Hirsch, Elroy Leon (“Crazylegs”)

(b. 17 June 1923 in Wausau, Wisconsin; d. 28 January 2004 in Madison, Wisconsin), record-setting halfback and end whose talents earned him a place in the Pro Football Hall of fame in 1968.

Hirsch was born to Otto Peter Hirsch, an ironworker, and Mayme Sabina (Magnusen) Hirsch, a homemaker, and led a typical 1920s childhood in the Upper Midwest. Early on he showed outstanding athletic ability. Hirsch’s Wausau High School football team, coached by the legendary Win Brockmeyer, won conference championships in Hirsch’s junior and senior years. Hirsch was a much sought after recruit but decided to matriculate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1942. In his only varsity season Hirsch and his teammates led the Badgers to an 8–1–1 record, including an upset victory over the first-place Ohio State University. Hirsch gained 200 yards in that game and finished the season with 786 yards rushing. During the 1942 season the Chicago Daily News writer Francis Powers gave Hirsch his colorful and lasting nickname, Crazylegs. Reporting on a sixty-two-yard touchdown run, Powers wrote, “His crazy legs seemed to be going six different directions at once—he ran like a demented duck.” Hirsch did not mind the appellation. He said, “It’s better than Elroy.”

After the 1942 college season Hirsch enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and was assigned to the University of Michigan V-12 officer training program. Hirsch continued to shine athletically at Michigan, leading the Wolverines to an 8–1 record. The University of Notre Dame inflicted the only loss and was the only team to score more than one touchdown against Michigan. Hirsch became the only Wolverine to earn four letters in one year, for football, basketball, baseball, and track and field. The versatile Hirsch once competed for Michigan in a morning track meet at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and then flew 170 miles to Bloomington, Indiana, to pitch the second game of a baseball doubleheader against Indiana University later the same day. Hirsch went out for basketball when he noticed the Michigan schedule included a trip to Madison to play the University of Wisconsin. It gave Hirsch an opportunity to see Ruth Katherine Stahmer, his high school sweetheart, who was a student at Wisconsin. The couple married in 1946 and had two children.

In 1944 and 1945 Hirsch was on active duty with the Marine Corps. He played football for the El Toro Marine Base in California and took part in the clash of World War II service-ball titans against the Fleet City Naval Base Bluejackets. Although he was the number one draft pick of the Cleveland Rams in 1945, Hirsch, and many of his El Toro marine mates, signed on with the Chicago Rockets of the upstart All-America Football Conference for the 1946 season. Before reporting to training camp, Hirsch led the College All-Stars to an upset of the defending National Football League champion Rams, 16–0, and was named the game’s most valuable player. With the Rockets, Hirsch was not very effective as a runner and often was injured. It appeared as though his career was over when he sustained a skull fracture behind his right ear during the 1948 season.

Hirsch, not pleased with the ineptitude of the Rockets, signed with the Rams, who had moved to Los Angeles, for the 1949 season. Hirsch had been wearing a leather helmet when he was injured in 1948 and therefore was fitted for special plastic headgear with the Rams. The Rams, always innovative offensively, debuted a three-end attack in 1950. Hirsch, instead of a running halfback, was a flanker, a position similar to the later wide receiver. He carried the ball only twice that season but caught forty-two passes for 867 yards and seven touchdowns.

With Bob Waterfield and Norm Van Brocklin, both later enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, alternating at quarterback for the Rams, Hirsch had a breakout season in 1951. In a game against the Chicago Bears, Hirsch took a medium-range pass from Van Brocklin and zigzagged ninety-one yards to a touchdown to help erase a 14–0 deficit as the Rams cruised to a 42–17 victory. Hirsch was nearly unstoppable for the National Football League champion Rams that season. With his seventeen touchdowns, Hirsch led the league in scoring with 102 points. He also led in yards gained (1,495) and average number of yards per catch (22.7 yards). He had touchdown receptions ranging from thirty-four to ninety-one yards. Hirsch once caught eighteen passes in a single game, a long-standing record.

Hirsch continued to post outstanding numbers until he retired after the 1957 season. He ended his playing days with a career total of 387 receptions for 7,029 yards and sixty touchdowns. Bill (“Scrooge”) Kellagher, Hirsch’s teammate on the Chicago Rockets from 1946 to 1948, when asked who was the best receiver ever answered, “That’s easy... Crazylegs Hirsch! He had that crazy running style once he caught the ball, but he made catches, especially those over-the-shoulder kind, that I never saw anyone else make.”

While Hirsch was with the Rams, Hollywood beckoned. Hirsch played himself in the 1953 biopic Crazylegs, which premiered at the Grand Theatre in Wausau. In 1955 he played a prison inmate in Unchained, which produced the song “Unchained Melody,” now a pop classic. Hirsch’s film career ended with the 1957 airline disaster movie Zero Hour!.

After his playing career, Hirsch served as general manager of the Rams. Always a Badger, however, he returned to the University of Wisconsin and served as director of athletics from 1969 to 1987. Hirsch was instrumental, largely through infectious optimism, in restoring his beloved Badgers to athletic prominence. The Crazylegs Classic, an annual eight-kilometer run, generated more than $4.2 million dollars for Wisconsin athletic scholarships. More than 125,000 runners participated in the race over the years.

When Hirsch died of natural causes on 28 January 2004 in Madison, tributes from all over the nation poured in. Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin read a tribute on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Senator Russell D. Feingold did likewise on the Senate floor. The University of Wisconsin athletics director Pat Richter summarized what Hirsch meant to so many, “Never before has there been a more loved and admired ambassador for Wisconsin sports.... He loved life, he loved people, and he loved the Badgers.” The University of Michigan athletics director Don Canham said, “Elroy, by sheer magnetism, brought the entire state together.” Hirsch’s humility and everyman persona had made him a Wisconsin icon. A portion of the access road to Camp Randall Stadium at the University of Wisconsin is named Crazylegs Drive. His number 40 jersey was retired by the Badgers.

Hirsch’s life and career are discussed in Steve Bisheff, Los Angeles Rams (1973); Don Smith, Pro Football Hall of Fame, All-Time Greats (1988); and Rick Telander, From Red Ink to Roses (1994). An obituary is in the New York Times (29 Jan. 2004).

Jim Campbell