Dr. Z

by Paul Zimmerman

  “This team is gonna get murdered,” Larry said to me during the week, very nervous about his bet. I agreed with him. So did the bettors because by kickoff on Sunday the price had risen to 19 1/2, an almost unheard of one-week swing during Super Bowl week.

  Larry panicked and bailed out, taking the Colts and laying the 19 1/2. In other words he could have caught a reverse middle. If Baltimore would have won by 18 or 19, he’d have lost both ends. The prospect had him in a sweat as the game began.

  Well, it was soon obvious that it wasn’t going to happen that way, and Larry breathed a huge sigh of relief and settled down to enjoy the contest. Afterward, as we were heading down to the locker room, someone asked him, “How’d you do, Larry?” He put on his cool-as-a-cucumber, National Football Lottery face and said, “I had the right team.”

  Yeah, he had the right team and he had the wrong team. He had both teams. I almost blurted it out. Even now, thinking about it brings a smile to my face.

  Punked

  The whole scene surrounding Super Bowl III ranks among the great memories, but the best part of it was watching those tight, steel-jawed faces of the NFL writers, as it became obvious that the Jets were going to win. The AFL was a punk league in their eyes, and AFL writers such as me were treated as punks — trash, actually.

  So did I act with grace and dignity in the press box as those guys suffered in their profound silence? I did not. “Hey, Tex, what was that score again that you predicted?” I shouted over to Sports Illustrated’s Tex Maule, who had forecast some ungodly Colt victory. “Hey, Arthur,” I yelled over to The New York Times’ Arthur Daley. “How much you have the Colts winning by?” Yeah, I know, crude and vulgar, but you have to remember we’d been taking a lot of crap from them through the years. A very happy memory of that Orange Bowl press box.

  ‘It’s Absurd’

  Two good ones from Super Bowl IV, Kansas City vs. Minnesota. On Tuesday a story broke that K.C. quarterback Len Dawson was involved with a Detroit gambler named Dice Dawson (no relation). Ken Denlinger of The Washington Post and I hopped into my car and shot over to the Chiefs’ hotel so we could talk to Dawson before they put him in quarantine. As we were heading out of the press hotel, we passed Daley and Gene Ward, the New York Daily News’ lead columnist, going to dinner.

  “It was just a rumor,” I heard Ward say. “No substantiation.”

  Yeah, right. It was still a good Tuesday story. So we got to Dawson’s hotel room, and he talked to us for a while, and the quote we focused on was, “There is absolutely nothing to that story. I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong.”

  Kenny went back to the press HQ to file his story. I was writing for an evening paper so I could stay later, which I did. When I got back to the press room, Ken was dictating, and Ward, sitting one row behind him, was straining to hear what he was saying. He heard it, but he screwed it up. Instead of “absolutely,” he registered it as “absurd.”

  A few minutes later, as I was starting to write, I saw Ward tip his chair back, light his pipe, and begin to dictate to his desk. “Slug it ‘New Orleans, Ward, confidential to the Daily News,’” he said. “‘It’s absurd,’ Len Dawson told this writer in confidence last night.”

  That one goes under the heading of great journalistic moments.

  Presidential Postgame

  Postgame locker scene, again from Super Bowl IV, in decrepit Tulane Stadium. The Chiefs won, and Dawson was the game’s MVP. President Nixon called. Dawson took the call in a little shack adjoining the locker area. As you squeezed your way in, an overstuffed armchair, of all things, was right in the pathway, and in the armchair was K.C. end coach Darrell (Pete) Brewster, snarling at the writers who were tripping over his outstretched legs, and we were snarling at him. A real jerk.

  So Dawson took the call, and from outside, the guys who couldn’t fit inside were yelling, “Who’s he talking to?”

  “President Roosevelt!” I yelled out at them. Brewster sat up with a jolt.

  “Not Roosevelt, dummy,” he said, with absolute hatred. “Nixon!”

  I thanked him. That sure cleared it up.

  Jacked Up

  Super Bowl XIV in Pasadena, Rams vs. Steelers — for some strange reason my favorite Super Bowl of them all. Maybe it was because I had been tracking the Steelers all week, and they seemed worn out, tired, depressed, not in a good mood. Jack Lambert eventually emerged as one of the heroes of the game, intercepting a Rams pass deep in Steelers territory just when it seemed that L.A. would go ahead in the fourth quarter, but during the week he was feeling very low and ugly.

  We’re sitting in the bar of the team hotel. A couple of teeny boppers are making the rounds, and they let out a squeal as they spy him. “Jack Lambert! It’s Jack Lambert!” They yelled. I’m thinking, oh, brother.

  “My horoscope said I’m gonna run into somebody famous,” one of them said. “Do you believe in horoscopes, Jack?”

  “No,” he said, staring into his beer.

  “Do you know your astrological sign?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “Feces,” he said.

  News from the Tent

  One of the best teams for quotes was the Raiders. I remember making the rounds of the tent that served as their midweek interview area before they played the Redskins in Super Bowl XVIII. As the crush of reporters closed in on him, Howie Long closed his eyes, tilted his head back and uttered a stream of consciousness I’ve always remembered as a perfect Press Interview Day capsule.

  “Give me a day to die … are we in Kansas yet, Toto? … I don’t know where I am … oh God, I’m in a tent ...”

  And two tables away, Lester Hayes was leading the writers through this weird Star Wars angle: “I honestly can feel myself getting my power from the Force. When it is with me, I am able to play. I am very, very close to Obi-Wan Kenobi.” And on and on in this vein, the writers dutifully writing down every word.

  “How do you think up this stuff?” I asked him afterward.

  “Aren’t they amazing?” he said, wide eyed. “They wrote it all down. They were all serious. I could have told them anything. Wait till you hear what I have for them tomorrow.”

  Death in Detroit

  Well, I’ve saved the best for last. People with long memories might recall that I became a cause celebre in Detroit before the ’82 Super Bowl. On Tuesday we went to the Silverdome on a freezing cold day for Picture and Press Day. Except that they didn’t let us in when they were supposed to. The cops kept us outside a fence, freezing. I gripped the fence and asked, “What’s the deal?” “How’d you like this stick across those fingers?” was the answer. I guess Detroit cops don’t like writers any more than anyone else does.

  It was a nasty, mean place to have a Super Bowl, and next day I was one of the guests on Good Morning America, along with The Detroit News sports editor, Joe Falls, and when Charlie Gibson asked us how we liked it there, I let loose with both barrels. I mean heavy, heavy stuff.

  I knew something was up when one of the technicians wanted to fight me after the show. “I’ll bet you’re one of those punks from New York,” he said. “Nah, I’m from Hamtramck, (Mich.)” I told him.

  “Like hell you are.”

  “Like hell I’m not.”

  And then they pulled us apart. In the car going back to the hotel, I said to Joe, “I think I might have said something I shouldn’t have.”

  “I think you might have,” he said.

  Well, the city came down on my head, kaboom! I received two death threats. I didn’t take them too seriously, my theory being that if someone wanted to kill me, he wouldn’t tell me about it first. But my mother took it big. She’d read about it in the paper, and I guess she figured that the next picture of me would be with a tag on the toe.

  “Maybe you ought to hire a bodyguard,” she told me over the phone.


  “Gosh, Mom,” I said, “I looked in the yellow pages under B and I couldn’t find any.”

  “Very funny, very funny,” she said.

  One columnist wrote, “I’m sure Mr. Zimmerman would like to hear from you, so here’s the hotel he’s staying at and his room number.” Which, of course, produced round-the-clock crank calls. And you don’t want to shut your phone down, not when there are two young kids back home.

  But I learned a very interesting thing, the difference between male and female crank callers. Your typical male crank caller: “Is Mr. Zimmerman there?” “This is Mr. Zimmerman.” “Oh yeah? Well, then, why don’t you …” And the parade of obscenities, followed by the phone being slammed down.

  Typical female crank caller: “Is Mr. Zimmerman there?” And then the same routine, the same obscenities, but wait … no hang up. Natural feminine curiosity kept them on the line, and, to quote an old Edward R. Murrow radio bit, “The Jungle Answered Back,” I’d let forth with my own volley … “Why don’t you get ahold of your husband and …” A much more satisfying exchange indeed, especially when I’d hear that intake of breath denoting the surprise at hearing a writer using that kind of language.

  Next March the league meetings are in Phoenix. Curt Sylvester of the Detroit Free Press asked me for a quote, any quote at all from Phoenix. He said my name was still being mentioned in Detroit.

  “Too hot,” I said. “Wish I was back in Detroit.”

  And of course the letters followed. “You ass, when you were here you said … and now you’re saying …”, etc. Lots of happy Super Bowl memories, folks.

  6. Diary of a Madman

  This column appeared on SI.com on Aug. 16, 2001.

  Just came back from two weeks of nonstop AFC East training camp visits and, boy, am I tired. The teacher has given us the topic What We Did This Summer, which was always my favorite topic in composition class. Well, I talked to a guy who played against Bronko Nagurski. And ate in some swell restaurants. And clocked a national anthem in 1:56.87. And counted 1,032 steps from the entrance to Gate 91 in Newark Airport. And got into this big fight with The Flaming Redhead at the same venue because we always get into fights as air travel approaches since we hate airlines so much and are always in an ugly mood.

  Saturday, July 29: We drive, hooray, to Bryant College in Smithfield, R.I., for the Patriots. Good mood all around because no air travel is involved. Set a record for different states’ license plates recorded on the trip, 31, plus three Canadian provinces. We head immediately for nearby Providence and Al Forno restaurant, which is a hot spot now because the chef has been on Martha Stewart’s show twice, and we arrive at 4:30 p.m., an odd time for dinner, granted, but a necessity, since the place accepts no reservations and it’s filled up by 5:30. The outdoor garden dining is filled even earlier, and one of the extremely odd rules of this place is that they only serve their drink specials in the outdoor venue.

  Why this strange rule? Who knows? They’re a little strange in New England anyway. And what’s so special about the drink specials? The mint julep. Never in my 103 years on this planet have I had one to match it. Frosty metal glass. Mint has been boiled in the correct way and it lines the bottom, blended with boiled sugar. Then a layer of crushed ice, then the bourbon near the top. You use a short straw and by moving it up and down you can experience all varieties of taste sensation with the julep. Oh, man. We have one, then bing-bang, another one, and by now the Redhead is starting to wave at the people at the other tables, so it’s time to order food. Won’t bore you with all the details, but the produce is local and fresh, which is they real key, I believe, and everything is delicious. Nice call, Martha.

  Patriots’ practice is a strange amalgam of wide receivers imported from all parts of the globe, plus glaring weaknesses in the offensive and defensive lines. The new wideouts, which I read will lift the passing game to undreamed of heights, are basically people from other teams that felt they needed to upgrade their wideout situations. Best looking one is ex-Brown David Patten, but that’s nothing new because he always looks good in camp.

  Later I ask Bill Belichick why the big rush for wideouts when he has Terry Glenn and the vastly underrated Troy Brown, who are certainly serviceable enough. Belichick thinks for a moment before deciding how to phrase his reply.

  “I’m not counting on Glenn,” he says. Well, the guy is currently out with a sore knee, but that’s no big deal, is it?

  “I’m just not counting on him,” he says. “If he lines up for us, it’ll be a bonus.” This is strange news indeed.

  “Is he gonna go in the tank? Is he gonna quit?” I ask.

  “He’s just a different person,” the coach says. What he’s trying to tell me, in code of course, and what I’m too dense to pick up, is something that surfaces a few days later, the four-game suspension, followed by Glenn’s no-show, followed by his banishment.

  I walk back from practice with Belichick on a shaded pathway, used by coaches, players and team personnel, but not open to writers, and which saves you roughly a quarter of a mile of the 1,310 steps between the office building and the press area at practice. When I arrive at the parking lot where the two routes join, I am on the privileged side of the chain and therefore warmly greeted by the security people who would normally tell me to take a hike. I am ushered through, and a young fan immediately asks me for my autograph.

  “You don’t want mine, I’m nobody,” I tell him.

  “Well, you were on the other side of the chain,” he says.

  “Anybody can get there if you pay them,” I say.

  “Daaaad! Is that true?”

  “Don’t listen to that guy,” says the tough-looking daddy. “He’s a moron.”

  Highlight of the trip is a conversation with Francis “Bucko” Kilroy, the Patriots’ 82-year-old consultant, one of the founders of the art of personnel scouting and codifying. A gentle fellow, given to reflection and reminiscence, and how many people remember that at one time he was one of the filthiest and most feared linemen in the game?

  “He committed the worst foul I’ve ever seen on a football field,” Herb Hannah, the father of Patriots guard John Hannah, once told me. Herb was a starting tackle for the Giants in 1951. “We were playing the Eagles and after one play, when we were walking back to the huddle, Bucko came up behind our end, Bob McChesney, and smashed him in the back of the head with a forearm and laid him out.”

  So now we’re sitting under the warm Rhode Island sunshine, watching practice, and Bucko is telling me about his rookie year, 1943, when the great Bronko Nagurski made a wartime comeback after a five-year layoff and he’s lining up for the Bears as a tackle — against Bucko.

  “A great holder,” Bucko says. “So I punched him. He goes back to the huddle and asks someone, ‘Who the hell is that guy?’”

  “Oh, he’s that wild-assed rookie. Stay away from him. He’s crazy.”

  The drive back is more pleasant because we avoid the ugly Connecticut Thruway and take the older but slower Merritt Parkway.

  “This is beautiful,” the Redhead says. “Why didn’t we come up this way?”

  “Because we wanted to get to Al Forno before five,” I tell her. Oh yes, we also ate at Hemenway’s and Legal Sea Foods to complete the trifecta and thus ended our experience in fine dining on the AFC East circuit.

  Wednesday, Aug. 1 (not to mention another visit on Aug. 8): New York Jets at Hofstra University, Hempstead, L.I. This is an awful 75-mile drive from my home in New Jersey, but I know it well because I used to make it every day during the decade or so that I was a Jets beat writer. Bad things always happen, traffic tie-ups, freakies. Once I nearly lost my life on the Cross Bronx Expressway, skidding wildly on squashed potatoes after a truck had dumped its load. You ever drive over squashed potatoes? Bet you haven’t.

  You have to stay alert for tie-ups as you’re driving to Hempstead. You have to hunt
for back roads. You arrive exhausted.

  Things brightened up when I got to camp. It’s always old-home week for me at Jets camp, always someone around that I knew from the old days. This time it was Wesley Walker, the former wideout, and Connie Nicholas, daughter of the Jets’ former team dentist, niece of their famous orthopedist, Jim Nicholas. I knew her as a frisky little kid, frolicking among her heroes. Now she talks about her grown children. Or did she say grandchildren? I can’t even visualize something like that. I’d missed, by a day, pass-rushing phenom Mark Gastineau, newly released from prison. He’s back in custody now, but when he showed up at Hofstra he mentioned his religious conversion. “These days I’m sacking Satan” was his quote in the papers. I called the Elias Sports Bureau to find out if he’d get credit for that one on the record, but no, they wouldn’t count the sack since it was shared by about 72 million others.

  An open, friendly place, unlike the Stalag 17 operation Bill Parcells ran. What a pleasure to actually be able to talk to assistant coaches. “If they hadn’t let me talk to the writers when I was an assistant with the Bucs,” Herman Edwards said, “I probably wouldn’t be a head coach now.”

  Right away you get good feelings about this man. A players’ coach, well-liked by everyone, but so was Pete Carroll, and the Jets laid down on him. Could this happen again?

  “The veterans won’t let it happen,” Vinny Testaverde said, exactly the same quote I got from numerous veterans when Carroll first took over. The place bubbles with enthusiasm, but nose tackle Jason Ferguson is out for two months, and so is the No. 1 pick, Santana Moss. Well, Jim Haslett and the Saints shrugged off early injuries in camp last year and did just fine. Maybe history can repeat.

  Thursday, Aug. 2: Now it’s time to fly to Fort Lauderdale for the Dolphins. Here’s a helpful word of advice: If you’re booking a reservation, ask what the aircraft is, and if they say the code is 73-S, which stands for a Boeing 737-200, thank the person very kindly and book something else. Delta provided us with one of these horror machines. Doug Flutie couldn’t fit into one of the seats. You have just about enough room to read a small paperback. A newspaper is a challenge. The seat in front of you presses firmly against your knees. If the passenger chooses to recline it, the pain will be exquisite. Howling, by the way, is not permitted on Delta. Or any other airline.