Twelve Mighty Orphans, by Jim Dent

At the height of the Depression, some of the most popular and admired sports figures were not big-time pros.  Capturing the hearts of the nation was a football team at a little orphanage in Fort Worth, Texas, the Mighty Mites of the Fort Worth Masonic Home.  When Rusty Russell came to the Masonic Home to coach and teach, most people thought he was crazy.  When he tried to start up a football program, he began to think so, too.  He had a practice field covered with rocks and cacti.  He had no equipment.  He had a flour can covered in a sock for a football.  But from that humble start, he built a football program that dominated a football crazy state for a decade.

Jim Dent tells the stories of the orphans, the Masonic Home, the against-all-odds coach, and these remarkable teams in Twelve Mighty Orphans: The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites Who Ruled Texas Football.  It really is hard to believe that these kids competed and won against bigger, better equipped schools with established football traditions.  Dent captures the era and the Home, placing it in the context of Fort Worth in the 1920s and 1930s.  I live a short drive from this site, but there is much about Fort Worth history and the Home that I had never heard.  Football is the focus, but Dent digs into the biographies of the kids who lived in this little piece of east Fort Worth with a sensitive heart for the pains of life that brought them all there and a wink and a nod for all the good times they had in spite of themselves.

The football, though, really tells the story.  Russell knew his little teams, outweighed by their opponents and outnumbered by their opponents' much larger rosters, had to be creative in this physical game.  He developed the spread offense, spreading out the field and passing much more than other teams were used to.  He was a pioneer in this style of play, which is now run-of-the-mill.  Back then, teams had a difficult time defending the unusual offense and frequently went home humiliated by these little orphans.  Besides their style of play, they also became known as being exceptionally tough, even mean, on the playing field.  They were scrappy and rough and took great pride in drawing blood and knocking heads.  

Like many great sports books, Twelve Mighty Orphans is an underdog story full of dramatic comebacks and happy endings, along with lots of bumps along the way.  A movie based on the book is coming out later this year; there is no shortage of cinematic moments and subplots for this to be a great film.  For the love of football, for the love of Fort Worth, and for the love of a bunch of kids who had a chance to be a part of something big, this is a wonderful book.

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