This Day In Sports History is part of the Sports History Network - The Headquarters For Your Favorite Sport's Yesteryear.

If you would like to check out Doug Villhard's book 'The Golden Age of Red: A Novel of Red Grange, the Galloping Ghost' here's a link to it on Amazon.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In 1924, Red Grange scored four touchdowns in the first 12 minutes of a game against Michigan. He ended up with 400+ all-purpose yards, 5 TDs himself and he also threw one.

Doug Villhard, the author of 'The Golden Age of Red: A Novel of Red Grange, the Galloping Ghost' joins me for a longer discussion about Red's amazing accomplishments.

In 1974, Nate Thurmond became the first NBA player to record a triple-double.

And in 1977, it was the birth of Mr. October as Reggie Jackson hit three homeruns in the decisive game of the '77 World Series.

THIS DAY IN SPORTS BACKGROUND

Relive the greatest moments in sports every day of the year. From the triumphs to the tragedies, the first to do it to the last time it happened, the unbelievable to the strange, This Day in Sports History is a 365-day journey remembering those significant events that made a lasting impact.

Takeaways:

• Red Grange's performance on October 18, 1924, established him as a national sports icon.
• Warren Brown's description of Grange as the 'galloping ghost' captured his elusive playing style.
• Grange’s four touchdowns in the first twelve minutes shocked Michigan's formidable defense.
• Doug Vilhard's historical fiction explores the life and impact of Red Grange's career.
• The economics of football in the 1920s influenced Grange's decision to turn professional.
• Nate Thurmond's quadruple double in his Bulls debut marked a significant NBA milestone.
• New York's Reggie Jackson becomes Mr. October after belting 3 HRs vs. LA in the World Series

Links referenced in this episode:

• sportshistorynetwork.com

Mentioned in this episode:

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Hey, and welcome to another edition of this day in sports history.

A member of the Sports History Network, you can find more info and more sports history podcasts@sportshistorynetwork.com.

Most people who read the sports page in those days knew the name Red Grange.

He'd left opponents mesmerized, fans screaming for joy, and writers looking for words to describe what he actually had done.

On this day, Grange's fighting Ali Ni of Illinois were playing at home against mighty Michigan.

The Wolverines had a stout defense.

But on this day, they knew they faced quite a challenge in trying to stop the greatest football player in the country.

But knowing what youre facing does not exactly mean that youre going to be able to stop it.

Michigan kicked off to start the game in front of a capacity crowd of 66,609, and before a good number of those had been able to find their seats, Red Grange caught the football at his own five yard line and took off to the right like he generally did.

That's how the blocking was set up.

But as eleven yellow jerseyed Wolverines took a beat on him, Grange swiveled his hips and cut back to the left, leaving everybody intent on tackling him in the dust on the way to a 95 yard touchdown return.

But he was just getting warmed up.

On the following Illinois possessions, Grange would score on runs of 67, 56 and 44 yards.

And he did all of that in the first twelve minutes of the game.

Grange's four touchdowns were as many as Michigan had given up in the past two seasons.

Now, back in those days, players played both sides of the football, offense and defense.

And if you were subbed out on either side of the ball in the first half, then you could not return until the second half.

And so when a sub was sent in to replace him, he was a bit surprised and not exactly happy.

But he wasn't one to argue with coach Bob Zupke.

He did come back in the third quarter, and he scored his fifth touchdown on an eleven yard run.

He finished off his day with a 20 yard touchdown passed and Illinois won 30 914.

So Grange figured in every touchdown scored for the Illini but how about these numbers?

In his limited time on the field, he had 212 yards rushing, 64 passing yards, and he added 126 yards in return yardage.

Now add all of that up, and thats 402 all purpose yards for Grange on this day.

Chicago sportswriter Warren Brown was in the press box that day.

In a world without television and where radio broadcasts of college games was in its infancy, newspaper sportswriters were the entertainers of the day.

And Brown had been following the exploits of Grange since the previous year.

And he was looking for just the right words to describe what he had seen on this day.

That was a bit unusual.

Hed never really been at a loss for descriptive words and phrases.

Hed actually been the one to label Babe Ruth as the Sultan of Swat.

And he knew this special kid, this once in a lifetime player, needed a nickname.

Hed just watched Grange roll up yard after yard as if he were invisible, as if he was a ghost.

And so when Warren Brown wrote his column for the Chicago Herald examiner about this game, he labeled Grange's running style as if he was a galloping ghost.

On the east coast that day, covering the Notre Dame army game was noted sports columnist Grantlin Rice.

After he'd written about the Notre Dame's four horsemen rolling to a 13 seven win against army, he learned what Grange had done in Illinois, and he also started thinking of ethereal beings.

Rice enjoyed writing short poems, and he would add those into his column.

And he pinned this one to describe Grange in a game that he did not see, a streak of fire, a breath of flame eluding all who reach and clutch, a gray ghost thrown into the game that rival hands may never touch, a rubber bounding, blasting soul whose destination is the goal.

Red Grange of Illinois.

Grange's performance on this day vaulted him from a guy that some knew to a guy that everybody knew.

More was to come from the galloping ghost in the coming years.

And we'll talk about a lot of those things on future editions of this dish.

But let's talk more about Red Grange, and not only what he did on this day, but in the years after.

And joining me now is Doug Vilhard, the author of the new book about Grange titled the Golden Age of Red, a novel of Red the Galloping ghost.

It's available in paperback or Kindle on Amazon and as an audiobook on audible.

Doug, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, thanks for having me.

It's gonna be fun.

First, you make it known in your book that this is a work of fiction, historical fiction.

Why did you choose to go that route with your book about Red Grange's life.

Yeah, that's right.

And, you know, there's a lot of nonfiction books written about football and about red, and I think that they're great.

But if I'm being honest, though, a lot of those books just tell you what happened, like how many yards and what the weather was like, those types of things.

I really wanted to get into why and.

And how it felt to have all this stardom on this young man.

So, historical fiction or historical biographical fiction?

It is a book, but it kind of reads like you're watching the movie, and that's.

That's how I like to tell stories.

Well, since this is a podcast called this day in sports history, let's talk about what Grange specifically did on this day 100 years ago.

It really was the game that vaulted him to a nationally known figure.

Yeah, that's right.

And, you know, so he had, he.

This was his junior year, by the way.

Back then, you couldn't play your freshman year.

Isn't that interesting?

You couldn't.

You could only.

So they really only had three year careers.

So he wasn't all american as a sophomore.

But here he is on this day when the reigning national champion, Michigan, is coming in, but Illinois is trying to dedicate their stadium.

So they got 67,000 people there.

Um, but they're expecting, not expecting to win, per se, against this powerhouse team.

By the way, Michigan, in the prior two years, hadn't lost a game and had really only given up one or two touchdowns, really, really less than 30 points in two years.

So the powerhouse coming in, and then.

Yeah, right off, right off the bat, um, Red receives the ball, the kickoff from the five yard line, and runs it back for a touchdown.

Right?

So, I mean, they.

They've only had, like one touchdown in two years, and he scores one immediately.

And then it was a little different then.

They.

They.

Instead of in normal nor today, Michigan would then get the ball, but they had different rules.

Michigan elected to kick off again.

They kicked it right back to him because they preferred field position.

Or they said that was a fluke.

Two plays later, red scores again.

And then again.

And then again, it's 28 nothing in the first twelve minutes.

And, you know, Sports Illustrated still calls that the most unforgettable moment in sports.

It's just fantastic.

And then, of course, he scores two more touchdowns in the second half and has two interceptions, too, because they played offense and defense over 400 yards.

So it was just an amazing performance, single day performance.

And yes, he then became, at that time, more famous than Babe Ruth after doing this.

So Michigan did not change their game plan at all.

They kept kicking the ball to Illinois.

Yeah, because.

Because what?

Because.

Yeah, because this had not happened before.

They're like, surely that's not gonna happen again.

And, yeah, and it was also very.

The rules were different.

Be fun to talk about.

But including, people often punted on first downs.

They just catch you off guard and kick it down the field and then try to pin you down in your area, you know, hope for a fumble.

And you couldn't really have long passes like we do today because the ball was, like bigger, like a rugby ball, like a volleyball.

You just can't throw it very far and it's wobbly.

So it was very much a game until red actually of get the biggest farm boys possible and run them up the middle.

That was the game.

But then think of red like a track star, basically, and just broke this wide open.

The well known sportswriter, Grantlin Rice has often been mistaken as the one who gave red his nickname, the galloping ghost.

But I.

Red always said it was Warren Brown who had penned the moniker.

And that was one thing you really wanted to kind of set straight in your story.

That's right.

And so Warren was a reporter out of Chicago, and Grantlin Rice was a national reporter.

And, yeah, Warren.

Warren is a great, great historical figure, too.

And he had an incredible beat because he had Illinois and he had the bears, too, right at the same time.

So it was really neat.

But, yeah, he was.

Everybody had a name.

So, like, Babe Ruth was like the, you know, Bambino and Sultan of Swat, you know, and man of war.

At the time, the horse had nicknames and the boxers had nicknames.

And the guy, you know, Bobby Jones was the Georgia Peach, like, you know, and kid Blackie, like, everybody had a nickname, so they needed one for redem.

And, yeah, this.

I mean, when you watch him on film, what'll happen is he'll.

He'll sort of disappear, like, into the scrum of players, like.

Like a.

Like a surfer going under the wave, basically.

And then you're just waiting for, like, the play to end, and all of a sudden, bam, he's out the other side and gone.

And that's.

And that's really where that, that galloping ghost nickname came from.

It's like.

It's like reaching out for, like, a mist, an apparition, and you just can't grab it and that.

And it really looks like that when he's running out there, too.

So, yes, that's where that nickname came from.

And it seemed like a perfect descriptor for exactly what he was doing on the field.

I mean, that elusive, he couldn't be caught, and people were just grasping at air.

And I think it was very hard at the time when most running plays got you a yard and then this guy could suddenly break free for a 60 yard run.

It just, it just, it just wasn't.

It just changed the way that the game worked.

It would be like.

Reminds me of, like, Steph Curry, just like crossing the half line and then making the shot, you know, from so far out.

You know, we just, you know, we just hadn't seen that regularly before.

And that's.

That's kind of what red did for this game.

And by the way, football's a lot more fun when people are scoring, too.

And it wasn't, it was a very tight game.

Like, most games were like three to six, right, until.

Until Red Grange kind of broke it open.

So it really, really brought a lot of fans into the game.

This is your third book that you've written, but first, with your focus on sports or a sports figure.

What was it that drew you to wanting to write a novel about Red Grange and this time in history?

Yeah.

So I'm an entrepreneurship professor, business professor at Washington University in St.

Louis.

So I'm actually drawn to entrepreneurs.

And he was very interesting character, and I like to take what I teach in class and do that through historical figures.

Even though this book is about football and Red Grange, it's not what drew me to it.

It was actually, not only was Red awesome, but he partnered with what is known today as the first sports agent in CC Pyle.

So it was actually CC Pyle that drew me to this story and the way that he saw this amazingly famous kid in college.

And CC Pyle was running movie theaters in Champaign, Illinois, where the University of Illinois is located.

And he saw this kid, he's like, famous right there.

And CC pilot kind of had a vision for how Red's career could go.

So it was actually that mind of that entrepreneur, of that promoter that drew me to the story.

And he was vilified for actually wanting to play professionally.

What was it that ultimately led to him making that decision?

Yeah.

And let me walk you through why people weren't going to the pros back then.

So, um, so if you play, if you play at college, this, this part is still true today is then you're paying, playing on Saturday to like 67,000 people or at Ohio State at the time, 85,000 people.

So it was a very popular game in college, but it wasn't outside.

And the main reason was because it was developed, it was created in colleges and not a lot of people went to college, actually.

So you had to like be, and there was no television, so you had to be like in college to get it.

And they're paying play because they don't have any money.

They're paying players like dollar 50 a game to play.

So when these college graduates graduate, they're even better off to get a job, you know, than to play college.

The economics were different.

So what was interesting about CC Pyle is he said, I, he said, you know what?

I think the NFL could be something.

I think it could pack, it could, it could sell out.

He saw the vision.

He said, but it's missing a babe Ruth.

It doesn't have, it doesn't have a star.

It needs a star.

So what was interesting about CC Pyle is he went to the owner of the Bears and, you know, and he said, the Bears owner said, listen, we've been paying people $50 a game.

We'll pay red $500 a game.

And on his own, Red would have taken that and said that's, oh my gosh, that's amazing.

But CC Pyle said that's a place to start in the negotiation.

He said, how about this?

Red draws 60,000.

If Red plays for you, you're going to have 60,000.

How about instead we split it?

So not dollar 500 a game, half the gate.

That's what he negotiated for Red, half the gate.

And, and then when they played in New York, Red got half the gate.

He made more money in one game than Babe Ruth made all season.

And Babe Ruth was there to have to watch it, too.

They realized that right off the bat.

So it was, I do love Brett Grange and I do love him.

As an athlete and a person, he's such a humble, nice person.

But it was this mind of CC Pyle to, like, see the future.

And, you know, Red Grange is in the hall of Fame in the first 17 inducted into that class.

And they say it wasn't necessarily for being an NFL player, but it was for putting that entire league commercially on the map.

And so, yeah, it's just, it's a, it's, it.

I'm so glad we're exploring this day in history, but this day in history then changed this entire, the entire landscape of the NFL.

So would the NFL be what it is today or even be a thing if it was not for Redgrange?

So here's opinion.

But what I think would have happened is they were teetering on bankruptcy at that time.

And right around the corner, just a year or two later, was the Great Depression.

I think it would have worked out again.

You know, that tv is the, in my, is, I mean, there's also people like, there's kind of like the violence of it, if you will, in the way that the sport works.

But tv made that league.

So, yes, it would have been very precarious, but I do have a feeling there could have been another star, you know, of the television age.

But yes, this would have, there's, there's no question that they would have barely survived.

They already barely survived the depression.

But I think Red made the league name image.

Likeness is a huge thing in college sports now.

But Grange may have been like the first nil guy.

He had kind of an agreement with pile his senior year.

Am I.

Is that right?

Yep, that's right.

And of course, and that's what I love about this story, too, and I love how history repeats itself.

So, of course, they didn't call it name, image, likeness then.

They called it fame.

Fame.

And what CC Pyles argument was that, Red, you're selling out these stadiums for colleges.

In fact, Red is paying tuition to go to school.

They don't, they don't have athletic scholarships then.

So cc Pyle, you know, he's, he's vilified, really.

He's looked like, like a, like a fly by night guy, a scoundrel, all about money.

But he really saw himself as a champion of the student athlete.

And he's saying, look, you've read, you're selling out stadiums, that fame is yours.

We should capitalize on it.

And red, red is a very good and humble human being, and he fought very hard to not take a dime until his last day of playing college football.

That was very important to him.

But you're right, they were working in the scenes to get ready for him to go pro afterwards.

So, yes, I do think he's the first pioneer of that, and so much so that they couldn't cash in while he was in college.

But he played his last college game on a Saturday, and then he was a pro player the day, next day on a Sunday.

So he had a whole pro season in the same.

He, like, he played his college season and pro season same season.

He quit school right then.

So it was really interesting to see the current debates come up because they've really been talked about for 100 years, whether this is fair or not, you know, to have these kids selling out stadiums.

And it was especially unfair when the kid was actually paying tuition at the same time.

So when you were doing the research for this book, did you come across something that surprised you about red?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it is.

I mean, I'll answer honestly.

There was, but for me, and I hope your listeners would find it interesting, too.

But, you know, I didn't realize that he was a, I mean, we know he's a star, but I didn't realize that he was a star who never wanted to be a star at all.

He just want, he wanted to be behind the scenes.

He just wanted to be a college graduate and get a job and move on.

And then he runs into CC Pyle, who should be behind the scenes, but instead wants to be a star himself.

So he runs into this.

But what I found most interesting was there was a period in Red's life after his pro career and before he started doing color commentary on television, which he was one of the first, you know, Troy Aikman's right, or whatever.

Chris Collinsworth, one of those guys, was this period of time where he owned his own insurance company, and he's actually most proud of those ten years where he just went to work, did his job, and went home.

And I think that's what's really interesting about this guy.

Sometimes this fame and sort of talent is given to people who didn't necessarily want it or want to exploit it.

So I find that to be the most interesting part of him because in today's age, everybody wants to be the star, but, you know, he really didn't.

And then he ended up a guy who didn't ends up pioneering how that works for everybody else.

Well, Doug, it's been a pleasure.

I appreciate you joining me today on the podcast to talk about your book, the Golden Age of Redem.

And I'm assuming that Amazon would be the best place to get it.

Yeah.

And if people aren't readers, which happens, the audiobook is really a lot, is a lot of fun.

The actor who does it does a lot of different voices and there's some old time radio shows, stuff shows on it.

But I think readers would really enjoy not just learning more about Red Grange and the origin of football, but just really immersing themselves into that time period.

So thanks.

Thanks for the opportunity to see if we can get a couple more people to learn about Red Grange.

Well, that's Doug Vilhard, the author of the Golden Age of Red, a novel about red the galloping Ghost, available on Amazon as a paperback or on Kindle and as an audiobook on audible.

So make sure you check it out and rolling right along with today's episode.

At this point in his career, Nate the great was in his 12th year in the league.

He'd spent the first eleven years with the warriors, and this was his debut game with the Chicago Bulls.

I mean, talk about impressing your employer with your skills on the first day, right?

The Bulls were playing the Atlanta Hawks and Thurmond dominated every aspect of the game, scoring 22, pulling 14 rebounds.

He dished 13 assists and he blocked twelve shots.

Now one thing to know is that the league did not track blocked shots prior to the 74 season.

So it is possible that perhaps Bill Russell or Wilt Chamberlain may have unofficially done it in the decade previous.

But Thurmonds is the first recognized quadruple double in the NBA.

But fellow spur Victor Wimbamyama came close in his rookie season and he may be the next to do it.

So if he does accomplish that at some point in his career, you can amaze your friends with the knowledge that Nate Thurmond did at first in his Bulls debut.

And this wasn't just any World Series game.

It was game six between the Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers with New York leading the series three games to two.

Jackson came to the plate in the fourth inning and he parked Burt Hooten's first pitch into the right field seats for a two run shot to give the Yankees a one run lead.

He came back to the plate in the fifth inning and delivered another souvenir to the right field seats for another two run home run, this one off Elias Sosa.

That extended the Yankee lead to three.

And then when he came to the plate in the 8th inning, the entire Yankee Stadium crowd was chanting his name.

Reggie.

Reggie.

And he hit.

Charlie Hupp's first pitched to deep center field for his third homer of the game and his fifth of the series.

The Yankees won the game eight to ₩4, the series, four games to two.

And Jackson was named mvp of the series and soon after known as the man who could hit when it counted in the postseason as Mister October.

And time now for today's got nothing to do with sports fun.

During the Great Depression, Al Capone opened up a soup kitchen to feed the homeless and the hungry.

He rented out a storefront and opened up a soup kitchen at 935 South State street.

That's all I've got for you today.

A special thanks to Doug Villehardt for joining me today to talk about Red Grange and his book, the Golden Age of red.

You can check it out on Amazon and the audiobook on audible.

I've put a link in the show notes for you as well, and make sure to check back in tomorrow for another tour around the history of sports.

On this day in sports history, this has been an original thrive suite production.