Sports Biblio Digest, 6.21.20: George Preston Marshall, the NFL’s Last Dinosaur
News, Views and Reviews About Sports Books, History and Culture
Also In This Issue: UK Sports Books Awards Shortlist; ‘Only A Game’ Signs Off; Brian Piccolo; ‘Ball Four’ At 50; Bobby Bell; Gerd Müller; Jason Whitlock; Remembering Murray Olderman, Wes Unseld and Bill Gildea
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As statues are being ripped down across America and elsewhere as part of a continuing racial reckoning following the death of George Floyd, the bronzed and sculpted likenesses of some notable sports figures have been among the fallen.
In Washington, D.C., not far from the U.S. Capitol, a statue of George Preston Marshall, the founding owner of the Redskins, came down on Friday, which was Juneteenth, the official date of celebrations of slave emancipation.
Unlike other events, this removal was ordered by a city agency and proceeded with workmanlike precision by a professional crew, instead of frenzied pillaging by gleeful mobs.
At the same time, the franchise that bears an equally problematic nickname announced it was retiring the jersey number of one of its greats, wide receiver and longtime team executive Bobby Mitchell, who died in April and integrated the last all-white team in the National Football League.
That was in 1962, as the Civil Rights era was on the rise and the Kennedy Administration was keen to respond. Months before, federal authorities threatened to forbid the Redskins from using what later became known as RFK Stadium.
Without specifically identifying him, the Redskins also replaced Marshall’s name on the lower level of FedEx Field, where they now play, with that of Mitchell.
To say that Marshall had antiquated views about race was a grand understatement, even for his own time. Among the original co-owners of the Boston Braves NFL team at the start of the Depression, Marshall moved the renamed Redskins to Washington in 1937.
Marshall fit right in in a highly segregated city, running a woeful NFL franchise further into the ground, at least in the standings. A businessman who owned a chain of laundromats, Marshall was a flamboyant showman who was ahead of his time in other matters.
As the first owner of an NFL team in the South, Marshall embraced radio and television long before his peers, airing his dreadful team across a vast part of the country during an era of strict regional broadcast practices (My stepfather, who grew up in Atlanta and loved the Vince Lombardi Green Bay Packers, hated being fed a steady TV diet of the awful Redskins.).
When pressed about the racial makeup of his team, Marshall was frank: He didn’t want to offend his largely white Southern radio and TV audience. Shirley Povich of The Washington Post, long a thorn in Marshall’s side, once wrote that “Jim Brown, born ineligible to play for the Redskins, integrated their end zone” three times for the Browns against Washington, rendering the score “separate and unequal.”
The Redskins made Syracuse running back Ernie Davis, the first black Heisman Trophy winner, the No. 1 pick in the draft for the 1962 season, but he refused to play for Marshall. His draft rights were swapped to Cleveland for Mitchell, who said years later about playing in Washington that “we had trains coming here from down South. ‘Dixie’ was the National anthem, and you had to stand up there and sing it or he’d give you the devil. But that’s how he made his money.”
(Davis died in 1963 from leukemia and never played in the NFL.)
After being elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame the same year, Marshall suffered a stroke, and gave up control of the Redskins before his death in 1969. Months later, the Redskins hired Lombardi to revive a moribund franchise, but he was dead from cancer within a year.
Under the ownership of Jack Kent Cooke and with Joe Gibbs as head coach, the Redskins flourished, winning three Super Bowls, including the first won by a black quarterback, Doug Williams, in the late 1980s.
As unrepentant as Marshall was about race, and as easy a target as he remains for contemporary activists wanting to purge racists, Confederates and anyone else in the public square not to their liking, the desire to sweep away history needs to be tempered with a respect for unpacking the lessons of the past.
Events like what we’re seeing could be teaching moments, not just for the young unschooled in any kind of history (knuckleheads in San Francisco on Friday busted up a statue of Ulysses S. Grant), but for anyone unaware of the full lives of the men (and a few women) these statues and memorials are named after.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame, under pressure to scrub Marshall from its ranks, said its by-laws don’t allow it. By-laws can always be changed, of course, but in the zeal of the moment, and with a long hot summer just underway, something of a cooling-off period would be wise.
The legacy of George Preston Marshall can serve as a symbol of what the NFL and one of its franchises once was, how far they’ve come, and as continuing calls to change its nickname mount, illustrate the sizable task of reconciliation that remains.
A Few Good Reads
It’s been 50 years since Chicago Bears running back Brian Piccolo died of testicular cancer, and the team’s website offers this retrospective; Jeannie Morris, whose 1971 book became the basis for the hit TV film “Brian’s Song,” said this week that she’s never had a problem with never earning any royalties, and has turned over profits from the book to Piccolo’s family and the cancer foundation named after him;
Bobby Bell, Hall of Fame linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs, just turned 80 years old this week. He played during the era of racial strife in the late 1960s, a time filled with experiences including his segregated upbringing in North Carolina that he recalls today for anyone willing to listen, and learn;
Gerd Müller, regarded as one of soccer’s greatest goal poachers—who struck 68 times for West Germany and 552 for Bayern Munich—is 74 years old now, and is suffering from dementia, and doesn’t recognize many of those he played with, including Franz Beckenbauer. But their memories of “Der Bomber” remain vivid, as they recall his trademark line: “A goal is a goal, all that matters is that it crosses the line;”
In July 1960, the first European Nations Cup in soccer was played, and got immediately tangled up in Cold War politics, as well as the machinations of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, before the Soviet Union prevailed in the finals against Yugoslavia;
Bombastic sports columnist and TV commentator Jason Whitlock has left Fox Sports and is partnering with a fellow renegade, Clay Travis, at Outkick. Whitlock’s writing a column again and plans are in the works for a podcast;
Spencer Hall’s maverick career as a college football writer started out with a humble blog, Every Day Should Be Saturday, which yielded him a stint at SB Nation. He’s taking on new horizons while maintaining his Gonzo persona;
A wave of layoffs hit public media outlets across the U.S. this week, including WBUR radio in Boston, where the sports program “Only A Game” has originated for 27 years. That run comes to an end in the fall, as it’s one of the casualties stemming from revenue drops due to COVID-19. Retired host Bill Littlefield was kind enough to have me on a couple times in the 1990s and early aughts when I was covering women’s sports;
In June 1970 a tell-all by a journeyman pitcher was published, and it rocked the baseball establishment. Mitchell Nathanson, author of a new biography of Jim Bouton, suggests it was the most significant baseball memoir ever written:
"In an era of social change, when seemingly everybody was questioning everything, Ball Four brought at last the ethos of the times into the staid world of baseball."
Sports Book News
The shortlist is out for Britain’s Sports Books Awards, and the titles are a romp to look through. What this American loves the most (in addition to the fact that there is such an award, something that no longer takes place in the States), are the breakdowns by various sports, as well as biographies, autobiographies, illustrated books and sports books for children. The winners will be announced from Lord’s Cricket Ground on July 15 in a virtual ceremony.
Illustrating The Games
Murray Olderman got his start in sports media when the newspapers still ran plenty of caricatures of athletes and coaches, and parlayed that into a 60-year career as a cartoonist, author, feature writer and news executive.
Olderman, who died last week week at the age of 98, was transfixed by the sports cartoons of Willard Mullin of the Brooklyn World-Telegram and other papers and as his skills grew, so did his confidence and creativity with the pen.
After serving in World War II, he got a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University, worked at newspapers and then began doing a sports cartoon, as well as features and other work for a newspaper syndicate.
Olderman wrote, illustrated or contributed to nearly 20 books, including illustrated volumes on pro football, a biography of Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis and two books about Europe at the end of World War II.
More tributes to Olderman here.
Passings
Wes Unseld, 74, was a classic undersized NBA post player who earned induction into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and whose quiet life and persona reflected how he played on the court. A college star at Louisville, he admitted he didn’t didn’t have the right attitude to play at nearby Kentucky and integrate the SEC;
Bill Gildea, 81, wrote with an elegant touch about any sports topic, on deadline and in short pieces for 40 years at The Washington Post, and as a sports book author. As former Post sports columnist Leonard Shapiro noted, Gildea was in line to succeed the legendary Shirley Povich, then moved over to the paper’s dazzling Style section, honing a style and voice all his own. Gildea's books include works about his beloved hometown Baltimore Colts, Indiana high school basketball and a biography of Joe Gans, America’s first black boxing champion in 1906.
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The Sports Biblio Digest is an e-mail newsletter delivered on Sunday. You can subscribe here and search the archives. This is Digest issue No. 207, published June 21, 2020.
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