I'm a fan of Arch Ward's "Green Bay Packers". I have an old copy and really enjoy reading through it from time to time. It chronicles the early years of the team from the start through the 1940s. Some good stories in there from when gridiron football was a tough man's sport.
Here's an excerpt that I keep around in a text file. As you read it, filter it through the experience of 1946 - World War II had just ended, radio had not-long-ago surpassed
the grid-o-graph for real-time scoring updates, and the Packers had won their sixth league championship. 1919 was not even thirty years ago.
Packers-Ishpeming, 1919
The upper peninsula of Michigan has long been known as
a territory where men are men and football players are big
and tough. Ishpeming was an example in the Packers' first
season as an organized team. For five years no team had
been able to beat the Michiganders on their home grounds,
and they were acknowledge champions of the Wolverine
state.
Captain Lambeau and his mates dared to invade Ishpem-
ing on October 20, 1919, even though older heads had
counseled them about the punishment they would take from
Ishpeming. It required only three running plays for the
young Packers to realize that their elders had not been josh-
ing them. Jimmy Coffeen, the quarterback who now officiates
at the public-address mike at all Packer home games, was
the first casualty, a brace of broken ribs sending him out.
Another scrimmage play followed, and tackle Al Petka
emerged from that with a cracked collarbone. One more
rushing maneuver, and tackle Andy Muldoon made his exit
with a broken ankle.
Lambeau & Company took quick stock of the situation.
This was hardly a day to buck the rugged Ishpeming line.
The Green Bay personnel totaled only twenty players, and
just seventeen were left for duty. Curly suggested a drastic
switch in tactics--no line plays, just passes and punts. The
reversal not only resulted in a 33-to-0 triumph for Green
Bay, with Lambeau doing the pitching, but also infuriated
the Ishpeming team to a point where it used a seven-man
line that included its fullback. The Michiganders taunted
their lighter rivals to come through, but the Packers hewed
to the pass-and-punt line for the rest of the day. Lambeau,
Tubby Bero, Walter Ladrow, and their associates continued
to fling and kick footballs through the air until the game
was over, and the riled Ishpeming gents had been given a
sound trouncing.
This game is chosen as outstanding because it proved
conclusively that brawn could be conquered by strategy, the
same aerial brand which young Lambeau and his friends had
learned in their knicker days on Cherry Street, Green Bay,
when they used a stuffed salt sack for play. It was to become
a concrete factor in Green Bay offensive play, one that is
still employed today.
