“HILL THRILLS” and “ONE TOUGH JEW”
#806/#805
806. NEW YORK GIANTS VS CHICAGO BEARS
NOVEMBER 25, 1956
YANKEE STADIUM
QUALITY OF PLAY—6.55
DRAMA—7.87
STAR POWER—8.20
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.61
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—6.42
LOCAL IMPACT—7.06
TOTAL: 43.71
“HILL THRILLS”
The NFL in 1956 was a Brave New World, one freed at last from the hegemony of Otto Graham and the Cleveland Browns. Since joining the league in 1950 after dominating the old All-American Football Conference, the Browns and Graham ripped off six straight Eastern Conference titles, and won three of the six championship games they were in. But Automatic Otto retired after the 1955 season (one which he only agreed to play at the last moment), so for the moment the throne was empty.
The New York Giants figured to be the team to grab it—at least that was the consensus around town, particularly on Madison Avenue, where a new alliance was forming between pro football and the lucrative world of advertising and sponsorship. After a quarter-century at the Polo Grounds, the Giants had moved in ’56 to the far more spacious quarters of Yankee Stadium, a relo that augured a new mass-market appeal for both the team and the sport. With telegenic superstar Frank Gifford on board, and a star-studded defense led by Sam Huff and Andy Robustelli, the Giants leapt from also-ran status in the City to headliners, seemingly overnight.
It helped that the team was good—but were they good enough to end the team’s championship-free streak, which stretched back to 1938, a millennia in NYC terms? That was a question the 6-2 G-Men looked to answer a few days after Thanksgiving, when the Chicago Bears, leaders of the Western Conference and odds-on favorites to supplant the Browns in the NFL winner’s circle, came to the Stadium on a cold and blustery Sunday afternoon, November 25, 1956.
The Monsters of the Midway were dominant during the war years but had been trampled underfoot by Graham’s Browns; seeking to end a decade in the wilderness, Chicago was 7-1 and touchdown favorites on the road to smack the Giants. The Bears were led by star runner Rick Casares, a formidable o-line, and a typically tough defense featuring Hall of Famer Bill George. But it was a newer threat that separated this edition from previous Bear dens; a Forrest Gump-like speedster from the backroads of Alabama named Harlon Hill.
Hill was the son of a sharecropper from a small crossroads outside Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee border, a nowheresville called Killen, Alabama. He had little football experience as a youth but while attending Florence State Teachers College (now the University of North Alabama) and studying for an Education degree the school restarted its defunct football program (not enough men had enrolled over the previous years). Hill was a wide receiver on a run-first and -second and -usually third squad, but his blazing speed made him a threat every time he touched the ball. He scored on 19 of his 54 receptions at FSTC, and was named an NAIA All-American. “I never timed myself,” he told the Times once, “but I imagine I can run the 100 in 9.8 seconds.”
Unlike today, there wasn’t any widely shared game film to study or an NFL combine for Hill to blow up. He didn’t even know he had been selected in the 15th round of the draft by the Bears until a professor told him the news. "I had no idea I had been discovered,” Hill recalled. “I really did not know much about the National Football League...I did not know what to think.”
He knew how to play, though, and in 1954 he exploded on the pro scene, leading the league in touchdown receptions and yards per catch and blowing past NFL defensive backs as easily as he had the NAIA versions. He was named Rookie of the Year, and in 1955 was the first-ever Jim Thorpe Award recipient for MVP. He was compared to the immortal Don Hutson as the greatest end to ever play pro pigskin, and his unknown collegiate status, in a time when the college game was far more closely followed than the pros, added to his mystique.
Hill kept it going in 1956, catching passes from Chicago QBs Ed Hill and George Blanda en route to an amazing statistical season of 47 catches, 1,128 receiving yards and 11 touchdowns, enormous numbers in an unsophisticated passing league with a 12-game schedule. Stopping Hill was key to the Giants pulling the home upset.
And stop Hill they did, for most of the game. The heavy winds, gusting up to 30 MPH, helped ground long balls thrown in his direction. The 55,191 fans sipped cocoa and other liquids concealed in hip flasks while sitting under blankets, content with their team’s excellent defensive showing. Casares was held to 13 yards on 13 carries. Brown was briefly benched for his weak efforts. The Giants effort was “unbelievable, but it warmed the hearts of the frozen-toed, red-nosed throng like a cracking blaze in the fireplace,” wrote Gene Ward in the Daily News.
All the Bears had to show for three chukkers of work was a measly Blanda field goal. Meanwhile, the Giants, after an early field goal, used an interception by Huff to set up the first TD, a slant pass from Don Heinrich to Kyle Rote. George saved a score with an end zone interception, but the Giants scored after a Blanda fumble to take the 17-3 lead as the third quarter expired.
But from seemingly nowhere, Hill struck. The Bears used a bit of razzle-dazzle called the “Goose Special,” a trick play with the reinserted Brown pitching behind him to a motioning slotback, Bill “The Goose” McColl. McColl pulled up and heaved one down the left side, where Hill, sprinting past defenders Jim Patton and Dick Nolan, pulled it in and raced into the end zone for a stunning 79-yard touchdown that halved the lead to 17-10.
“The clock ticked on,” wrote Ward. “The lights had been turned on at halftime, and there were uneven, eerie looking shadows pockmarking the corners of the gridiron.” The teams exchanged turnovers in the gloom, and it seemed the Giants would be able to see out the remainder of play. The Bears had one last chance, starting at their own 20 with 1:50 to play.
The clock was down to 1:05 when the Bears ran the “Up-and-Out,” where Hill ran a corner pattern deep. Brown chucked it into a backing wind, and it landed at the goal line, where Hill dove for it, with Patton on his back. Hill bobbled it once, than with remarkable concentration worthy of the Thorpe Award winner snagged the carom, and fell across for the touchdown, an insane catch that recalls the famous Lynn Swann grab in Super Bowl X. Incredibly, the Bears had tied the game 17-17.
That’s how it ended in the days before overtime. “I’ve got to be happy with a tie after the poor game we played,” admitted Chicago owner George Halas. Hill finished with 7 catches for 195 yards and the 2 TDs, on a day when the Bears managed just 252 total yards.
The Giants had proven…something, but not that they could stop Hill.
AFTERMATH:
In a manner that somewhat echoed the Giants-Patriots regular season game from 2007 that foreshadowed the seismic Super Bowl upset, the Giants came away from the frustrating tie buoyed in confidence. The teams wound up atop their separate conferences, and tangled for the 1956 NFL Championship at Yankee Stadium (the title game alternated between home stadia of conference winners in those days), one even more frigid than it had been for the late-November encounter. The Giants annihilated Chicago, 47-7, to win their first title in nearly two decades. Hill was held to 6 catches for 87 yards, as much by the frozen field as by the Giants defensive backfield.
Hill was named first-team All-NFL after his sensational 1956 season, but after that fell victim to a horrible injury, a torn achilles tendon, one that in those days generally ended careers, which is why even the NFL history devotees among you probably haven’t heard of Harlon Hill. He clawed his way back to the lineup (in his memoir Hill says he was the first pro footballer to do so after a torn Achilles), but he was never the same player. In that sense, Hill was the forerunner to another Chicago great cut down in his prime, Gale Sayers. Hill retired after the 1962 season, and such was his excellence (and so poor the Bears passing attack in the intervening years) that he remains at or near the top of franchise lists in most receiving categories. In the 1980s the Harlon Hill Trophy began to be awarded to the top Division II player in the country. Hill died in 2013.
WHAT THEY SAID:
“The Giants had the Bears stopped colder than the wind which whipped through Yankee Stadium…and then the glittering upset suddenly disintegrated in front of 55,191 fans as a lean, racehorse end named Harlon Hill speared two block-long touchdown passes in a fantastic individual blaze of glory…Hill surpassed his advance notices in such tremendous fashion that the Giants, and the crowd, still are wondering how he did it.”
—Gene Ward, New York Daily News
FURTHER READING:
Victory After The Game: The Harlon Hill Story by Harlon Hill
VIDEO:
805. HENRY ARMSTRONG VS BARNEY ROSS
WELTERWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP FIGHT
MAY 31, 1938
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN BOWL
QUALITY OF PLAY—6.15
DRAMA—7.67
STAR POWER—7.40
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—8.41
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—6.67
LOCAL IMPACT—7.41
TOTAL: 43.72
“ONE TOUGH JEW”
Barney Ross may not have been the greatest Jewish fighter ever (that title probably belongs to Benny Leonard), but he was likely the most beloved. Born Dov-Ber Rasofsky to immigrants fleeing pogroms in the Russian Pale city of Brest-Livotsk, Barney grew up in the Chicago equivalent of the Lower East Side ghetto, Maxwell Street. There he banded together with the Jewish fighters and gangsters and schmatta merchants and other Hebrews whose only way out of the tenements were with toughness. He worked his way up the boxing ladder as a relentless, stylish welterweight, one who banged out all comers, spurred on by the memory of his father, who was murdered by thieves in his grocery store when Barney was a youngster.
Ross hid his profession from his mother, who like most Jews of the time was repulsed by boxing and thought it best left to the goyim. But Dov-Ber (both names mean “Bear”) was obviously a talent, and he was backed by not only the Jewish gangsters and bookmakers in the area but by the Capone gang. Al himself never missed a Ross bout, and often found grunt work for young Barney Ross (as he called himself professionally) to make a few extra shekels.
Ross won the Golden Gloves, turned pro, and had a sterling career, winning the welterweight crown in 1933 and holding it, save for a few months, for nearly five years. In 1938 he agreed to a title defense with an unusual challenger.
“Homicide Hank” Armstrong was, as we have discussed earlier on the list, an all-time great, and oft-overlooked himself in the annals of great boxers, partly due to his race, at a time when white ethnics drew the lion’s share of popularity. “You can’t Jim Crow a left hook” was Henry’s motto, but he also had a sensitive side, and he talked openly about the uselessness of pitting the fighters in some sort of ethnic grudge match. “We’re just fighting for the things we need,” he said. Armstrong was too busy eating to hate—he was wolfing down sandwiches and beer in order to make up a huge weight difference. Armstrong was attempting to leap from the featherweights (max 126 pounds), where he was champ, right over the lightweights (max 135) and into the welterweights (max 147).
By the time of the fight Armstrong weighed in at 133 pounds, not even a full lightweight. Ross was at 144, an advantage that seemed to guarantee victory, despite Armstrong’s greatness and comparative youth.
The venue for the fight was the Madison Square Garden Bowl, on Northern Boulevard and 48th Street in Queens. The Bowl was known as the “Graveyard of Champions,” for upsets were common there and titleholders oft beaten, including most famously Max Baer, the half-Jewish fighter who fell to the “Cinderella Man,” James Braddock, at the outdoor Queens venue in 1935. Three times the bout was delayed by a persistent rain. At last, the weather cleared, and when it did it was on an unseasonably chilly Tuesday, May 31, 1938, with the rain having ushered in a cold front. 38,290 “pneumonia addicts” crammed into the wooden bleachers of the MSG Bowl.
A massive throng traveled to Long Island City, mostly by subway (the 7 to Queen’s Plaza and a transfer to the E to 46th Street, then a short walk). It’s quite possible that riding the underground among them was a man surreptitiously snapping photographs, with a hidden Contax camera strapped to his chest, the lens peeking out a buttonhole, of subway riders for a planned book. In actuality, Walker Evans was so moved by the faces he saw and their privacy he felt he was invading that he sat on the images for twenty-five years, before at last revealing them in a much-ballyhooed book, Many Are Called. “The guard is down and the mask is off,” Evans remarked of subway riders. “Even more than in lone bedrooms (where there are mirrors), people’s faces are in naked repose down in the subway.”
The fight was mostly even for four rounds—if anything, Ross appeared to be the slightly sharper fighter. Then, without warning, as though falling off a cliff, Ross turned ring-ancient. He could no longer summon the snap in his punch or the movement in his legs. “The Dorian Gray moment” is how Ross’ biographer, Doug Century, described it. Armstrong’s killer instinct discerned there was no danger now in crowding the champ, and he savagely unloaded on Ross to the body. It was like watching a gangster beatdown with baseball bats and lead pipes. “A hurricane of leather,” in the words of one writer, poured down on Ross, as “Hurricane Henry,” aka the “Human Buzzsaw,” rained blows on the defenseless Son of Abraham.
Ross recalled not being able to avoid an ordinary punch thrown by Homicide Hank. “I had my left raised to strike and I saw that punch coming—and he hit me. Right away he hit me with the same punch, and followed that with a hook. I knew then. I knew that if Armstrong could hit me with that punch, then I was through.” Armstrong “set a pace that would have worn out War Admiral,” thought the Daily News, and by the eighth round there was no doubting the result—only how much suffering would accompany it.
Ross absorbed an hellacious beating, with one eye closed, cuts opened up in several spots, damaged ribs, and his face ravaged into a spongy appearance that left him unrecognizable. But he refused to quit. He later explained that if he had gone down, or not gotten off his stool, that it would be seen as an expression of Jewish weakness. And no one feared being seen as a weak Jew more than the Bear—especially at a time when global anti-semitism was rising rapidly. So he kept going. Cries to stop the fight were heard all over the Bowl. His manager threatened to end it after 14. “If you stop this, I’ll never talk to you again,” was Barney’s mumbled reply through smashed lips. He even talked ref Arthur Donovan out of ending the fight by promising never to step in the ring again.
And he made it through. Ross had been punched into oblivion by the new champ, but when it was over no one cared much about the title changing hands. The unanimous decision for Armstrong was a formality that was greeted with silence by the crowd, many of whom were openly weeping. Armstrong had added the welterweight crown to his belt collection, and his achievement of hurdling over the lightweight division entirely to grab the title at 147 pounds was unprecedented.
But few cared in the moment. Some calculated that Armstrong had thrown some 1,200 punches at Ross that evening in Long Island City, and a large majority of those whacked into Ross’ flesh. Ross never went down, never backed up, scarcely even ducked. He just took the horrible battering and came back and asked for more. “Downfall of a Titan” was the headline in Ring Magazine. Celebrated as he was in victory, Ross earned more love in defeat. “Well, one star sinks and a new one is born,” was how Barney put it.
As for his mother, she was seen weeping outside Barney’s dressing room. “Is my boy hurt?” She asked softly. “Why did they let him take such a beating?”
Gam zu l’toyve is the Hebrew expression she invoked—even this is for the best. “Now maybe he will quit,” said Mom.
AFTERMATH:
And quit he did. Ross was hospitalized for days, and when he finally managed to board the Twentieth Century Limited to Chicago, he needed long treatments from his personal barber and masseuse, Harry Gelbart (a cutup whose son, Larry Gelbart, was the wit behind the M*A*S*H* TV series), to make him presentable enough to greet his fans and the media in the Windy City. True to his word to Donovan, Ross never fought again, retiring after the beating with a record of 74-4-3. He was never knocked out, and retained his marbles.
Three years after the fight, while still a huge celebrity despite his retirement, Ross surprisingly enlisted in the Marines after Pearl Harbor at age 33, and insisted upon a combat role, though other well-known fighters stayed stateside in cushy gigs. Ross was sent with the 2nd Marine Division to Guadalcanal, where he won the Silver Star for a one-man stand against an overwhelming Japanese force that had ambushed his patrol. Barney became addicted to the morphine administered to him after being wounded on the Canal—his eventually kicking of the habit turned him into a fervent anti-drug campaigner. His final decades were picaresque, including a stint running guns to Jews fighting for a new homeland in the Middle East and testifying for his pal Jack Ruby during his trial for killing Lee Harvey Oswald. Ross, the ultimate tough Jew, died of throat cancer at just 57 in 1967.
WHAT THEY SAID:
“Why didn’t you quit? Did you want to get killed?”
“Champs privilege. A champ’s got the right to choose the way he goes out.”
—Grantland Rice exchange with Barney Ross
FURTHER READING:
Barney Ross: The Life of a Jewish Fighter by Douglas Century
VIDEO: