In the 1930s, leather helmets were an integral part of football uniforms, with the exception of Dick Plasman. The Chicago Bears wide receiver never liked hats, and he particularly despised the uncomfortable football helmets of the day that constantly fell on his eyes and obscured his vision while trying to catch. Preferring to play bareheaded with just his lush blonde hair for padding, Plasman is said to be the last player without a helmet in National Football League history, according to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Having won two All-Pro caps and a pair of championship rings during an eight-year NFL career, Plasman was more than just a football note. Voted the most outstanding athlete at his Miami high school, he excelled at football from an early age. Already measuring 6ft 4in in his sophomore year in high school, Plasman towered over defensemen and dominated all phases of the game.
After Plasman received an electrical engineering degree from Vanderbilt, the Bears drafted him in 1937 as a fine pass catcher, linebacker and kicker. The fierce play of 225 pounds on both sides of the ball fits in perfectly with a team dubbed the ‘Monsters of the Midway’.
His teammates nicknamed rookie “Eric the Red” because of his unstable temper, which was fully on display in the 1937 NFL Championship game. After being tackled hard on the frozen ground along the sideline Opposing, Plasman sparked a savage scrum after taking a hit against Washington star quarterback Sammy Baugh. Fans and police walked out of the stands and the benches emptied as Baugh’s teammates manhandled Plasman, who left the pitch with a bloody nose and split lip.
Although the NFL did not require players to wear helmets at the time, photographs from the 1937 title game appear to show Plasman wearing a helmet like the other players. However, it wouldn’t be the same the following season, and it had horrific consequences.
Helmet-less Dick Plasman hits a wall headfirst
In a home game against the Green Bay Packers on November 6, 1938, Plasman grew too friendly with the limits at Wrigley Field. As Chicago led in the first quarter, Plasman lined up as a catcher on Wrigley’s grill, which was so tight in the ballpark that a brick grandstand wall encroached on Chicago’s end zone. Bears quarterback Ray Buivid threw a pass to Plasman, who had parted ways with a Packers defenseman. With outstretched hands and eyes fixed on the sky, the receiver plunged headlong into the wall of the end zone.
The collision briefly knocked out Plasman as blood flowed from a gash that ran almost completely through the top of his head. Players and fans alike shielded their eyes from the gruesome sight.
“He hit him head-on and took off the entire scalp of his head,” recalls his teammate Dick Schweidler in Mudbaths and Bloodbaths: The Inside Story of the Packers-Bear Rivalry. “When he hit that wall, I jumped up and thought, ‘This man is dead.’ I couldn’t see how anyone could experience something like this. “
Dick Plasman, who played at Vanderbilt, played in the NFL from 1937 to 1947.
Professional Football Hall of Fame
The police helped transport the injured bear to the locker room, where he reportedly asked, “Have we scored?” . “I’m afraid Dick will never play again,” she told media. “His broken arm has been reset and luckily he only suffered minor head injuries. However, I barely see how his arm can be the same.”
Plasman, however, recovered from his injuries and excelled on the court in 1939, winning an All-Pro nod in he from Collyer, a sports weekly. He helped the Bears win back-to-back NFL Championships in 1940 and 1941, and he received All-Pro honors from United Press International in 1941.
Although he sported a crease in his head as a permanent reminder of his frightening encounter with the wall at Wrigley Field, Plasman still refused to cover his scalp. Bears teammate Hugh Gallarneau was not surprised. “I mean, he had a lump of cement for his head,” said the half-back, quoted in The chronicle of professional football.
Only one NFL opponent took advantage of the Plasman without a helmet. “The guy kept hitting me with his elbows,” he recalls after his retirement as a player. “I told him I was fed up. He continued. So one day he was on the ground and I stepped on a vulnerable part of him. He stopped after that.”
NFL military rules require Dick Plasman to cover his head
Two weeks after the Pearl Harbor bombing, the bareheaded bear caught two passes for 48 yards in Chicago’s victory in the NFL Championship game in 1941. The victory was bittersweet, however, as the Bears knew that World War II would end their fledgling dynasty. “There won’t be any need to break the Bears for the sake of professional football,” Plasman said. “The war has already done it.”
A few weeks after marrying a nurse he had met during his hospitalization in 1938, Plasman traded in his football uniform for a serviceman. Too large to serve in the Navy or Marines, he was inducted into the Army Air Forces in July 1942 and posted to Bolling Field in Washington, DC, to lead a new physical training program for base airmen.
Military service forced Plasman out of the 1942 and 1943 seasons and forced him to do something he hated: wear a hat. The football star had given up hats during his college days when a newly purchased hat flew off in a windstorm. However, service regulations required him to keep his head covered, and Plasman later recalled that he was almost court-martialed for wandering around the base with his top exposed.
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When Plasman returned to the Bears’ roster for three games on a military leave in late 1944, he was also forced to cover his head because a year earlier the NFL had required all players to wear a helmet. After returning to the Army after the 1944 season, Plasman continued to wear a football helmet on a team of former college and professional players who represented the Army Air Force personnel distribution command.
After his military service, Plasman returned to play in the NFL in Chicago, but this time with the Cardinals. After playing three games in 1946 and four in 1947, he retired with seven touchdown receptions and 14 extra point conversions.
Plasman returned to his bare-headed ways as an assistant coach with the Pittsburgh Cardinals, Packers and Steelers, which contributed to one occasion to freeze his ear. In a 1974 interview, sports journalist Ira Berkow asked Plasman, who died in 1981, if he would wear a headgear if he had the opportunity to return to the field. “Yes,” said the last player without a helmet in the NFL. “Earmuffs.”
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