The '63 Steelers (49 page)

“I put it down in the book as it wasn't meant to be,” Michaels said. “That's the way it happened. And that's the way it worked. What can you say about it? There are things that sometimes happen for you, sometimes don't happen for you.”
²³

The eleven-year-old kid who watched the Steelers cling to a championship dream bounced back, too. Days after the 33–17 loss to the Giants, he even made the front page of the
Youngstown Vindicator
, standing in a sleigh driven by Santa Claus and pulled by a couple of donkeys wearing fake reindeer antlers. Sitting in a sleigh pulled by donkeys was probably the Christmas equivalent of playing in the Runner-Up Bowl. The headmistress of the school had arranged the event and alerted the newspaper to a good photo opportunity. It was no Morris Berman photograph of Y. A. Tittle for eternity, but it was good enough for a sixth-grader. And he had a broad grin despite the frigid weather and the aftermath of the Steeler loss.

Christmas was a week away, and four days after the holiday, the NFL title game between the Bears and Giants was held at Wrigley Field on another frozen field, with temperatures in the single digits. If you were a Steeler fan, it was tough to resist watching and imagining how Pittsburgh would have done in a rematch with Wade and Ditka. Hampered by an injured knee, Tittle threw five interceptions, and Del Shofner dropped a pass in the end zone. For a Steeler fan, it figured that such lapses couldn't have happened against Pittsburgh two weeks earlier. The Bears won, 14–10. The winner's share, per player, was $5,899.77, the loser's share $4,218.15, a much better payday than the Steelers got playing in the Playoff Bowl the year before.
¹

With little off-season coverage, the draft over, no such thing as sports talk radio shows, and no 24–7 sports on TV, football practically went into hibernation until the College All-Star Game in the first week of August in '64—which brought one more reminder that it could have been the Steelers
playing George Mira, Carl Eller, and Charlie Taylor instead of the Bears. But there were other diversions to keep a young Steeler fan from dwelling on disappointment.

The Beatles were only weeks away from appearing on
The Ed Sullivan Show
, opening up a whole new world of transistor radio, rock 'n' roll, and 45 rpm records to a sixth-grader. The Beatles would even play at the Civic Arena, the same venue Leonard Bernstein had condemned for its acoustics. Later, there would be a school dance with Beatles songs playing on a record player, and the discovery that a girl's hand in yours could feel as soft and comfortable as a nicely broken-in baseball glove. And probably smell better.

And there would always be reminders of life and death. At the end of July, during training camp, Willie Galimore, who had scored the opening touchdown in the Steelers-Bears 17–17 tie, and teammate John Farrington, whose 54-yard reception set up Galimore's score, died in a car crash. The kid, now twelve, went with his dad to see Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential candidate, speak at Idora Park in the summer. Maybe it was the memory of Kennedy or just a disinterest in politics, but the kid probably would have had a better time there riding the Wildcat or hearing the Human Beinz in concert.

The wait for a good Steeler team would seem as interminable as the last week of school before summer vacation—magnified a hundred times. Seasons of 2–12 … 5–8–1 … 2–11–1 went by—and so did the coaches. In that time, the rival Browns won a championship and so did the New York Mets; Forbes Field was torn down and the Beatles disbanded—just as easily as the '63 Steelers were disassembled. Tucked inside those events was a lesson about how brick and mortar could be crushed, but you could hang on to the smell and sights and sounds of a Sunday afternoon, and the spectacle of John Henry Johnson running with a football like a man dashing out of a burning building could become imbedded in your memory as securely as a tattoo on your arm. And if the Mets could win a World Series, well, how could anyone doubt that we could land a man on the moon, even if it wasn't Big Daddy Lipscomb? And who would dare scoff that even the Steelers could win a championship?

At last, seeing black-and-gold uniforms in a playoff game on TV made you feel the way you do when your lungs give thanks as you explode to the surface after holding your breath underwater for as long as you can. As the clock ticked off the final seconds on January 12, 1975, to make it official that the Steelers were, indeed, after forty-one seasons, champions
of the NFL, it felt as if all the noisemakers, confetti, and cheers on New Year's Eve in Times Square were fluttering inside your stomach. At some point, another lesson seeped into the kid's subconscious, where it would linger like some valuable tool or device that had been neglected and forgotten in a corner of a garage or attic, then discovered with the exclamation, “I've been looking for this!” No one articulated and described that lesson better than Pat Conroy in
My Losing Season
. “Winning is wonderful in every aspect, but the darker music of loss resonates on deeper, richer planes,” Conroy wrote. “Loss is a fiercer, more uncompromising teacher, coldhearted but clear-eyed in its understanding that life is more dilemma than game, and more trial than free pass.” And there could hardly be a more fitting performer to applaud Conroy's tale than Andy Russell, who went from a player on a 1–13 team to a Super Bowl champion. Conroy's contention that loss teaches us more is “absolutely true,” Russell wrote in “A Letter to Pat Conroy,” one of the chapters in Russell's book,
Beyond the Goalpost
.
²

Forty-one years after two uncles, Big Daddy Lipscomb, Ernie Davis, John F. Kennedy, and the '63 Steelers' dream died, I returned to Rosewae Drive and the front yard where I once wore away the grass diving after footballs. It was a sunny, balmy spring afternoon, but there were no kids outside playing catch, no mothers tending their gardens. There was an addition on one end of the house—our house—and the trees had grown a lot bigger. But mostly I was surprised at how small the yard was compared to how I remembered it. Maybe the whole world looked bigger back then—bigger with hope and dreams. As big as Big Daddy, as big as New York.

The one thing that hadn't changed over four decades was the rich sheen of the grass, and I didn't have to close my eyes to see my neighborhood pals playing tackle football on it, or to picture an overcast, late fall Sunday afternoon long ago, on a day the flag dangled limp at half-mast, along with our spirits, and the sight of Mike Ditka ricocheting through a half-dozen defenders as Clendon Thomas gave chase and the eleven-year-old kid in the stands at Forbes Field clenched his fists and pleaded, “Catch him. Catch him.”

PREFACE

1
. John Kobler, “Crime Town USA,”
Saturday Evening Post
, March 9, 1963, 71.

2
. Jack Sell, “Last-Minute Layne Deflates Browns,”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, Nov. 23, 1959.

3
. Al Abrams, “The Comeback Kids,”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, Nov. 23, 1959.

4
. George Strickler, “Packers Win; Bears Tie, Retain Lead,”
Chicago Tribune
, Nov. 25, 1963; Pat Livingston, “Steelers Warned,”
Pittsburgh Press
, Sept. 21, 1963.

5
. Art Rooney Jr., conversation, March 10, 2008.

6
. Bill Conlin, “Bears ‘Lucky' to Tie Steelers,”
Philadelphia Evening Bulletin
, Nov. 25, 1963.

7
. Al Abrams, “A Bear of a Tie,”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, Nov. 25, 1963; Lou Cordileone, conversation, Aug. 13, 2008; Lou Michaels, conversation, Aug. 29, 2007; Conlin, “Bears ‘Lucky.'”

8
. Robert Riger,
Best Plays of the Year 1963: A Documentary of Pro Football in the National Football League
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964), 69.

PRESEASON

1
. Ray Didinger,
Pittsburgh Steelers
(New York: Macmillan, 1974), 21.

2
. Jack Sell,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, “Steelers Hire Buddy Parker for 5 Years,” Aug. 28, 1957.

3
. Art Rooney Jr., conversation, April 29, 2010.

4
. Didinger,
Pittsburgh Steelers
, 21.

5
. Jack Goodwin, “Fran Watches Layne in Awe and in Desperation,”
Minneapolis Star
, Nov. 5, 1962.

6
. Steve Hubbard, “Destiny's Derelicts,”
Pittsburgh Press
, Jan. 3, 1988.

7
.
Myron Cope, “Pro Football's Gashouse Gang,”
True
, Sept. 1964, 106; Andy Russell, conversation, April 19, 2010; Frank Atkinson, conversation, Oct. 10, 2007.

8
. Cope, “Pro Football's Gashouse Gang,” 106; Lou Cordileone, conversation, Aug. 13, 2008.

9
. Andy Russell, interview, April 19, 2010.

10
. Richard Sandomir, “Little Consolation in Third-Place Game,”
New York Times
, Feb. 5, 2011.

11
. Sandy Grady in Didinger,
Pittsburgh Steelers
, 22.

12
. Lou Cordileone, conversation, Aug. 13, 2008.

13
. “Parker Slated to Remain as Steelers' Coach But Layne's Career Nears End,”
Youngstown Vindicator
, Jan. 8, 1963 (United Press International, published in
Vindicator
).

14
. Lou Cordileone, conversation, Aug. 13, 2008.

15
. Ibid.

16
. Mike Shropshire,
The Ice Bowl: The Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers Season of 1967
(New York: D. I. Fine Books, 1997), 59.

17
. Tarasovic was listed as defensive end that year; he played linebacker in '63.

18
. Jack Sell, “Eagles Top Steelers in Wild Fray, 35 to 24,”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, Dec. 4, 1961.

19
. Didinger,
Pittsburgh Steelers
, 29.

20
. Michael Richman, “Eddie LeBaron,”
Coffin Corner
, 25, no. 3 (2003): 1.

21
. Tex Maule, “Pro Football Scouting Reports,”
Sports Illustrated
, Sept. 9, 1963, 54; Andy Russell, interview, April 19, 2010; Bobby Layne with Fred Katz, “Pro Football's 11 Meanest Men,”
Sport
, Nov. 1964, 16.

22
. Jimmy Brown with Myron Cope,
Off My Chest
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964), 44–45.

23
. Stephen Norwood,
Real Football: Conversations on America's Game
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004), 109.

24
. “Packers Picked to Lead the Pack,”
Pittsburgh Press
, Sept. 1, 1963.

25
. Tex Maule, “The Cowboys Can Ride High on Better Defense,”
Sports Illustrated
, Sept. 9, 1963, 52.

26
. Joe Falls, “NFL Predictions: New Threats, Old Champions,”
Sports All-Stars 1963
Pro Football
, 44.

27
. William N. Wallace, “Steelers: A Lot of Discards Seeking a Jackpot,”
New York Times
, Dec. 10, 1963.

28
. Arthur Daley, “The Great Untangling,”
New York Times
, Dec. 10, 1963.

29
. “The Way People Live Today,”
U.S. News & World Report
, Nov. 11, 1963, 56.

30
. Ibid.

31
. Ibid., 56–57.

32
. Ibid., 58.

33
. Ibid., 59.

34
. Ibid., 59.

35
.
Pittsburgh Press
, Sept. 7, 1963.

36
. Al Abrams, “Monday Morning's Sports Wash,”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, Dec. 11, 1961.

37
.
Robert Gordon, “Hate Bomb Kills 4 Girls at Negro Church,”
Philadelphia Inquirer
, Sept. 16, 1963 (UPI).

38
. “Fiery Deaths of 3 Laid to Race Insult,”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, Sept. 16, 1963.

39
. Geoffrey Gould, “Valachi Will Resume Crime Expose Tuesday,”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, Sept. 30, 1963 (AP).

40
. UPI, “Luciano Aide Reveals Story of U.S. Mafia,”
Pittsburgh Press
,Sept. 19, 1963.

GAME 1

1
. Timothy Gay,
The Physics of Football: Discover the Science of Bone-Crushing Hits, Soaring Field Goals, and Awe-Inspiring Passes
(New York: Harper, 2005).

2
. Al Abrams, “Monday Morning's Sports Wash,”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, Dec. 3, 1962; Lou Michaels, conversation, Aug. 29, 2007.

3
. Jack Sell, “Steelers, Bears Battle to 17–17 Deadlock,”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, Nov. 25, 1963.

4
. Al Abrams, “Steelers Ooze Confidence,”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, Sept. 11, 1963.

5
. Ibid.

6
. Buck Jerzy, “They Don't Make 'Em like Lou Anymore,” National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame,
http://polishsportshof.com/inductees/football/lou-michaels
.

7
. Lou Michaels, conversation, Aug. 29, 2007.

8
. John Steadman, “Sub's Life No Role for Michaels,”
Baltimore News American
, Dec. 30, 1964.

9
. Richard G. Hubler, “Hollywood's Frightening Lover,”
Saturday Evening Post
, Nov. 13, 1954, 44.

10
. Pat Livingston, “Lou Michaels Went to College to Get Grid Education,”
Pittsburgh Press
, Nov. 8, 1962.

11
. “Lou Michaels, Brother of Walt, Spurs Rams Hopes,”
Proball
, July 1958.

12
. Steadman, “Sub's Life No Role.”

13
. Bill Wise,
1963 Official Pro Football Almana
c (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1963), 65.