1935 Smallest Player

The first time when I visited Aldo, we got into the hotel in the middle of the night and I didn't see anybody on the team. We got up for breakfast and I went down to get some coffee and then Aldo came down. I told him that the circus was in town. He asked me, 'Where is it at?' I said, 'Well, here comes some of the men that are in it.' In walked the men on his football team. I had never seen so many big men in all my life."

It is a common perception that most pro football players look like Too Tall Jones or William "Refrigerator" Perry -- giants and behemoths. Tall, big, and heavy players are the norm in today's pro football ranks.

However, I found twenty players who were either shorter or lighter in weight than he had been. These guys could have been horse race jockeys. Admittedly, most of the players played in the 1920s and had brief flings, but the findings were statistically fascinating (in a trivial kind of way). Just Ito name a few, there was Patsy Giugliano (5'4",140), Slim Jimmy Van Dyke (140), Bobby Wilson (147), John "Shorty" Tanner (5'5"), and Pard Pearce (5'5"). A lot of the players deservedly sported nicknames like "Pee Wee" and "Tiny." There were even two who also played major league baseball: Chuck Dressen (147) and Pid Purdy (145).

In contrast to Shapiro, Billy Cross had a respectable 3-year career in the NFL He was more than just a spot player, even though he did return punts and kickoffs and performed other duties now delegated to special teams. The clippings preserved in his scrapbook are proof positive that this tiny terror from the Texas Panhandle was skilled at blocking, defense, running, pass receiving, kicking and quarterback on occasion.

He first reported to the Cardinals training camp in Lake Forest, Illinois in 1951. He had been picked as a late draft choice at the annual winter meeting when all the teams were just shooting in the dark. Not much was known about him and presumably not much was expected. From out of little West Texas State College, Cross had never seen a pro player in his life. He recalled, "I felt like I had knocked on the wrong door." It wasn't that he didn't think he could make the team -- Billy had confidence oozing out his pores -- but he just felt like everyone there, from the coaches to the 80 to 100 players trying to make the team were saying, "What is that little boy doing here?"

Later in life, Billy coached with Bum Phillips at UTEP. When Phillips sent Cross out on a recruiting trip he would always remind him, "Don't bring back anyone you can look eye to eye with."

Cross came to the attention of the coaches during that first week in training camp in an intra-squad game. Leo Sanford recalled, "Bill and I came to the Cardinals as rookies. He was scared to death that first week and then the first time they let him run with the ball he ran crazy. He went 65 yards for a touchdown and from then on everybody on the team was crazy about him." The Cards signed him to contract for $5,000.

In the first Card-Bear tilt in Comiskey Park in 1951, the unheralded little speedster quickly captured the notice of Chicago fans. He figured prominantly in the Cards upset victory by scoring two TDs. The first came when Frank Tripucka rifled an 18-yard scoring pass to Cross and he followed that up seven minutes later with a 39-yard scoring romp. He was selected as the Cards' MVP of that game and was awarded a tailor-made suit.

Cross joked, "Maybe they selected me because they could have a suit made for me at one-third the price of outfitting some other guy." In another game in his rookie year, he snared a pass and went 80 yards for a score against the Rams.

Coach Curly Lambeau called him the "most surprising football player he ever coached. He attested, "I found out early that he was tough He proved to me he could do everything just as well, or better, than players of normal size He just runs past, or under, the big fellows."