The '63 Steelers Read online

  On first down at the Steeler 27, Johnson was dropped for a 2-yard loss and, with thirty seconds left, the Cards were penalized for being offside. Johnson hit Smith with a short pass, leaving the quarterback at the 28-yard line with the clock running out the last twenty seconds. Johnson, backpedaling after taking the snap, spotted Conrad running a post pattern across the 20-yard line, and he fired away.

  After watching the films the next day, Buddy Parker explained how Conrad reacted after he caught the pass and found himself surrounded by three defensive backs: Willie Daniel, Dick Haley, and Jim Bradshaw. “They had him in a triangle, a sort of vise,” Parker said, “but he got off the hook. Daniel was only a yard behind Conrad but instead of trying to tackle him stuck his foot out and tried to trip him. Had he been knocked down, time would have run out and we’d have won.”53

  Instead, after making the catch, Conrad feinted to his left, ran right, and “breezed into the corner of the end zone.”54 There were five seconds left on the clock. Jim Bakken kicked the point after, and the Cards were 24–23 winners. The lemmings had been successful in their long march and had not self-destructed. Johnson had racked up 428 yards by completing twenty of forty-one passes, the most important ones in the last ninety seconds.

  The week after the Steeler loss, Green Bay used a different strategy in St. Louis. Packer defensive assistant coach Norb Hecker had his secondary play man to man. “Unquestionably, Bobby Joe Conrad and Sonny Randle are the two best receivers in the League simply because both men can beat you on every pattern,” Hecker said. “On the very deep corners and posts they are in a class by themselves.”55

  Maybe if Clendon Thomas had been healthy and able to play the whole game, he could have added to his league-high interception total of four and picked off Johnson on the final drive. Or maybe broken up a pass. Or at least he could have tackled Conrad short of the goal in the final seconds. Or maybe, as assistant coach Torgy Torgeson suggested when he spoke of the pass deflected to Smith for a “gift” touchdown, it just wasn’t meant to be for the Steelers. Certainly not on this day, and maybe not this season.

  Parker was in no mood to be philosophical. A tremendous defensive effort had been wasted. “There was [a] bitter smile on Coach Parker’s face but he was boiling mad inside. It was obvious that an explosion pended, in the delayed fury of a time bomb.”56 This was no time to pick out any bright spots, as Parker had after the loss in Cleveland. Instead, he “tore through the locker room in an uncontrollable rage,” shouting, “It was a disgrace,” over and over. “You disgraced me. You disgraced yourselves.”57

  This time, instead of the Cards, it was the Steelers who did the complaining. Keys protested and Parker screamed from the sidelines on the final drive that the officials stopped the clock for no apparent reason after the third-down reception by Childress, giving St. Louis an additional twenty seconds, at least. But there was no disguising the truth that the Steelers had let a certain victory slip out of their hands, just as pathetically and inexplicably as that end zone deflection went for a Cardinal touchdown.58

  “Agreed that we got some lousy calls and we got some lousy timekeeping,” one unnamed player said, “but you can’t blame the officials when you blow a 23–10 lead.” How do you account for a team whose defense faced first-and-goal situations from the 6-, 7-, and 10-yard lines, and another first-and-10 from the 11, and only gave up a touchdown on a fluke deflection and then yielded two touchdowns in less than four minutes? In Livingston’s opinion, there was only one explanation: “They choked up.”59

  The Browns and Bears remained unbeaten and were emerging as early favorites for a showdown in the championship game. Mike Ditka, a former teammate of Haley’s at Pitt, caught four touchdown passes to lead Chicago to a 52–14 rout of the Rams in the Coliseum. Jim Brown, “in a fantastic display of power and speed,” scored three touchdowns, one on a 72-yard pass from Frank Ryan, as unbeaten Cleveland outmuscled the Giants, 35–24, at Yankee Stadium. Brown earned everything he gained.60 He called it “the roughest, hardest game” he had played in the NFL, and he earned admiration as much for his willingness to absorb a brutal beating as for his ability to shred a defense.61 “They beat Jimmy like a dog and whipped him like a pup,” someone shouted in the Browns’ locker room. “But he showed them.”62

  Charley Johnson had shown them too, and now the Steelers had to wonder whether they were good enough to climb over three teams to win the Eastern Conference. Maybe the final ingredient was still lacking in the Steelers’ makeup, some intangible that teams like the Browns and Bears had added. More than once Bobby Layne had noted during his stay in Pittsburgh, “There’s just something missing, something we had at Detroit that we don’t have here.”63

  Nearing the halfway point of the season, the team had to wonder whether they had enough time left to find that missing ingredient.

  GAME 6

  VERSUS WASHINGTON REDSKINS

  AT PITT STADIUM

  OCTOBER 20

  By mid-October, the mild, dry fall that Pittsburgh had been enjoying had become too much of a good thing, transforming temperate weather into a genuine drought. The day after the Cardinal loss marked the thirty-second day the region had gone without any appreciable precipitation—not since three days before the opener in Philadelphia.

  On Monday, the state of Pennsylvania banned fires and smoking in forests and woodlands because of the dry conditions. On Wednesday, Governor William Scranton issued an emergency proclamation closing all woodlands to the public because of the danger of forest fires. The next day, seven other states closed woodlands. Pennsylvania was one of a handful of states that banned hunting and fishing.

  Probably no one was hurting more from the lack of rain than Pittsburgh’s so-called Umbrella Man, Sam Cohen, who had a small shop in the Pick-Roosevelt Hotel. Cohen had been selling and repairing umbrellas for fifty years, but it wasn’t just the dry spell that was to blame for a lack of business; it was a shift in lifestyles. “Sam’s villain is the automobile,” a story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. “That’s what took the umbrella business away,” Cohen said. “People drive into their garages. They don’t walk to church anymore.”1

  The drought extended from Maine to Texas, and by the end of the week, it would only grow worse, with little hope of relief. Hundreds of fires broke out. County health authorities worried about a buildup of heavy smog. It appeared to be the worst drought in Ohio in eighty years. The dry spell in Pittsburgh was called the worst in thirty-five years—and even longer than the championship drought endured by the Steelers.

  Buddy Parker had come to Pittsburgh with a pledge to bring the city a championship within five years. Parker had become available to the Steelers when he abruptly quit the Lions as coach in 1957, and he had turned threats of quitting the Steelers into a nearly annual (or even biannual) rite. Two days after the fiasco at Busch Stadium, Al Abrams led his Post-Gazette column with a dig at the coach: “This is about the time of year, isn’t it, that Buddy Parker announces he’s going to quit the Steelers?”2

  If Parker gave the newspapers just a glance, it would have been hard for him to miss a series of front-page stories “showing ways to win your own personal war of nerves” that ran the week before the opener. Some pressure can work to a person’s advantage, “But there is a critical difference between helpful tension and the tension which destroys,” according to one article. “A rope drawn taut is a working rope,” but one whose fibers begin to fray “under an overload is a rope nearing its breaking point.”3

  Parker had not reached that point—yet. His rage had subsided and his mood had improved considerably by the day after the Cardinal loss, as frustrating as it was, and he expressed confidence that the season wasn’t lost. “We blew it,” he said. “But, hell, the season’s not over yet. It’s far from over. We’ve got a chance to get back in the race. Just wait and see.”4 Two days later, Parker vowed that his 2–2–1 Steelers would stay in the race if they could win the next two games, against Washington and
Dallas. “The first and second half are two different seasons,” he said. “If we can get through the first half with only two losses, we’ll be in the fight all the way.”5

  For the second straight week, the Steelers were facing one of “the bright young men of pro football’s movement toward daring and reckless quarterbacking,” the Redskins’ Norm Snead, a twenty-four-year-old in his third year “who can impale the point of the football on a needle at medium range.”6 Snead had been booed in a 37–24 loss to the Eagles the day Pittsburgh beat St. Louis, but head coach Bill McPeak, a former Steelers assistant coach, insisted, “For my money, he has the potential of being the best quarterback in the National Football League.”7

  What the Steelers would need Sunday against another hotshot passer was a much better performance from their secondary. The game would have a bit of extra meaning for one member of that group. Dick Haley was going to be seeing his old teammates again.

  Like a lot of kids who grew up around the steel mills of western Pennsylvania in the fifties, Haley had his mind set on escaping a life of drudgery, grimy jobs, and dangerous work. “Football was a way out for us,” said Haley, who grew up in Washington County, where he attended Midway High School, about an hour south of downtown Pittsburgh. “That was how we were going to make it if we were going to make it.”8

  Haley’s father worked in the open hearth at National Steel in Weirton, West Virginia, for forty years. But thanks to his football ability, the son found a way out. After helping his high school win a WPIAL (Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League) title, Haley signed to attend Duke. The University of Pittsburgh was determined to change his mind, however, so not only did he get regular visits from an assistant football coach, but the staff got him a summer job at Jessop Steel in nearby Washington, Pennsylvania. Just a couple of months of work there was enough to remind him of what he had been trying to avoid all along. “I decided I didn’t want to do that on a full-time basis,” Haley said. He had a little extra motivation to succeed in football, as well as additional encouragement to stay close to his roots.9

  “At that time, when you signed [letters of intent], they weren’t binding, so I changed my mind in July or August and decided I was going to stay home.” Pitt didn’t have to look much farther than its own backyard to stock the squad. “Half of the guys had signed to go other places,” Haley said. “The last couple of weeks, Pitt just stayed after them. At the end, everybody said, ‘I’m staying home.’”10

  No wonder Pitt was so keen to keep Haley home. In the first week of October in his junior year, 1957, Haley intercepted a pass to set up the winning score in a 20–14 victory over Southern Cal. On October 19, against Army, “With Dick Haley as their spearhead, the Panthers ran the ball strong out of [a] split T formation.” He scored a 53-yard touchdown on “a dazzling catch,” but Army prevailed, 29–13.11

  On November 2, Pitt engaged Syracuse in “a pulsating struggle calculated to make blood pressures climb.” Haley scored the first touchdown for the Panthers, a 64-yard run “during which he slipped through the fingers of three Syracuse downfield tacklers.” Pitt lost, 24–21, on a field goal, the first one Ben Schwartzwalder had called for in nine years as head coach at Syracuse.12

  In ’58, Haley’s senior year, he made a 9-yard touchdown run in a 22–8 loss to Michigan State in mid-October, caught the winning TD pass in a 15–8 victory over West Virginia, and scored on the two-point conversion to enable Pitt to tie Army, the nation’s top-rated team, 14–14, in “a bruising contest” in the final week of October.13 On November 1 he scored on a 14-yard run in a 16–13 loss to Syracuse, and one week later he had two TDs in a 29–26 win over Notre Dame. Haley had a 35-yard catch for a TD in a 14–6 loss to Nebraska as the Panthers slipped to 5–3–1.

  Pitt floundered in Haley’s senior year, but his talents were recognized with invitations to all-star games. He ran back a kickoff 84 yards for a touchdown in the East’s 26–14 victory in the Shrine Game. Along with Nick Pietrosante and Lee Grosscup, two future pros, he was part of the starting backfield in the College All-Star Game, a squad that had a sure-handed receiver from Rice named Buddy Dial at end.

  The Washington Redskins drafted Haley in January in the ninth round, the hundredth overall pick, which would have made him an early fourth-round selection after the merger with the AFL and expansion years later. He played two years with the Redskins, returning kickoffs and punts, running, and catching passes besides playing some defense in his rookie year. Then his career hit a snag.

  “I’d had some medical problems,” Haley said, “and the Redskins were questioning whether they were going to let me play because I had had rheumatic fever when I was nine or ten years old, and that always leaves you with a heart murmur of some type. I took a medical for the Army, and they turned me down because of the heart murmur.” The Redskins put Haley on the expansion list for the new Minnesota Vikings franchise, which began play in 1961. “If you wanted to play,” Haley said, “you probably could get to play, and I wanted to play.” It wasn’t until 2005 that Haley underwent heart surgery. “I waited forty-four years to have it, so I thought I made the right decision,” he said.14

  Haley was with the Vikings for four games in the ’61 season before Buddy Parker picked him up, along with receiver Bob Schnelker. It took only a few weeks for the pair to become heroes in a win against the second-place Browns in Cleveland. With the Steelers down 13–10 with 3:51 left in the game, Haley picked up a kickoff bobbled by a teammate and returned it 50 yards to the Browns’ 38. Two plays later, Schnelker caught a 26-yard touchdown pass from Rudy Bukich. “Castoffs Spark Steelers to Upset, 17–13,” read the headline in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. It was a headline that could have been recycled over and over in 1963.

  The five-foot-ten, 185-pound Haley was soft-spoken and looked “more lik[e] a choir boy than a professional football player.” His son Todd, who would work his way up the ranks to become a head coach in the NFL, said he never heard his father utter a swear word. “Around this business, that’s hard to do,” the son said.15

  Haley also revealed a meditative, analytical side that would likely help him in his future career evaluating college players but was uncommon in a profession that discourages any recognition of vulnerability or failure. After a preseason loss against the Browns in August of 1962, Haley was “a somber study in despair,” blaming himself for making wrong guesses that resulted in two Cleveland touchdowns. “Have I been cut yet?” he asked two hours after the game.16 With Buddy Parker, you never could tell. “I was never 100 percent sure of the job,” Haley said years later. “You had to play with your head or you weren’t going to stay around the league.”17 Maybe part of his worry was finding a new employer, or maybe it was just an inquisitive football mind fretting about the experience he had failed to use to finish a task. It was a trait that didn’t hurt him at all when he joined Art Rooney Jr. in the scouting department and began judging talent. “He’s very introspective,” Rooney said. “He loved it. He had a real passion.”18

  Playing football was a means of escaping a lifetime of working in the mines or the mills, but it didn’t mean striking it rich—not by a long shot in the sixties. But you could do OK for yourself. Haley estimated he made $16,000 in 1964, his last season as a player. “I thought I was pretty well off,” he said. “You didn’t make a lot of money, but nobody made a lot of money.19

  Another guy who found a way out grew up only a few miles from Haley: Stanley Robert Vintula Jr., the son of a bandleader. He became known as Bobby Vinton, and, like Perry Como, he was from Canonsburg. In a feature story the week before the Redskins game, Vinton said he once considered coal mining as a career. He had attended Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and graduated at the age of twenty with a degree in music and a goal of becoming first oboist with the Pittsburgh Symphony. But then he tried out his singing voice and worked with dance bands that backed visiting musicians like Sammy Davis Jr. and Fabian. Two years after graduation he earned $6,000, but in mid-Octob
er of ’63, with “Blue Velvet” No. 1 on the record charts, the twenty-four-year-old singer’s income was expected to exceed $250,000.20

  Some of the residents of western Pennsylvania who couldn’t sing or catch a football resorted to more creative measures in hopes of getting rich or just getting by—or just to amuse themselves. Four days before the Redskins game, squads of state police and IRS agents teamed up with city police to conduct raids in Pittsburgh and other parts of the county that resulted in the arrests of thirty-one people on gambling charges. The raids boosted the total conducted by state police in Allegheny County for the year to forty-five. Among the items seized at Domenic’s Confectionery in Pitcairn were sixty football sheets for betting. Western Pennsylvania football fans might not have had the physical ability of Haley, but they did show an analytical side of their own.21

  The night after the Cardinal loss, the McKeesport Tigers Booster Club traveled a few miles to downtown Pittsburgh to honor Browns defensive back Ross Fichtner, another hometown kid who’d found his escape out of town. During the evening’s festivities he saluted teammate Jim Brown as “the greatest running back of all time.”22 The next day, Buddy Parker finally gave up on a player who, as a star collegian, had seemed destined to earn some comparisons to Brown one day. It was a concession that had to reinforce Parker’s distrust of draft choices—even a Heisman runner-up—and his preference for bargain castoffs like Haley. Fullback Bob Ferguson, the Steelers’ No. 1 draft pick the year before, was waived and, after clearing waivers, traded to the Minnesota Vikings. Ferguson, who had been serenaded with chants of “We want Ferguson!” by the Forbes Field crowd the previous December, was officially a bust, all the more disappointing because he had shown flashes of promise in preseason and in the first Cardinals game when he subbed for John Henry Johnson. If ever Parker had a right to think he was snakebitten, it was while saying goodbye to a two-time All-America who had averaged 5.1 yards rushing for Woody Hayes but couldn’t find his way in the NFL.23 “I felt that this boy never lived up to my expectations as a top fullback in pro football,” Parker said. “He made mistakes and couldn’t seem to rectify them. Maybe a change will be good for him.”24