NFL CHAMPIONSHIP: A LOOK BACK : A LONG WINTER’S DAY : The Improbable Saga of the 1945 NFL Championship Game

On this morning Bill John did not need an alarm, and when he awoke he stretched his arm up against the lamp on the nightstand, found the clock and pushed in the button.

“Time?” said Gloria John. She was awake, too.

“Time,” said Bill John and he swung his legs out over the edge and onto the cold wood floor. “Damn,” he muttered as he pulled back white lace curtains and looked out into the night, seeing moonlight on frozen snow and nothing else.

“On Christmas morning it would be beautiful,” he said.

The business manager of the Cleveland Rams let the curtain fall and rubbed his hands together, moving in front of a register for warmth.

The dawn was still four hours away. It was more than six hours beyond that to the football game, the one between the Rams and the Washington Redskins, the one for the championship of the National Football League.

It was 3:30 a.m. in Cleveland on Dec. 16, 1945. The temperature was eight degrees below zero.

Emil Bossard was the first to arrive at the stadium, parking his Chevy in a corner of the unplowed lot and hurdling snowdrifts to get to a side gate. The wind was coming up from Lake Erie, out of the north.

It would be a day Bossard would never forget. He had known that for a long time, but the meaning had been underlined in the five days before, when the temperature had dropped along with the snow. The groundskeeper looked at his watch. The hired hands should be along shortly, he thought.

It was 6:20 a.m.

Bob Waterfield’s alarm went off at 6:30. He turned on the light and reached for the playbook on the floor. The rookie quarterback had turned the pages a thousand times and still he did not feel totally sure. He would spend nearly two hours studying it this time.

The field at Municipal Stadium was coming to life. Bossard and John walked atop the snow that had piled up on the straw that covered the grass.

“I don’t know if we can do it,” Bossard said. “I hope we can but I don’t know.”

“We can do it,” John said. He kicked at a chunk of ice and snow. “We can do it, but it won’t be easy.

“What we need is some organization. We’ve got a lot of guys who are willing to work.”

He had hired more than 300 men, some of them servicemen back from the war that had ended in the summer before, most of them drifters and vagrants who would be on the next train south.

At 7:30, Bossard stood under the goal posts and addressed a gathering of huddled stormcoats.

“Men,” he said. “We need your help.”

Nate Wallack opened the press box, removing his right glove to sift through a ring of cold keys.

“Damn,” he said aloud, to no one.

Inside the press box there was room for only 50 reporters, far less than the space that was needed. A lot of them would have to sit outside with makeshift planks as writing tables and no shelter from the harsh winds.

Wallack knew what it would be like, about the abuse he would take. He knew that there was not a sportswriter alive who would not complain about such working conditions. He also knew there was nothing he could do about it.

The Rams’ public relations director looked through the glass that had Jack Frost all over it, at a rusty thermometer outside. It was one degree below zero. It was 10:15.

Waterfield arrived at Municipal Stadium at 10:30, his teeth chattering and his playbook under his arm. He was to duel Sammy Baugh, the man the writers called Slingin’ Sam and of whom it had been written, “He is a legend in his own time.”

Waterfield hung his parka on the back of his locker and went in to talk to Adam Walsh, the head coach.

“We can’t let this weather stop us from playing our game,” Walsh said. Waterfield said that the weather would not be a factor. “Good,” Walsh said. “Get dressed and then we’ll talk.”

In front of his locker, Waterfield took off one of the three sweaters he had put on an hour before. He was thinking about his college days at UCLA and how it never had been like this.

John knew he was in the middle of a living, breathing miracle. In less than four hours, the center of the field had been opened and the rest of the playing area was almost uncovered. In the previous 10 days, he had supervised the laying of nearly 9,000 bales of straw on the field, and he had wondered then how they would move them when it was time to play. A lot of people, he thought, we’ll need a lot of people.

It was 12:05 p.m.

Wallack finished passing out the statistics and the fact sheets inside the press box and then he moved outside, a box of thumbtacks in his pocket. He would use the thumbtacks to fasten the papers to the assigned outside spots.

A few writers were there already, moaning about what it was like.

“You guys will be lucky if your typewriters don’t freeze up,” Wallack said.

“The hell with my typewriter,” someone said. “How about my hands and my nose?”

Wallack’s hands and nose were cold, but it was his feet that were freezing. He decided not to say anything.

It was 1 p.m. on Dec. 16, 1945, in Cleveland, Ohio. The kickoff was an hour away. The temperature was three degrees above zero.

Baugh’s ribs ached and there was added discomfort from the tape that ringed his body. He had been injured two weeks before, against the Giants, but there had been no public announcement to indicate that his condition was anything but perfect.

“We can’t help ourselves by saying anything,” said Dudley DeGroot, the head coach. “So let’s keep our traps shut.”

Now, only minutes away from the opening kickoff, DeGroot had to make a decision. He summoned Baugh and Frankie Filchock, the second-string quarterback, for a conference. Baugh had led the National Football League in passing during the regular season, completing an incredible 70% of his passes, but Filchock had been the NFL leader in 1944 and there was no team around that had such strength in reserve.

“The minute your ribs start to bother you, you let us know,” DeGroot told Baugh.

Baugh said that he would.

Bossard was talking and John was shaking his head.

“There’s nothing that could have been done about it,” Bossard said. “Nothing at all. The field just up and froze on us, pure and simple.”

The insulation had proved to be only temporary. With the tarp and the straw removed, the field had frozen like a bullet. The only blessing was that the sky began to clear. It did not look as if there would be more snow.

The game would begin in 10 minutes.

Harry Wismer was the man behind the microphone in the broadcast booth, Wismer under the double overcoats and the scarfs and the stocking cap.

“I must remember not to get too close to the mike,” he had told some cronies the night before. “If my tongue hits the metal, it could be all over.”

He got a big laugh.

Now, the engineer counted down and when he dropped his hand, Wismer leaned in toward the mike.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “It is cold in Cleveland. With the kickoff of the 13th championship game of the National Football League just five minutes away, it is six degrees.”

Wismer paused for a moment and then delivered the punchline.

“For the benefit of those of you listening in the Cleveland area, that’s six degrees above zero!”

It was miserable on the sidelines, where the wind whistled through the open spaces, and there was no hiding place. Before the game began, players from each team tore open bundles and scattered straw along the sidelines, where they would sit. Some of them burrowed into it.

The Rams’ first series sputtered on the Washington 5-yard line when a fourth-down run fell inches short. In came Baugh and the Redskin offense.

On first down, Baugh fumbled the snap from center and had to scramble after the ball in the end zone. When he retrieved it, he threw wildly far out of bounds. The call was intentional grounding and Washington was penalized back to its 2.

On second down, Baugh dropped back to pass again. But the attempt caromed off the arm of the goal post and fell back into the end zone for an automatic safety.

The two points seemed insignificant at the time, but they would be the margin of victory.

The look of agony on Baugh’s face told DeGroot all he needed to know. In one quarter of play, Baugh had completed only one pass for six yards and he had looked impotent in failure.

“Filchock!” boomed DeGroot, and Filchock rose out of the straw and went in to play.

The entrance of the healthy quarterback gave the Redskins impetus and in five minutes they had the lead. A simple flare pattern resulted in a touchdown, Filchock passing 38 yards to Steve Bagarus.

Wallack moved in and out of the press box, ministering to aches and pains and needs. He was watching the crowd, too, and what he saw did not please him.

“If there was any way to measure it, I think this crowd will break the record for most liquor consumed per person,” he said.

What frightened Wallack was that he knew the effect that liquor has on a human being in extreme cold weather. There is little reaction for a long time, regardless of the volume of consumption. But there is a point of no return and it can be a dangerous one.

On this afternoon, when the temperature was 26 degrees below the point when water will freeze, the attendance was 32,178.

Trailing 7-2, Waterfield began from his own 30. He needed just six plays, three of them completions. The last was a 37-yard touchdown pass to Jim Benton.

It was 8-7, Cleveland, and Waterfield stayed in the game to try the extra point. In 1945, Bob Waterfield did all there was to do for the Cleveland Rams.

There was excitement in Wismer’s voice.

“There’s the snap,” he said. “The ball is up and it’s. . . . “ For an instant Wismer could not believe what he was seeing. For an instant, the ball teetered on the top of the crossbar before falling backward and into the end zone for the point.

“It’s good!” Wismer shouted. “And let me tell you what happened!”

George Preston Marshall had insisted that his Redskins Marching Band be the featured halftime attraction.

“They’re the best,” Marshall told Reeves, but the persuasion was unnecessary. Reeves knew the Redskins Marching Band was the best in pro football and one of the best anywhere. There was no question about who would be featured at halftime.

John heard the sounds coming from under the stands, the agonizing toots and snorts of a band exercising. Leaning on a box railing, he said to Bossard, “This should be something!”

And it was. The band came out of the tunnel behind the south goal posts and lined up in the end zone. The drum major came shooting out of the middle and the crowd howled. And there was no other sound except for the beat of the drums. The reeds and horns had frozen solid.

Halftime ceremonies had ended. It was two degrees above zero and dropping.

The Cleveland police noticed an increase in rowdyism early in the third quarter. There were numerous scuffles in the stands and at least three fans attempted to rush onto the playing field.

By the end of the game, 14 persons had been arrested.

There was fire in the Rams’ locker room at halftime. Adam Walsh said he was not pleased with what he had seen.

“You guys haven’t shown me a helluva lot,” he said.

The prodding lifted Waterfield one emotional notch higher. At the start of the third quarter, he directed the Rams on an 81-yard touchdown drive, getting the final 44 yards on a pass to Jim Gillette. This time there was no crossbar to gather in Waterfield’s kick. It was to the right. With less than 20 minutes remaining, Cleveland had an eight-point lead.

The commotion came from the upper deck.

“My God,” said someone in the press box. “A water main is broken up there and it’s gushing down an aisle.”

It did not gush long. The water turned into a sheet of impassable ice. Aisle 14 in Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium was off-limits until the spring thaw.

Filchock brought the Redskins back to life in the final minutes of the third quarter, getting a touchdown on a nine-yard pass to Bob Seymour on fourth down. Clearly, fate was on the Rams’ side in the fourth quarter. Normally the steadiest of kickers, the Redskins’ Joe Aguirre missed field goal attempts from 31 and 41 yards. And Filchock’s final pass of the day was intercepted by the Rams’ Albie Reisz.

At the end, it was Cleveland 15, Washington 14.

Adam Walsh raised his arms to silence the noise in the Ram locker room for a moment.

“You were great all the way,” he said.

The Rams finished with advantages in yards rushing and passing, totaling 372 yards to Washington’s 211.

“Bob Waterfield is the greatest T-formation quarterback in the world,” announced Walsh and words were lost in a wave of roars.

Outside the locker room, Reeves admitted that he did not believe it.

“I’ve been used to losing for so long, that I wasn’t counting on anything until it was all over,” he said.

The one announcement Reeves did not make was that the game was the Rams’ last in Cleveland. After suffering $50,000 in losses in a championship season, the Rams would move to Los Angeles early in the next year.

Wallack could only offer his final apologies to the numb-fingered writers who shuffled back into the press box area.

“There will be bus service going back to the hotel every five minutes,” he said, and he wished that he could be on one of them.

Waterfield signed autographs for only a short time.

“We’re all going to freeze to death,” he said.

Later, in a car, he said, “I didn’t notice the cold weather as much as I thought I would. All I know is that this was my biggest day.”

Twenty years after that, when Waterfield entered the Hall of Fame, he admitted that the memory of that day remained strongest.

John stood by a register again, soaking in the heat that poured out.

“I can’t wait to see what they say about this one in the papers tomorrow,” he said to his wife.

It was 11:30 p.m.

Copyright, 1984, NFL Properties. Reprinted with permission of Game Day Magazine.