Instant Replay: The Green Bay Diary of Jerry Kramer

by Jerry Kramer

  We started getting ready for Cleveland today, and we worked for about two hours. The Browns haven't won a preseason game yet this year, and they always have championship thoughts, so I suppose they'll be up for us, the way everybody gets up for us. This'll be Cleveland's first game at home this year, and there'll be about 85,000 screaming idiots in the stands. If anyone thinks we don't play our exhibition games as hard as our regular games, I'll tell him he's out of his head.

  Bart Starr stayed completely out of the practice session. He isn't running or throwing or doing anything except resting. He's had a number of minor injuries this summer—a pulled hamstring, a jammed thumb, a torn muscle, one thing after another—and I hope we hold him out of the Cleveland game. It's hard to have an injury heal when you have the hell beat out of you one day every week.

  My wife and children came home from their vacation in Idaho this evening. I spent the afternoon airing out the house and buying groceries and getting the cat out from the vet's. I even went over and got the Continental washed. There's a gas station here in Green Bay that washes the cars of all the Packers for nothing. I knew there had to be some advantage to being a professional football player.

  AUGUST 31

  The varying attitudes of the rookies never cease to amaze me. We're coming down to the wire now. We have fifty-two people left—we dropped two rookies Monday—and, with Long and Aldridge on the disabled list, we have to drop ten more men before the season starts. Almost none of the dozen or fifteen possible candidates thinks it's going to be him, with the exception of Travis Williams. He thinks he'll go. He fumbled again in practice today, and I guess that just about signs his death warrant.

  Tom Cichowski is still a mystery to me. He continually talks about this season, about his wife coming up here, about going hunting with me, about how he's going to miss the oyster fries back home. To my way of thinking, the guy has no chance to make the club, but it just never dawns on him. The other day, we were talking about Lombardi, and he said, “Boy, I sure hope we don't lose too many during the season, 'cause if he chews us out like this when we win, I wonder what it'll be like when we lose.” With Cichowski, everything is “we” and “us” and “during the season,” and I just know he's not going to be here. Of course, I may be wrong. Maybe I'm the one who's going to be gone.

  SEPTEMBER 1

  We flew to Cleveland today, and when we checked into the hotel I ran into Jim Martin, who's a coach with Detroit. The Lions are playing the opening game of the double-header tomorrow, and Martin told me they're going to whip us in the first game of the regular season two weeks from now. I know they're waiting in the weeds for us. It's so damned difficult to repeat as champion because, automatically, everybody's out to beat you, everybody's looking to knock you off. Nobody ever lets up when they're playing against you; they're always sky-high. And if it's hard to win the title twice in a row, imagine how difficult it is to win three straight world championships. Three titles in a row. That's what our season is all about. That's what's driving us. It would be beautiful.

  SEPTEMBER 2

  The Browns were really laying for us tonight, and they jumped out in front by two touchdowns, 14-0. Some people thought we were in trouble, but we knew we were going to win. We go into every game we play knowing we're going to win. And we always do. We never lose a game. Sometimes, of course, the clock runs out while the other team still has more points than us, but we know that the game isn't really over, that if we kept playing we'd end up ahead. From our point of view, we haven't lost a game in years.

  There were almost 85,000 people in the stands, and they kept screaming and hollering as Cleveland built up its lead, but, finally, toward the end of the first half, they began to quiet down. We wear the crowd down the same way we wear our opponents down. They come into the game high—all keyed up for the Green Bay Packers—and we just do our job and do our job and do our job and methodically grind them down, grind their enthusiasm right out of them. Finally, they just say, “Aw, hell, I knew we couldn't beat them.”

  At the half, we were just a point behind the Browns, 14-13. And then, with Zeke running the team and Ben Wilson showing a lot of heart at fullback, and my roomie kicking his third field goal in three attempts, we moved out in front, 30-14. By the time Cleveland scored its last touchdown to cut the final margin to 30-21, not more than 25,000 people were left in the stands. The rest had just crept away in the night.

  It was a good feeling to quiet down that big crowd, and afterward, in the bus going to the airport, Forrest Gregg and I began remembering our game against Baltimore in 1958, when the Colts whipped us 56-0, and, with a minute to go, with us moving the ball, all of the 57,000 fans were still in their seats and all of them kept chanting, “Hold 'em, hold 'em,” not wanting us to get a single point. You hear the crowd. You really do.

  This was one of the most physically bruising games I've been in for a long time. Cleveland had a kid named Walter Johnson facing me, about 270 pounds and extremely strong, a straight-ahead guy, nothing fancy about him. I didn't have to worry too much about his moves, but I really had to pop him to slow him down. He didn't give me as much trouble as Jethro Pugh—he didn't have Pugh's quickness—but he was a lot more violent. Once Johnson slapped Gilly across the head, and Gilly came back to the huddle and said, “That 71's a lot of football player.”

  Earlier in the week, we had watched movies of our game with Cleveland last year, and the same kid played opposite me, and he didn't show much. I chewed him up. I did almost anything I wanted with him. I pass-blocked him beautifully. I drove him. I took him inside. I took him outside. So I went into the game figuring I was going to whup up on him again, and I came out of the game with a black eye and a bruised hip, a sore knee and a jammed neck. I got the black eye on a pass play. I pulled out to block on the outside linebacker, and he stuck his fingers through the cage and got my eye.

  We had a strange incident during the plane ride home. Ray Nitschke and I sat down to play cards, and Marvin Fleming wandered over and said something I couldn't quite hear, and Ray said, “Shut up and sit down.” Ray's always talking loud, and he never means anything by it. But all of a sudden, Marvin took offense and snapped, “Don't tell me to shut up.” And Ray got hot, because Marvin was hot, and he said, “Shut your mouth.”

  “You get up and shut my mouth,” Marvin said. “Don't tell me what to do. I'm no dog.”

  “I'm gonna get up and shut your mouth,” said Ray.

  I sort of stepped in between them and said, “Cool it,” and they both calmed down, and Marvin walked away.

  Later, Marvin came back and sat down, and Ray said, “Marvin, I'm sorry. I apologize. I didn't mean anything by yelling at you.”

  “Oh, man, I know that,” Marvin said. “I'm just upset. I've got a bad stomach and I'm up tight.”

  Within a couple of minutes, they were about ready to hug each other. It had been a long time since I'd seen a flare-up between teammates on this club.

  Ray's an interesting guy. Actually, he's two interesting guys, two completely different guys, on the field and off. He loves to hit people, he loves body contact, yet out of uniform he's quite gentle, quite sensitive, almost professorial. We played together on the College All-Star team in 1958, and one day, kiddingly, I made a vague reference to his intelligence. I just said something like, “You genius,” and he got so angry he wanted to punch me. I had to talk fast to calm him down.

  He can be absolutely murderous during practice. He seems incapable of letting up, even against his own teammates. He's always grabbing people, hitting people, throwing elbows. I've lost my head with him more than I have with anybody else. I don't feel there's any reason for him to hit me in the head with a forearm during dummy scrimmages. He did it just the other day. We were running through plays, sort of going through the motions, and my assignment was to block the middle linebacker. I moved out and positioned myself in front of Ray, not intending to hit him or take him down, and he was wearing a forearm pad which wasn't too thick, a
nd he brought his padded forearm all the way back and then lifted it right into my face. He really stung me. I don't think I even had my chin strap on. I didn't say a word to Ray, but I was steaming. I went back to the huddle and told Zeke to call the same play again, and I went out and hit Ray and pushed him and drove him to the ground. He got the message. He didn't even know he'd been hitting me so hard; he just gets carried away on the field.

  His first few years on the Packers, Ray was something of a wild man. He drank a little and fought a little and carried on a little. But then, about five or six years ago, he got married and he turned into a monk, no drinking, no carousing, no nothing. He and his wife, Jackie, adopted two little boys, and Ray, who had a pretty rough childhood himself, lives for those boys. I think he's the most devoted father I've ever seen. He built his older boy a treehouse in their backyard, and the only thing it doesn't have is color television, I'm pretty sure it does have black-and-white. His boy said he wanted to go fishing last year, so Ray, who's one of the very few Packers who doesn't take an off-season job—he's turned down dozens of offers—took the youngster to Florida for a month.

  A few years ago, after Ray had given up all his wildness, Dan Currie, who also liked to party, walked up to Nitschke one day and said, “Hey, Ray, what's it like, not drinking?”

  And Ray looked at him and said, “It's quiet, man. Real quiet.”

  SEPTEMBER 3

  Donny Anderson looked a lot better in the Cleveland game, so maybe Lombardi's lectures last week have already had some impact. Obviously, Vince wanted to get him mad. “You're going to be doing the punting,” Coach told Anderson the other day, “and if that's all you want to be around here, a punter, that's all right with me. You can be the most expensive punter in the league, and maybe you can run back a few kickoffs.”

  Lombardi also needled the rest of us to work on Andy. “I'll tell you this, gentlemen,” he said. “If I were playing and I had an individual or two on my ball club who was messing with my $25,000 bonus, endangering my chances to play in the Super Bowl, I'd damn sure let him know in a hurry that I expected 100 percent effort out of him.” Vince didn't mention Donny by name, but we all knew who he meant.

  I'd been goading Donny a bit myself, even before the coach's comments. “Donny, you better lay off the girls before the games,” I told him. “You better get yourself some rest. You better give those girls some rest, too.” I was laughing and grinning when I said it, but underneath the kidding tone, I wanted to let Donny know that we're expecting a lot out of him. We want him to carry his share of the load. He's got all the natural talent in the world, and we need him.

  SEPTEMBER 4

  “When the hell are you going to start running, anyhow?” Vince asked Lionel Aldridge at the meeting tonight. “When're you going to stop loafing?” Lionel's leg's been out of the cast for four or five days now, and it hasn't even been three weeks since he broke it, and Lombardi wants him to start running. Vince means it, too. Bob Long is trotting already, less than a month after his knee operation, and Coach thinks it's time for Lionel to be running, too. Lombardi has got to have the highest threshold of pain in the world; none of our injuries hurts him at all.

  SEPTEMBER 5

  Dick Arndt came up to me this morning at breakfast and told me he'd been traded to Pittsburgh. He said he wanted to thank me for all the help I'd given him. Dick's a nice kid, and he worked like hell trying to make this club. The only thing he needed really was to be a little meaner, a little more aggressive. I felt that perhaps I'd let him down, that I hadn't worked with him or helped him quite as much as I should have. “You don't have to worry, Dick,” I told him. “You're going to play a lot of pro football.” We talked about the possibility of Bill Austin building a football dynasty in Pittsburgh, and we talked about the possible end of a dynasty here, the end of a reign. There's more and more speculation every day about Lombardi retiring at the end of the season.

  Dick wasn't the only victim today. We cut six other rookies, including Stan Kemp, the kid who wrote “I want to be a Packer,” and a fullback named Jim Mankins, a good fellow who played the harmonica all the time. Mankins had his wife and family up here in Green Bay. It's a terrible thing: Momma's up here getting acquainted with the other wives, going to games with them, making friends, and suddenly it's all over. We also dropped Dave Dun-away, who was a high draft choice, but the word is around that he has a $100,000, three-year, no-cut contract and that nobody wants to pick up the bundle. If no other team claims him, he'll be on the cab team, the taxi squad. He'll get his full salary and he'll be the most expensive taxi player we've had in a long time.

  I saw that my old old friend Dan Currie was cut by the Rams, and I started thinking back to my socializing days, my old habit of running out every Monday afternoon and getting a little bombed with Currie and Bill Quinlan and Ron Kramer and a few others. “I don't mind you going out,” my wife, Barbara, used to say, “but do you have to go out with Quinlan and Currie?” They really liked to party. Now, with them gone, I've gotten away from socializing.

  The cuts brought us down to forty-three active men, only three over the limit, and reminded me of my rookie year. I didn't have a chance then. The team had five veteran guards in camp, and they were only going to keep three. My College All-Star coach John Sandusky, who had played with Green Bay the previous year, told me, “You'll play in the NFL, but not with Green Bay. You won't make that club.”

  So I had kind of a lackadaisical attitude, just having fun, enjoying myself, waiting to get cut, until one day Scooter McLean, our head coach, called me into his office and said, “Jerry, what in hell's wrong with you? You've got size and speed, but one play you look great and the next play you look like you're out to lunch.” I told him that I didn't expect to make the team, that I was just relaxing until he traded me. That week Scooter promoted me to the first team and started me in an exhibition. I got up against a guy who didn't have too many moves on the pass rush, and I was big and strong, so I had a good game. Two veteran guards were cut the next day, and when we got back to training camp, I called my wife in Idaho and said, pretty cheerfully, “Honey, I think we've got the club made. They cut two veterans.”

  Jim Ringo, the team captain, happened to be standing outside the phone booth, waiting to make a call, and he heard me and he didn't talk to me all year. He hated my guts the whole season. He hated me not so much because I was gloating, but because I was happy that two of his close friends were leaving the club. He told me the whole story about three years later.

  Coach Lombardi's second article came out in Look yesterday, and once again a few of the boys resented his comments. He said Henry Jordan tends to be satisfied and needs to be whipped, which upset Henry, and he said that when Bob Skoronski doesn't start a game, he suffers a psychological relapse. Today Ray Nitschke was calling Bob “Psycho”—“C'mon, Psycho, you'll be able to start Saturday” and Bob really seemed hurt by the whole thing. Tomorrow, I imagine, Coach Lombardi'll pat him on the head, rub his back, scratch his ears, and everybody'll feel a little better.

  SEPTEMBER 6

  We look like we're in pretty good shape. Bob Long's running almost at full speed now, only four weeks after his operation, and Lionel Aldridge's hobbling around, lifting weights, almost ready to run. Bart seems to have shaken his injuries, and I imagine he'll play the final exhibition game against the New York Giants Saturday.

  Bart was in a playful mood tonight. He and Henry Jordan room together and tonight, after dinner, Bart got back to the room first and hid behind the door. When Henry came shuffling in, Bart leaped out and hollered, “BOO!” Henry almost fell over backwards.

  Bart's usually quiet and calm. He's got so much character, so much willpower. He's about as complete a person as I've ever known. He admires Lombardi tremendously, and the affection is mutual. When Vince bawls Bart out in a meeting, it's always about the receiver he didn't see, or the play he didn't call, never about not putting out enough. I really think the only reason Vince ever criticizes
Bart is just to show the rest of the club that he's impartial, that he'll even yell at his favorite.

  Bart was telling me tonight about his father-in-law, who lives down South somewhere, owns about seventy acres of land and has maybe eight or ten head of cattle, and likes to think he's a big rancher, watching over his herd. Boyd Dowler and Max and I were sitting with Bart, and I mentioned how beautiful I find a herd of white-faced heifers grazing in a meadow.

  “Yeah,” said Boyd. “Can't you just see them in a high meadow, mountains rising above them on both sides, and a beautiful little stream winding down into the meadow?”

  “That's certainly beautiful,” said Bart.

  “I can't imagine anything lovelier,” I said.

  Max looked a little disappointed in us. “Hell,” he said. “I can't think of anything prettier than a herd of broadies sitting at a bar grazing on Martinis.”

  SEPTEMBER 7

  A couple of NFL officials came into camp today and gave us a test on the new rule changes. Coach gave us a little talk before we took the exam.

  “It's a tough test,” he said, “and I don't expect you to get all twenty answers right. I just took it and I missed two questions myself.”

  “Don't worry, Coach,” Max hollered out. “They'll change those two rules.”

  Max and Willie Davis each got seventeen questions right, and they shared first prize, a dozen golf balls. I think Max cheated; he was out of golf balls.

  We've been studying movies of the Giants, and it's kind of hard to take them seriously. We almost laughed out loud at some of their mistakes. They looked a little ragged, to say the least. They simply are not a good football team. I hate to say that, because, inevitably, this is the kind of team that beats you, or gives you a helluva game. But their backs sure do funny things on defense; they have trouble staying out of each other's way.