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sharp nose, and exaggerated jaw that gave him a wicked underbite—it made the old man look like he was forever grinding his teeth or girding for a blow. His chin was dimpled in the axe-wound way of Kirk Douglas, a recognizable feature from his first schoolboy photo to the last shots snapped by local paparazzi. It was an iconic Chicago face, a West Side face, the face of a boss or alderman, as familiar as the silhouette of the Sears Tower.
    Halas was born in 1895 and grew up in that part of the city once known as Pilsen, many of its early inhabitants having emigrated from the area around Pilsen, Bohemia, which is now part of the Czech Republic. Back then, Chicago was a quilt of immigrant neighborhoods, communities of outcasts, each more despised than the next. You lived with everyone from everywhere. Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Italians, Greeks. It gave Halas a broad-mindedness that distinguished him from other players in the early years of the NFL. Halas could get along with anyone as long as he could play.

    Coach Halas working the sideline. When he disputed a referee’s call, the air around him turned blue. October 25, 1959
    Pilsen was one of those redbrick neighborhoods you see from the window of the elevated train, broad streets rushing toward the vanishing point, narrow houses, shades drawn in the upper stories, neon in the saloon windows, church spires, hardware stores, stoops, iron, ruin, and rain. The fire escapes were complicated weaves of rotting wood. Halas’s father was a brewer, a barkeep, and a tailor. He owned a grocery on 18th Place and Wood Street, three miles west of the Loop. George and his siblings lived in rooms above the store. In the summer, George shoveled coal for 50 cents a week, money he saved for college. Later reminiscences of his youthful striving had the comical ring of the miser telling you how he walked three miles to school, uphill both ways: “It was sometimes said of me that I threw dollars as though they were manhole covers,” he wrote in Halas by Halas . “That is correct. It is precisely what I did do. By being careful with money, I have been able to accomplish things I consider important.”
    Halas was a Cubs fan, a member of the last generation of Chicagoans who did not have their hearts broken by the team, then a dominant franchise. The Cubs played in West Side Park, a jewel box with curtained opera seats, brownstones looming. The stadium was demolished in 1920, lost in the way of Atlantis, sunk to the subconscious of the city. Baseball was the only pro team sport, and Halas watched with the fascination of the fan who recognizes a possibility: maybe, if I keep getting better. Though scrawny, he was a natural athlete, a master of every variety of stoop- and stickball game, the flea you make the mistake of underestimating. To get to West Side Park, he had to cross 14th Street, which meant fording the territory of the 14th Street Boys, a gang of jacket-wearing, punch-throwing gutter rats. “I would take a sock at the nearest punk and run,” Halas wrote later. “I believe that’s how I developed the speed that later was to be helpful in all sports.”
    Running from thugs was football in its primal state, with the object not scoring but surviving. In the early years of the pro game, scouts looked for players with the toughest childhoods: those who had to fight would have the instincts. The street games that preceded high school, games we all played, were football stripped to its essence—a run from the 14th Street Boys confined to a playground. Mob ball, gang ball. Anything can be done to you as long as you hold the rock. Those who give it up too soon will be considered cowards; those who hang on as the blows rain down will be esteemed. Halas came to favor a half dozen phrases, but the highest was reserved for players who kept the ball a moment longer than seemed reasonable. Such men had “the old zipperoo.”
    Halas excelled in every sport, but football was his favorite. The game