Mel Bashore

Joe:     When we were in Chicago and went by train, we’d meet down at the train station on Thursday night and drive all night and you’d be back to the east coast. Pittsburgh, New York, that’s were nearly all the games were played. Washington and in that area. You’d travel all night Thursday and maybe part of Friday. And if you got where you were going at night time, they just unhooked you and run your car over to the side and you slept until the next day and got up. You always got there on Saturday before and had a workout and then came back on the train right after the game. Really wasn’t bad traveling at all. Players played cards together and so forth. It was quite a good trip.

 

Mel:     Who was your best friend on the team?

 

Joe:     Well. J. R. Boone was my roommate. He’s in California. He was my roommate. We were good friends. We were rookies the same year. He was a little scatback who could really move. His name was J. R. and they nicknamed him Jack Rabbit. His name was J. R. before the Bears nicknamed him Jack Rabbit. But the Bears were a close knit [team]. Bulldog Turner, our center, was real close. He kind of took a liking to all Texas kids.

 

Mel:     So you felt pretty welcome on the Bears then?

 

Joe:     Oh, yeah. We were a close-knit group. We sure were. A lot of the married guys kind of ran around together. I was single. Some of the guys who were married didn’t bring their wives. They left ‘em at home. We all ran around together and most of the married guys had their little deals and went around together. We had the Sheraton Plaza Hotel in Chicago made a real nice deal for the players that wanted to live in the hotel. Nearly all of us stayed down there unless you were married and had a family and brought your family with you, then you got apartments elsewhere.

 

Mel:     Is it the next year you didn’t play for the Bears?

 

Joe:     The next year, I hurt my knee against Green Bay in the second game.

 

Mel:     Was that in 1949?

 

Joe:     In ‘48. I hurt my knee against [Green Bay]. In 1948, I went back to the Bears. Hunk Anderson had wanted more of a big defensive end, so we picked up Jack Dugger, a big 260 pounder from Ohio State. The Bears put me on waiver and the Chicago Cardinals picked me up. When they put you on waivers, it means someone else is eligible to sign you, but they can call you back one time. So when the Cardinals wanted me, Halas wouldn’t let me go to the Cardinals, so he called me back. I came back with the Bears. In the meantime in 1948, we had Sid Luckman who was towards the end of his career. And the Bears had drafted Johnny Lujack and we had signed Bobby Layne. So the Bears traded before the ‘49 season, they traded Bobby Layne to New York. Layne went to New York for money and some players to be named later. Well later on in the year they sent Joe Osmanski, me and Jim Kennedy. We all went to New York and finished out the season in New York.

 

Mel:     That was in ‘49?

 

Joe:     That was in ‘49. That was the year that George Wilson, our end coach from the Bears, went to Detroit as head coach. Then Layne went to Detroit as their quarterback from New York. The New York Bulldogs folded. They didn’t make it so they folded. The players were turned loose and I signed a contract with Detroit. George Wilson wanted me. And in the meantime a coaching job opened down here in Texas at Tarleton State College. They called me and wanted to know if I’d come down for an interview as assistant coach, not as a head coach. So I thought, well I’ll go down and interview just for the experience. And I went down and interviewed and lo and behold I signed a contract with them. And I even had advance money to go to Detroit. And I sent ‘em back some train money. I didn’t that 1950 season. George Wilson was the head coach there at that time. He was our end coach with the Bears.

 

Mel:     So you had a two-year pro career.

 

Joe:     Yes.

 

Mel:     I need to understand this better. Part of the ‘49 year you played with the Bears?

 

Joe:     I played for the Bears for about three games. Then I missed a couple of games and I went to New York and finished out the season with New York.

 

Mel:     Did New York finish out the season?

 

Joe:     Oh, yes. We finished out the season, but they dissolved after that. I can’t think of his name, but the owner of New York was Kate Smith’s agent. Kate Smith sang God Bless America at the start of every home game. We played in the old New York Polo Grounds. We shared stadiums back in those days. The Chicago Cardinals were in Chicago and they played at White Sox Stadium. We played in Wrigley Field. No one played in Soldier’s Field at that time. But it was an old dilapidated stadium. Not like it is today. We worked out there some when we’d go back after training camp. We’d go back to Chicago and baseball season would still be going on. We shared with the Cubs. They’d still be having games so we’d work out at [Soldier’s] Field. Let me tell you something. This was before TV. The first TV game was Chicago Cardinals and New York. They TV’d the game back to Chicago. Red Grange was with the Bears. He traveled with us. He’d see the games and then he’d go back to Chicago. They had TV in all the bars. But it would be like on Tuesday night. They’d show Sunday’s game on Tuesday night in all the bars in Chicago.

 

Mel:     So everybody knew the score and the outcome. Joe: Everybody knew the score and what it was. Red Grange saw the game and he narrated it. There was no sound. It was just a reel up there and that was the TV in that era. Shoot. I had something else on my mind, but it slipped.

 

Mel:     Probably my fault. I should have kept my mouth shut. I know that you played with a awful lot of good players on the Bears.

 

Joe:     I played with a lot of guys that were in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And some that are not were nearly as good. We had a guy named George Gulyanics. The Bears had a farm club at that time in Akron, Ohio. George Gulyanics was out of Chicago and he was a Golden Glove champion. He came to the Bears and said, “I believe I can make your team.” Halas talked to him and signed him to a contract and sent him to Akron. He went down to Akron and played one year and come to the Bears and played eight. No college experience. Just right out of high school. Boy, he was tough, good running back and a great kicker. You know something kind of interesting, Sammy Baugh at that time was quarterback of Washington. The Bears claimed that Sid Luckman was the highest paid football player in the league. He made twenty-seven five. George Marshall claimed that Sammy Baugh was the highest paid and Sid made 27,000 and he paid him 500 more. I don’t know which one’s right, but 27,000 was a big salary back in those days.

 

Mel:     Do you remember what your contract was for?

 

Joe:     Yeah. 5,500. Most of the guys made 55. Bulldog Turner was All Pro and he made 14,000 or that’s what he said he made.

 

Mel:     Did they let you tell the salaries?

 

Joe:     It was a hush hush deal. In fact Halas wouldn’t let the player’s wives sit together. When we got tickets, they were scattered all over the field. A lot of players had problems because of the wives. Find out that one of ‘em’s salary was making more money than the guy starting ahead of him and so forth. So they kept it quiet. This is kind of interesting. We were the only team in the league that played in front of a sell out. All of our games were sold out. We played at Wrigley Field which was the smallest stadium in the league also. But we put about ten or fifteen thousand more in the stands everywhere we played. We’d go to the Rams. They’d draw 60,000 and when we’d go out there, they’d draw 85,000. We’d go to New York and we’d be the only ones that had a sell out. Many of us played in baseball fields. We were the only ones that resodded the infield. We played Pittsburgh and they left the pitcher’s mound in. The only time I ever heard Halas chew out a quarterback was on third down and two and he run a power play up over the pitcher’s mound. That’s the only time he ever chewed the quarterback out. We went to Pittsburgh to play in 1949 and we’d traded Layne and signed George Blanda. So our quarterbacks in ‘48 was Luckman, Lujack, and Layne. In ‘49 they were Luckman, Lujack, and Blanda. And Blanda came as a great kicker. He was a quarterback but mostly as a kicker. We were playing Pittsburgh. At that time, you got to go back and remember the rules. At that time they had a play where right at midfield, you could only substitute three guys at a time unless you called a time out. Then you could substitute as many as you wanted to. But time outs were valuable so you didn’t call time outs to substitute. If you intercepted a pass or recovered a fumble, it took you awhile to get your offensive team in there. Our substitute center was always in the game as a linebacker. He and Bulldog both played linebacker. He played linebacker. On the first play of every game, Bulldog would go to guard. He’d play center one play until they got the substitution the way they wanted ‘em. We were playing Pittsburgh. At that time everybody didn’t have to break the huddle if you were on the football field. So we stood up, we had all the players standing on the sideline. Two players went in and three went out. One of ‘em stood just inside the line on the side of the field talking to Halas. And the ball was snapped and they threw a hideout play to him. You can’t do that now. It’s against the rules. It wasn’t at that time. McAfee was the one and he caught the ball. At the end of three quarters the score was nothing to nothing. We beat ‘em 34 to nothing after that touchdown. But McAfee laughingly teased Blanda for years to come that he’s starting out to catch that pass that he threw him because it was coming at him end over end. Blanda wasn’t known for his passing skills.

 

Mel:     You mentioned the pitcher’s mound. Did they flatten that or did they leave it up?

 

Joe:     The wooden mound was gone, but the hill wasn’t taken off. The elevation was still out there. But that was only one time in Pittsburgh there. The point I’m making is that we were the only ones that ever resodded the infield. Whenever you played, you played with that dirt in there. They didn’t resod it. There were three really, really good teams in the league at that time. Chicago Cardinals, Chicago Bears, and Philadelphia Eagles. The Eagles won the world championship. We played ‘em in Philadelphia and they beat us. We lost two ball games. We lost to Philadelphia, 10 to 7 and we lost to the Chicago Cardinals, 24-21. When we played Philadelphia in the middle of the year, that infield was in then. In fact you’d play a play so that you would run, where did your cutting if you was an end, you did your cutting on the grass and they had to do theirs on the infield. You had certain plays. The field, a lot of times, they didn’t have hardly anything to protect the field from freezing. The Bears used to put about a foot of straw all over the field. We never played on a frozen field at home. But we put about a foot of straw all over the field and then put a tarp over it. And then they had these big hot air blowers. They’d blow it in that straw with that tarp and they’d keep the field from freezing. But that week they’d do that, we’d have to go to a park or somewhere else and work out. One game we went to the park. It was real bad weather and we got the University of Chicago, we went to their indoor armory. Not like today where you have all indoor facilities and everything is ideal.

 

Mel:     When you played Philadelphia did you ever try to tackle Steve Van Buren?

 

Joe:     Oh, yes.

 

Mel:     I’ve heard he was a pretty hard hitter.

 

Joe:     Yeah. He was a hard hitter and a good guy. They had a great team. They had Steve Van Buren at end. Pete Pihos was the tight end. He was an All American fullback at Indiana and they had a lot of plays where they screened the tight end and let him run it like a fullback. They had Tommy Thompson who was a quarterback. He was blind in one eye. He’d got hit with a slingshot when he was a kid and lost an eye. Or lost most of his sight. He was legally blind in that eye.

 

Mel:     If you were to name the toughest one to bring down, who would that be?

 

Joe:     Oh, who was that guy? The New York Giants had a guy that just run straight. I can’t think of his name. There were a lot of good football players. You know another thing that’s kind of interesting, there was only one three hundred pounder. You talk about size now. There was only one three hundred pounder in the NFL when I played. That was Les Bingaman from Detroit. He was the only guy that weighed three hundred pounds. Oh, I tell you kind of an interesting story. We played the Philadelphia Eagles in an exhibition game in Hershey, Pennsylvania, in an exhibition. And on the kickoff, they had a game named Frank Kilroy. Frank Kilroy was a real good football player. He was kind of recognized as not the cleanest player in the league. On the kickoff of an exhibition game, he ran right straight up. Here’s the two linesmen that are twenty yards apart, he ran right straight up to our interior linesman, Ray Bray, and kicked him right in front of everybody, right on the fifty yard line, Kicked him right in the crotch. Ray doubled over and they threw Kilroy out of the game. And after the game, Ray Bray said, “Frank,” they’re fairly good friends, “what in the hell’d you do that for?” And Kilroy said, “I’ll make All Pro out of the publicity I’ll get for that.” And he did.

 

Mel:     That wasn’t a common thing that you’d see was it?

 

Joe:     No, no. Of course now, let me also tell you another thing. Back then we didn’t have plastic and there was no such thing as a plastic face guard. So your face guard was made out of steel. Iron or steel. It was a cage. They didn’t the stability. They had a bar coming down where your nose, from your forehead so there was a bar downward. You didn’t have a clear space in front of you. Therefore not many backs wore them. They didn’t start wearing facemasks until plastic came and they didn’t have that cross bar to break your eyesight. Not very many people wore facemasks.

 

Mel:     Did you wear one?

 

Joe:     No. I never did wear a facemask. Not too many did. Guards and tackles nearly all wore ‘em. You could grab ‘em and lead ‘em around with those facemasks. It wasn’t against the rules back then. Now the rule, they’ve changed the rule, you could get up and run. If you got tackled, you had to hold ‘em down. If they tackled you and you wanted to jump and run, you could. Now if you jumped up and ran, you better make sure you get up or you’d get clobbered. But when tackled somebody and you went down, you had to hold ‘em down. Now they’ve changed that so that if you go down in the grasp or you touch someone while they’re down, they’re down. But that wasn’t the rule back then.

 

Mel:     I know that Ed Sprinkle on your team has a lot of colorful stories that people have told about him. Did you ever play against him in practice? Joe: You know, no. We never put the pads on in practice. You wore your shoulder pads out. You took your shoulder pads out on Thursdays and you practiced form tackling on Thursdays, but you never did, unless you had a scrimmage or a game. In training camp now, you’d have a scrimmage or a game, but it was advertised. They’d usually charge a small money and give it to the college or they’d do it for some fund raiser for some group. You never did go against your teammates. Unless it was in a game-type scrimmage. We had a scrimmage at Purdue and the money went to some group there at one game. We had a scrimmage at Rensselaer and the money went to that group, but not very much. You usually got against another team.

 

Mel:     I think at one time Ed Sprinkle had a reputation of being a pretty rough player against other teams. Do you think that was a deserved reputation?

 

Joe:     Ed Sprinkle was tough. Ed Sprinkle had a write-up in 1948 in Collier’s magazine. It had a big deal of him. It was “Ed Sprinkle, the Meanest Man in Football.” That was in the Collier’s magazine back in the ‘48 season at some time. Ed was a good guy, a good football player. He was left-handed and he played right end. Ed is the same position over at the other end that I was. They had an offensive end. He was mostly the defensive end over there. Jim Keane was the offensive end. Ed’s from a little town out here in Tuscola, Texas. It’s where this McCoy, the quarterback of Texas is from. It’s a little old country town. Shoot. I don’t know how big it is. I never heard of it hardly, but that’s where Ed is from. They keep writing up this McCoy. I started to write the newspaper a letter out there and tell ‘em that McCoy may not even be the best football player that ever came out of Tuscola. Ed Sprinkle played so long ago, most of ‘em forgot about him, but Ed Sprinkle was a pretty good football player from Tuscola.

 

Mel:     I’ve heard some people say that Ed ought to be in the Hall of Fame.

 

Joe:     Well, Ed Sprinkle is probably the best football player that’s not going to make it. Here’s another thing that Halas at one time said. Joe Osmanski played with me. Bill Osmanski, his older brother, played with the Bears also. Bill was a great football player and all the time that he played football, he was in dental college in Chicago. He missed a lot of workouts because he was going to dental school. He became a dentist. I never did see him play or play with him. He played a year or two before me. Joe, his little brother, was one of my good friends. We went to New York together. Bill was a great running back, a great running back. He had an explosive start and he was gone. He was one of these guys that weighed about two hundred pounds and just, boom, he was gone. They were trying to get him into the Hall of Fame when I was there. Halas said that the Bears had too many guys in. A Bear was going to really have to earn it because they had too many of the early football players that went in were Bears, which you can see why.

 

Mel:     Another one who probably won’t make it too is Mac Speedie. Joe: He was with Cleveland.

 

Mel:     Of course you guys didn’t play them.

 

Joe:     You know, Ray Renfro is my real good friend. He’s from here. I hired his younger brother as a football coach years later. Ray probably will never make it, but what a football player he was.

 

Mel:     Now you played too in the beginning years when the black players were starting to play. Joe: We did not have any black players with the Bears, but they were a lot of them in the league. Night Train Lane, Tank Younger, and what’s that big old boy from Cleveland’s name from Nevada?

 

Mel:     Marion Motley.

 

Joe:     Marion Motley.

 

Mel:     Bill Willis. I think the Bears got their first black player in ‘51 or ‘52. Do you know why? Was George against recruiting the black player? What do you think was the situation?

 

Joe:     I don’t know. I’ve never heard him say. I’ve heard Hunk Anderson talk a lot of times. He was our defensive specialist. When we worked on defenses, he’d say, “Now the boy playing this position is a blue boy.” He wouldn’t call him black. He said, “This is a blue boy.” That’s the only reference I ever had. I don’t know why there weren’t any more blacks at that time. There wasn’t any money in pro football at that time and not too many blacks. They didn’t get in it until they started really making big money. I don’t know whether that’s any part of it or not.

 

Mel:     Well, Joe, this has been good. I don’t want to run this real long because it gets a little tiring for you.

 

Joe:     Well, I enjoy sitting and reminiscing about it. There will probably be things that I’ll think of later on.