lead. Cliché Alert: Walks can kill you, especially the leadoff variety. Mark Koenig drew a walk to lead off the bottom of the 9th, and Babe Ruth hit a walkoff home run.

Herb Pennock was the winning pitcher, in relief of Wilcy Moore. The other way around was much more common. The home run was Ruth's 56th home run of the season. A new record of 60 was within reach.

* The New York Giants split a doubleheader with the Pittsburgh Pirates at Forbes Field. The Pirates won the 1st game, 5-2; and the Giants won the 2nd game, 7-1.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers were swept by the Cincinnati Reds, in a doubleheader at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. In the opener, Chuck Dressen, later to manage the Dodgers to 2 Pennants, and Pid Purdy hit back-to-back doubles to give the Reds a 2-1 win in 12 innings. The Reds won the nightcap, 4-3.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Chicago White Sox, 2-1 at Fenway Park in Boston. Cleo Carlyle's single won it for the BoSox in the bottom of the 10th.

* The Philadelphia Athletics swept a doubleheader with the Cleveland Indians at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. The A's won the 1st game 4-3, when Jimmie Foxx singled home a run in the bottom of the 13th inning. The A's won the 2nd game 5-2.

* The Washington Senators beat the St. Louis Browns, 10-7 at Griffith Stadium in Washington.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 8-4 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

* And the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Boston Braves, 6-5 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.