Sid Gillman. Josh Katzowitz
to make good use of his pass-catching abilities, though after catching three touchdown passes his sophomore year, he never scored again in high school. As one newspaper reporter put it, “he came through at his new post in brilliant fashion.” He was also helpful in carrying the ball in Kennedy’s end-around plays for which the coach was well known. But what really stood out in Sid’s game was his jumping ability to catch passes. That kind of talent meant colleges would be interested in securing his services for the next four years.
The year before, Clarence “Biggie” Munn—who played next to Sid on the North offensive line and who Gillman years later called “tougher than a month-old steak”—had committed to the University of Minnesota. Munn, who would go on to coach Michigan State to the 1952 national title, already was showing his potential as the best offensive lineman ever to play for the Gophers, and Gillman was getting plenty of attention from the Minnesota coaching staff. After all, he grew up just across the Mississippi River from campus.
Gillman, though, needed to gain weight. Already, he was a voracious eater, but Gillman weighed a skinny 185 pounds, and in order to play collegiate football, where everyone was bigger and faster, he needed to put on the poundage as soon as possible. So, Sid ate and ate, a habit that never quite worked its way out of his system.
“My brother, Don, used to walk home from school with Sid,” Budd Guttman said. “One day, my mom said she was going to make dinner for Sid and Don. Don said, “No, we had two corned beef sandwiches and a malted milk at the deli.’ My mother was talking to his mother on the phone, and later, Sarah called back and said that Sid ate a whole chicken when he got home.”
But his lean figure didn’t mean he wasn’t tough. On non-football Fridays, Gillman would try to cut out of piano lessons early and head to North Commons Park to play sandlot football with his buddies. He’d put on a uniform, and by the end of the game, he would be so black and blue that the bruises would last all week. That’s how brutal those games were, but it helped build the toughness and stubbornness in Sid that would last throughout his playing days and into his coaching career.
Some of that pluck is reflected in that scrapbook that Sarah so lovingly created and stored. Today, the 85-year-old book lives in the house of Sid’s youngest daughter, Terry, in San Francisco. Sid’s high school exploits take up about half the pages, and the other half consists of Sid’s collegiate career and various diplomas and love letters from his future wife. Eventually, the scrapbook will be placed in the hands of one of Sid’s grandchildren, where it will tell some of Sid’s story. But only a small portion. Only a small slice of how Gillman played on the field and a tiny portion of what was to come after high school and college.
When Sid would love two things: football, and a pretty girl named Esther.
On a Saturday afternoon in 1929, Esther Berg was invited to a Sweet 16 party, and she arrived on the arm of a long-forgotten suitor. Sid Gillman was already there, playing soft music on the baby grand. Esther undoubtedly knew about his athletic prowess and most likely recognized him, but she also was on a date and probably didn’t spend much of her time looking Gillman’s way.
Gillman, though, had a different reaction. Said Gillman, decades later as the two sat on the couch in their San Diego home and smiled at each other at the memory: “It was love at first sight. I looked at her and said, ‘She is mine.’” Then, Gillman got clever. He tapped a friend named Tom Egan, a fellow member of the all-city football team, to call Berg on the telephone the next day. The purpose of the call: to determine if Berg was going steady with the date she had brought to the Sweet 16 (she was not). Then, Egan, acting as proxy for Gillman, asked Berg out for the next Saturday (she accepted).
By the middle of the next week, Gillman had taken a job at another event and couldn’t pick her up for the date. So, Gillman asked if it would be OK if a friend of his picked her up from her house and brought her to the party (it was). After his gig was complete and Gillman’s day of work was through, Esther and Sid had their date.
And that, as Esther liked to tell her daughters, was the beginning of forever.
They went out a few times but didn’t see much of each other, because she had graduated from high school early and worked a job and because Gillman was busy playing football and basketball. There just wasn’t enough time. But something had sparked. By the time Gillman had graduated and was trying to figure out where he should go to college, she knew that he was the guy for her. Gillman also was smitten with the petite brunette.
“I have to tell you, she was the prettiest girl in Minneapolis,” Gillman said. “She used to stop traffic she was so pretty.”
Still, he knew he couldn’t stay in Minneapolis. Even with Esther, he knew he had to get away for college. Though Minnesota courted him, Ohio State had a secret weapon. A man named George Hauser, a former star at Minnesota who was then the line coach at Ohio State, talked to Gillman about enrolling at the Columbus school. It was 750 miles away from home—and from Esther. But Hauser was persuasive. And Gillman figured the only way to move forward with Esther was to move far away without her. Gillman worried that if he stayed in Minnesota then, he might never leave the state.
“I felt that she and I had to separate for a while,” Gillman said. “I would have said, ‘Let’s get married,’ and she would have said, ‘No, we’re not getting married until you get your degree and make something of yourself.’ I knew that if I went to Minnesota, I wouldn’t have lasted very long. [Going to Ohio State] was the smartest thing I ever did.”
Said Esther: “He knew it was most important that he get his degree first. He didn’t go into football or any sports education [major]. He was a political science major and a history minor. He was going to be a lawyer. I thought, ‘God, that’s even better than what I need.’”
Funny thing about Gillman’s plans, though. Thanks to an eccentric, most likely crazy coach named Francis Schmidt, Gillman’s judicially charged ideas were transformed into something else entirely when his time at Ohio State was finished. Football was his life before he met Esther. It was always priority No. 1. With her by his side, he still couldn’t escape that equation. He thought he could be a lawyer, maybe play a little piano on the weekends, build a family and be a regular guy. But in reality, he was destined to spend his waking (and some of his non-waking) hours inside a stadium, inside a film room, inside the locker room.
Football, you see, was still No. 1, and at Ohio State, it would become his career as well as his love.
three OHIO STATE
Sid Gillman never claimed he was a smart man. Not when it came to academics anyway. With football, Gillman wanted to learn, wanted to ingest as much knowledge as his brain would allow. Academics—like just about everything else that wasn’t a sport—didn’t interest him much. But there was always Esther. She was there to help push him forward, most notably to his high school graduation. Yet, at the same time, to push him away to a city that was a two-day drive away.
“She was smarter than I, honest to goodness,” Gillman said many decades later, with Esther at his side. “We had minimum requirements (at North High School), and to this day, I would never have passed those minimum requirements if she hadn’t helped me. That’s the truth.”
Gillman had earned a football scholarship to Ohio State, but he wanted to continue playing baseball as well. That wasn’t what football coach Sam Willaman wanted to hear. When Willaman learned of Gillman’s plans, Willaman made sure to let his incoming freshman know, “We’re going to have spring practice, and I want you there.” And thus ended Gillman’s illustrious baseball career.
Instead, he prepared himself to play the end position for the Buckeyes, started gaining weight for his transition to the Big Ten conference, studied for what he assumed would become a career in the judicial arts, and found a band that needed a piano player (called the Miserable Five).
Since freshmen weren’t eligible to compete on the varsity squad, Gillman played on the rookie team, and since Ohio State rarely threw