Two Flags For the Cardinals?

Pennants have not recently flown over the city of St. Louis. This year the baseball Cardinals brought one home, and the football Cardinals may bring another from the scramble of the NFL Eastern Division

By Edwin Shrake 

Sports Illustrated-November 09, 1964  

  

In St. Louis last week a bunch of guys with sledgehammers were knocking down an old burlesque house to clear ground for a new stadium, which means that by the spring of 1966 night baseball and Sunday afternoon football will have replaced sex in at least one area of the leafy and pleasant town on the banks of the Mississippi River. For the citizens of St. Louis, who sat 18 years in the gloom of Busch Stadium waiting for their baseball Cardinals to win another World Series, the new stadium is a merit badge for patience. A further reward may be granted to St. Louis fans before the first graffito is scratched into the concrete of the new stadium. The football Cardinals leaped off to a flourishing 3-0-1 record in the NFL's Eastern Division. Although they lost three of their next four games to the powerful Baltimore Colts, the rising Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants, who seem to have come back from wherever they had been, they are by no means out of contention. The Cardinals are two games behind the Cleveland Browns, .071 percentage points ahead of the Philadelphia Eagles and one game ahead of Dallas. Cleveland still must play Detroit and Green Bay, two strong Western teams, on successive Sundays. The Cardinals have one more shot at the Browns and, fortunately, are through banging helmets against the West.

But if the Cardinals are to be successful, they will have to provide their quarterback, Charley Johnson, much better protection than he got last Sunday against the Giants. The New York pass rush reached Johnson 11 times for 96 yards in losses, and under pressure he threw three straight interceptions and three times overthrew receivers who were open deep for certain touchdowns. Giant Quarterback Y. A. Tittle, who had been written off as finished by observers of little faith, finally began to throw the way he used to. With the help of tough running by rookie Backs Steve Thurlow and Ernie Wheelwright, Tittle bombed the Cardinals 34-17. Facing the somewhat erratic Steelers this week, the Cardinals will have to win if they intend to keep St. Louis hoping for another pennant to fly beside the one the baseball team brought home.

The football Cardinals and the baseball Cardinals are the same in name and playing site only. The baseball team is owned by August Busch, the Budweiser baron, who is a quick man at handing out rejection slips. The football team is owned 90% by Charles and Billy Bidwill, who also own a piece of Sportsman's Park racetrack in Chicago and a couple of dog tracks in Florida, and 10% by Joseph Griesedieck of the Falstaff Brewing Corp. The relationship between the football and baseball organizations is not always one of warmth and camaraderie, especially when Billy Bidwill reflects on the playing conditions at Busch Stadium, where Gussie Busch is the landlord. "We've had three colors of grass on the field this year—light brown, medium brown and dark brown," Billy Bidwill said last week. "The only water that ever gets on it is the sweat that falls off our players."

The Bidwill brothers had a serious romance with Atlanta during the spring and summer, but they decided to keep their franchise in St. Louis. "There was no legal or financial reason why we didn't go to Atlanta. They offered us a better deal than we will have here," said Billy Bidwill. "But we're going to stick it out and wait for the new stadium. It will have a nice, simple, easy-to-remember name. They're calling it the Civic Center Busch Memorial Stadium, and they'll probably put a statue of Stan Musial out front. Nearly anything will be an improvement over the park we have to play in now. Busch Stadium is a terrible handicap to us."

Football fans who are not lucky enough to get one of the 16,000 seats between the goal lines can agree with that. But at a time when baseball owners are changing affections faster than college sweethearts, the fans applaud the Bidwills' decision to let the Milwaukee Braves have Atlanta and to remain in a town where they have been loved not always wildly but well.

Because the World Series occupied Busch Stadium until October 15, the football Cardinals had to play their first five games on the road. For the home opener the 8,000 seats in the temporary East stands had not yet been erected, and season ticket holders in that section had to watch the game on closed-circuit television in an auditorium at Washington University. But the Cardinals made them happy by providing a weird and winning climax—they scored two touchdowns in the last 24 seconds to beat the Washington Redskins 38-24—and the band at half time strutted over and paid tribute to St. Louis patience by playing a number directly to the empty, dismantled East stands.

Adversity never has bothered the Cardinals. They are used to it. In 1962 they lost more than a dozen players because of injuries. Last year Running Back Prentice Gautt was hurt in the opening game and did not play again, although the Cardinals finished 9-5 for their best record since 1948. This season Linebackers Larry Stallings, Bill Koman and Marion Rushing, Running Back Joe Childress and Corner Back Jimmy Hill have been injured, Running Back Bill Triplett is ill with a tubercular infection and Split End Sonny Randle—the Cards' most dangerous deep threat—is out of action completely because of a shoulder separation suffered two weeks ago in the game against Dallas.

But this may be remembered as one of the years John David Crow (see cover) stayed on his feet and—perhaps—rallied the Cards to victory. In seven seasons Crow, more than any other single player, has become identified in the public mind with the St. Louis team. An All-America at Texas A&M and winner of the Heisman Trophy and Walter Camp Award, Crow was the No. 1 draft choice of the then Chicago Cardinals in 1957. In his first game he tore loose on an 83-yard touchdown run. That same season Crow also caught a 91-yard touchdown pass. But then injuries forced him out of several games, setting a pattern of bad luck that has plagued him throughout his pro career.

In 1961 Crow broke a leg. In 1963 a knee operation limited him to nine carries. Perhaps because of injuries, Crow has never again been the blasting runner he was in 1960 when he rushed for 1,071 yards and a 5.9 average. But he scored 17 touchdowns in 1962 for a Cardinal record, and it must be more than coincidence that with Crow reasonably healthy this year the Cardinals did get off to their best start since the franchise was shifted to St. Louis before the 1960 season.

Crow has not been pleased by his own performance this year. Recovering from his knee operation, he put himself through an arduous training program at his home in Pine Bluff, Ark., where he is in the construction business, and reported to camp at a trim 214 pounds. "We have a flock of good running backs," Crow said last week, "and I was determined to get my starting job back. I was trying to concentrate on my blocking. I think I've had a fair year at blocking and have helped the club. But something has been wrong with my running. I've never been real fast and at 29 don't expect to get faster. But the trouble this year is my balance. The first guy who hits me, I go down."

In preparation for the Giants, Crow spent much of last week viewing old movies of himself. "I'm trying to figure out if I'm doing anything different," he said. "It could be that I haven't been using the guards right. I have to follow the guards wherever I go and make my cuts off their blocks. Traps, wheel blocks [in which the center blocks over on the tackle and a guard pulls to block the middle linebacker], sweeps, everything the guards do dictates what I do, and I haven't been doing it the way I know I'm capable of doing it.

"I want to be part of this club," Crow said. "If we win this year, we're going to win for a long time. We're moving into an era of championships. We won't be one-shotters like Philadelphia or Chicago because we have a lot of youth. We have poise and confidence. Those are the marks of the great teams. With the great teams, like Green Bay was, you see them come onto the field and you can feel their poise and confidence. You can't imagine them losing a game. Well, this Cardinal team is going to be like that."

If Crow is right, much of the responsibility for the Cardinals' new status will rest on the slender shoulders of Quarterback Charley Johnson, a young Texan with cold, gray, unblinking eyes. Johnson studies defenses with those gunfighter's eyes as if daring them to make their move. But when the defenses do make sudden, unexpected moves—as the Cowboys did two weeks ago while beating the Cardinals 31-13—Johnson's eyes often go right on staring without knowing exactly what they are seeing. He does not yet have the experience to find alternate receivers quickly under a thundering rush such as the Giants presented him. A quarterback like Johnny Unitas of Baltimore can create a play where there is none. Johnson, in only his fourth season as a pro, has to stay with the plan.

But Cardinal Coach Wally Lemm keeps his offense fairly static. Lemm, like Vince Lombardi of Green Bay, installs his offense in training camp and sticks with it. He believes the Cardinals have the personnel to make it work. The offense relies on execution rather than on deception or surprise. And at operating such an offense, Johnson is a capable mechanic with a good arm.

At New Mexico State, Johnson called the plays for a backfield of Bob Gaiters, Pervis Atkins and Bob Jackson, all of whom had more glittering reputations than Johnson but none of whom made it as a pro of Johnson's class. When Johnson arrived at his first training camp the Cardinals looked at his thin, slight frame and waited to be convinced. The fact that he was working toward a doctorate in chemical engineering—which he expects to receive in another year at Washington University with a thesis on extruder dynamics—sounded suspiciously unathletic. "But we have confidence in him," Crow said. "You can see the poise in Johnson this year. He sets up strong."

However, Johnson now has one less receiver that he was counting on, and it is a very important deletion from the Cardinal offense. Split End Sonny Randle, who underwent surgery last week, was Johnson's favorite target on the deep pass. Randle had gained an average of 20.7 yards on each of his 25 catches this year and had scored five touchdowns. He was the man who got the compliment of double coverage.

With Randle out, a particularly heavy load has fallen on Tight End Jackie Smith and Flanker Bobby Joe Conrad. At Texas A&M, Conrad played in the shadow of Crow. But Conrad—who was once called "the best touch football player in America" by his college coach, Bear Bryant—has blossomed as a professional since he became a spread receiver. Last year, with the defenses nervously conscious of Randle, Conrad led the NFL with 73 catches. He is a quiet, grinning country boy who owns a feed store near his home town, Clifton, Texas (pop. 2,230). "I run a few old mama cows on a little piece of land down there, too," Conrad said last week. "It's only 250 acres. In some parts of the country I guess they'd call that a ranch. But down home it's only a little farm, not worth talkin' about."

The Cardinal defense can help make up for any offensive failure caused by the loss of Randle when the blitz is working well. The Cowboys designed their offense for their second Cardinal game on the theory that St. Louis would blitz most of the time. Dallas eventually forced the Cards into a more conservative defense. Against New York, the Cards tried a five-man line with two linebackers and managed to tackle a fast-throwing Tittle for a loss only once. This put a tremendous responsibility on the defensive backs, and the Cardinals have some good ones. Perhaps the best is 5-foot-9, 168-pound Corner Back Pat Fischer, the most consistent performer in a competent secondary. Fischer is adept at tracking such receivers as Jimmy Orr, Bobby Mitchell and Tommy McDonald, and he astonished the crowd at Cleveland this year by spearing the 228-pound Jim Brown head on, lifting him and hurling him backwards. "We didn't even try to throw into Fischer's area," said Dallas Cowboy Coach Tom Landry. "It's a real dogfight for a receiver to try to beat Fischer. We thought there were easier ways to play the Cardinals than to challenge him." The Cardinal veterans are as astonished by Fischer as the opposition is. "The veterans cut him from the squad two years ago," Crow said. "But Pat refused to give up and now he does a great job."

After six years in which nothing but an injury could, and often did, keep him out of the starting backfield, Crow has found new competition this season. The competition weighs 230 pounds and is named Willis Crenshaw. The Cards drafted Crenshaw as a future in 1962. "Going over our roster in the spring, we thought the best chance Crenshaw had to make the team was as a linebacker," Wally Lemm said. "Then we saw him as a running back in the two college all-star games this summer, and that's where we put him. He's a bull of a back."

Crenshaw, a St. Louis native who played at Kansas State, is the Cards' most exciting runner at this point—even in competition with Joe Childress, Prentice Gautt, Thunder Thornton, Bob Pare-more and John David Crow. He is all knees and elbows when he runs, and after a tackier gets past those flailing extremities there is an impressive amount of muscle to contend with. "Trying to get your arms around his thighs is like tackling anybody else around the waist," said Dallas Linebacker Chuck Howley. At a recent Junior Quarterback Club meeting in St. Louis, a young fan stood up and asked Crow why Crenshaw has not been allowed to play more. "He asked the wrong man that question," Crow said later. "I'm concerned about playing myself."

Crow is one of the veterans who can recall less pleasurable days, when the Cardinals were in Chicago and the crowds were small but antagonistic. "Some afternoons we would have 10,000 people in the stands, and 9,000 were there to boo us," said Dallas Linebacker Jerry Tubbs, a survivor of those campaigns. "We were the doormats for everybody to wipe their feet on," Crow said. "I'm not taking anything away from Pop Ivy [the previous coach] but when Lemm took over in 1962 he drilled confidence into us. He told us he wasn't going to make a lot of trades. He said we had the players to win the championship if we would believe in ourselves. He made us believe it. We're going to win."

If the Cardinals should make it this year, the NFL championship game would be played in Busch Stadium on December 27, less than three months after the baseball Cardinals won the World Series on that same brown grass. Two championships in one season would set off a celebration in St. Louis that would make Charles A. Lindbergh's 1927 parade down Lindell Boulevard seem like a rehearsal. But the team that wins in the NFL's Eastern Division will view the probable approach of the Baltimore Colts with considerably more alarm than the baseball Cardinals felt toward the New York Yankees.

The Cardinals Take Wing

In 1965 Coach Wally Lemm built a title contender in St. Louis on the impious philosophy that football need not be drudgery

Sports Illustrated-November 1, 1965

By Edwin Shrake

In the summer of 1945, a wartime year in which beef, gasoline and genuine football players were scarce, the Chicago Cardinals went to training camp at Carroll College in Waukesha, Wis. with only 21 men. One of the first things their equipment manager, Dutch Kriznecky, did was to write on the blackboard: "Scrimmage Wednesday against the Green Bay Packers." A great fellow for a joke, that Dutch. After reading the blackboard eight of the Cardinals quit.

That left 13, and when the bobtailed scrimmage came it was the left side of the Cardinal line against the right side of the Cardinal line. A tackle asked 14-year-old Bill Bidwill, one of the two sons of the Cardinal owner, please to listen in the huddle and then stand behind the back who was to carry the ball. That was the sort of key even an exhausted tackle with sweat and blood in his eyes could read, and the Cardinal linemen survived the afternoon. They got their revenge on Kriznecky later in the season by forcing him to suit up and threatening to make him play against the Giants in the Polo Grounds. Dutch weighed about 240 pounds and most of it hung over his belt, but in the year World War II ended the Cardinals could use anybody who knew enough not to put his helmet on backward and Dutch sat on the bench with his fingers in his ears.

In the past 20 years life has been a roller coaster for the Cardinals. They had what the late Charles W. Bidwill called "my dream backfield" of Paul Christman, Pat Harder, Marshall Goldberg and Charley Trippi and won the NFL championship in 1947. They won their division in 1948. In the 1950s they reverted to lowly ways, and the few people who turned up at Comiskey Park were there to boo and throw garbage at the Cardinals and to clap like seals for the opposition.Finally taking the hint, the Cardinals moved to St. Louis in March of 1960. Now they are approaching the crest again as one of the best teams in the East and may read of another scheduled scrimmage with Green Bay—this time a real one—for the NFL championship on January 2. But despite their return to prosperity, the Cardinals are still a loose, laughing, fairly uncomplicated group that Dutch Kriznecky would have admired. The man who keeps them that way is Wally Lemm, one of the most surprisingly successful and quietly unconventional coaches whoever lived.

To a majority of his brothers in the lodge of professional football coaches, Wally Lemm is an outlaw, a maverick, a renegade—practically an impious beatnik—and some of them openly pull for him to lose. Many coaches make radical changes in their offense from game to game. Not Wally Lemm. "With all these different defenses, the players have enough to think about," says Lemm. "The more you give them, the more mistakes they will make, and errors beat you quicker than anything else." Many coaches bring their players in for morning meetings during the week, break for lunch, then resume with meetings and practice in the afternoon. Not Lemm. "We just gather once a day and not very early. The players like that arrangement, and the most important thing is to keep them satisfied," says Lemm. Most coaches spend the off-season months from January until July studying films, reading and writing scouting reports,drawing circles and X's and poking around on college campuses during spring training. So what does Lemm do? In January he goes home to Lake Bluff, Ill. and stays there until camp opens in July, except for a monthly visit of two or three days to St. Louis to see what's happening at the office. Maybe the other coaches could forgive—and even envy—Lemm's attitude toward the off-season routine, but his lack of affection for a movie projector is appalling. Filmsare what have made professional coaching a laborious, year-round job, and you do not mess with a person's method of earning a living without making that person very angry.

Lemm was a freak,anyhow, when he first went to work for the Cardinals in 1942 as a dining-hall waiter at the Carroll College camp. He was an English major who wanted to be a sportswriter—reason enough to suspect him of erratic behavior in following years—and he was a senior halfback who broke his nose six times in eight games. Lemm went into the Navy as commander of PT 114, a boat that did not become quite as famous in the Pacific as PT 109. After the war Lemm won three championships as a college coach and served a couple of hitches as a Cardinal assistant coach. In 1961 he came out of temporary retirement and took over the Houston Oilers, who promptly won nine in a row and beat San Diego for the championship. He accepted the Cardinal head-coaching job in 1962, guided them to a 9-5 record in 1963 and raised them to 9-3-2 and a Playoff Bowl win over Green Bay last season. He has a chance to become the first coach to win championships in both the current professional leagues, and in his resonant, Midwestern voice he explains that he has had a lot of fun at it. "Football is supposed to be fun," Lemm says, "and if you treat the players like adults they will usually respond like adults. The game is not really simple anymore because the defenses change so much, but we try to keep it as clear,straightforward and pleasurable as we can."

Fun or no, the Cardinals missed the Eastern Division championship by half a game last season,and there was nothing pleasant about thinking how close they had come. In the locker room of the private school at which they train on a wooded hill in St.Louis, there is a sign reminding the players that the half-game cost them$7,500 each. For that money, the sign says, each player could have taken his family on a European vacation, put a down payment on a house, paid for a college education or done a couple of other interesting things, The sign winds up by saying: IF YOU WANT THESE, HIT HARD!

The Cards this year have that extra flow of confidence that eventually produces championships,and perhaps the biggest reason is the development of Quarterback Charley Johnson (see cover). With the slender Texan on the bench resting a bruised left shoulder last Sunday, the Cards were the victims of one of Washington Quarterback Sonny Jurgensen's hot days and lost, 24-20, to a team they beat 37-16 two weeks earlier. Last season Johnson was inclined to run his offense in a grab-bag fashion, leaping from one play to the next, more on hunch than from logic. This season Johnson's play-calling has continuity. The need for that has been impressed upon Johnson by Bobby Layne, who quit the Steelers in September when his pal Buddy Parker did, and signed with the Cardinals as quarterback coach. As a player Layne was a leader, a winner and a superior technician. At Cardinal practices, Layne may be relaxed, smoking and playing catch while the defense works, but when Johnson is operating the team Layne watches him like a school master. After a series of plays Layne will call Johnson over, talk to him earnestly and emphasize his points by pounding his fist into his palm. And Johnson listens. It is not that Charley did not listen to his coaches before,but there is something different about listening to a man who has been a championship quarterback. The words penetrate and Johnson, his ice-gray eyes looking directly at Layne, obviously believes what he is hearing.

"My contribution to Charley has been overrated," Layne says. "Charley was a finished quarterback before I came here. I wouldn't trade him for any quarterback in the league, and I mean that. I've helped him with a few little things, but the main thing I've done for him is to watch him all the time. WhenI was playing I didn't have anybody to watch me constantly and I tended to get sloppy, as anybody will occasionally. One of the most vital things for a quarterback to do is to get back into the pocket and set up quickly, especially with all the blitzes you see now. Charley knows I'm watching and he concentrates on setting up fast. If you keep doing that in practice, it becomes a habit."

Layne also offers suggestions for the Cardinals' game plan, and he has taught Johnson tricks of recognizing defenses and beating blitzes, although Layne says he was never much good at beating blitzes himself. "When I saw a blitz coming, I'd keep an end, both backs and the coach back to block for me." From his seat in the press box during games, Layne observes and talks to Johnson on the phone."I'm afraid I couldn't help him against the Steelers when they used that 5-1 defense against us, though," Layne said, laughing. "Charley asked me what to do against a 5-1, and I said how would I know, just throw the ball."

Johnson, who is working toward a Ph. D. in chemical engineering, is an intelligent and honest young man who likes to think before he acts. That is a handy trait for operating the Cardinal offense, which relies heavily on audibles. Although Lemm believes in making the game as simple as possible, Johnson may change plays at the line of scrimmage as many as 25 times in a game. Lemm's theory is that audibles are easier for the players to handle than complex blocking combinations. With some teams, for example, the quarterback may select an end run only to find the defense is not aligned as he expected. The offensive linemen then call code words to each other and thereby switch their blocking combinations to make the play go. But when Johnson steps over center and finds a defense that would stop his end run he calls an audible and changes the whole play. Nearly all the Cardinals' basic plays are set up to be used as audibles.

The players have faith in Johnson this year, whereas last year they were a bit dubious."Charley is a great quarterback, he makes this team move," says his sub, Buddy Humphrey, who has been in the NFL for seven seasons with three clubs and has hardly played enough to earn a letter but is a good backup man. Johnson also has more faith in himself than he did in 1964. "I'm steadier and more consistent," he says. "I take fewer chances. I don't force a play when the odds are against it anymore. Last year I began to doubt if my approach to the game was right. In defense of myself we had three sets of running backs last year and none was alike. I got confused and couldn't organize the running game. Last year I was hot and cold. I was throwing when I should have been running. The difference this year is a maturity of decision. I can exploit the defenses better. I presume I was immature. That doesn't mean I think I've arrived as a complete quarterback. I'm still inclined to be overly cautious. I think I need a better sense of balance in running the offense. When I get into a slump, timing is usually the problem and I tend to get overanxious."

Johnson has not been in a slump this season. Before last Sunday he had passed for 1,350 yards and 13 touchdowns with a 54.5 completion percentage and has thrown for more than 10,000 yards in five years. Johnson's fine start this season is due partly to his own improvement and partly to the club's. The Cardinals are wealthy in good, heavy running backs—with Willis Crenshaw, Prentice Gautt, Thunder Thornton and Bill Triplett—and have the most effective offensive line in the East. The line is young and has matured with Johnson, and the Cards use that strength to advantage. They like to run straight at the strongest of the opposing defenders, using a lot of wham plays in which one back goes through to clean house for the back following with the ball. They will pick out the opposition's toughest man—like say, the Cowboys' All-Pro tackle, Bob Lilly—and drive hard at him until they prove they can run through his area, and with that psychological edge Johnson will then step back and throw to one of his fine receivers. With Sonny Randle split to one side and Bobby Joe Conrad flanked tothe other, defenses are forced into double coverage on both, and Tight End Jackie Smith is open. Conrad, a rancher from central Texas, has already caught 23 passes, one for a 71-yard touchdown, this season. The long one was against the Steelers, and Conrad was cleared by Randle's down-field block. Randle,whose first name is Ulmo ("It's an old family name," he says, "but my son is not named Ulmo"), does not exactly specialize in blocking. When he cut down Brady Keys on Conrad's touchdown, Cardinal Publicist Joe Pollack was talking on the phone to Cardinal President Stormy Bidwill, who had stayed home because his wife was ill but wanted a long-distance commentary,nevertheless. Pollack described the play, and Bidwill's voice roared back over the phone: "Randle threw a block! Randle threw a block!" Randle really does not have to block. He has scored from 72 yards this year and has caught six touchdown passes. If the Cardinals cannot make it by running or throwing,they summon Jim Bakken, who kicked 25 field goals among the 115 points he scored in 1964 for a team record.

The offensive line—Team Captain and All-Pro Ken Gray at right guard, Ernie McMillan at right tackle, Bob DeMarco at center, Irv Goode at left guard and Bob Reynolds at left tackle—is a cohesive unit. Gray, who is from little Howard Payne College and has twice been introduced on the field as Howard Payne from Ken Gray College,says a big factor in the line's steadiness is McMillan. "Ernie is the best tackle in the East and, with Forrest Gregg now playing guard [for the Packers],probably the best tackle in the league," says Gray. "He never makes mistakes, and it's his consistency that keeps him from being noticed. He's nearly perfect. He does his job and then helps the rest of us. If there's a mix-up on our side of the line, it's me and not Ernie. There's no justice if Ernie isn't All-Pro."

The Cardinals are near the top of the league in defense as well as offense. Their defense is best known for the safety blitz by Larry Wilson. Defensive Coach Chuck Drulis, whose wife is the artist and sculptor who created the facade for the NFL Hall of Fame, began using the safety blitz several years ago with Jerry Norton. He is considering a double-safety blitz ("Drulis is a sadist," says Layne,and Drulis replies, "Quarterbacks make too much money"), which would shoot Jerry Stovall into the backfield with Wilson. But the Cardinal defense is solid enough not to have to depend on gimmicks. Left Corner Back Pat Fischer, 5 feet 9 and 170 pounds, is too small for his position, although he doesn't realize that and plays it superbly and with such intensity that he has ulcers.The other corner back, Jim Burson, came to the Cardinals in the 1963 draft as one of 13 from that crop who have made the club and now have the age and experience to form a nucleus for years ahead. The middle linebacker is Dale Meinert, a rancher from Lone Wolf, Okla. who arrived in camp this year wearing black Bermuda shorts and a cowboy hat and driving a red, air-conditioned pickup truck. Bill Koman, one of the league's more outspoken figures ("If I made as many mistakes in a whole season as Sam Huff makes in one game, I'd retire," he once said), is the weak-side backer behind End Joe Robb, the only Cardinal ever to play on a championship team.

Under Lemm's policy of fun with games, the Cardinals have flourished. They fly jets on most of their trips, their average workday is less than four hours, and they seem to believe that what they are doing is a great way to pass the time. Fischer is typical of their want-to spirit. Once last year he hit Cleveland's Jim Brownhead-on during a sweep and drove Brown back several yards. Another time Fischergrabbed a John Henry Johnson fumble and ran 49 yards to beat Pittsburgh in the last two minutes. That attitude is infectious.

There are some reminders of the Cardinal quirks of old. The Bidwill brothers appreciate a joke as thoroughly as Dutch Kriznecky ever did, but as devout Catholics they fired their cheerleaders for doing the twist while the band was playing The Notre Dame Victory March. "Sacrilege!" cried Billy Bidwill. Trainer Jack Rockwell leads the team in calisthenics, which is far from ordinary. Several of the players have formed a business syndicate to enrich their retirement years,and their first major investment was two shares of Falstaff beer. The Bidwills are very superstitious. Stormy Bidwill missed the last two Cardinal games in Pittsburgh and the Cards won both. "I guess Stormy will never go back to Pittsburgh now," says Billy.

Next season the Cardinals will move into a new 50,000-seat stadium on a rise above the Mississippi River. The stadium is not well suited to football—as no combination football-baseball stadium is—but compared to the old Busch Stadium where, from a number of seats, the fans cannot even see the field, the new park will seem lovely. And the Cards have prepared themselves mentally for nicer surroundings,particularly in the standings. "This is the second year in a row that we've been one of the top clubs," says Gray. "I think we've learned how to live with it."

Half a Game Out and One to Go

The St. Louis Cardinals ran their Eastern Division pennant halfway up the flagpole last Sunday by beating the Cleveland Browns. But the final effort on the hoist must come this week from the New York Giants

Sports Illustrated-December 14, 1964

By Edwin Shrake 

The Cleveland Browns ordered four cases of champagne delivered to the Bel Air West Motel in St. Louis last Saturday night. The bottles were stacked in a refrigerator to await what the Browns hoped would be a barrage of popping corks, spewing wine and gay laughter on Sunday afternoon. A taxi was ready to rush the champagne out to the Cleveland locker room at Busch Stadium the moment the Browns were certain of defeating the St. Louis Cardinals. Fortunately, someone in the Cleveland organization had the discretion to order the champagne on consignment. By Sunday night the four cases were on their way back to the liquor store.

The celebration was to have marked Cleveland's capture of the Eastern Division championship of the National Football League. It will have to be delayed at least until this weekend, and possibly for much longer. By knocking off the Browns 28-19 Sunday before a frozen but delighted home crowd of 31,585, the St. Louis Cardinals have forced the Eastern Division decision into the final hours of the season. Everything now depends on two games: the Giants vs. Cleveland in New York this Saturday and the Cards vs. Philadelphia in St. Louis the next day. If both the Browns and the Cardinals win, the pennant will go to Cleveland by a few percentage points. But a Cardinal victory and a Cleveland loss would bring the city of St. Louis its first pro football championship and another flag to fly beside the one the Cardinal baseball team won last October.

The football Cards are the hottest team in the East and have been the most opportunistic in recent games. After an awful mid-season slump during which they lost three of four games—including two to second-division teams, Dallas and New York—the Cards have been unbeaten for the past five weeks. The only nonvictory in that period was a 10-10 tie that was played—or, rather, wallowed—with the Giants on a Busch Stadium field turned swampy by a steady, pounding rain. The Cards beat Pittsburgh twice in the last five weeks, and in one of the games little Corner Back Pat Fischer epitomized the recent St. Louis play and spirit. He ripped the ball from the arms of John Henry Johnson and ran 49 yards for the winning touchdown in the last two minutes.

Last Sunday the Cardinals needed no such desperate heroics. It was the finest day of the year for the young, scholarly St. Louis quarterback, Charley Johnson (see cover), who was presented a plaque as an outstanding alumnus of New Mexico State just before the game. A couple of hours later Johnson slumped on a bench in the Cardinal locker room, taking small puffs off a cigar and smiling at his plaque. He had a red scratch under his right eye, a long, ragged claw mark along the right side of his mouth, a bleeding cut on the back of his neck and a large, swollen purple bruise on his right biceps. Truthfully, Johnson looked as if he had spent the afternoon being wrestled and chewed by a bear. His pants were undone and wadded around his ankles, and he was too tired either to pull them up or to take them off. But he was not too tired to exult at the comeback of the Cardinals.

"After that first New York game [which the Cardinals lost, 34-17] we decided we had to double up and catch up," Johnson said. "I went back to studying hard. I started taking films home with me again. We changed our entire practice procedure and worked harder. What had happened was we had got away from our preparations during the week. We were still getting high for the games, but we weren't really prepared. You can't get ready in one day. Each game is a week-long job. We quit making that error."

For the Browns, the Cardinals had developed a game plan in which they had confidence. The earlier Cleveland game was a 33-33 tie, and the Cards knew they could move the ball on the Browns' defense. They intended to stay fairly close to the tactics that had proved effective in the first game. The running attack was to concentrate on off-tackle slants and traps. The big difference in the St. Louis offense was that Split End Sonny Randle, one of the NFL's most dangerous deep receivers, was out of this second Cleveland game because of a shoulder separation (it has finished him for the season). As a consequence, prime responsibility shifted to Flanker Bobby Joe Conrad, a drawling Texan who is a tricky receiver but does not have Randle's speed.

The Cardinals hoped to throw repeatedly to Conrad on short sideline patterns and on what, in St. Louis terminology, are called inside slips and comeback switches. On the inside slip Conrad goes 15 yards downfield and breaks across the middle. On the comeback switch Conrad goes down 15 to 18 yards, whirls and runs two or three steps back toward Johnson. The Cardinals also hoped to catch Cleveland in one of the defense patterns in which the weak-side safety crowds up almost over the St. Louis weak-side guard. In that situation Johnson would start play action toward the strong side, then stop and throw back across the field—either to Conrad or to Randle's replacement, Billy Gambrell, who would be man-for-man on the safety and was expected to be clear.

In the first Cleveland game the Browns' linebackers came up fast to cover the St. Louis backs on swing patterns. The idea this time was to swing the backs again, and if the linebackers committed themselves early Johnson would throw to Conrad on quick slant-in patterns.

The man with the primary duty of tagging along with Conrad was Cleveland Corner Back Bernie Parrish, who has his faults on man-for-man coverage but who has contributed mightily toward putting the Browns into their current lofty position and probably saved Quarterback Frank Ryan's job as well. Late in the second Dallas game the Cowboys were leading, 16-13, when Parrish intercepted a pass and raced it in for the winning touchdown. Cleveland's No. 2 quarterback, Jim Ninowski, who is capable of brilliant afternoons but is not as consistent as Ryan, was warming up on the sideline. After Parrish's touchdown, Ninowski sat down again. After that Ryan played five good games in a row, going into last Sunday.

The interception by Parrish was typical of the Cleveland defense this year. The Browns—hurt by the loss through injuries of Defensive Tackles Bob Gain and Frank Parker—play a conservative defense. They seldom blitz. They lay back and give up voluminous yardage—the most, in fact, of any team in the league—and wait for the other side to make a mistake. That style gets the Browns kicked around quite a bit, but until last Sunday they had usually managed to come up with the big defensive plays, and they ranked fourth in the league in fewest points allowed.

The thing that worried the Cardinals was stopping the Cleveland offense. It used to be that to stop Cleveland meant only to stop Jim Brown, which is a considerable chore but could occasionally be done. After Ray Renfro lost his speed several years ago and retired, the Browns did not have a really fast target for the long pass. But they found one this season in rookie Flanker Paul Warfield, who can run like a sprinter and jump like a basketball player and already has mastered moves that most receivers never learn.

To complicate the St. Louis defensive problems, Warfield—who flanks to the left side—had to be covered by Jim Bur-son, a taxi-squad graduate who moved ahead of veteran Corner Back Jimmy Hill after Hill injured a knee. The St. Louis safetymen, Jerry Stovall and Larry Wilson, would flip-flop, with Stovall moving to the strong side. One or the other thus would frequently be available to help on Warfield. But that meant the 5-foot-9, 168-pound Pat Fischer would have to go it pretty much alone on 6-foot-4, 208-pound Cleveland Flanker Gary Collins, who was Fischer's nemesis in the first Cleveland game. (Collins caught six passes for 105 yards and one touchdown off Fischer and set up the Browns' last touchdown with a long reception.)

On Saturday morning the streets of St. Louis were slick with ice after the city was sideswiped by a midwestern blizzard. The morning paper informed the Cardinals, who were due at Busch Stadium for a 10 a.m. practice, that 245 people had been treated at hospitals for injuries from falls during the freezing rain and light snow of Friday. But the Busch Stadium field, which under the best of conditions is not much softer than a parking lot, had been covered and was frozen only around the edges of the tarp. So the Cardinals stayed off the field and used the morning to watch movies of Cleveland kickoff returns. The headier preparations had already been made.

Before the 1:05 p.m. Sunday kickoff, the temperature at the St. Louis airport was 12°. Smoke from factory chimneys around Busch Stadium hung white and frozen against a gray sky. In the Christmas spirit, an airplane flew over the stadium trailing a sign that read, "Deck the halls with battered Brownies." When the tarp was rolled off the field and the snow was scraped up and banked against the walls, the ground was bare and hard. The maintenance crew spread sand on the field to improve the footing. The Browns, who had arrived Saturday night an hour late because of the storm and strong headwinds, had brought along three sets of shoes—the regular ones, tennis shoes and some German-made footwear with small rubber cleats. None were magic.

In the middle of the first quarter Conrad tried to run a down-and-out pattern against Parrish and was crowded out of it. Conrad broke back toward the center of the field, which was the correct procedure, and arrived in the same area as St. Louis Tight End Jackie Smith. Johnson threw toward Smith and then fell under a tackle, thinking the pass had been completed. But Parrish, who had come looking for Conrad, caught the ball and ran it to the St. Louis 32. The Browns had been striking at St. Louis right Defensive Tackle Luke Owens, who has a chronic bad knee, and they continued to do so as they drove to the Cardinal 15. From there, Lou Groza kicked a 22-yard field goal to put Cleveland ahead. 3-0. But holding the Browns to a field goal inspired the St. Louis defense, and for the rest of the afternoon, although Groza kicked three more field goals, Cleveland could manage only one touchdown. It came on a tremendous diving catch by Ernie Green late in the game.

With Conrad getting double coverage when he flanked to the strong side, Johnson turned to his running game. In the first quarter Running Back Prentice Gautt limped off the field and beckoned to John David Crow, who recently has been benched for the first time since he was in the seventh grade. Crow responded well, slamming for 72 yards in 21 carries, most of them in tough, battering tries in short yardage situations. But it was a pass on a broken play that shot the Cardinals ahead to stay, in the second quarter. Johnson called a pass to Gautt and Cleveland put on a blitz. Gautt stayed behind to upend a Cleveland linebacker, and Johnson threw perfectly to Joe Childress down the middle for a 46-yard touchdown.

Johnson sneaked for another touchdown in the second quarter, passed to Conrad on the inside slip for another, and the Cards led, 21-6, at the half. From then on the St. Louis team was never in danger. Johnson wound up the day completing 15 of 22 passes for 167 yards and two touchdowns and running for two others himself.

Fischer, meanwhile, glued himself to Collins and did not allow the Cleveland flanker a single catch. Burson had more trouble with Warfield, who caught six for 91 yards but could not escape for a touchdown. The St. Louis defense, blitzing less than usual, kept Jim Brown down to a comparatively modest 68 yards in 14 carries. And the Cardinals hit Ryan very hard very early, causing him to hurry his passes. "I started off throwing short," Johnson said later as a doctor examined the lemon-sized lump that grew on the biceps of his passing arm after he was speared by a helmet in the first quarter. "Then they came up and I threw deep. Then they went back again, and I threw short. We stayed one jump ahead." Nearby, Guard Ken Gray, the St. Louis offensive captain, nodded. "Charley called all the right plays," Gray said. "He's never been sharper."

"We're going to prepare this week as if our Philadelphia game will be for the championship," said Johnson. "We have to think that way. We have to believe the Giants can beat Cleveland."

"We deserve to be the champions." Defensive End Joe Robb said. "We have a better team than Cleveland, especially if you take that big guy out of their back-field. If Y. A. Tittle can beat the Browns, we'll vote him a full share of the championship money."

Even if New York can beat the Browns, St. Louis is by no means home free. High and hot as they are, the Cardinals go into their game with Philadelphia suffering from what could be a critical loss: Fullback Joe Childress dislocated his shoulder in the Cleveland game, and is out until 1965. If St. Louis can overcome this disadvantage—and if old Y. A. has a great day—those four cases of champagne may still find a taker.

The Unhappiest Millionaire

Walter Wolfner sadly leads his football Cardinals out of Chicago and into prosperity

By Jack Olsen 

Sports Illustrated- April 04, 1960

The Buddha-shaped boss of the Chicago Cardinals professional football club raised his voice far above its usual mumble, banged a heavy fist on his desk and announced his opinion of the owner of the rival Chicago Bears. George Halas, said Walter Wolfner, is an asterisk, a semicolon, an exclamation mark and an ampersand. The wallpaper began to peel in Wolfner's office, as it always does when he talks about Halas. "I refuse to mention that man's name ever again!" Wolfner went on, then mentioned "that man's name" again and again. It was a stirring, definitive display of dislike.

Nine blocks to the north, in the back room of the George Halas Co. ("Sporting Goods, Wholesale, Retail"), the object of Walter Wolfner's disaffection said simply: "Wolfner? He's a real lovable specimen, isn't he?"

The discerning reader will observe the feathery touch of irony in the Halas remark. And students of human behavior will sense immediately that some terrible battle has taken place between these two old war horses, and that Wolfner has lost and Halas has won. And the reader will be right. The Cardinals, 8,000 pounds of powerful young manhood, are moving to St. Louis, leaving a clear field in Chicago for Halas and the Bears.

For 10 years Walter Wolfner has twisted and squirmed and kicked and wrestled to avoid being forced out of Chicago. In that period Wolfner and his wife, Violet, majority owner of the Cardinals, have lost something like $1 million on their team. But no matter. They had won the more important battle. They had not given in to Halas. Money was little or no object; the Cardinals were kind of a hobby with the millionaire Wolfners.

But not even millionaires want to throw away money forever. As Wolfner said in a calmer moment last week: "It just got so that we weren't having any fun here any more." Twice the Wolfners had offered Halas big money to move out of town (once, according to Wolfner, it was $500,000; another time it was $1 million). Halas turned them down.

The fact that Wolfner has every chance to strike pay dirt in the new location seems of little or no importance to him. A football-starved city is already trying to gobble up season tickets. Joe Griesedieck, president of the Falstaff Brewing Co. and a crackerjack TV sports entrepreneur on his own, shelled out $250,000 for a 10% interest in the Cardinals (leaving Mrs. Wolfner with 84.6%), promised a $50,000 bonus if the Cards made the move and guaranteed the sale of 25,000 season tickets. Gussie Busch, Griesedieck's beer rival in St. Louis who nevertheless is mindful of his civic responsibilities, is renting his baseball park to the football Cardinals for an undisclosed sum which insiders label ridiculously low. And in three years a new river-front stadium seating 55,000 will be ready.

Back in Chicago Halas will have things all to himself, which is what he has been fighting for all along. No longer will he be barred from televising the Bears' out-of-town games into Chicago because the Cardinals are playing in town that day. The measure of what it is worth to Halas to have the Cardinals leave is the fact that he is putting up almost all of a $500,000 "moving expense" payment from the league to the Cardinals. The league, for its part, has been eager to get the Cardinals into another city because in recent years the poor gates at Comiskey Park have cost every visiting team money. Visitors have had to content themselves with the routine $20,000 guarantee instead of 40% of a fat gate. This year the guarantee will be $30,000.

So everybody should be happy now—the Cardinals, the Bears, the National Football League and the fans. As befits a winner, Halas isn't saying much. He sits behind his desk on honky-tonky W. Madison Street in Chicago and wears a look of inscrutability. "Let Wolfner do the talking," he says, and Wolfner obliges.

There has been bad blood between the clans ever since 1947. Before then, when Chicago Sportsman-Gambler Charlie Bidwill and his wife Violet owned the Cardinals, all was sweetness and light. Bidwill and Halas were close friends; more than once Cardinal Owner Bidwill lent money to Bear Owner Halas to meet a payroll, a fact which Halas has graciously acknowledged. Bidwill's interest was based not only on friendship; he owned a bloc of Bears stock. When he died in 1947, the Bears stock went to his widow, who shortly after sold it back to Halas. Mrs. Bidwill later told Halas that she would let him keep $50,000 he owed her, in return for third-string Quarterback Bobby Layne. As Mrs. Bidwill, now Mrs. Wolfner, tells the story, Halas refused the trade, sent Layne instead to the New York Bulldogs for $50,000 cash and inserted in the contract a clause which barred Layne from ever playing for the Cardinals. That started the feud. When Coffee Broker Walter Wolfner married the Widow Bidwill on Sept. 28, 1949, he inherited the feud, and on him it looked natural.

An abrasive, pugnacious man, Wolfner seems to like a fight, has picked them with the Chicago press, with his coaches, with league officials and now with the dead. He accuses the late Bert Bell of setting up the annual league schedule to hurt the Cardinals and help the Bears, of deliberately assigning anti-Cardinal officials to Cardinal games, and of helping Halas in a campaign to run the Cardinals out of town. To hear Wolfner tell it, the Cardinals' lamentable financial record is the fault of George Halas and Bert Bell. Others say it is the fault of Walter Wolfner. Says a one-time Cardinal star: "Making him managing director of the team just because he married the owner is like you should send me to manage the New York Philharmonic."

A PUBLIC POPOFF

Even Wolfner's staunchest admirers sometimes find themselves apologizing for his popping off. When he first stepped into the job of managing director, he made a lot of enemies in a short time. He publicly criticized his coaches and often interfered in the coach's domain. In 1952, after the Cards won three straight games, Wolfner predicted a championship, a proclamation which not only proved wrong but also put undue pressure on the coach. In those early years of Wolfner's reign, Violet made the big decisions, as she does today. But more and more she has turned over important duties to her husband, and lately he has begun to show that he is learning the trade.

In defense of Wolfner, he is not entirely responsible for the fact that the Cardinals lose money. Losing money has been a Cardinal habit, not only because tough infighter George Halas has made it hard for them, but also because the Cardinals have had a sort of lackadaisical happy-go-lucky tradition in the front office. And some of this has communicated to the players and from them to the fans. In the Bidwill era, the Cardinals were known throughout the league as a pack of hail-fellows-well-met. It was anything for a laugh, make up the plays as you go along, and don't let's take this game too seriously. Once the Cardinals were tied with the Bears 28-28 with seconds to play. They had the ball deep in Bear territory and could have won easily with a field goal. Ignoring signals from Coach Jimmy Conzelman on the sideline, the Cards went for the touchdown. The providence which also watches over drunks crossing turnpikes came through for them, and they won 35-28. Not all their zaniness worked out so well, but a good time was had by all. It was even rumored that some of the Cardinals drank a little, but only if there was time before the game. This was the flotsam-jetsam group Walter Wolfner took over.

Also in Wolfner's behalf, and in the absence of any rebuttal by Halas, it must be pointed out that Bell apparently did render aid and comfort to Halas in his fight against the Wolfners; a higher court will have to judge Bell's motivations. Probably Bell felt in his heart the same as other NFL owners: that it would be good for all concerned, including the Cardinals, for the team to move to another town. For years Bell gave the Cardinals the short end of the scheduling stick, making them open the pro season in Chicago. This meant competing with the end of the baseball season and the World Series. More than once the Cardinals found themselves scheduled to open in Comiskey Park on the same day the White Sox were playing at home. According to Wolfner, Bell would answer his complaints by saying: "Work it out the best you can." This meant one year playing the opening "home" game at Buffalo against the New York Giants and another year rescheduling the opening game to be played after the season was over. Bell's explanation for shoving these opening dates on the Cardinals was that Halas had to build special stands in Wrigley Field after the Cubs moved out, and the stands took two weeks to erect. Wolfner offered to pay for the overtime necessary to put up the stands in five days; Halas said thanks but no thanks. Wolfner even took lawyers to NFL meetings to fight against the year-after-year inequities in the scheduling. He always lost by a vote of 11 to 1.

FOILED AGAIN

Bell also sided with Halas on another crucial case involving the Cardinals. Wolfner wanted to move the team to Northwestern University's Dyche Stadium (seating capacity 55,000) just north of Chicago, and he thought he had a deal with university officials. But Halas produced a 28-year-old agreement that the Cardinals would not play north of Madison Street and the Bears would not play-south of the street. "That agreement wasn't worth the paper it was written on," says Wolfner, "but Bell gave it the force of law by stepping in and ruling that it was valid. If we had moved to Dyche Stadium, we wouldn't be leaving Chicago now."

But no impartial observer can shed any tears over the Cards' departure, even though they were Chicago's first professional football team. The Cardinals bored Chicago and the Bears did not. The news of the transfer to St. Louis brought a vast ground swell of public ennui from Chicago fans. Said the Sun-Times: CARD LOSS FAILS TO JOLT CITY. Echoed the Tribune: CARDINAL MOVE NO SHOCK TO CHICAGOANS. The team had brought only two world championships to Chicago in 61 years (1925 and 1947). The Bears, on the other hand, seemed always to be in contention; even in losing seasons, they drew crowds.

SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS

The shift to St. Louis, where the new team will automatically be taken to the municipal bosom, may rejuvenate the Cardinals and turn them into winners. Says the canny Halas: "Wolfner will come up smelling like a rose, you wait and see. He's what you might call a fortunate victim of circumstance." Says Coach Frank Ivy: "We will be the only pro team there and will have the support of the fans right off the bat. In this emotional game where morale means so much, this undivided interest is going to work advantageously to the point where the football Cardinals will rise to the occasion and play much better than they did in Chicago."

Ivy has good reason to be optimistic. His team fumbled an extraordinary 48 times last season; yet it played far better football than its dismal (2-10) record showed. The Cardinals are young and fleet of foot, full of sass and vinegar. The spectacular long-gainer became the hallmark of the team last season; fans who attended Cardinal games could be almost certain of two things—that the Cardinals would lose and that with a full repertory of razzle-dazzle plays they would be interesting. Such a team can draw crowds in a new town. Such a team, given time and patience, can win championships. St. Louis and the unhappy Wolfners may have fat years ahead.