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Friday, March 12, 2010
Art Rooney is remembered as the congenial owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers. His profile -- a thatch of white hair offset by thick eyeglasses, an ever-present cigar in his mouth -- is cherished by many sports fans.
Lost in time is the image of Rooney in his youth: solidly built with whippet-like speed, a multi-sport athlete whose talents emerged at an early age. As a teenager in the late 1910s, Rooney was akin to Terrelle Pryor, the talented athlete from Jeannette High School who currently plays quarterback at Ohio State. When he was only 16, Rooney played for sandlot baseball teams against the Homestead Grays, the Kansas City Monarchs and the House of David. Rooney was one of the best football players whenever he took the field, either for Duquesne University's prep team or the Hope Harveys, a semi-pro club composed of older men. Rooney's boxing skills made him a near lock to make the U.S. Olympic team in 1920, but he failed to attend the trials, worried that payments he received from semi-pro teams would have disqualified him."For his time, he was a prodigy," says Rob Ruck, one of the authors of "Rooney: A Sporting Life." "He just wasn't a six-foot-six prodigy."
Co-written by Maggie Jones Patterson, who is married to Ruck, and Michael P. Weber (who died during the writing of the book), "Rooney" traces the life of the Steelers' patriarch who shepherded the team into the NFL in 1933. The research and writing of the biography took 10 years and was done with the help of the Rooney family. Ruck and Patterson searched through family archives and historical documents, and conducted countless interviews.
When asked what they found most surprising, Patterson says, "That would be more of a list." She does allow that the tenor of Rooney's character emerged unexpectedly.
"As a reporter, having done many stories on many people, I've never done research on anyone who got better and better the more we dug," says Patterson, an associate professor of journalism at Duquesne University. "There's a lot of kindness in this man that people don't know about. It was done without any fanfare. I think he just really liked people."
Rob Ruck and Maggie Patterson, of Squirrel Hill, recently finished a biography on Art Rooney. "Rooney: A Sporting Life" traces the life of the Steelers' patriarch who shepherded the team into the NFL in 1933. The research and writing of the biography took 10 years and was done with the help of the Rooney family.Philip G. Pavely Tribune-Review
Art Rooney was born Jan. 27, 1901, in Coultersville, east of Pittsburgh. His family would move to Monaca and Crescent Township in Beaver Country, and the Homewood section of Pittsburgh, before settling in the North Side. His father opened Daniel Rooney's Cafe and Bar on General Robinson Street, where the tone of Art Rooney's life was set.
Daniel Rooney "is a mediator, he's brokering all sorts of things, and Art is exposed to that at an early age," says Ruck, a lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh and the author of "The Tropic of Baseball." "He has eight brothers and sisters and he's just part of that world. I think he picks up those attributes."
As he gets older, Art Rooney befriends two politicians who also shape his life: James J. Coyne, a state legislator from Oakland, and David Lawrence, who becomes the mayor of Pittsburgh, then governor of Pennsylvania. Rooney was enlisted to run in the Republican primary for the office of registrar of wills as a favor to Coyne in 1939. But his heart was not in the campaign, which he lost.
HELPING HAND
"I think he really liked it when he was active in ward politics because that was a way to help people out," Ruck says. "People would come to the ward chair or the lieutenants to get kids out of trouble, to get a load of coal, to bail them out of a jam, and Art was great at that."
That spirit of generosity, the willingness to help, would be part of Art Rooney's character his entire life. Rooney would hold court at the Steelers' offices at the Fort Pitt Hotel, where he also promoted boxing matches in the 1930s and 1940s.
Art Rooney was one of the nation’s top amateur welterweights in 1920. Rooney's boxing skills made him a near lock to make the U.S. Olympic team in 1920, but he failed to attend the trials, worried that payments he received from semi-pro teams would have disqualified him.Pittsburgh Steelers Collection
He also was known for being loyal, which partially explains why the Steelers were mired in mediocrity for most of their first 40 years. Instead of a hard-nosed, winning-at-all costs attitude, Rooney stuck by friends such as Walt Kiesling, who he continually brought back to coach the team despite poor results.
Rooney also had more than his share of bad luck. The team was on the verge of a breakthrough when World War II began, and the Steelers lost almost their entire roster when the men joined the military, forcing temporary mergers with the Philadelphia Eagles and Chicago Cardinals. After World War II, Rooney hired Jock Sutherland, who coached the University of Pittsburgh to five national championships. Sutherland, however, died after coaching the Steelers for only two seasons.
Rooney also wasn't inclined to invest exorbitantly in the team.
"He's willing to lose money, but he's not willing to lose big," Ruck says. "He's got a problem in the '30s, '40s,'50s: This is a big college football town. There aren't many cities where there are three (Pitt, Duquesne and Carnegie Tech) nationally competitive teams, and (the Steelers) are not drawing well."
Whatever misfortune dogged the Steelers was counterbalanced by Rooney's success in betting the horses at racetracks. Rooney had two incredible hot streaks: During the summer of 1937, on what came to be known as Rooney's Ride, it's estimated he cleared at least $200,000. In the first couple of months of 1947, he is presumed to have won nearly $1 million betting on a horse he owned, Westminster, in two races.
His gambling exploits were celebrated across the country, but not because he was the owner of the Steelers. Patterson points out that in the 1930s and 1940s, the NFL was not nearly the glamorous league it is now, and the Steelers often went begging for fans.
"We went to a Steelers game and I thought so much of Art, the contrast to these desperate years when he's trying so hard to get anybody to come to a game," Patterson says. "All these different ways of giving away tickets, and now this big empire that he built. Back then, the NFL wasn't getting much attention."
A loyal friend and family man, Art Rooney spent his life helping others. He came from a tight knit family and then created his own. Pictured in this undated photo are Art, his wife Kass, and their five boys (left-right), twins John and Pat, Art Jr., Dan and Tim. Pittsburgh Steelers Collection
Ruck thinks that until the team started to win championships in the 1970s, Rooney supported the team with his ventures in racetracks, notably ownership of Yonkers Raceway in New York and the Palm Beach Kennel Club, a dogtrack, in Florida.
Winning Super Bowls did not change Rooney. Even if he had remained a lovable loser -- a term he always despised -- Rooney's patterns would have stayed the same. He was defined by his daily habits: saying the rosary, attending Mass at St. Peter's Catholic Church in the North Side, then walking to work, helping folks who wandered into his office at the Fort Pitt Hotel or on the streets of the North Side.
That's who Art Rooney truly was, Ruck and Patterson agree.
"We tend to think of the American ethic of individualism," Ruck says. "You climb the ladder of success on your own. But Rooney's coming out of a background of mutualism where these ironworkers (his ancestors from Wales) stuck together. They shared work, they shared information about where there was work. There was a strong union consciousness in the family, a strong sense of you stick together and help each other work."
"Certainly his heritage was to maintain a very close tie with the church," Patterson adds. "I kept thinking of the Corporal Works of Mercy (the seven practices of charity toward neighbors). I really think he lived them. He went to funerals, he visited the sick. I think those were his connections."
At the groundbreaking ceremony for Three Rivers Stadium, April 1968, Art Rooney gets ready to kick a football while son Dan Rooney holds. The father-son working partnership guided the Steelers to quite a few victories in the old stadium. Pittsburgh Steelers Collection
Rooney stories
Anecdotes about Art Rooney from "Rooney: A Sporting Life"
• Art Rooney was nicknamed the Chief because of his resemblance to Perry White, the editor in chief of the Daily Planet in Superman comics.
• To cash in on the popularity of baseball, Rooney first named the Steelers the Pittsburgh Pirates Football Club when he formed the team in 1933. Forrest "Jap" Douds was the first coach (he also played), and the first training camp was Newell's Grove near Greensburg. The team became the Steelers in 1940. Other names that were considered included the Vulcans, Tubers, Ingots and Puddlers.
• In the 1930s through the 1950s, Rooney, along with partner Jack McGinley, promoted boxing matches. Fighters, including Billy Conn, Fritzie Zivic, Jake LaMotta, Sugar Ray Robinson and Ezzard Charles, fought at Forbes Field, Duquesne Gardens, Hickey Park in Millvale and Heidelberg Raceway. Pittsburgh was considered just a notch below New York City as a boxing mecca.
• Rooney would often visit St. Anne de Beaupre, a shrine in Quebec City, where he would collect holy oils and waters to rub on the legs of his racehorses.
• Rooney actually sold the Steelers in 1940 to Alex Thompson, the son of a Boston industrialist who wanted to move the team to Massachusetts. Rooney then bought half an interest in the Philadelphia Eagles, with plans to rename the team the Keystoners and split games between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. When the NFL nixed the idea of having a team in two cities, Rooney persuaded Thompson to swap franchises and move his team to Philadelphia, allowing Rooney to run his new team in Pittsburgh with Bert Bell. But, for four years, because Rooney never got around to changing names, the club operated as the Philadelphia Eagles Pro Football Club, Inc.
• In the late 1960s, the Steelers tried to hire Penn State's Joe Paterno as coach. When talk turned to faith, Rooney told Paterno about a brother who was a Franciscan monk. Paterno mentioned his mother, who prayed daily to the Infant of Prague. After Penn State staged a last minute rally to beat Kansas in the 1969 Orange Bowl, Rooney sent Paterno the following telegram: WILL TRADE MY BROTHER AND TWO SISTERS FOR YOUR MOTHER.
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