The '63 Steelers Read online

  The Playoff Bowl, instituted in 1960, was a post-championship matchup of the second-place teams in the Eastern and Western conferences. It was a meaningless game, ridiculed by Vince Lombardi, who called it a “hinky-dink football game, held in a hinky-dink town, played by hinky-dink players.”10 Yet with nothing at stake but pride and an officially sanctioned opportunity to exact vengeance and cause a bit of mayhem, the initial games were played with a viciousness to rival any championship game—or street fight.

  The Lions’ victory over the Eagles in the Playoff Bowl following the ’61 season left Philadelphia quarterback Sonny Jurgensen with a separated shoulder, tackle J. D. Smith with a broken leg, fullback Ted Dean with a broken foot, and defensive end Leo Sugar with torn knee ligaments, a career-ending injury.

  The Steeler-Lion matchup in Miami after the ’62 season was just as savage. “It’s a cinch that Fidel Castro heard the ruckus 90 miles away and mobilized his beach defenses,” wrote Sandy Grady of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.11 Detroit escaped with a 17–10 win when the Lions held off Layne after he entered the game with seven minutes left and drove Pittsburgh from its own 20 to the Detroit 21. Steeler offensive tackle Dan James was originally thought to have chipped a bone in his ankle during the game, but X-rays showed it was “only” badly sprained. Defensive back Willie Daniel was hospitalized with a broken jaw and severe concussion after colliding with receiver Pat Studstill. John Henry Johnson needed eight stitches to close a cut above his eye and sustained a concussion after getting kicked in the face while fighting Wayne Walker. Johnson was so woozy after one play that he walked toward the Lions’ huddle and had to be redirected the other way. “What a game that was. It was brutal,” Cordileone, a defensive tackle, said forty-five years later.12 “My, my, it sure was kinda rough out there for a while today,” Lipscomb said with a sigh in the locker room.13

  What drove two teams to play a meaningless exhibition as if it were the fifteenth round of a heavyweight title fight? It wasn’t the money, for sure. “In those days, I think we got $400 to play in that game,” Cordileone said. “The winners, I think, got $800.”14 There wasn’t enough money in the NFL to inspire players of that era to sacrifice their bodies for victory. They had to work in the off-season to support their families or prepare for a vocation once their NFL career skidded to a halt. Offensive tackle Charlie Bradshaw attended law school. Quarterback Terry Nofsinger earned a master’s degree in business. Defensive tackle Joe Krupa was a schoolteacher.

  So why the hatred and brutality? Why would two teams fight so desperately and throw their bodies around so recklessly with nothing at stake and only a meager payoff? What drove them to compete and excel, and merely to survive, was something that ran deep inside their souls, and it flowed as easily as the blood that ran like rainwater from their faces and hands. Cordileone pointed back to the opener, the Lions’ 45–7 rout. “They kicked our ass,” he said. “That’s why we were so fuckin’ pissed off. That’s why we went after them.”15

  Packers offensive tackle Forrest Gregg, praised by his coach, Lombardi, as “a picture ballplayer,” remembered a game early in his career when he faced Lipscomb. Gregg had been advised by his line coach, Lou Rymkus, that the only way a lineman could make it in the NFL was to hold. Gregg tried that tactic on Lipscomb on every play until the then-Colts tackle approached him between plays and said, “Hey, Forrest, I’ve got a deal for you. If you quit holding me, then I won’t kill you.” At that time, Gregg said, “Not many players were earning fortunes, but they took their football seriously.”16

  Of course, it wasn’t all that unusual for the Steelers to interrupt their games for a bit of brawling and bare-knuckle fighting. At a December 3, 1961, game at Forbes Field, the Steelers were going down, 35–24, to the defending world champion, the Eagles, when the amateur gladiators took center stage. Two players from each team would wind up being sent to the hospital: Pittsburgh’s Charlie Bradshaw and Philly’s offensive guard Stan Campbell, with dislocated shoulders; the Steelers’ end and linebacker George Tarasovic, with torn ligaments in his right knee; and Eagles defensive back Irv Cross, with a concussion.17 A player from each team was ejected: Lipscomb, for punching center Howard Keys in the jaw in the final minute, and J. D. Smith for taking a swing at Big Daddy. Meanwhile, Pittsburgh’s 185-pound defensive back Brady Keys was “socking” 235-pound linebacker Bob Pellegrini, and Krupa was wrestling with Eagles defensive tackle Jess Richardson.18 What was at stake for the Eagles was possession of first place in the Eastern Conference, against the Giants. The Steelers, who would finish 6–8, were scrapping to reach .500, but mostly they were battling, as usual, just for pride and respect and to retain their honor as the clock ticked off another defeat. Some players may have dreaded playing the Steelers, but teams didn’t respect them. “I remember as a player with Cleveland we used to make fun of Pittsburgh,” Chuck Noll said with a laugh when he was introduced as head coach of the Steelers at the end of the decade. “They’d wear different colored helmets sometimes.”19

  Players did indeed need the meager money available in the NFL at the time, and they had to fight for it—as well as for their pride. Winning players in the January 1959 Pro Bowl got $300 apiece, and Big Daddy Lipscomb had to settle for a smaller loser’s share when five-foot-seven quarterback Eddie LeBaron threw a touchdown pass to beat the West squad, which Lipscomb played on as a member of the Colts. When Lipscomb emerged from the locker room and spotted LeBaron after the game, the six-foot-six, 290-pound lineman snarled, “You little SOB. I’ll get you next year.”20

  “Next year” never seemed to arrive for the Steelers, just as it seemed unattainable for baseball’s Brooklyn Dodgers. “This is a club that has been heir to misfortune ever since it entered the league,” sportswriter Tex Maule commented about Pittsburgh. The Steelers had a losing tradition dating back to their inaugural season of 1933, but an unflinching toughness was just as much a part of their heritage. They might not beat you, but they were a sure bet to beat you up. “If we lose,” said Russell, “we’re going to hurt you.” Two members of the ’63 team made Layne’s list of “Pro Football’s 11 Meanest Men”: John Henry Johnson and wide receiver Red Mack. If Layne had made a list of twenty-two, surely Johnson and Mack would have had company from the Steelers’ roster.21

  It was a motley mix of individuals, composed like a hot rod from salvaged junkyard parts. Pittsburgh had Daniel, an undrafted speedy cornerback from Mississippi State who made the unlikeliest leap of all to a Buddy Parker team by leaving his high school coaching job and earning a roster spot on the Steelers with a tryout.

  The Steelers had an eighth-round draft choice—Atkinson, who played defensive tackle in the pros for two years before walking away from pro football forever for a career in finance—and a sixteenth-round draft pick—Russell, who didn’t want to play pro football but would take over a starting spot, leave for two years in the Army, return to Pittsburgh to endure six straight losing seasons, and then conclude his NFL career with two Super Bowl rings.

  They had an undersized, slow-of-foot running back, Dick Hoak, who would retire after ten years as the team’s No. 2 all-time rushing leader and then spend another thirty-five years as coach of the Steelers running backs. They had a hometown defensive back, Dick Haley, who would play one more season with the team before going on to a stellar career in player personnel, helping to shape the Steelers into a dynasty in the seventies. And they had a defensive tackle, Cordileone, who had been traded straight up for a future Hall of Fame quarterback and, in his fourth year in the NFL, was with his fourth team. He was a New Jersey guy who had hopes of going into business as a mortician after his football career was over.

  Jim Brown called them the “Gashouse Gang.” They had a reputation for playing all-out on the field, and partying all-out off it. Word was, according to Brown, that the coach loaded up the team bus with beer. “Now I’m not saying that the Steelers are necessarily headed for hell when they die,” Brown allowed, but it didn’t look as if they were on th
e road to salvation either.22

  Clendon Thomas, an All-America at Oklahoma before being drafted by the Rams, wanted to be traded from Los Angeles, but the last place he wanted to go was Pittsburgh. He had heard “all kinds of bad things about the Steelers—that they were a bunch of drunks and rabble-rousers.” After the trade, he discovered that the stories had been “embellished to the ridiculous.”23 But enough of the stories were true to maintain the Steelers’ reputation as a team that was good to the last drop, whether it was booze or blood.

  The ’63 Steelers were the Animal House of the NFL.

  The Steelers had players no one else wanted or believed in—certainly not enough to think that these men could carry a team to an NFL championship. At least one preseason poll of newspapermen picked the Steelers to finish fourth in the Eastern Conference in ’63.24 Sports Illustrated predicted a third-place finish.25 Veteran sportswriter Joe Falls of the Detroit Free Press predicted a fourth-place finish.26 But by the final weekend of the ’63 season, a curious mix of overachievers, castoffs, veterans, and raw young players with more heart than natural talent had put itself on the brink of something special, summed up in one headline in the New York Times: “Steelers: A Lot of Discards Seeking a Jackpot.”27

  The race down the stretch between four teams in the Eastern Conference was so crazy a free-for-all that it looked as if the jumble might create “the worst snarl” in NFL history, necessitating a playoff. After the twelfth week, the Giants and Browns were tied for first, at 9–3, a winning percentage of .750. The Steelers, following their third tie of the season, were 6–3–3, a winning percentage of .667, the same as the 8–4 Cardinals. Because the NFL’s practice in computing the standings had been to disregard tie games, the Steelers could still win the conference with the best winning percentage if Cleveland lost once and Pittsburgh won its last two games, against Dallas and New York. Frank Ryan, the Browns’ quarterback as well as “a mental giant pursuing a doctorate in mathematics,” had been asked not long before to calculate the possible finishes and came up with “a stunning total of more than 7,000,” New York Times columnist Arthur Daley wrote.28 No matter the math, no one in the NFL had to be told that against the longest odds of all, the most unlikely scenario was that Parker’s band of renegades would be fighting for the right to play in the NFL championship game on the last day of the regular season.

  As 1963 began, Americans weren’t exactly naive about their place in the world. Castro and Khrushchev were as much household names as Ed Sullivan and J. Edgar Hoover, and people were learning to locate Vietnam on a map. Americans had a steady, trusted routine. Dondi, Pogo, and Joe Palooka appeared daily in the Pittsburgh Press comics. André Previn and Polka, Polka, Polka records alike—“Hi-Fi or Stereo”—were on sale for eighty-seven cents at Gimbels. Acme markets had T-bone steaks for ninety-five cents a pound. Kellogg’s introduced a new cereal called Froot Loops, and The Fugitive and Petticoat Junction would make their debuts on TV in the fall. The new Corvette Stingrays were zipping down streets. All in all, not only was life pretty cheery in 1963, but “the American people ha[d] never before had it so good,” U.S. News & World Report concluded from a nationwide survey. People in general were well off. They had good housing and a healthy amount of time for leisure and vacations. Incomes were at “a record level,” and there were “gadgets of all kinds for the home.”29

  But with all the trappings of prosperity and the veneer of success, were people actually happy? Many were not, the magazine said. “Millions keep on the move each year in search of something they don’t seem to find.”30 There were problems and trends that could be documented with statistics. The divorce rate was high. Crime in big cities was on the rise. Despite the flush times, plenty of people were in debt. But there was also something that didn’t add up, something missing, but it was an elusive worry that was hard to identify, quantify, or articulate.

  “We’re such an affluent society, we have so much,” a newspaperman in Escanaba, Michigan, said, “that what is there left?” An insurance agent in Vermilion, South Dakota, mused, “There is too much money, times are too good. We are losing our basic values.” A secretary in Los Angeles felt people lacked spirit and animation, and she faulted the age of automation. “There are too many products: life’s too complicated,” she said. “We drift. It’s a depressing atmosphere.” The nation was in a state of flux, and no one seemed to know what to do or think about it. “The national attitude, it seems, is one of some uncertainty rather than one of full confidence,” the magazine reported.31

  Young people across the country were restless and inquisitive. Sex and drinking were becoming more widespread, and parents fretted that kids were getting married too soon. A school official in Jamestown, North Dakota, wondered if kids were growing up too fast. The new generation was starting to assert itself. “Our young people are more insistent on answers to troubling questions,” said a Protestant minister in Columbia, South Carolina. “They no longer are quiet, no longer willing to just accept what we older folk tell them.”32

  People brooded about everything from jobs and unions to church membership, and now civil rights had become a big issue, but what to do about the controversy was a dilemma. “We are 100 per cent for integration, of course,” said a Jamestown, North Dakota, lawyer, “but 99½ per cent of us don’t understand the problem at all.” There was a lot of talk about it, the editor of a newspaper in Whitesburg, Kentucky, said, and even if they couldn’t grasp what the problem was, people let their worries run unchecked. “The fear here is of mixed marriages,” the editor said. “People worry, too, about Negroes demanding jobs downtown.”33

  Not many seemed confident that politicians comprehended the issue either—or that they had the ability to solve any of the other problems plaguing the nation. “I have a feeling that nobody cares whether a Republican or Democrat is elected the next President,” said a railroad executive in Chicago. “Both parties eat out of the same bowl.”34

  Football fans were beginning to learn that the sports world was not immune to the temptations and problems of real life. Green Bay’s Paul Hornung and Detroit’s Alex Karras had been suspended for gambling on NFL games. That punishment was designed as a deterrent to players, of course, not to regular citizens. On the weekend of the 1963 NFL openers, thirty-six state police officers in seventeen cars “swooped down” and made eighteen gambling-related arrests at thirteen establishments in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. “We just scratched the surface,” one officer commented. Six more arrests took place outside Uniontown.35

  The sports world had provided a refuge for diversion and entertainment, but violence, death, and grief were muscling in on the national consciousness. Long before sports viewing became widely popular and accessible twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the daily newspaper provided fans with a reliable escape from the onslaught of depressing news. “Agree with me or not,” wrote Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sports editor Al Abrams in a December 1961 column, “I say sports pages today offer a vicarious, if not welcome relief, in these days of uncertainty, restlessness, turbulence, violence or any other disturbing factor one can name.” The places and problems seizing the public’s attention at the time, he noted, included Katanga, West Berlin, graft, murder, automation “and even the twist craze.”36

  Most people would have agreed with Abrams. Two years later, Katanga and the twist had faded from the public consciousness, but graft, murder, and automation were as much in vogue as ever. Different spots on the globe were twitching with war, and new social issues were cresting. Barely an hour before NFL games kicked off on the opening Sunday of the ’63 season, down in Birmingham, Alabama, a bomb that police estimated had the power of at least fifteen sticks of dynamite went off in a Negro church, killing four girls and inciting riots in which two boys would be shot to death. The four girls had just heard their Sunday school lesson for the day: “The Love that Forgives.” The bombing came five days after the desegregation of three of the city’s all-white schools.37

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p; There were many other incidents of racial intolerance, of course, ranging from the humiliating to the tragic, only there wasn’t enough room to squeeze them all into a daily newspaper—at least not on page 1. On the same day that the bombings in Alabama made front-page news, buried on page 8 of the Post-Gazette under a one-column headline was an account of an incident that had culminated in the deaths of three Hill District men from an accident believed to have been sparked by a racial insult. The unidentified driver of a passing car yelled a slur at four men in a station wagon, and as the station wagon gave chase, the vehicle collided with an oncoming car on the two-lane Thirty-First Street Bridge. The station wagon caught on fire, and three of the passengers were burned to death.38

  The world was steadily revealing itself to be more dangerous, more deadly, than people had imagined. Residents of Youngstown, Ohio, were all too familiar with organized crime, but it wasn’t until the court testimony of Joe Valachi, “the kindly looking killer with the henna rinse haircut,” in late September of ’63 that the rest of the nation got its introduction to the Mafia. “Two months ago the world at large had never heard of Cosa Nostra,” a wire service reported during the proceedings. “Now Cosa Nostra is a household word.”39

  Two dozen crime families would arise from coast to coast in the United States, as well as Canada. New York and Chicago had the most notorious families, but Cleveland and Pittsburgh could boast major league crime franchises, too. However, when it came to organized crime, Pittsburgh evidently was a bit different from, say, Youngstown—more upper crust. A former associate of Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, speaking in Italy, explained that once the Mafia needed someone to perform a task in Pittsburgh but could find no one to do the job “because the Mafiosi in that city were all well-to-do.”40