Dayton Triangles
Dayton Triangles’ Impact on Early Records
Contemporaries viewed Triangle players Al Mahrt, Lou Partlow, Norb Sacksteder, and Hobby Kinderdine as top players in their era.
Lee Fenner deserves special recognition for playing with the Triangles every year from 1916 to 1929 — a total of 14 seasons. He weighed only 150 pounds during his playing days and accomplished the additional feat of playing for two entire seasons without being taken out of a game.
In 1922 the Racine Cardinals move their home games to Comiskey Park, and officially became the Chicago Cardinals. Also in 1922, the Decatur Staleys relocated to Chicago and took the name “Bears”. They played their home games at Wrigley Field.
Of the remaining eight charter-member teams which attended the league’s organizational meeting on September 17, 1920, seven had folded. Of the ten charter-member teams of the NFL, only the Dayton Triangles remained playing as originally organized.
On July 12, 1930, the Dayton Triangle franchise was purchased by a syndicate from Brooklyn headed by John Dwyer. He moved the franchise to Brooklyn, New York, and renamed the team the Brooklyn Dodgers. No connection to the more famous Brooklyn Dodgers professional baseball team.
Triangle manager Carl Storck continued to serve the NFL. When Joe Carr, NFL president since 1921, died in Columbus on May 20, 1939, the NFL named Dayton’s Storck as acting president five days later. He served in that post for almost two years, resigning due to poor health, on April 5, 1941. He was replaced by the NFL’s first commissioner, Elmer Layden of Notre Dame.
The Dayton Triangles team was one of the charter members of the National Football League. The first league game played in the NFL was played in Dayton at Triangle Park on October 3, 1920. The first touchdown in the NFL was scored in that game by Lou Partlow of the Dayton Triangles. Dayton’s “Hobby” Kinderdine kicked the new league’s first and second extra points.
Also, Dayton provided one of the league’s organizational founding fathers, the manager of the Triangles, Carl Storck.
Carl Storck participated in all of the league’s first organizational meetings and served the National Football League for the first 21 years of its existence. He served as the NFL’s President for two of those years in his office in the Winters Building at Main & 2nd Street in downtown Dayton, Ohio.
Dayton’s Triangles Franchise Summary
Dayton’s Triangles Clubs Games 1920-1929
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