Early Life and Sports Career
Halas was born in Chicago, Illinois, into a family of Czech-Bohemian immigrants. His parents were Slavic migrants from Pilsen, Bohemia part of what would later become Czechoslovakia. George had a varied career in sports. In 1915, Halas worked temporarily for Western Electric and was planning on being on the Eastland. He was running late, however, and missed the capsizing. After graduating from Crane High School in Chicago, he attended the University of Illinois, playing football for coach Bob Zuppke as well as baseball and basketball, and earning a degree in civil engineering. He also became a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He helped Illinois win the 1918 Big Ten football title.
Serving as an ensign in the Navy during World War I, he played for a team at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, and was named the MVP of the 1919 Rose Bowl. On a team which included Paddy Driscoll and Jimmy Conzelman, Halas scored a receiving touchdown and returned an intercepted pass 77 yards in a 17-0 win; the team was also rewarded with their military discharges.
Afterward, Halas played minor league and semi-pro baseball, eventually earning a promotion to the New York Yankees, where he played 12 games as an outfielder in 1919. However, a hip injury effectively ended his baseball career. The popular myth was that Halas was succeeded as the Yankees' right fielder by Babe Ruth, but in reality it was Sammy Vick who was replaced by Ruth. Later that year, he played for the Hammond Pros and received about $75 per game.
Read more about this topic: George Halas
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, sports and/or career:
“We early arrive at the great discovery that there is one mind common to all individual men: that what is individual is less than what is universal ... that error, vice and disease have their seat in the superficial or individual nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“They had both noticed that a life of dissipation sometimes gave to a face the look of gaunt suffering spirituality that a life of asceticism was supposed to give and quite often did not.”
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980)
“...I didn’t come to this with any particular cachet. I was just a person who grew up in the United States. And when I looked around at the people who were sportscasters, I thought they were just people who grew up in the United States, too. So I thought, Why can’t a woman do it? I just assumed everyone else would think it was a swell idea.”
—Gayle Gardner, U.S. sports reporter. As quoted in Sports Illustrated, p. 85 (June 17, 1991)
“My ambition in life: to become successful enough to resume my career as a neurasthenic.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)