The frustration of good intentions often gone astray characterized the inner life of the Lombardis of Lockwood Place. In the comedy of grotesque, their saga might have been symbolized by the story of the duck. One Easter Sunday, Uncle Joe Lombardi gave young Vincent a duck as a present. All the duck did was sit at the bottom of the stairs and quack. While hurrying down the steps one morning, Vincent tripped over the duck and broke its leg. A quacking duck that couldn’t walk. Marie took one look at it and told Vincent and Susan to leave the house while she resolved the crisis. She grabbed the duck and stuffed it into a paper bag, took it into the kitchen and opened the oven door. What’d you do with the duck? Vincent and Susan asked when they came back. The answer left them stunned, queasy. You what? You gassed the duck?
Lombardi’s relationship to Harry and Matty seemed simpler. Old Five by Five swelled with pride over Vinnie’s accomplishments. He became a vociferous Giants fan and attended every game he could, still lighting his Lucky Strike before the opening kickoff, even though his doctor said he should stop smoking. He quit the meatcutting business, retired early, thought he had enough money, bought a sporting goods store in Englewood and turned it over to little Joe while he worked in his garden and watched Vince’s games and enjoyed his grandchildren. Harry was surrounded by family. Madeline and her family lived upstairs, Claire and hers next door, and Harold, now teaching at Saints, occupied the basement rooms, filling the house with exultant arias from his collection of opera records. Little Joe lived nearby with his wife and kids, hating the sporting goods store and its obligations, but sticking it out, doing what his dad wanted. Joe was the dutiful youngest son, always in his older brother’s shadow, which was both oppressive and beneficent. With Vince’s connections, he sold equipment to Saints and Dwight Morrow and West Point, and served as a ticket outlet for the New York Football Giants, but when the store finally went up in smoke, no moans were heard from Joe; he went to mass at Saints and gave secret prayers of thanks and called the fire “a blessing in disguise.”
Harry had been slowed by one heart attack and several occlusions during his years in New Jersey, but he was still a power-pack of energy. Chopping wood was his release. He would be outside on Saturday mornings, hacking away with his axe, then back and forth with the saw. His cardiologists were “afraid to death” of him, according to Harold, and for good reason: one morning Doc Trainer came by the compound and saw Old Five by Five felling a tree. “You’re not supposed to be doing that,” said the doctor, to which Harry picked up his axe and made a feint toward the physician, bellowing, “Don’t tell me what I’m supposed to do!” But Harry remained the lovable bully; his grandchildren teased Poppop, snatching tomatoes from his garden and pears from the fruit tree and giggling behind the house as he ran after them, his squat, short legs propelling him around the corner in comic search for the culprits.
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WAVES of talent washed into the National Football League during the second half of the fifties decade, but no pool of rookies did more to transform the pro game than the offensive stars who arrived in 1957. Jim Brown of Syracuse became the best and most feared runner of all time. Paul Hornung from Notre Dame, the triple-threat golden boy, established new standards for scoring and style. Ron Kramer from Michigan, hulking yet rangy, appeared as the new prototype for tight end. Quarterbacks Sonny Jurgensen from Duke, John Brodie from Stanford and Len Dawson from Purdue matured into All-Pro precision passers. Jon Arnett from Southern Cal was the less radiant version of Hornung, Tommy McDonald from Oklahoma showed there was still a place for agile little guys, and Jim Parker from Ohio State ushered in the era of huge and mobile pass protectors. This wave brought nothing for the Giants. They did not have a first-round pick and took little of value from the draft. Only one of their choices made the squad, but the Giants seemed unconcerned; they were stocked with skilled professionals and bound by uncommon togetherness which gave them a sixth-sense awareness of one another on the field. That was enough for most of the season, as they bolted out to a 7-2 start, but they tired near the end, losing their final three, with the Cleveland Browns overtaking them in a decisive year-ending game at Yankee Stadium, winning 34 to 28 behind the pounding rushes of Jim Brown, who was already, by the end of his rookie year, incomparable.
Lombardi’s mind was quickly elsewhere, away from the playoffs once the Giants were eliminated. He had renewed his search for a head coaching position. The right college job still might have attracted him, but now he fully understood that there were fewer uncontrollable variables to coaching in the NFL. The players were bigger and smarter, yet he did not have to worry about losing them to honor codes, daily quizzes, midyear grades or graduation. An offer finally came that winter from Vince McNally, general manager at Philadelphia. Hugh Devore, one of Sleepy Jim Crowley’s assistants at Fordham during the Seven Blocks era, had been dismissed by the Eagles after leading them through losing seasons in 1956 and 1957, and the owners were interested in either Lombardi or Buck Shaw, who a few years earlier had beaten him out for the Air Force Academy position, from which Shaw had now resigned. When Shaw delayed in his negotiations, seeking a clause allowing him to stay on the West Coast during the off-season, the Eagles turned to Lombardi.
At least some of them did. The management at Philadelphia was a mess, with a vast committee of partners elbowing for power. McNally was hamstrung in what he could offer Lombardi because of disputes within the ownership over salary and other terms. Even Bert Bell, the commissioner, who had once owned the Eagles and still kept a flame alive for the team, got involved in recruiting Lombardi, calling him on a Saturday morning while Vin was playing cribbage with Marie. Lombardi told Bell that he would take the job. Within minutes the Maras were on the line, pressing to keep him. Going to the Eagles was a mistake, Wellington Mara argued, because the ownership was rife with contentious politicians. “You’ll never get along with them,” Mara later remembered telling Lombardi. “They’ll never let you run the team the way you want to do it. I don’t think you ought to go there.” No sooner had Mara hung up than the phone rang again and it was Mara’s wife, Ann, urging Marie to persuade her husband not to leave the Giants. Vince began to reconsider. The phone kept ringing, with voices tugging and pulling at Lombardi to stay or go. Mara had promised him another raise, matching the $22,500 the Eagles were offering, and had jumped his life insurance policy to a cool $100,000. Finally, Marie told him to get out of the house and think about his future at St. James Roman Catholic Church in downtown Red Bank, where he attended morning mass. She said he should settle into a pew and just think for a while. “Don’t pray,” she said. “Think!”
Lombardi sat in the pew for several hours. Forty-four years old. Burning to lead. Impatient. Easily depressed when people could not see his greatness. Knew pro offenses cold. Thought he knew defense, too, always giving Landry an idea about that 4-3. Philadelphia had some talent, despite the losing record. The kids McDonald and Jurgensen and Clarence Peaks; the veterans Van Brocklin, who just came over from the Rams, and Chuck Bednarik, Tom Brookshier and Pete Retzlaff. Van Brocklin—what he could do with Van Brocklin! Chuck Conerly was an old pro, but the Dutchman was all-world. Overall, the Eagles were not as good as the still-loaded Giants. Gifford was the back you built an offense around. New York was Vin’s town. He knew the restaurants, the sportswriters, the rhythms of the place. Philadelphia was East Coast, near enough, but not New York. The Maras were class owners, friends, like family. Who ran the Eagles? Jim Lee Howell was not going to stick around forever. Wellington Mara certainly implied that Vince might be next in line. Colonel Blaik was always talking about retiring and going into business. What a life that was at West Point! Maybe he could go back and run the show. The Giants paid him better than any assistant coach in the league. Something to be said for stability. Vincent and Susan had moved so often in their young lives. Marie was at home in Fair Haven. Hail Mary. Prayers to St. Anthony and to St. Jude. All the lost causes.
He left St. James and called Mara the
next morning from Lockwood Place. The cautious choice, staying put again. “I think you’re right,” he said. “I won’t take it.”
THESTART of the 1958 campaign seemed designed only to make Lombardi regret his decision. The Giants slogged through a miserable preseason, losing five warmup games. Vince sensed that the players were drained from expectations, banged up mentally and physically, too tight, and he arranged a beer-keg party for them at the Bear Mountain Inn up near West Point a few nights before the opener against the Chicago Cardinals in Buffalo. Red Reeder, the ebullient, one-legged colonel, was there, telling stories, and the evening worked just as Vince had hoped. It was the type of thing he would do if he were head coach, a perfectly timed surprise for the occasional release of tension, like the pat on the back for young Vincent, but it came easier for him with the players. The Giants, revived, walloped Pop Ivy’s lowly Cards, 37 to 7, but then lost two early season games that they were supposed to win and dropped two games behind the Browns in the Eastern Conference standings. They saved themselves in late October and November, with consecutive close wins against the Browns in Cleveland and the Colts in New York, both games played in front of sellout crowds of more than 70,000 and watched by unprecedented millions on national television, then pulled out a last-minute win over the previous year’s champions, the Detroit Lions, on a blocked field goal attempt. The eastern title depended on the outcome of the season finale against the Browns at Yankee Stadium. At first it looked like a repeat of last year’s game, with Jim Brown performing another masterpiece—glide, weave, thrash, rumble, roar, score, chest out, No. 32 in brown and orange, sixty-five yards for the touchdown. But the Giants defense and a heavy snowstorm slowed the pace, and the game entered the final minutes tied 10 to 10.
Two minutes left and Lombardi’s offense has the ball near midfield, though precisely where is uncertain; snow has whited out the sideline yard markers. A tie does the Giants no good; the Browns are one game ahead in the standings and can clinch the title. New York has to score. Conerly, the old pro, tries three straight pass plays, but all fall incomplete. Fourth and ten. What now? Howell and Lombardi huddle, disagree, and Jim Lee makes the call: Send in the field goal team. Lombardi stands back, shakes his head. No way, not even with Pat Summerall’s powerful foot. A ten-yard pass is iffy, but a midfield field goal in a near blizzard with slippery footing seems impossible. Summerall is equally shocked by the call: On a bad field. So unrealistic. But what choice is there? Summerall is an Arkansas Razorback, same as Howell, who has confidence in him. Wellington Mara looks down on the desperate scene from the press box, bewildered. “He can’t kick it that far. What are we doing?” the owner asks assistant coach Ken Kavanaugh, seated next to him. Summerall, with his straight-legged placekicking style, is now concentrating only on where he should hit the football with his right shoe. Not too low, or it will flutter high and short. Has to be addressed sharply in the middle, barely below center, but then sometimes it knuckles and wobbles from side to side.
He hits it dead center, and it starts flaring out, then knuckles back inside and pushes on and on, defying the resistance of the dank December air, floating over the crossbar. The stunned silence of disbelief, then a thunderous roar in the gray and white shroud of Yankee Stadium. As he walks off the field, his chest pounding with hero’s blood, Summerall catches Lombardi’s eye. Vince is smiling, and he says, “You know, don’t you, that you can’t kick it that far.” Historians in the press box search for comparisons. Red Smith believes there is only one—the home run Bobby Thomson hit to beat the Dodgers in 1951 when the baseball Giants won the pennant. The New York Football Giants had to win, Smith writes. It was “do or die.”
One week later the Browns were back, a coin toss determining Yankee Stadium as the home turf, same time, same place, do or die for both teams now in a tie-breaking Eastern Conference playoff. No snow, just a hard, frozen field. Huff and the defense were monsters again, stopping Jim Brown in his own backfield; only eight yards on seven carries all afternoon. Landry’s boys threw a shutout and Lombardi’s offense scored the ten points needed to win. Jim Lee Howell, handing out psychic rewards after the game, gave most kudos to the defense. He said he had never seen a game “where one defense overpowered the other team so completely.” Vince could have fallen into a depression, even in victory, but he had just enough reason to strut. Gifford and Conerly and all his key players were banged up. Triplett had been thrown out in the second quarter, caught retaliating against two Browns who were kicking and yanking him. And the sportswriters all saw the Lombardi genius in the game’s deciding play. The Giants were on the Browns’ eighteen when Vince called a trick play he had devised just for this moment. Conerly took the ball and handed off to Webster, who handed it back to Gifford, who came around the end on a double reverse and soon lateraled to the trailing Conerly, who hobbled in untouched from the eight.
Vince was certain it would work; he had charted how the Browns tackles were pursuing blindly, leaving gaping holes. “We just put that play in to exploit the shift,” he told the press after the game. But Conerly running the ball? Wasn’t that the amateurish sort of play that Gifford and Conerly had ridiculed Lombardi about when he brought his naive college playbook to that first training camp in Salem in 1954? The old pro didn’t complain this time; he crowed about how long it had been since “an old guy like me” had run it in. Gifford did not mind either. He was a blotchy mess when Red Smith spotted him in the dressing room afterwards, his legs and arms bruised and patched. What happened? “Ice. Tiny slivers of ice, like needles” made the field a frozen sheet of torture, Gifford said. “I’m cut up this way all over.”
None of Red Smith’s New York followers could read his column in the Herald Tribune the next day, nor follow any of the Giants’ exploits in the New York newspapers. This was still a newspaper town, with nine dailies in the metropolitan area in 1958—four in the morning: the New York Times, the Herald Tribune, the News and the Mirror; and five in the afternoon: the World-Telegram and Sun, the Journal American, the Post, the Long Island Daily Press and the Long Island Star-Journal. In normal times, 5.8 million local papers were sold each day, but none were to be found this Christmas season. The city had been without them since December 12, when a strike by delivery workers, which had begun four days earlier, forced the publishers to shut down. As far as the New York sportswriters were concerned, the Giants’ two compelling struggles with the Browns had been oddly ephemeral, witnessed in the gloaming but not recorded and annotated for history. Only columnists with national syndication, Red Smith among them, were still writing for publication. Smith’s work could be seen down the eastern seaboard in the Philadelphia Inquirer—the most popular newspaper in New York that month. To try to fill the vacuum, local television and radio stations pumped up their sports departments and doubled the time devoted to pro football on the nightly newscasts. Even more than in 1956, the rise of the Giants was watched and remembered as a television phenomenon.
Every aspect of life in the city was affected by the strike. Holiday sales were down along Fifth Avenue. Funeral service attendance dropped 20 percent without obituary notices. Travel agents reported business cut in half. Litter basket collections on the city streets, minus newsprint detritus, were 25 percent lighter. Ten thousand city newsstands were closed. Some sporting events in the area suffered dramatic attendance declines, as much as 25 to 50 percent according to a study by students at Columbia School of Journalism, but the Giants had no such troubles. Attendance throughout the NFL had risen another 5 percent in 1958, and the late rush by New York fueled the increase. Near the end of the third quarter of the playoff win over the Browns, with the Giants holding a 10 to 0 lead that appeared insurmountable, given the impenetrable nature of their defense, fans began leaving their seats to start the line for tickets to the championship game against the Western Conference’s Baltimore Colts, a game that would be held at Yankee Stadium the following Sunday, the third straight Sunday with a major game in the Bronx. The Giants sol
d 12,500 tickets late that afternoon and another 10,000 by ten Monday morning, when public ticket sales were halted.
Colts fans, in the grip of what Baltimore sportswriters called Colt-aphrenia, bought another 15,000 tickets to follow their team to New York. Baltimore was seeking its first title in any major sport since before the turn of the century. The game had an obvious central theme, one that left Lombardi out. On one side was New York’s swarming defense—the front four of Katcavage, Robustelli, Modzelewski and Grier, the linebackers Cliff Livingston, Harland Svare and Huff (known in the huddle as Sara, Wanda and Meg, respectively), the cornerbacks Lindon Crow and Carl Karilivacz, and the ballhawking safeties Jim Patton and Emlen Tunnell. On the other side was Baltimore’s record-shattering offense, led by quarterback Johnny Unitas, end Raymond Berry, tackle Jim Parker, and running backs Alan “The Horse” Ameche from the University of Wisconsin and Lenny Moore.
The weather on December 28 was chilly and windy, but there was no snow and a broad shaft of winter light lifted the Bronx morning—better conditions than for either of the Browns games. Old Five by Five stayed home in Englewood in any case, his heart doctors ordering him to keep as far away from the excitement as possible. And, they said, no Lucky Strikes! Since there was a television blackout within a seventy-five-mile radius of New York, Harry had to listen to the game on the radio. Commissioner Bell was adamant about the blackout rule; television might be the future, he said, but it was not everything. He felt an obligation to ticket holders at the stadium who had paid good money to see something that others should not see for free. Vince and Vincent, father and son, their discomfort soothed on Sundays by a shared passion for the Giants, headed out from Fair Haven early that morning in the family’s big-fin ’57 Chevy, two-toned in mauve and white (Vincent thought it looked almost pink), heading north in determined silence, from Route 35 to the turnpike and all the way north to the George Washington Bridge, then across the Cross Bronx and down to the stadium at 161st Street; walking through the players’ gate, credentials out, into the dressing room, looking around at this pride of Giants: Frank, so cool, always, even now that he is hurting; and Alex, with the whisper of conspiratorial good will for Vincent; and Em and Rosey, friendliest of guys; and Little Mo and Kat, grinned killers; and Charlie Conerly, the old pro, taping up his Ole Miss bag of bones one more time.
When Pride Still Mattered Page 26