The 49ers star who witnessed his father’s murder in front of him was dubbed the “meanest” guy in NFL history.
The mother of young Hardy Brown Jr. was hiding from her husband on that day in 1928 in the remote Texas town of Childress, miles away from everything. However, Hardy Brown Sr. managed to locate her and their four kids. He followed her into a bedroom and cornered her until Absolam Gossett, the neighbor, came outside with a rifle and ordered Brown to leave. Brown was instantly shot dead by Gossett after he fired three shots directly into his chest.
Betty, Hardy Brown Jr.’s future wife, subsequently recalled, “He was in the room when his dad was shot.” “He said to me that everything that had transpired in his life up until that point was lost on him.”
On the other hand, the story that followed is among the most violent, dramatic, and famous in 49ers history.
Death was a shadow that trailed Brown. Gossett’s murder trial resulted in a hung jury in Texas. In 1929, Gossett went back to his house to await a new trial. One evening, he went out to the fields to see how his cattle were doing. His wife dispatched a posse to look for him after he failed to show up. They didn’t need to search far because one of Brown’s family members killed Gossett, who was found dead in a field. The Gossetts and Browns had exacted revenge, much like the Hatfields and McCoys of Texas.
The Texas Masonic Home, a Fort Worth orphanage for the children of deceased Freemason dads, is where Little Hardy and his three siblings were placed by their mother. In the 1930s and 1940s, he and his new friend, Tex Coulter, transformed the orphanage into a prep football powerhouse. Long into adulthood, the relationship with Coulter would endure.
When World War II started, Brown joined the Marines as a young man. The young soldier must have been even more traumatized by the severity of the Marines’ fighting in the Pacific theater, even if no tales of his deployment have survived. It appeared that violence was now his specialty.
In order to continue playing football, Brown enrolled at the University of Tulsa after his wartime discharge. At just under 200 pounds and 6 feet tall, he was undersized for a modern-day linebacker, but his strength quickly made him legendary. Like a freight train, the man struck.
He signed a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers, a brief All-America Football Conference football team, in 1948. After moving about for a while, Brown finally signed with the San Francisco 49ers in 1951. At Kezar Stadium, he quickly won over the local crowds’ admiration and fear. “On occasion, we were so close to hearing the bones crack right through the press box,” a sports journalist for the San Francisco Examiner expressed amazement.
Today, Brown would have been suspended from the league for what he did. He developed the skill of lowering his right shoulder, catching it beneath the jaws of his adversaries, and slamming upward. It was a knockout blow, not a tackle. 49ers quarterback and teammate Y.A. Tittle famously remarked, “I’m not claiming he was a terrific linebacker.” “However, in terms of striking, he rendered individuals disabled.”
According to Tittle’s tally, in only the 1951 season, Brown rendered 23 players unconscious, several of whom required hospitalization. According to Tittle, he once knocked out every starting backfield player but the quarterback versus Washington. According to Tittle, he destroyed a number of careers, notably halfback Glenn Davis’s, with a knee blow that one LA Times writer described as one of the “most devastating” hits he had ever witnessed.
Years later, Davis said, “I think he made a mistake playing the way he did.” “If he had focused on making the tackle instead of trying to murder somebody, he would have been a lot better player.”
This naturally turned Brown into one of the NFL’s most loathed individuals. He was said to be “the dirtiest SOB he ever played against” by one opponent.
Bob St. Clair, a teammate of the Niners, told the Examiner that some teams would set up a little money pot to see who could get Hardy out of a game.
