VAGABOND HALFBACK The Saga Of Johnny Blood McNally Ralph Hickok Copyright © 2017 Ralph Hickok All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced, transcribed, or copied, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express prior written permission of Ralph Hickok. To request such permission, or to make any comments or suggestions about this document, E-mail the author: [email protected] ISBN-13: 978-1434830302 ISBN-10: 1434830306 Dedicated to the memory of my sister, Ellen Jane Hickok-Wall 1946-2017 She loved many, was loved by many, is missed by many PREFACE or years before Vince Lombardi arrived, Green Bay was F haunted by the spirit of Packer teams past. After winning six of the National Football League’s first 24 championships, the Packers won only 55 games, while losing 107 and tying 3, from 1945 through 1958. No wonder that Packer fans dwelt on the past, and the great legends of the past—Canadeo, Hutson, Herber, Hubbard, Hinkle, Dilweg, Lewellen, Isbell, Michalske, Lambeau. But the greatest legend of all was Johnny Blood, because he was not only a great football player, but also a colorful, flamboyant personality off the field. (His one-time teammate and fellow member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Clarke Hinkle, once said, “Next to Johnny Blood, Joe Namath looks like Little Lord Fauntleroy.”) I grew up in Green Bay during that period and, by the time I was thirteen and thinking of becoming a writer, I knew that someday I wanted to write a book about this legendary charac- ter. So I absorbed as much information as I could. I was fortu- nate in that my father worked for the Green Bay Press-Gazette and, on home game Sundays, for the Packers, keeping play-by-play summaries and statistics in the press box. I often worked with him and, as a result, I got to meet and talk to and eavesdrop on a lot of people who had Johnny Blood stories to tell, including former teammates, drinking acquaintances, and sportswriters. After my first book was published in 1971, I thought per- haps I had the credentials to approach him about the idea, so I wrote a letter to John Victor McNally, a.k.a. Johnny Blood, in St. Paul, Minnesota. The letter was mailed from New Bedford, Massachusetts, where I was working for the local newspaper, on a Tuesday. The following Sunday afternoon, I got a phone call from Johnny Blood. “I like the idea of doing a book with you,” he said, “and I want to talk about it. I’m parked downtown, in front of the newspaper, but the building’s all locked up. Can you tell me how to get to your house?” (Later, when we had come to know one another pretty well, John told me that several other writers had approached him about a biography, but that he’d turned them all down. “I de- cided on you for two reasons,” he said. “First, you grew up in Green Bay, so you know the place and the history. Second, I’m a big fan of Moby Dick, and this gives me an excuse to visit New Bedford, finally.”) uring the next five years, John and I worked on this book D from time to time. He would visit New Bedford for a week or two, several times a year, and I’d tape interviews and conversations with him during every moment I could spare from my job. Twice during that period, he and I got together to continue talking and taping while I was visiting my family in Wisconsin. On one of those visits, we spent nearly two weeks traveling around Wisconsin and Minnesota, interviewing other people— including even his first-grade teacher in New Richmond, Wis- consin. And I always had the tape recorder with me in the car, to capture any bits of conversation we might have while travel- ing. In 1973, we spent five days in Canton, Ohio, for the tenth anniversary celebration of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It was an invaluable trip, because it gave me the chance to talk to George Halas, Art Rooney, Ernie Nevers, Red Grange, and Duke Osborne. All told, I would guess that John and I spent 600 to 700 hours together. I had virtually finished a first draft of the manuscript in 1975 when a got a letter from John saying, in part, that he had decided he didn’t want it published in his lifetime. There were some things in it, he said, that he wouldn’t want to see in print. I replied that I hoped he might reconsider, but I never heard from him again. So I put the manuscript away. t the time he made that decision, John had read only the A first three chapters. I suspect that he was bothered by some of the things he’d told me about his parents, although they certainly don’t emerge as ogres. His reaction says some- thing both about his sensitivity and about his attitude toward ii VAGABOND HALFBACK this book. He could have asked me to delete or change whatev- er bothered him, but he suggested only a couple of minor changes involving matters of fact. Vagabond Halfback is, therefore, neither a collaboration in the “classic” as-told-to mold nor an authorized biography. I prefer to think of it as a cooperation. For better or worse, I determined the general shape of the book and wrote it. But it obviously could never have been writ- ten without John’s cooperation. His willingness to talk to me at length, to introduce me to people who had something to con- tribute and, in several cases, to suggest incidents that perhaps ought to be included, and which I probably never would have known about otherwise, was absolutely necessary. The primary example is the story of his brief boxing career. So far as I know, not even a hint of that episode has ever appeared in the thousands of words that have been written about Johnny Blood during the last eighty-plus years. He did not help embellish his legend. On the contrary, he debunked several apocryphal stories. Perhaps the best known of these was a Shakespeare-quoting contest that he and John Barrymore were allegedly involved in, in a New York speak- easy—with Johnny Blood, of course, emerging as the winner. “I never met John Barrymore,” he told me, when I asked about this anecdote. “Never even saw him, except in a couple of movies. There was such a contest, but it took place in Kan- sas City, when I was with the Duluth Eskimos. A stock compa- ny was in town, and some of the actors happened to show up at a speakeasy where we were enjoying a drink. One of them started to spout garbled Shakespeare, very loudly, and I stood up and corrected his errors, just as loudly. He eventually shut up and sat down, which was all any of us wanted. But he was no John Barrymore.” During many of my interviews with other people, John left us alone for all or most of the time to avoid interfering. But I should point out that most of those interviews were tape- recorded and, with the permission of the subjects, John did lis- ten to them afterward and make his own comments. In most cases, he did nothing but give me additional, clarifying infor- mation. PREFACE iii In the nearly five years we worked together on this book, I acquired a good and valuable friend. Johnny Blood McNally was a remarkable man, even more remarkable than the legend I had grown up on. We had many long conversations on topics that had little or nothing to do with our ostensible purpose. We shared enthusiasms for Joyce, Melville, and Shakespeare, and for a number of other subjects. At times, our talks in motel rooms, restaurants and lounges in Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and Ohio reminded me of the one-on-one bull sessions I’d enjoyed, years before, in various dormitory rooms at Harvard—except that John and I both knew a lot more about the subjects than my friends and I had known in the late Fifties. In the process, we developed—I believe I can speak for John—a genuine affection for one another. While publication of Vagabond Halfback is the fulfillment of that goal I set for myself more than sixty years ago, my satisfaction is greatly tempered by the fact that it had to await the death of a good friend. I wish that John could have read the book in this final form. I can only hope that he would have liked it. eyond the legends that I grew up on, I drew on several B printed sources for my preliminary research. By far the best and most accurate was Gerald Holland’s article, “Is That You Up There, Johnny Blood?” in the September 2, 1963, is- sue of Sports Illustrated. Also helpful were The Game That Was by Myron Cope (World Publishing, 1970) and What a Game They Played by Richard Whittingham (Harper & Row, 1984), both collections of interviews with former pro football players. Johnny Blood was interviewed for both books. Material on the Packers’ history was drawn from Arch Ward’s The Green Bay Packers (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1946) and Larry D. Names' much better researched The History of the Green Bay Packers: The Lambeau Years—Part One (Angel Press of Wisconsin, 1987).