Nervous laughter. The titters of small-town men who had been subordinate to Chicago for decades, whose wives shopped in Chicago at Marshall Field’s and Carson Pirie Scott & Co. as soon as they had enough money. Now, amazingly, they were on top.
“That was never underscored more emphatically than a year ago last fall when the Packers were playing the Bears in Wrigley Field, when the Horn went into the end zone for a touchdown and flipped the ball gaily and gallantly into the stands. Of course, even the Packer coaching staff is laboring under an illusion about that. They feel Paul was tossing the ball to a lady. Which shows that despite the fact that they coached him for three seasons, they don’t understand him very well, because he certainly would have no lady sitting in the end zone. She would be on the fifty-yard line.”
Hornung sat at a table in the back of the hall with several teammates, and they all laughed, but not as loudly as many other men of the community whose lives were further separated from the glow of the Golden Boy. Hornung was still stuck down at Fort Riley most of the time; they had let him come north on leave for the ceremony. His military life, with two months of active service remaining, was cushier than ever. Now he was living in what amounted to a bachelor pad on the second floor of the First Cavalry museum, and General Ruggles was using him as a show horse, flying him around Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas to give speeches. He and Lombardi had visited earlier that spring, when the Old Man drove to Hot Springs, Arkansas, with Jack Koeppler and Ockie Krueger for a golfing vacation. One morning the coach called Hornung and ordered him to come over for a visit. “I don’t have to call that guy again, do I?” Lombardi joked, alluding to the call he had made to President Kennedy to free Hornung for the championship game. Hornung received a weekend pass and drove to Arkansas. Midway through a round of golf with Lombardi he found himself negotiating his next contract, or having it settled for him by the Old Man. There was a minor squabble over his bonus. Vince usually gave him a $10,000 to $15,000 bonus, but he seemed reluctant this time.
“Paul, you didn’t have that good a year,” he informed Hornung as he steered their golf cart from tee to green. “You were hurt. You missed four games.” To which Hornung replied, “Well, I was MVP of the league. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
Now here was Halas, the mortal enemy, moving to the microphone. Strange how it worked: Halas had created this league with Jim Thorpe and a few others. He had been the pilot light of professional football for four decades, but now the flame was burning bright and it was Lombardi’s flame and even Papa Bear knew it.
“It’s a pleasure to be back in Green Bay to see so many familiar smiling faces,” Halas said. “I wonder, are you, uh, thinking of what you did last year?” (Laughs all around. Green Bay had won both games against Chicago, 24 to 0 and 31 to 28.) “Or in smiling anticipation of what you expect to do to us next fall.” (Cheers. Yes!) “We’re delighted to be a part of this richly deserved tribute to Vince Lombardi. Although my role is out of character. In the past when we have come to Green Bay it was not to praise Caesar. It was to bury him. But due to our notable lack of success in arranging the football demise of Vince Lombardi and the, uh, Packers, we know that his record will continue for quite some time.”
Lombardi could imagine no greater compliment than to be toasted by George Halas. Their relationship had an odd balance. Halas hated to lose to Lombardi. As soon as Babe Parilli was cut by the Packers in 1959, his first call came from Halas, who was less interested in his quarterbacking abilities than in debriefing him on whatever he had picked up during training camp with Lombardi. In the privacy of his film room in Chicago, Halas was heard more than once snarling, “Look at that sonofabitch” at the sight of Lombardi stalking the opposing sidelines. As one journalist wrote of Halas, he “had all the warmth of breaking bones.” Yet he was loyal not only to his team, but also to his league, and to him the strength of the NFL was its durability, symbolized by the rivalry between his Bears and the Packers. It was that deeper bond that led him to advise Ole and the Packers board to hire Lombardi in the first place, and that inspired him to work behind the scenes to prevent Vince from leaving vulnerable Green Bay for New York after the 1960 season—even if it meant more drubbings administered by Lombardi’s team.
Cohane was back, first explaining how he had exhumed the name Seven Blocks of Granite from an old AP cutline from 1930, then offering to recite Grantland Rice’s “Old Gibraltar”—the sportswriter’s ode to the Fordham wall of 1936. “In those days, when Rice wrote a poem about your football team in his Monday column, believe me, you had arrived,” Cohane said. “I have recited ‘Old Gibraltar’ so many times, drunk and sober, I believe I can do it one more time.”
And he did. And the wall still stood.
Next came telegrams from Red Reeder, the buoyant one-legged colonel, and the other Red of West Point, Colonel Red Blaik. Both had been invited to participate in the testimonial, but could not attend. Blaik called Lombardi “America’s finest coach” and described him as “volatile, imaginative and highly intelligent.” Reeder wrote a line of doggerel and asked Cohane to compose the rest. Lombardi had always thought that he learned more about leadership at the Military Academy from Blaik and Reeder than anywhere else in his life. But Lombardi had moved beyond West Point now, and there was no going back, no matter how enticing the offer.
A few weeks after the championship win over the Giants, he had received another call from the White House. “Hello, Coach, how are you?” Kennedy had asked. Lombardi said he was fine. Why would the president be looking for him again so soon after the congratulatory call on New Year’s Eve? The answer came directly. “Good,” Kennedy responded. “Now, Coach, I’ve got three generals standing in front of me, and they want me to ask you if you would come back to West Point and coach Army again.” Lombardi was puzzled, unsure what to say. He would have taken the job in a second back in 1959, when Blaik retired, but Army was not willing to give it to a non-cadet then. Now, after a few mediocre seasons under Dale Hall, and with Lombardi’s rise to the top of the coaching world, they had reconsidered the policy. The job no longer interested Lombardi, but how could he politely refuse the president of the United States? With no answer coming directly to mind, Lombardi merely laughed, nervously. Kennedy understood. “I thought that would be your answer, and I told the generals so before I called,” he said. “Good luck next season, and if you get here, stop by and we’ll have lunch. Goodbye, Coach.” It was a grace note that Lombardi never forgot.
The testimonial rolled on. Now it was time for Lombardi’s top assistant coach, Phil Bengtson, mentor of the defense, who said that Vince was “due all the accolades” he had been given.
“One incident during the season stands out to me,” Bengtson said. “We had our problems, injuries and other things that hurt our efficiency. We had the military call-up of three fine football players hanging over our heads for so long. We worried about it every day. The more optimistic of us felt that they would not be called. But one Tuesday we reported for practice and they were all gone. Hornung. Nitschke. Dowler. None present. Taking three integral cogs out of our lineup. And I will never forget: Vince pointed out that these boys now are gone. We must get along without them; and it was not a question of getting along without them, we were still going to win! With or without them, we were going to win! Vince, to me, that was great.”
Sleepy Jim Crowley was up next, introduced with knowing precision by Cohane, his old publicist at Fordham. During the nine years that Crowley coached on Rose Hill, Cohane said, he had the third best college record in the country, behind only Minnesota and Alabama. He was the son of Agnes Sweeney Crowley, who taught dance to youngsters in Green Bay, and on the banquet circuit he still showed his dancing Irish wit.
“I was in the Navy and it was the war,” Crowley began. “I was very proud of the outfit I was with. We leveled four bridges, blew up six ammunition dumps and captured seven cities.”
Pause.
“And then we went overseas.”
/> Lombardi no doubt had heard that one before—it was part of Crowley’s rubber chicken repertoire. It was the sort of joke that Lombardi wanted to tell, but he never could get the timing down. He would start laughing too soon, long before the punch line. Crowley was master of the deadpan.
“When you are coaching football, there are only two ways to keep your job,” Sleepy Jim continued. “The first is win games. But if you can’t do that, you must become a character builder.”
With that single sardonic stroke, Crowley had punctured one of the swollen claims of football: that it was, by its very nature, a molder of human character. People inside the game knew better than anyone else that there was an uneven line between myth and reality here, between the characters of the game and the character of the game. The team that Lombardi had put together in Green Bay had its share of narcissists and roustabouts who in other professions might not be candidates for citizen of the year. Football was a violent sport, Lombardi insisted, and he had known from his earliest experiences that many of the boys with a natural affinity for the game came from troubled backgrounds. Crowley and Red Blaik had recruited heavily from the coal mines of Pennsylvania and mill towns of Massachusetts. Even at little Saints, Lombardi often used the Englewood police as informal scouts, asking them to point out borderline juvenile delinquents who might be football prospects. He did not tolerate rebellion, he shaped the team in his image on the field, and the positive effect that he had on his players off the field was undeniable, but even with Lombardi there was a direct correlation between the amount of time he would put into character building and the talent of the character in need of building.
Crowley ended by dedicating a Gaelic toast—“Not bad when it’s for an Italian”—to his former player:
May the roads rise to meet you,
May the wind always be at your back,
And may the good Lord forever hold
You and yours in the palms of his hands.
“Well,” said Cohane. “It’s ten o’clock and we’re getting to the home stretch. It must have been the handiwork of fate for Vince to coach here and no place else. When he was at St. Cecilia, he might have been picked as Fordham coach. If he had been, the school today would be a first-rank eastern power. He might have been selected as head coach of the Giants at the end of 1953. He was not. In 1954 there was an attempt to restore football at Fordham with Vince as head coach. It didn’t work. In 1959, Army went looking for a coach, but it was not ready to break with the tradition of cadet coaches. So fate fingered him for Green Bay. In 1956, after the Rose Bowl game, he and I took a ride out Wilshire Boulevard and drove out to Coldwater Canyon to the Tail of the Cock restaurant. He had been offered some jobs, but not the right ones, and he was wondering whether the right one would ever come along. Now we know the answer to why he did not become a head coach until he was forty-five years old. When God has reserved real greatness for somebody, God makes sure he is ready for it.”
The time had arrived for Pete Rozelle to present Lombardi with the two-foot-high Jim Thorpe Memorial Trophy for winning the NFL championship. “This trophy has a great deal of history behind it,” Rozelle said. “In passing it on, I’d like to say that as commissioner I’m not concerned with individual records or individual team efforts. I am concerned with the high caliber of players we have in the league, and the owners, and coaches, who have that indefinable something called class. And the gentleman I’m handing this to personifies it—Vince Lombardi.”
More presentations came Lombardi’s way—a new gold-plated putter, a life-scale portrait, a plaque from the city. Finally it was the coach’s time. As Lombardi reached the microphone, people nearby could see that he was starting to choke up, tears forming at the corner of his eyes. “I planned to say many things this evening in appreciation and gratitude, and maybe be even a bit witty. But I’m afraid I’m so filled with emotion that regardless of what I would say I could not express myself adequately,” he began. “Ahem. Ahm. However, I would like to thank the Elks, the committee, all of you who made this a wonderful night. I’ve received many tributes since I came to Green Bay, but none, I don’t believe, would ever replace or compare with this great tribute here”—he lowered his deep voice further and spoke even more deliberately to make the point—“in … my … home … town.”
From the side of the hall came a loud yelp—Yeah!—and more cheers. Lombardi cleared his throat again.
“I would like to thank in particular some of our guests who traveled many miles: Father Tim Moore, who’s been a very close friend and adviser to me for many years; Jim Crowley, my first coach and a great coach; Tim Cohane, who has been a close personal friend of mine for many years; George Halas, for taking his time, the dean of all coaches and one of the most respected, believe me, of all time; Commissioner, and Father Masse and all of you out there. I am proud and happy of course to have been able to bring a championship to Green Bay. I don’t know of any city more deserving of a championship than this city for its loyalty and cooperation and support for many, many years before I came here. Green Bay has been good to me, good to my family. And I am proud and happy to call it my home.”
He could not accept the tribute, Lombardi said, without mentioning the people who were “every bit as important” as he was in bringing home the title, all of whom, he said, should have been up there with him sharing the honor. “In particular, a very—”
For a moment it seemed that he could not go on, but he struggled to regain his composure. No one else in the room knew what Marie had endured for twenty years because of his obsession with football: the silent meals, the flashes of temper, the demands for perfection, the Mr. High-Low, on top of the world here, sulking in gloom there. Nor could they know his share of the burden as the husband of a woman who numbed herself with alcohol. Yet despite their troubles, she had devoted herself to his cause and become a coach’s wife. He finished the thought.
“… ehmmm … patient … wonderful … wife.”
Another pause.
“And the Packer executive board and its directors. And a fine group of assistant coaches. A great group of players without whom none of this would be possible. …”
Wild applause from Hornung and Fuzzy and Jesse Whittenton and the rest of the boys at the back table. As despotic and unfeeling as he could seem sometimes on the practice field, the coach had taught them how to win, lifted their self-image, challenged them to accomplish things that they had thought might be beyond their reach. And recently he had won the hearts of their wives as well, presenting every Packer woman with a luxurious fur stole in celebration of the title. The Golden Boy did not get one to give away to a girlfriend; Lombardi sent it directly to his mother. That made it one fine year for Loretta Hornung; her son also gave her the Corvette sports car he had won as the outstanding player in the championship game.
“… And to the good Lord for His help and understanding. And I pray to Him each day to give me enough of a sense of humor to be serious, yet never allow me to take myself too seriously. Thank you, again.”
Cheers, whistles, pounding applause. After a benediction delivered by the Reverend Dean Kilgust, the men in the audience moved toward the head table with the reverence of parishioners waiting to receive communion. The Pope signed autographs, showed off his new putter, traded gibes with Rozelle and Sleepy Jim and the two Tims. The high of the evening was wearing off, the same transition from elation to exhaustion that overtook Lombardi after a big win. He stepped out into the downtown mist, found his car in the darkened lot behind the Elks Lodge and headed home to Marie.
17
Daylight
THE CALL CAME one Sunday afternoon during the 1961 Christmas break. “Bill, Red wants to talk to you,” Betty Heinz hollered down to her husband, W. C. Heinz, who was ice-skating on a neighborhood pond at the end of their property in Stamford, Connecticut. Heinz crunched his way home through the snow, removed his skates at the door, walked inside and took the phone.
“What are you doing?�
�� asked Red Smith, the columnist for the New York Herald Tribune, who lived nearby.
“I’m doing what you should be doing,” Heinz responded, in the sarcastic manner that defined the friendship of two eloquent sportswriters. “I’m skating around on the pond with your son.” True enough: Heinz had been skating with Terry Smith, Red’s son, home from college for the holidays.
“Well, are you going to be there for a while?” Smith asked. “I’ve got something I want to talk to you about.”
“Sure,” said Heinz. “Come on over.”
Smith arrived with a proposition. He had entered into an agreement with Prentice-Hall to serve as general editor of what would be called Red Smith’s Sports Series, as-told-to memoirs in which prominent sports figures would give readers an inside look into their lives and professions. Robert Riger had signed on to do illustrations and photographs, and Smith would select an established author to write each book. “They want to start with a book on Lombardi, and we think you should do it,” Smith said. He acknowledged that Heinz was a replacement choice; their first thought was Lombardi’s old Fordham pal, Tim Cohane, but Cohane had declined, saying he was too busy. “So, when are you going to get finished with that doctor book?” Smith asked. The question came with a tone of disdain. Heinz had devoted himself recently to writing The Surgeon, a true-to-life fictional account of the pressure-filled days of a doctor, and he thought that Smith “always kind of looked down on” that project because it broke up their relationship in sports. The doctor book would be finished by July, Heinz said. Soon enough.
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