CUFF’S HEROICS

On October 3, 1951, Bobby Thompson drilled a ninth-inning pitch from Ralph Branca over the left field wall at the Polo Grounds to win the National League pennant for the Giants. It was christened then, and forevermore, as “the shot heard ’round the world.”

It stands as the most famous hit in the history of the stadium.

The most famous baseball hit, that is.

Because just over a decade earlier, a young defensive back who had stumbled into the sport in college and had yet to gain much attention for his play at the pro level delivered a massive tackle in the 1938 NFL Championship Game that helped the Giants—the football Giants—beat the Packers.

The Giants led most of the game, having blocked two early punts and converted them into nine points to lead, 16–7, at halftime. The Packers scored 10 points in the third quarter and took a 17–16 lead. The Giants regained the edge, 23–17, but the Packers were driving to win the game.

With the ball at their own 35, Packers quarterback Arnie Herber threw a pair of incompletions and then handed off to Ed Jankowski for a short gain. Instead of punting—an exercise that had already resulted in the two blocked kicks—the Packers went for it on fourth-and-9 from their own 36. And for a moment, the gamble paid off.

Herber connected with Wayland Becker for a deep pass that was caught at the Giants’ 20-yard line. Becker pulled in the pass, took a stride, and turned upfield to continue his journey to the end zone.

And that’s when it happened. Ward Cuff, the second-year defensive back and kicker, walloped him, forcing a fumble with an audible pop that rattled throughout the Polo Grounds and above the din of the 48,120 who attended the game. This was before plastic shoulder pads were introduced, the kind that produce that car-wreck crumpling noise when they meet each other on NFL fields these days. Rather, Cuff’s crunch came from one man’s flesh and bone and muscle ramming into another’s.

Becker fumbled the ball. Kayo Lunday of the Giants recovered it. The Packers never again came close to scoring, and the Giants would score a final touchdown to become the first team to win two NFL Championship Games (their title in 1927 having come via the standings rather than a head-to-head contest).

In a game noted for its violence—the New York Times observed that play was “absolutely ferocious,” that “no such blocking and tackling by two football teams ever had been seen at the Polo Grounds,” and that “tempers were so frayed and tattered that stray punches were tossed around all afternoon”—the hit by Cuff stood out amongst the mayhem.

“This was the gridiron sport at its primitive best,” the Times noted.

And yet when Cuff hit Becker, it rattled above all of that.

“The impact,” a reporter from UPI wrote, “was heard all over the stadium.”

Maybe not ’round the world, but certainly throughout the small continent of pro football.

Cuff grew up in Minnesota and went to Marquette to play ice hockey. When he got there, the team folded. Instead of changing schools, Cuff simply changed sports. He became a boxer. He became a javelin thrower. And he became a football player.

He had a rather nondescript college football career even though Marquette played in the inaugural Cotton Bowl on New Year’s Day 1937, losing to TCU, 16–6. Cuff missed an extra point in that game.

After college, he signed to play with the Giants as a running back and kicker, though during his rookie season he hardly did any of either. He carried the ball four times, caught five passes, and did not attempt a field goal in 1937. But he started to emerge as a solid defensive back, and he soon became a key part of a Giants defense that would become the best in the NFL. In 1938, the Giants allowed just 79 points in 11 games and gave up just 10 points over their final five games of the regular season. That included a 36–0 shutout of the Redskins, the team that had beaten them in the final game of the schedule in each of the two previous years, to clinch the NFL’s Eastern Division championship and advance to what was then called the “World’s Series of Football.”

Cuff was described by UPI reports as “a hard-driving back made of concrete and steel” who had been “a virtual unknown at Marquette.” Yet after the championship, when it came to recording the heroes of the Giants’ victory, it was Cuff who “copped the wreath with a smashing tackle that saved the game late in the fourth quarter.” He was unknown no longer.

By the time his career ended with the Giants, he would have his number 14 jersey retired (although it was dusted off for Y. A. Tittle to use a decade later), and in 1976, when the Giants celebrated their 50th anniversary, Wellington Mara would name Cuff to his all-Giants team as one of four defensive backs.

Cuff’s defensive hit may have shook the stadium and thwarted what was to be the last big push for points from the Packers, but there were other heroes in the 1938 Championship.

The game-winning touchdown was scored on a 24-yard pass to Hank Soar, who almost single-handedly engineered the drive. First, he returned the kickoff after Green Bay’s go-ahead touchdown to the 39. Later in the drive, he lunged for and barely reached a first down on a run that brought the Giants to the Packers’ 38. Ed Danowski threw a pass to Soar that took the Giants to the 24. From there, Danowski hit Soar for a leaping 24-yard touchdown pass. The Associated Press wrote that Soar “took the ball off Clark Hinkle’s fingertips on the 7 and dragged the Green Bay fullback over the line for a touchdown.” Cuff kicked the extra point just a few minutes before his crushing hit.

The Giants’ early lead in the game came courtesy of a pair of blocked punts. In the first quarter, Jim Lee Howell, who would go on to become the Giants’ head coach from 1954 to 1960, crashed through the Packers’ protection, smothered a kick attempt, and recovered the fumble at the Green Bay 7. That resulted in a field goal for the Giants. Howell recovered the second blocked punt, this one deflected by Jim Poole. Per the report from Associated Press, Tuffy Leemans “crashed through left tackle, was hit four times, and finally dove over” the goal line for a 6-yard touchdown and a 9–0 lead (the Giants missed the extra point that was attempted by John Gildea). The Packers hadn’t crossed midfield.

They eventually did, and scored to make it 9–7, but Hein flopped on a loose ball to recover a fumble, and Danowski marched the Giants from midfield to the end zone on six passes, the last of them a 21-yard touchdown to Hap Barnard.

Wellington Mara would later call the 1938 team his favorite of all time, mostly because he was 22 years old and a contemporary of the players. He and Danowski, in fact, were buddies at Fordham before they entered an employer-employee relationship with the Giants. Those players in 1938 weren’t just Wellington’s players, they were his pals, and they would enjoy life in New York City together.

Probably never more than after the 1938 Championship win.