The Battle of Pottsville
By: Jerry Izenberg
POTTSVILLE, PA.- This is the home of Joe Zacko, a 65-year-old general who serves as field
marshal and varsity strategist in Pottsville's war against bureaucracy and the National Football
League.
His army is made up of stern stuff. Throughout the anthractite region the men of Pottsville are
known as "the first defenders"- a title they acquired by producing the first Union Army enlistments
in the Civil War.
His command post is a comfortable sporting goods store on Centre Street, armed with two
telephones, a small arsenal of football trophies and the pictorial history of the Pottsville Maroons.
His chief allies are the B'nai B'rith and the Rotarians . . . Walter S. Farquhar, the 74-year-old
newspaperman who is the army's minister of information . . . Michael Close, mayor of Pottsville
. . . and Charlie Berry's right shoe.
Like all holy wars (this one enters its 28th year) the goal is unconditional surrender and it may
be that Charlie Berry's old size nine is going to wind up kicking the National Football League's
record book right in its agate type,
For that reason the new Professional Football Hall of Fame is reaching hot little hands towards
Pottsville, hoping to acquire the shoe and other trophies of war now in Zacko's possession.
Zacko will be happy to comply. All the National Football League has to do is admit the error
of its way by recognizing Pottsville as the 1925 league champions. Pottsville is in this war to win.
It has been fighting a long time.
"During World War II," Zacko explained, "we got thousands of letters from boys in the service.
It seems they doubted the stories our young men told about the Maroons and how they won the
world title.
"That's when the struggle really began. I printed up 1,000 pictures of taht team and began
sending them to the doubters. I know that team. I supplied its uniforms.
"If they'll only look at what really happened there's only one thing they can do when they have
their league meeting on January 29 and that's to give us our 1925 championship."
It is Zacko's contention- a contention supported by Walter Farquhar- that the Frankford
YellowJackets and not the late Joe Carr, then NFL president scuttled Pottsville's pennant.
"They beat us earlier in the year. But we beat them, 49-0, later. We were the champions.
"They were mad because they thought they should have had the chance to play the Four
Horsemen.
"But they were always trouble for us- not on the field, mind you; the Maroons took care of them
all right there. We used to travel with 3-4,000 fans and you know Frankford was the only town in
the league where the police wouldn't let us march to the park with our band.
"I know I get carried away sometimes. I talk about this to much my wife feels like she's
married to the whole 1925 team."
For the record Pottsville won 10 and lost 2 that year, scoring 327 points to the enemy's
45. Berry led the league in scoring, picking up all 31 points when the Maroons schneidered
Green Bay on Thanksgiving.
But until the Hall of Fame found itself trying to fill up trophy cases, nobody paid much attention.
Zacko leafed through a pile of documents. "See these? The're letters of support from all over the
country and here's a proclamation from one of our service clubs: "Our citizens should raise their
voices so that the clamour will be heard throughout the country . . . "
Men of Pottsville, stand firm. The battle has just begun.
People come straight to the point here. Out on Route 122, the shuttle road which connects
Pottsville with U.S. 22, a drive-in theatre stands snow-bound and empty. The marquee simply
says:
"Closed for season . . . Reason? Freezin'."
Nobody wastes words in the anthracite region. "With money," Walter Farquhar said Pottsville
directness, "we could have been the Green Bay of the East."
"Money," Joe Zacko chimed in, "was always something of a problem." Zacko is the field
marshal of the Pottsville expeditionary force which hopes to get Commissioner Pete Rozelle
to restore the 1925 championship at the league meeting this month.
He is also possessor of Charlie Bery's right shoe- a piece of field goal memorabilia he hopes
to swap to the Football Hall of Fame in exchange for that line of championship type in the NFL
record book.
This was in his sporting goods store which serves as battalion headquarters.
"Money was always tough. In 1924 we sent Dr. John G. Striegal to Chicago to go after
the NFL franchise. While he argued we went around town collecting money."
Dr. Striegal called Zacko the day he obtained the franchise. "We got it," the doctor said.
"I wrote a check for them." "You will be happy to know," Zacko told him, "that we finally got
the money together to cover that check."
Dr. Striegal's negotiations and Zacko's little community chest had wrapped up operations in
a dead heat. One less day in Chicago and there might have been no NFL team in Pottsville.
Farquhar and Zacko spoke about the team which dismembered the Cardinals in the 1925
title game and as they talked a spent messenger staggered into the stockade. It was Charlie
Berry.
"It seems to me," the ex-American League umpire, who was Pottsville's leading scorer that
year, said, "this whole thing should have been cleared up long ago. There wasn't a team that
could touch us.
"For one thing, the 1925 Pottsville Maroons had a magnificently illegal screen pass. Of course it was legal in those days. (CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE)