Book Reviews: "Last Team Standing" and "Hound Dog"

OK, not one, but two, book reviews for your pleasure today.

The first is "Last Team Standing" (2006) by Matthew Algeo, a guy who is rapidly becoming one of my favorite authors. The sub-title of this book is "How the Steelers and Eagles - The Steagles - Saved Pro Football During World War II." Steelers fans over a certain age, say, 55 or so, may have some recollection of the fact that during the years of WW II the Steelers and Eagles combined to form one team in 1943 as a matter of war time urgencies. In the NFL Official history and records, that team is known as "Phil-Pitt." In Philadelphia, and the Philly part of this combo was the dominant partner, the team was still referred to as the "Philadelphia Eagles," but in Pittsburgh and around the country (at least that part of the country that cared about pro football), the team became known as the "Steagles." It should be noted that to this day, the NFL does not acknowledge the name Steagles as anything but a nickname. (In 2004, some enterprising fan registered the name "Steagles" as a trademark, something I am amazed that the money hungry NFL never did.)

The Steagles were comprised of players from two teams that pretty much stunk for their entire histories up to that point, but in that 1943 season, they surprised everyone, including themselves, to stay in the hunt for the Eastern division title up until the next to last week of the season and finish with a 5-4-1 record. This book is the story of that unlikely season.

Perhaps an even more interesting part of the book is how Algeo tells how the NFL was affected by the manpower shortage brought about by WW II. Everyone knows about major league baseball during the war, about the players (Feller, Williams, DiMaggio etc.) served and lost time from their careers, but to my knowledge that story has never been told to any great extent about pro football during that time. In all, 638 NFL players served in the armed forces during the war (the League only had 330 total roster spots in 1941, when Pearl Harbor was attacked), and 19 NFL players were killed in action.

Algeo tells the story of how the NFL fit into the American landscape during the war, and how it struggled for survival during those years, and actually thrived when not everyone figured that it would.

The post-script of the book takes place at Heinz Field during Steelers-Eagles exhibition game in 2003. I was not aware of this at the time, but Dan Rooney staged a "turn back the clock" night for that game to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Steagles' 1943 season. Six living members of the Steagles were introduced and honored at halftime that night. A nice touch.

Oh, and here is a little known fact that Algeo talks about. The original franchise that Art Rooney was granted for Pittsburgh by the NFL is NOT the beloved Black & Gold that the Steelers Nation of today adores. No, that franchise is now the Philadelphia Eagles, and the Steelers of today, the Steelers with the six Lombardi Trophies, was originally from Philadelphia. I'll not spell out the details here, but it's true. You can look it up.


The second book is "Hound Dog, the Leiber and Stoller Autobiography" by, naturally, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. The recent death of Jerry Leiber prompted me to check this 2009 book out of the library. I wrote about Leiber and Stoller at the time of Jerry's death last month, so I won't belabor it here.

I will say that it is a fascinating tale. Leiber and Stoller met as teenagers in Los Angeles in the late 1940's and for over sixty years, their's was a musical partnership that contributed so much to popular music, rock & roll, and rythm and blues. As one critic put it, it would be hard to imagine what American popular music and culture would be like if Leiber and Stoller had never met.

One thing amazed me about them. Throughout the book, they told stories of how they needed to come up with songs at a moment's notice, and were able to do so. For example, they sat at a piano and wrote "Hound Dog" in less than twenty minutes, and the book is full of stories like that. I am in awe of truly creative people.

Incidentally, the "Hound Dog" that Leiber & Stoller wrote for blues singer Big Momma Thornton, was very different from the "Hound Dog" that Elvis Presley recorded and that we all know so well. In fact, Leiber & Stoller never much cared for Elvis' version. That didn't stop them from cashing the checks, however. It didn't stop them from loving Elvis, either, and the stories dealing with Elvis in the book are great.