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Those were the days when football was a ground game—four yards and a choking cloud of dust. Lambeau's Packers played it like basketball. ''Other teams passed in desperation. We threw on first down," he recalls. But nobody complained. Lambeau. after all, was the coach as well as the ace passer, and besides. the Packers almost always won. In 1921, looking for new worlds to conquer. Lambeau and his friends recklessly spent $50 for a franchise in the embryo National Football League (today's cost, including players: $550.000). and in 1929 the Packers won their first N.F.L. championship, trouncing the imperious (and previously undefeated) New York Giants at the Polo Grounds. 20-6.
Over the next 15 years, they won five more titles, with a baffling, devil-may-care attack that was built around a succession of well-remembered stars: John ("Johnny Blood") McNally, a vagabond halfback from Notre Dame; Arnie Herber and Cecil Isbell, both astoundingly accurate, threadneedle passers; Clarke Hinkle. a pile-driving fullback; and Don Hutson. a glue-fingered end who was probably the best pass receiver of all time. In 1935, on his first play in Green Bay, Hutson gathered in a Herber pass and raced 83 yds. against the hated Chicago Bears for the only touchdown of the game.
There is a page in the N.F.L. record book entitled simply "Records Held by Don Hutson.'' Among them: most touchdown passes caught (101). most yards gained catching passes (5,010), most touchdowns scored (105).
No Turnstiles, No Seats. Green Bay loved a winner, but it was next to impossible for such a small town to support one. At first, the Packers played their home games at Hagemcister Park, an open field that belonged to the Hagemeister brewery. The ''park" had no fences, no turnstiles, no seats. Fans wandered in and out at will, and a sportswriter named George Calhoun walked up and down the sidelines passing his hat. At the end of their first season, the Packers divvied up the spoils. pocketed $16.75 Per man-Even after the city built a stadium and fans filled every seat, the costs had a way of outrunning the receipts. Other pro teams popped up in such backwater towns as Rock Island. Ill., and Pottsville. Pa., only to die of poverty. But the Green Bay Packers somehow held for clowns.
Once Curly Lambeau cajoled a fan into selling his cream-colored Marmon roadster (for $1,500) to bail the team out of hock; in repayment, Lambeau allowed his benefactor to play one minute of one Packer game. Another year, a spectator tumbled from the Packer grandstand, sued, won a $5,000 verdict, and forced the team into receivership; Green Bay businessmen chipped in $15,000 to save the franchise. Again, in 1949, after two miserable seasons (Lambeau's last as coach), the Packers floundered financially.
This time the team's boosters reorganized the Packers as a nonprofit corporation (which they were anyway), peddled $125,000 worth of nondividend stock at $25 a share. "All we got was a certificate with some fancy lacework around the edge.'' says one shareholder, "and the best football team in the world." Today the Green Bay Packers Inc. has 1,698 stockholders, and its annual meeting is a major event on Green Bay's social calendar.