Last Team Standing by Matthew Algeo

Author:Matthew Algeo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2006-06-29T16:00:00+00:00

As was customary, the release was published nearly verbatim in the Chicago papers. Almost immediately, the phone at the Chicago office of the War Manpower Commission began ringing. Callers were angry. Why were these men being allowed to leave important war jobs to play pro football? William Spencer, the top WMC official in Chicago, decided to find out. Declaring it “a matter of public morale,” Spencer said his investigation would determine whether there was any “irregularity” in the transfer of the players from essential industries to a nonessential one.

“If rules have been violated,” Spencer promised, “I will attempt to straighten them out.”

As part of a “job stabilization program” begun in late 1942, the WMC required a worker to obtain a “certificate of availability” from his employer before leaving a war job. This was supposed to prevent a worker from leaving his employer in a lurch when he quit. Employers were not allowed to hire a worker who did not have a certificate of availability. The goal of the program was to keep workers from leaving essential jobs without good cause—to simply go to a higher paying job, for example. In fact, it bound workers to their employers: You needed your boss’s permission to quit a war job. At issue was whether the five Bears in question had obtained their certificates of availability. Also at issue was the question of which employer was “regular” and which was “vacation.” If the football club was considered the players’ regular employer, then their war work was merely “supplemental,” and not under the jurisdiction of the WMC. However, if the Bears were their vacation employer, that was another matter altogether.

Ralph Brizzolara, who was running the Bears while George Halas was in the Navy, insisted the team had done nothing wrong.

“If there has been any violation,” he said, “it was entirely inadvertent.”

To NFL Commissioner Elmer Layden, the whole situation was keenly embarrassing.

“The league clubs have always cooperated in the war effort,” the image-conscious commissioner said. “If there are any irregularities we want to know about them too and they will be corrected. The war comes first.”

The possible repercussions were enormous.

“If the players failed to obtain certificates of availability,” Spencer said, “it would be doubtful if they would be permitted to continue playing football. They might have to return to essential industry.”

There was also the possibility that the players would be reclassified 1-A and inducted immediately. And it wasn’t just the Bears who would be affected. A negative ruling would affect the entire league, and all of professional sports for that matter, since most teams employed players who worked in war plants during the offseason. If those players were not permitted to leave their war jobs, pro sports would be out of business. It was estimated that three-fourths of all major league baseball players were doing war work after the baseball season ended.

“It goes without saying, of course,” wrote New York Herald Tribune sportswriter Arthur E. Patterson, “that if these men were frozen to their war jobs, there just wouldn’t be any baseball in 1944.

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