A very Philly thing happened when the city last hosted an NFL draft

The last time the NFL draft was held in Philadelphia was the day after the Eagles won their most recent NFL championship. And the most Philly thing ever happened: The team drafted a fullback in the first round who would never play a down in kelly green.

"The whole situation was very shaky," recalled Art Baker, now a79-year-old retiree in Hollywood, Fla., then a Syracuse star who would end up signing with the AFL-rival Buffalo Bills.

The Bills outbid the Eagles, though Baker says now that money wasn't the key factor in his decision: "The money was about the same. (The Eagles) were going through some changes. They didn't even have a coach. ... It was almost like they were starting over. Talking to a few of the players, I got the feeling that, you know, it's not too stable here."

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Seems like an odd way to look at the brand-new NFL champions, but Baker had a point. Head coach Buck Shaw had announced he was retiring before the Eagles beat the Packers to win the title. When ownership reneged on a promise to make quarterback Norm Van Brocklin the next head coach – trying to talk him into becoming player-coach, something Van Brocklin had no interest in being – the Dutchman opted to coach the expansion Minnesota Vikings. The Eagles would move forward minus both their championship coach and the QB who was pretty much Shaw's second-in-command. From 1962-77, the Eagles would go through three ownerships and manage one winning season.

But let's back up a moment to the 1961 NFL draft, held on Dec. 27, 1960. The 14 teams convened at the Warwick Hotel on Rittenhouse Square, about a mile and a half from this year's site, on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The Warwick, which hosted the 1957-61 drafts, looked a lot like it looks now, though the cars waiting for valet parking then tended to be larger and predominantly of American manufacture. The temperature was in the 30s and the sky was clear as NFL dignitaries trundled in from 17th Street through the flag-festooned entrance.

"The staffs of the dozen or so teams were arrayed around round tables in a small ballroom or large meeting room," recalled former Daily News sports editor Larry Merchant, who covered several drafts at the Warwick, and retains this memory, though he isn't certain which year it is from. "The Browns and the Rams, who pioneered modern scouting and drafting, had military-like planning committees -- scouts on telephones, rolodexes, etc. -- while other teams had a handful of guys in various relaxed attitudes, some of them with lists of players.

"The Eagles had three or four executives there. I distinctly recall one of them, I believe the (Philadelphia) fire commissioner (Frank  McNamee, who was also the team president) … leafing through a college football magazine and saying something like, 'This kid ( a guard) is 6-3 and 245. Why don't we take him?' "

McNamee was team president during the last decade of the so-called "100 brothers" Eagles ownership, a group of business and civic figures who bought the team between the 1948 and '49 NFL championships and sold it to Jerry Wolman in 1963. The general manager when the Birds drafted Baker was Vince McNally. In those days, players didn't travel to the draft, which was not televised, and McNally wasn't able to give his top draftee the news right away.

"McNally was high on Baker, although he hasn't been able to reach him yet," the Inquirer reported. "Baker is on the West Coast, getting ready to leave for Hawaii and the Hula Bowl."

Back then, the AFL drafted during the college season; Baker had known he was a third-round pick of the Bills since November.

"I talked to the Eagles manager, Vince McNally, several times," Baker said. "The Eagles' whole point of view was, 'We're the world champs and you should be honored to play for us.' I'm like, 'But guys, there's another league out there that also drafted me. And they got more money than you.' "

Baker recalls McNally's questioning whether the AFL would last. It lasted long enough to merge with the NFL in 1970, and the Bills won AFL titles in 1964 and 1965, though Baker, who never became a pro star, was playing in Canada by then. He would soon transition to a successful career selling radio ad time. He says now that he always felt his best sport was wrestling, in which he was the NCAA 191-pound champion in 1959.

Daily News columnist Jack McKinney relayed a Baker quote from Buffalo: "Philadelphia was very lax about its draft choices. They didn't get in touch with me until a week after the draft. It made me feel as if they didn't want me."

The Eagles hotly denied this, and even maintained they had flown Baker to Philadelphia just before the Hula Bowl, something that, if it happened, went unreported at the time. McNally said he'd spent two weekends with Baker on the Syracuse campus; the Eagles accused Baker of breaking a promise to give them a chance to counter before signing with the Bills.

At any rate, as Merchant wrote in the Daily News, of Burton and Baker: "For whatever reason, the two backs are gone, and eventually, attrition must catch up with the Eagles. Because it goes to the root of the issue,  it is noted that the Eagles consider it a successful season if they make a profit, win or lose."

Gosh, 56 years later, nobody ever levels those kinds of charges against Philly teams, right?

Baker never once played football in Philly, for Syracuse or the Bills.

"I ran there, though, in the Penn Relays," he said. "And my son lived there for years. I like Philadelphia."