Talkin’ Football 9/17/2013

Talkin’ Football

By Jack Coll

9-17-13

      A few weeks back Donna and I woke up to one of those rare summer Sundays, a beautiful day with nothing to do.  This summer situation called out for a road trip so we spun our imaginary wheel that covers Pennsylvania and nearby states and the arrow landed on the town of Centralia Pennsylvania.

    Centralia, a town with a population of 20, is the town in the mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania that has been burning for 50 years.  On May 27, 1962, the fire department set the town’s landfill on fire in an attempt to clean things up for the Memorial Day celebration.  As it turned out the fire ignited an underground coal vein, venting hot and poisonous gases, up into the town venting into residents basements of their homes.

In the following 50 years our government has spent more than 42 million dollars for a relocation program for residents, purchasing and demolishing their homes.  As Donna and I drove the streets of the once populated neighborhood, we found it somewhat eerie to see curbs and sidewalks where families once thrived, but all the houses were gone.  Our government bought 520 houses and relocated more than 1,000 residents.

Our drive to view the remains of the Centralia mine fire took us through the small city and former borough of Pottsville Pa.  On the way back to Conshohocken we detoured into Pottsville for a little look around.   We found the 4.2 square mile city very charming with some great architecture buildings.  Pottsville is a town a lot like Conshohocken but four times the size of our borough.  Pottsville was founded in 1806 and incorporated as a borough in 1828, twenty two years before Conshohocken was incorporated as a borough.  Named after John Potts the borough charted as a city in 1911 and has a current population of 14,000 residents.

While Pottsville’s anthracite coal history began before 1790, the town is known for two things in my book.  In 1829, D. G. Yuengling and Son established the oldest operated beer brewery in the United States, and the long running and well known dispute with the National Football League and the Professional Football Hall of Fame over the 1925 Pottsville Maroons professional Football Team.  The Pottsville Maroons, who joined the National Football League in 1925, posted a 10-2 record.  The Maroons beat the Chicago Cardinals at Comiskey Park in Chicago for the NFL Championship.  However the title was nullified just six days after the hard fought victory in Chicago by a series of what was described as controversial management maneuvers still debated today.

The Pottsville Maroons were founded in 1920, played in an Independent League and were known as the Pottsville Eleven, in 1924 the team joined the Anthracite League and changed their name to the Pottsville Maroons,  in 1925 the Maroons joined the National Football League, they moved to Boston in 1929 where they became the Boston Bulldogs.

The Pottsville eleven beat up the Green Bay Packers, Frankford Yellow Jackets, and the Canton Bulldogs in route to the championship, but they failed to play the New York Giants team also in their inaugural year.  The Giants posted an 8-4 season in 1925, one of the highlights was beating the Chicago Bears in front of 70,000 spectators at the old Polo Grounds, and Red Grange was the draw, considered the best football player ever.    The Giants also had a marquee player in Jim Thorpe, the Olympian Triathlon winner of 1912 was on the down side of his career and only played three games with the Giants, and Thorpe was 36 years old and was contending with two bad knees and alcohol.

There was a Conshohocken connection on that Giants team, Johnny “Jack” McBride of West Tenth Avenue was a record setting standout at Syracuse University who joined the Giants in 1925.  McBride was a fullback, quarterback, and kicker for the Giants.  Although they lost to the Frankford Yellow Jackets twice in 1925, they did beat the Chicago Bears team with Harold “Red” Grange and a guy by the name of George Halas playing at right end.  Halas of course later went on to become coach and owner of the Chicago team.  In 1927, just three years into the league the Giants won a NFL championship with a 11-1-1 record and amazing enough Conshohocken’s own Jack McBride was named the NFL’s Most Valuable Player, over Harrold “Red” Grange.  Another Conshohocken connection to the 1927 New York Giants championship team was the head coach Earl Potteiger, who played for a number of the early Conshohocken Professionals championship teams.   McBride played in the National Football League for ten years before retiring.  According to an old friend of mine Howard Ramsey, he stated that he ran into McBride on Broadway in New York sometime in the late 1930’s, and Jack was selling insurance.

The National Football League was founded in 1920, Conshohocken was in the midst of a number of championship seasons in the eastern seaboard leagues.  The Conshohocken Pros coach and owner Bob Crawford was offered a spot in the National Football League several years before the Pottsville Maroons

were invited to join.  Crawford was concerned about the $25,000 license fee, and weather the Conshohocken Community Field located at Eleventh Avenue and Harry Street could accommodate the necessary crowds to help fund the franchise, Crawford refused the invitation to join.  It should be noted that a photograph of the Conshohocken Pros Team of 1919 hangs on a rotating basic at the Professional Football Hall of Fame in Canton Ohio.  The 1919 Conshohocken Team was the Eastern Seaboard Champions of professional football.

Should you ever take a field trip through the coal region of Pennsylvania, and find yourself in Pottsville, drive down Center Street and you’ll see the Pennsylvania State Marker honoring the Pottsville Maroons, it’s really quite a story.  Should you ever find yourself in Jim Thorpe Pennsylvania, it really isn’t a story at all.  It turns out that while you can visit Jim Thorpe’s grave located on the very out-skirts of the town, Jim Thorpe never set foot in Mauch Chunk.  Carved into one of the granite markers, ”Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world” King Gustav V, Stockholm Sweden, 1912 Olympics.”

The town of Jim Thrope is perhaps one of the most beautiful, charming, picturesque towns in the state of Pennsylvania, its main street is a scene right out of Hollywood with its small shops and picturesque store fronts.  Should you ever be traveling the northeast extension of the Pennsylvania turnpike, it’s certainly worth the visit.

Conshystuff will write a series of articles throughout the fall looking back at our borough’s football history.  We’ll look back on the early pro days of the sport, Conshohocken High School, St. Matthew’s High School, Plymouth Whitemarsh High School, the Steelers and of course, the mighty Conshohocken Golden Bears.