On Any Given Sunday: A Life of Bert Bell

15. Bracing for World War II

F inancially, Bert Bell and Art Rooney continued to struggle in 1942 despite experiencing their first winning season with a 7–4 record. The owners were so heavily in debt, said Barney Nagler in the New York Morning Telegraph, that they were confronted with the task of feeding their players without spending money that they didn’t even have. “Out of desperation, by necessity, Rooney made a deal with a grocer: The Steelers could eat on credit. Finally the grocer lost patience. He was doing a rushing business with the hefty footballers, but there was no money coming in and prospects for payment seemed remote. He refused to shell out another peanut until Rooney and Bell shelled out.” “It was a tough situation,” Bell told Nagler. “There we were with a team on our hands and no money to pay for groceries. We’re in this hotel room, Rooney and I, and we get a call from Harry Thayer. He was Alexis Thompson’s business manager with the Philadelphia Eagles, and we knew Alex had money so we’re happy to hear from him. He says, ‘Bert, you got a player named Steele?’ I put my hand over the telephone and said, ‘Art, we got a player named Steele?’ He thought for a moment and said we had a halfback named Steele. “I thought to myself that if we had a player named Steele he couldn’t be very good because we didn’t have any players, but I said to Thayer, ‘Steele? Sure. He’s a top player.’ Thayer said Thompson wanted to buy Steele for the Eagles. I said, ‘Okay, how much?’ He said he’d pay $1,500. I said, ‘Make it $2,000 and it’s a deal.’ Rooney shook his fist in my face. He said, ‘If they turn us down, I’ll kill you, Bert.’ I said to Thayer, ‘Let me know by five o’clock.’ When I hung up, Rooney was fit to be tied. “Here’s the picture. We have no money for food, a guy wants to give us $1,500 for a player and I’m holding out for $2,000. Now it’s five minutes before five o’clock and the phone rings. We both jump for it but I beat Rooney to it. It’s Thayer, sure enough. He says, ‘We’ll pay you $1,500 for 15. Bracing for World War II 94 • Chapter 15 Steele.’ I said, ‘Okay, Harry, but can you do us a favor? Can you send the $1,500 by Western Union?’” Ernie Steele, a halfback/defensive back from the University of Washington , ended up playing seven productive seasons for the Eagles. As if they didn’t have enough to worry about with their embattled Steelers, Bell and Rooney were sent on an undercover mission by their sometimes friend, sometimes adversary George Halas, the wily owner of the Chicago Bears. Halas had sent his 18-year-old daughter, Ginny, to attend Drexel Institute in Philadelphia, where his older brother, Walter, was football coach. Soon she was dating Ed McCaskey, a senior at the University of Pennsylvania , who asked her to marry him during the summer. Even though a wedding date was set for December, Halas still had not given his permission . Instead, McCaskey found a couple of visitors wearing camel hair overcoats and fedoras standing at his door. “One was smoking a cigar,” Ed said years later in Jeff Davis’s book Papa Bear: The Life and Legacy of George Halas. “The other took out his upper plate and introduced himself as Bert Bell and his cigar-smoking friend as Art Rooney. Both, they said, were with the Pittsburgh Steelers. ‘Halas sent us here to investigate you,’ Bell said.” Later that night, according to Steve Halvonik of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Bell and Rooney caught up with McCaskey at a smoky Philadelphia saloon where McCaskey was a singer. They had been to see Bill Lennox , the ticket manager at Bell’s alma mater, Penn. “Bill Lennox says you’re OK,” Bell told McCaskey. “If Lennox says you’re OK, you’re OK with me.”“If you’re OK with Bert, you’re OK with me,” Rooney said, taking the cigar out of his face. “And whoever said Halas was an angel?” A couple of months later, the young couple eloped and were married by a priest in Baltimore. But not before Halas asked Rooney to hire a private detective to check McCaskey out...