The '63 Steelers Read online

  Kemp would go on to a four-decade career as coach and athletic director. When he visited Pittsburgh in late August 1963, he scolded the Pittsburgh Courier for failing to give proper recognition to Rooney “as a pioneer in the fight to integrate professional sports,” praise the newspaper routinely bestowed on baseball executive Branch Rickey and Cleveland Browns coach Paul Brown.20 Buddy Parker, on the other hand, was no candidate to become a leader in the civil rights movement. However, he believed in team unity because it could foster winning. He encouraged the players to get together after games, and his fellow Texan Bobby Layne had laid a foundation for camaraderie. He was a drinking partner of Lipscomb (for whom Layne would buy an entire bottle of V.O. for a single evening) and a friend of John Henry Johnson, and he made a point to include rookies in his entourage. Layne and Big Daddy were gone by ’63, but players continued their regular evening get-togethers at a drinking spot in Brentwood called Dante’s.

  In 1963 Parker was entering his seventh year as coach of the Steelers, with a cumulative 39–34–3 record, and the best he could show for his rebuilding efforts was a second-place finish. It was time to see results from his brash shuffling and dealing.

  Parker’s threats to quit had become an annual rite, dating back to his time in Detroit. It took only one regular-season game in 1961, a last-second loss in Dallas in the opener, for Parker to threaten to quit at season’s end if the Steelers didn’t win the Eastern Conference. They finished fifth, with a 6–8 record, but Parker came back for the 1962 season. He was “disgusted” after a 35–14 loss in Cleveland in the eleventh week of the ’62 season, and a victory over the Cards the next Sunday did little, if anything, to encourage him.21 “I don’t think I’ll be back in 1963,” he said the day after the 19–7 victory, decided by four field goals by Michaels, who missed three others and had one blocked.22 Parker’s contract expired at the end of the season, and speculation that he would quit intensified as the Steelers prepared for the Playoff Bowl.

  The 17–10 postseason loss to the Lions appeared to be the closing argument against Parker’s return, but the day after the game, he told Al Abrams, “I’m not going to quit. This team, as it is now, is my best since I came to Pittsburgh. We should have beaten Detroit. I think we can win it all next season.”23

  Three days later, Parker met with Art Rooney and they agreed on an indefinite year-to-year extension. It is unknown whether a game-to-game extension was ever discussed, but Parker seemed revived and confident that his team could win it all. “I think we’re at the point now where we can play with anybody in the league,” he said.24

  The players shared that confidence as they prepared for the ’63 season opener, and they weren’t shy about expressing their optimism. “I know we’ve disappointed the fans over the years, but this one will be different,” vowed defensive end and linebacker George Tarasovic, who had been drafted by the Steelers eleven years earlier and had been there for all of Parker’s tenure. “I’ve never seen better spirit on this club. These fellows are fighting mad and they’ve got the stuff to go all the way. Few experts are giving us a chance. That’s all right. We’ll fool them.”25

  Fans were as desperate as the players for a winner in ’63. Bill Mazeroski’s winning home run in game 7 of the 1960 World Series not only created an unforgettable moment in baseball lore but also resurrected the self-esteem of a city burdened by sports failures. Yet the euphoria wore off over the next three summers of mediocrity. The Pirates fell seventeen games behind the first-place Dodgers on September 8, 1963, the day they lost to the Cardinals while honoring the retiring Stan Musial during his final appearance at Forbes Field. The only thing sustaining the interest of Pirates fans was Roberto Clemente’s chase for the batting title. By the following week, Clemente would be leading St. Louis shortstop and ex-Pirate Dick Groat by a hair, .3231 to .3227.

  One could only fantasize about how the city would erupt if the Steelers reached the NFL title game. When the Pirates clinched the pennant in 1960, the Post-Gazette’s Abrams likened the city’s anticipation for the city’s first World Series in thirty-three years to the delirious joy of a six-year-old lying in bed on Christmas Eve. “It will be hysteria on pinwheels,” Abrams wrote in a column. “New Year’s Eve, the Fourth of July and Mardi Gras all rolled into one mass celebration won’t come close to approximating the excitement generated by the presence of our Pirates against the Yankees in the World Series.”26 Even if a Steelers berth in the NFL Championship Game generated a fraction of that hubbub, the city would be aglow like the brightest open-hearth furnace for years. Football was special in western Pennsylvania.

  The University of Pittsburgh held both a glorious niche in college football history and a special place in the hearts of its fans. In fact, “No place embodied the football-as-life perspective of the Keystone State more than the University of Pittsburgh.”27

  Glenn Scobey “Pop” Warner led Pitt to three consecutive undefeated seasons and its first national championship when he took over in 1915, and one of his players, John Bain “Jock” Sutherland, went on to guide the Panthers to a 111–20–12 record over fifteen years and an undisputed national championship.

  Pitt had mixed success during the fifties, regaining its stature when John Michelosen arrived and guided the Panthers to a 7–4 season in 1955 and a berth in the Sugar Bowl and followed with a 7–3–1 season and a trip to the Gator Bowl. Pitt continued to produce consensus All-Americas and future pros over the decade: Eldred Kraemer, Joe Schmidt, Joe Walton, John Guzik, and a player who came to symbolize western Pennsylvania grit as well as a no-surrender style of football—Mike Ditka.

  Even if Pitt hadn’t won a national championship since 1937, its tradition was lofty compared to the Steelers’. But who dared dream that after a 5–5 record in 1962, the ’63 Panthers would be battling for the No. 1 spot in college football and competing with the Steelers for the attention of football fans in western Pennsylvania?

  Steelers fans were cranky, impatient, and itching to fight, which they did regularly and with unchecked gusto. On any autumn Sunday at Forbes Field, the best place to catch a slugfest wasn’t at a Pirates game; it was somewhere in the stands during the fourth quarter of a losing Steelers effort. Pittsburgh fans were unmerciful, and they spared no one in venting their anger and frustration, least of all themselves. Still, fans felt a personal connection to the team, one that felt almost intimate, largely because of the universal respect and fondness for the owner of the team, Art Rooney, who was viewed as a regular guy, a pal from the neighborhood, a gentleman of distinction and yet a man without pretense. The newspapers referred to the Steelers as “Rooney U.” and “the Rooney men.” The Pittsburgh Courier called the team “Rooniversity.” Parker had groused that Pittsburgh people did not want an outsider, a Texan at that, as coach, but the papers also called his team “the Parker men.” A bit of thinly veiled hometown rooting may have been behind the nicknames, but there was no denying the affection felt by the fans or media commentators in using them.

  In late August of ’63, however, Rooney sensed no love for his Steelers. On a day that found him alone in his office, with no sign of ticket buyers, he detected a complete lack of interest in a team that showed a lot of promise, even though it was coming off a 17–14 loss to Johnny Unitas and the Colts in the third preseason game. “There doesn’t seem to be any football enthusiasm in Pittsburgh,” Rooney told Press sportswriter Pat Livingston. “Something seems to have gone out of the town.”28 Meanwhile, business in Philadelphia, the site of the Steelers’ regular season opener, was brisk. Within two weeks the Eagles would sell 45,000 season tickets, nearly four times the Steelers’ total.

  But the Eagles were trying to recover from a 3–10–1 finish in 1962; the Steelers had won six of their last seven games to finish 9–5. Rooney sensed that maybe Parker finally had the right talent to make a run at the Eastern Conference title. “Personally, I feel a lot more confident this year than I have felt for years,” Rooney said. Others shared his enthusiasm, but no
ne of them seemed to be the locals. “Everywhere I go people tell me the Steelers and Giants look like the class of the East,” he said. “Here in Pittsburgh, nobody seems to know we’re in town.”29

  It wasn’t an isolated case of disinterest in the Steelers. At the end of November 1959, the Steelers were coming off consecutive road victories over New York and Cleveland when they hosted the Eagles at Forbes Field. Bobby Layne threw four TD passes and kicked a field goal in a 31–0 romp before 22,191 fans. “As a sports town, Pittsburgh ought to hang its head in shame,” Livingston wrote in his lead to the game story. “The crowd was a joke, the biggest laugh in the NFL this year!” The two road games had drawn a combined 135,000 fans, and attendance in the league had been averaging “a whopping 46,000.” The Steelers and Eagles played in the snow, but 56,854 turned out in Cleveland to watch the Browns lose to San Francisco in “a driving snowstorm,” and the Chicago Cardinals, in suffering their eighth loss, drew 48,867 in a 31–7 rout by the Bears.30

  Ernie Stautner, who had suffered through more than his share of losing since being drafted in 1950—a decade in which the Steelers had a won-lost percentage of .463—lashed out at the fans after a late November 1961 victory over the Cardinals, a game during which Layne had been booed. “This is a lousy sports town,” Stautner ranted, “and if Art Rooney had any sense he’d get out of it.” Months before the ’61 football season began, Stautner had attended a Pirates game and had been shocked to witness the fans boo Elroy Face, two years after the pitcher went 18–1 and a year after he went 10–8 in the championship season. “What’s wrong with these people?” Stautner asked. “Do they have an inferiority complex or something?”31

  Something like that. “The prototypical Steeler fan was the mineworker, the millworker, who drank hard and fought hard and was violently resigned to losing out in life,” Roy Blount Jr. wrote after a season of watching the Steelers day after day in 1973. Some citizens even doted on their city, “with a certain strange pride, as a loser’s town.” But people were used to defending their turf and protecting their own, and so the fans naturally developed a tradition that identified with a team that approached football games as a barroom brawl. “Football is controlled violence,” Art Rooney Jr. said, “and the people around here were close to violence.”32

  Pittsburghers tended to be defensive, if not downright touchy, about their cultural identity and local customs. When a reader alerted a Post-Gazette columnist about a sign at the airport in Los Angeles advising barefooted people not to use the escalators, Charles P. Danver sniggered in his column, “Ha! And that’s the town that sent us the critic who made nasty cracks about our kolbassi!” The offending party was Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray, who had clearly overstepped the boundaries of propriety. “He can knock the town all he wants,” one reader wrote in, “but when he puts the blast on kolbussi the man has to be nuts!”33 And woe to anyone who dared to poke fun at pierogi.

  Offensive tackle Charlie Bradshaw, in his second year in Pittsburgh in 1962 after three seasons in Los Angeles, listened to the boos at Pitt Stadium as Layne was carried off the field in a 1962 game against the Redskins and thought to himself, “This has to be the toughest group of fans in the country.”34 Steelers fans were grumpy, ornery, and disconsolate, and they had to wonder whether they could allow themselves to dream of a championship team in their lifetime.

  The Steelers had built a reputation for themselves, and their fans had done likewise. Offensive tackle Frank Varrichione, the Steelers’ first-round draft choice in 1955, left Pittsburgh with some regret when he was traded to the Rams for Michaels in the spring of ’61. But Varrichione’s wife, Mitzi, was delighted with the move to Los Angeles, and it had nothing to do with kielbasa. “I love it here compared to Pittsburgh for many reasons,” she told Los Angeles Times columnist Sid Ziff. “The people are nicer. No snowballs or beer cans are thrown at the players. The fans are more considerate. They may boo you one minute but the next they’re cheering you like mad. In Pittsburgh, you never take your helmet off until you get through the tunnel.”35

  Layne had become a target of the fans’ venom, and Parker was convinced he had to make a critical change if his team was going to have a shot at the Eastern Conference crown in ’63.36

  Parker had an unflagging loyalty to Layne, but the fans had been relentless in pressuring the coach to turn to Ed Brown. “All I heard last year was a lot of screaming to put him in there instead of Layne,” Rooney said.37

  Parker would have to sacrifice Layne’s intangibles for Brown’s healthier body. The former Bears QB had a stronger arm and nearly as much NFL experience, but he was no Bobby Layne, and no one knew that better than Parker. “I think Buddy just recognized there was something lacking without Bobby,” Stautner said years later. “Buddy knew we had the players to make a run at the division, but we needed the take-charge guy in the driver’s seat. … Bobby had the extra something that made the difference in close games.”38 Maybe it was, indeed, Parker’s best team since his arrival in Pittsburgh, but who was going to lead it? “There is no doubt that Coach Buddy Parker’s eleven is in dire need of an electrifying and inspiring personality,” the Courier declared in late August.39

  Instead of relying on Layne’s leadership, Parker could take some reassurance in the fact that he could count on Michaels’s toe to make a difference in close games. Four of the Steelers’ games in ’62 had been decided by three or fewer points—two others by four and six points—and Michaels had proved he was a threat from 50 yards out. But there is another thing—two, actually—that can result from a placekick that Michaels didn’t mention when addressing the flight of a ball toward the goalposts, and both happened to him in the opener of the ’63 season, against the Philadelphia Eagles at Franklin Field.

  The Eagles had plummeted from NFL champions in 1960 to last place in 1962, but they were still an explosive team, with two future Hall of Famers—Sonny Jurgensen at quarterback and Tommy McDonald at wide receiver—and Pete Retzlaff at tight end. On defense, the Eagles had Maxie Baughan at linebacker, and Irv Cross and a roughneck named Don Burroughs in the secondary, but one of their big weaknesses in ’62 was the placekicking. Bobby Walston made only four of fifteen field goal attempts.

  When Parker met with the officials at midfield before the 1:35 p.m. kickoff for the ’63 opener, referee Bill Downes stared at the right upright on one set of goalposts. “Holy cow, look at that goalpost,” he said. Later, Parker said it was “as crooked as a gooseneck.”40

  Head linesman Dan Tehan joked that Parker ought to let it go because it would work to the advantage of a left-footed kicker like Michaels.

  “The hell it does,” Parker shot back. “A left-footed kicker hooks the ball. A hook will veer off that way.”

  “Well,” Townes replied, “what do you want to do? If you want the grounds crew to fix it, the game will be delayed for at least 20 minutes.”

  “Nah. Let it go,” Parker said. “How often does the ball hit the upright anyway?”41

  Even though his team was a three-point favorite over a squad that had won only three games the year before, Parker was wary of starting the season in sold-out Franklin Field. “Don’t let anyone kid you,” he said at a welcome home dinner earlier in the week. “An enthusiastic crowd means a lot to a football team. An enthusiastic crowd can make a team play over its head.”42

  Pittsburgh took the opening kickoff and drove to the Eagle 45 before three Brown incompletions forced a punt that was downed at the 13. Despite plummeting to last place in ’62, the Eagles had the top-ranked passing offense (and the next-to-worst rushing offense), thanks to a gunslinger of a quarterback who finished first in passing yardage and a flanker who was third in receiving yardage, tied for fifth in catches, and led the league in rodomontade, flaunting his skills to teammates and defenders alike.

  The receiver, McDonald, was a five-foot-seven, 172-pound fireball who had played on the Bud Wilkinson Oklahoma teams that ran a winning streak to fifty-seven games, earned All-America h
onors in 1955 and ’56, and won the Maxwell Award in ’56. He was fast and fearless and had the kind of ability to catch a football that landed him a cover story in Sports Illustrated in October 1962: “Football’s Best Hands.” The headline on the story inside read: “The Magnificent Squirt.”

  McDonald played with the unabashed glee of a ten-year-old and the daredevil bravado of a cliff diver, leaping and lunging for passes and bouncing off defenders and up from the turf with a big grin and a glare of defiance. He also earned a reputation as an eccentric, leading Sport magazine to ask in a feature story, “Is Tommy McDonald Pro Football’s Piersall?” But McDonald felt his idiosyncrasies were all exaggerated. “It really gets my dandruff up [sic],” he explained, “when some writer says, ‘Is Tommy McDonald a kook?’ or ‘Is Tommy McDonald flakey?’”43

  Jurgensen, at quarterback, looked at the start of the NFL season like a hunter awaiting deer season: he just couldn’t wait to pull the trigger. On first down, he hit McDonald with a 43-yard pass, down to the Steeler 44. After two incompletions Jurgensen hit Retzlaff with a 27-yard pass to the 17. Jurgy, as he was called, picked up a first down on a quarterback sneak on fourth-and-1 at the 8, and after Brady Keys dropped Tim Brown for a 6-yard loss, McDonald beat Glenn Glass by three steps in the right corner of the end zone and hauled in a 13-yard touchdown pass.

  Jurgensen also led the league in interceptions the previous year, and after the Steelers punted, he threw his first of 1963 when Haley picked him off and returned the ball to the Steeler 42. Neither team could mount a drive before the quarter ended, but Ed Brown, who loved to throw deep almost as much as Jurgensen, got the Steelers moving with short passes—to tight end Preston Carpenter for 9 yards, to wide receiver Buddy Dial for 10, to fullback Tom “the Bomb” Tracy for 21, to the Eagle 32. The drive stalled there, so Michaels came on to kick a 38-yard field goal to make it 7–3 with 3:51 elapsed in the second quarter.