Westbrook Pegler
New York Daily News/December 10, 1925
Fight on Field as Chicago Bears Lose, 9-6
Boston, Mass., Dec. 9.—Babe Ruth cranked up his flivver and clattered in over the frozen roads of rural Massachusetts today to give some advice to a novice in the celebrity business. He met Red Grange shortly before Red left the hotel for the ball yard and told him that into each life some razzberries must fall.
As one who had heard his share of both rousing and razzing cheers, the Babe advised Red not to be thin-skinned, to bank his money, and always to let the other fellows pay at least half of the dinner check, saying he wised he had known as much himself in his apprentice days at the hero trade.
Pearls of Wisdom
The Babe’s wisdom concerning the sour hurrahs of the public was very timely, for Grange, drawn fine and worn to utter weariness since he hired out as a professional showman, was a pitiful failure in the game between his Bears and the Providence Steamrollers and he was followed to the mouth of the tunnel by a jeering mob as he left the field in the third quarter.
The Bears were beaten for the first time since Grange joined them, 9 to 6.
Pursued, waylaid at every step of his progress around town, ambushed in his own room at the hotel and bombarded by photographers’ flash bombs, even when he was washing his ears in the Pullman at 6 in the morning. Grange is now a listless figure, with dull eyes and dark lines in his boyish face.
The Bears apparently realized that he was no man to play the bruising, agonizing game that they had to go through on this frozen ground, and they used him very little after the first quarter.
The Bird.
Red ran back a punt ten years in the first period, made four yards on an end run, and took other gains of three yards, one yard and one-half yard. He made three tackles, with some assistance, and knocked down two hostile passes.
But in the second quarter he made no tackles, and the only time he was given the ball it was for the gentle business of throwing a forward pass. Once, when he picked up a grounded ball to throw it to the referee, the crowd roared derisively and Red had need of Babe Ruth’s philosophy.
In the third and his last quarter, Red helped make one tackle, threw a pass that grounded and made a two-yard end run.
That was the performance of the man whose name and reputation drew about 25,000 Bostonians to the ball yard for an afternoon of exposure on the coldest day of the year thus far and it was several thousand dollars less than they were willing to consider their money’s worth.
Smack!
As Grange went down the hole to his dressing room, and the mob pressed in on him, mocking the fellow whose name was something of a national boast a few weeks ago, one of the civilian handlers of the Bears took a smack at the nearest of Red’s tormentors and a brawl began that surged over a full acre and needed lots of cops.
Joe Sternaman made the Bears’ touchdown shortly after Grange quit. He failed to kcik the goal. Crowley and Miller, of the famous Notre Dame backfield, played for the Steamrollers and each tore off gains as routine matters which equalled Red’s entire gain for the day, except, of course, Red’s gain at the bank.
A touchdown, a point after touchdown, and a safety gave the Steamrollers their score.
The Archive 