The '63 Steelers

by Rudy Dicks

  Snead stayed aggressive, hitting Bill Anderson for 13 yards and Mitchell for 12 and 15 yards, but on second-and-3 from the Steeler 24, Dick Haley, the hero of the first Washington game, stole a pass at the 6, his fifth interception of the year. The Steelers methodically marched downfield, 2 or 3 yards at a time, with five carries by Johnson sandwiched around one by Hoak. As the fourth quarter opened, a 17-yard completion to Ballman put Pittsburgh on the Redskin 41. After Hoak lost 8 yards, creating third-and-18 at the 49, Brown hooked up with Ballman for a 31-yard gain. But on the next play, at the 18, Brown fumbled and tackle Bob Toneff recovered at the 26.

  Snead wasn’t wasting time with his running game. Barnes took a 54-yard pass down to the Steeler 20, and then he threw one himself, a halfback option to Mitchell, all alone in the right corner of the end zone, to bring the Redskins within 24–21 with 4:21 gone in the quarter. Parker’s squad appeared to be on the verge of another collapse.

  “We should have had at least three more touchdowns,” Parker grumbled later. “We gummed up at least that number of chances to put the scores on the board. And that fumble scared the daylights out of me.”64

  Brown didn’t panic and come out throwing. Other than two passes of 9 yards apiece to Ballman, the Steelers let Johnson and Hoak carry the load on a fourteen-play drive, challenging Washington’s rugged defensive line. But on first-and-10 at the Washington 11, Brown threw three incompletions, leaving it up to Michaels to kick an 18-yard field goal for a 27–21 Steeler lead with 5:16 left in the game.

  With halfback Dick James injured, the Redskins had no running game. They would total only 38 yards on the ground and not pick up a first down by rushing (compared to 11 by Pittsburgh). Snead had been intercepted twice, but he kept firing away. Glass broke up a pass intended for Mitchell, but on second-and-9 from the Washington 46 Mitchell eluded his shadow and caught a 33-yard pass down to the Steeler 21. One play later, Snead hit Richter in the left corner of the end zone with Thomas close enough to graze the receiver’s helmet. With 2:38 to go, the Steelers were down 28–27. As Ballman and Thomas lined up for the kickoff, the Steelers called for a return left. Ballman caught the ball on the 8-yard line and “careened down his left sideline.”65 As the Redskins converged, Ballman saw second-year end John Powers “smother Rod Breedlove” and guard Mike Sandusky throw another block.66 “As I got through the hole, Clendon Thomas was ahead of me,” Ballman explained. “I grabbed him and steered him into [Lonnie] Sanders [a teammate at Michigan State] and then cut back. They had me sidelined.”67

  Ballman “weaved his way laterally, like a frightened settler, through a war party of Braves in Tribe territory” and then “veered sharply to the center of the field, where he took off like a cannon shot.”68 It was a chance he had to take. “It’s always a risk when you cut back in this league,” Ballman said. “You never know what’s behind you, but I didn’t think I could go any farther along the sideline.”69 It sounded like that “special insight” he described to his wife, Judi: “Just pick a spot and go.”

  From there, Ballman revved up his Detroit motor, and by the time he reached the Washington 30, he was not to be caught. The Steelers had a 34–28 lead, but Norm Snead, “6 feet 4 inches of pure determination,” still had 2:20 to work with, and the Redskins had “one final wheeze” left in them.70

  Budd returned the kickoff to his 35. Snead hit Bosseler for 12 yards, and fist-swinging between the fullback and Baker “precipitated a near-riot.” It was just the nature of the game, Stautner explained: “Baker just lost his head when Bosseler started kicking him.”71

  Snead hit Richter for 13 yards, and yet another personal foul advanced Washington to the Steeler 25 with 1:26 left. It was a déjà vu NFL moment, a flashback to St. Louis. But on first down, Snead’s pass to Anderson was broken up by Daniel and Thomas and almost intercepted. A second-down pass was intended for Mitchell, who’d already set a team record with eleven receptions for 218 yards, but Glass tipped the ball away at the last second. However, it was Stautner, “the old man,” who saved the Steelers, said losing coach Bill McPeak. “Stautner killed that pass, not Glass,” McPeak said. “Nobody else in the league could have charged that kid so fast. He made Snead hurry his throw.”72

  On third down, Snead misfired for Anderson again. On fourth down, with 1:09 left, McPeak was looking for a first down, so he called for a sideline pass to Mitchell. “But Norm Snead thought Pittsburgh was going into a zone defense instead of man-to-man and he changed the play, a ‘stop’ pass to Richter,” the coach explained.73

  Snead aimed for the six-foot-five-and-a-half-inch Richter, but the rookie was guarded closely by Russell and Haley, and the pass went incomplete. That was it for the Redskins. There would be no repeat of the Charley Johnson–to–Bobby Joe Conrad magic. Snead had thrown forty times, completing twenty-three for 424 yards, but his failure to get his twenty-fourth completion left the Skins losers. The Steelers were not the ones who were snake bitten. “Someone is not living right around here,” McPeak said, “and it must be me.”74

  Ballman didn’t let himself get carried away with his heroics. Asked the next day at the Curbstone Coaches luncheon if he felt that he had “arrived,” he reverted to his irreverent manner. “Sure,” he replied. “My car is parked in the lot across the street.”75

  The Steelers were still clinging to hopes for a division title, and they were doing it with battered veterans like Stautner and John Henry Johnson, discards like Haley, and unpolished talents like Ballman. The chase was exhilarating but exhausting. “Wasn’t that a game,” Parker said in a whisper.76

  The Giants, meanwhile, cruised to a 48–14 victory over the 49ers behind Y. A. Tittle’s four touchdown passes and 284 yards in the air against his old team. The win was the Giants’ fifth straight, a streak in which they scored at least thirty-three points in each game. The Giants took over sole possession of first place in the Eastern Conference with an 8–2 record as the Cards beat the Browns, 20–14, leaving the two teams in a tie for second at 7–3.

  But the most impressive victory of the day came at Wrigley Field, where the Bears whipped the Packers, 26–7, leaving 9–1 Chicago alone in first place in the Western Conference. The Bears throttled the Packer offense, intercepting Bart Starr’s fill-ins five times and snatching up three Green Bay fumbles. It was a dominating performance sure to seize Parker’s attention, with the Bears traveling to Forbes Field in a week.

  But for one day, the Steelers could savor another comeback, from another in a weekly parade of heroes. Art Rooney, as well aware as anyone that a football game and a horse race can be equally unpredictable, could appreciate a contest that went down to the final seconds. “I like to see my horse coming down to the wire neck-and-neck in the pack,” Rooney said, “then win out in a photo finish!”77 Rooney was about to see his kind of race come to life on the football field.

  GAME 11

  VERSUS CHICAGO BEARS

  AT FORBES FIELD

  NOVEMBER 24

  Half-a-million people were expected to turn out to greet President Kennedy in Chicago on Saturday morning, November 2, 1963, the day he was scheduled to attend the Army–Air Force game at Soldier Field. However, press secretary Pierre Salinger announced at the last minute that the trip would be canceled because the president had to tend to the worsening situation in South Vietnam, a military coup that overturned the government of President Ngo Dinh Diem.1

  Ten days later, as the Bears prepared for their first-place showdown against the Packers at Wrigley Field, and scalpers prepared for a big payoff, coach George Halas was asked if he would invite President Kennedy to the game. “I’m sure if the president wants to see the game, I can find a seat for him,” Halas replied.2

  College football had been revered by fans for decades, and 1963 would mark the tenth straight year in which attendance rose, this time to a record of more than twenty-two million fans. But pro football was turning into a mania. An Illinois couple getting a divorce became embroiled in “the bitterest fight of all”
over custody of Bears season tickets. Packer fans’ only hope of getting home tickets was by being bequeathed them in a will. “Such is the phenomenal and growing popularity and hypnosis of the gladiatorial encounter known as professional football,” wrote Steve Snider of UPI.3

  In fact, interest in the pro game had been surging for several years, not unlike the frenzy that accompanied the popularity of Elvis and Sinatra. After fans stormed the field at Yankee Stadium before the finish of a Browns-Giants game in December of ’59, forcing players and Browns coach Paul Brown to flee the field, and delaying the game for twenty minutes, New York Times columnist Arthur Daley commented that pro football “has become engulfed by an emotionalism that now approaches hysteria.”4

  And that hysteria knew no bounds. Giants coach Jim Lee Howell, a native of Lonoke, Arkansas, observed: “New York fans are just like the fans in Lonoke, Arkansas, only there are more of ’em here.”5

  In 1934, the NFL had fewer customers than the number of people who awaited Kennedy in Chicago. Ten years later, spectators topped one million. In 1952, the thirty-third year of the NFL’s existence, attendance reached two million. In 1962, the total was a record 4,003,421, and that figure was likely to be broken by the end of the ’63 season. Television sparked the boom in interest, and the NFL profited handsomely. The fourteen teams split profits of $4,650,000 from TV, and the NFL took in $926,000 for telecast rights to the championship game, with much of the sum directed toward a player pension fund. On an average Sunday in the fall, fifteen million TV sets were tuned in to NFL games. Interest in pro football was about to explode, and no longer did baseball enjoy an unchallenged claim as the national pastime.6

  Chicago fans had as intense an interest as anyone in the nation over the NFL telecasts scheduled for Sunday, November 24. After manhandling the Packers, the 9–1 Bears could edge out 8–2 Green Bay in the Western Conference race by winning their four remaining games, starting with Pittsburgh. After escaping Washington with a victory, the 6–3–1 Steelers still had a shot at climbing over St. Louis and Cleveland, both 7–3, and past 8–2 New York, but they couldn’t afford another loss. The day after his game-winning dash, Gary Ballman was asked at the Curbstone Coaches luncheon whether his team could go 4–0 the rest of the way. “You better call Lloyds of London for the odds on that one,” he said. “We have as good a chance to win them all as to lose them all.”7

  The Packers had beaten the Steelers by 19. The Bears beat the Packers by 19. “Does that make Chicago 38 points over Pittsburgh on Sunday?” Post-Gazette sportswriter Jack Sell asked. “Go right ahead and think so if you want,” Ballman answered. “I don’t know how they figure games by points.”8

  Halas wasn’t buying into the math either. His euphoria after “one of the greatest triumphs in Bear history” quickly turned to worry as Chicago prepared for a visit to Forbes Field.9 “Never mind the Packers game. The Steelers should have beaten them,” said the coach, who had spent forty-four of his sixty-eight years in professional football.10 “I’d rather be playing any team in the league than the Steelers. They are tough and punishing.”11

  In the Steelers, Halas could no doubt see a mirror image of his own club. Pittsburgh was the one team whose survival-of-the-fittest mentality could rival the reputation of the “Monsters of the Midway.” And a letdown by the Bears seemed only human after the Packers’ visit received the buildup of a championship game. “No team can play perfect football two weeks in a row, and it seems too much to expect them to be as supercharged as they were last Sunday,” Tex Maule said after the Bears’ win.12

  Halas didn’t shrink from the growing attention. In fact, he took the opposite approach of Buddy Parker and welcomed the tension. “No, I’m not afraid of a letdown after the Green Bay game,” he said. “The pressure is building up this week. That’s the way I like it … lots of pressure. Being completely relaxed is no good.”13

  Halas had his Bears playing as if it was still the 1940s, “demonstrating that games can still be won in the old-fashioned way.”14 Bill Wade was an efficient quarterback who led the league in pass attempts and completions in ’62 and finished third in passing yardage. Ten games into the ’63 season, he ranked second in the league to Y. A. Tittle among passers, relying on Ditka, No. 8 among leaders in receptions, as his prime target.

  The Bears finished twelfth out of fourteen teams in rushing in ’62 and through the first ten games of ’63 ranked eleventh in total offense, with none of their backs among the top ten rushers. After eight games, every team in the league with a winning record had scored 200 points—except Chicago. The Bears would go on to finish tenth in the league in points scored.

  Young George Allen had taken over from Clark Shaughnessy as defensive coordinator. His crew was “performing virtual miracles,” and it would wind up the season allowing a league-low 144 points, 62 less than the second-best unit, and would rank first in differential between takeaways and giveaways (plus 29).15

  It was the defense, ranked first in the NFL, that had allowed the Bears to win by scores of 10–3 (twice), 17–7, 16–7, and 6–0. It was the only defense in the NFL that had held opponents to an aggregate rushing total under 1,000 yards (892) after ten games. Aptly enough, it was Roger Leclerc of the Bears who was named AP’s player of the week after kicking four field goals in the 26–7 victory over the Packers. Pittsburgh’s defense, as tough as its personnel was, ranked only tenth in the league and had given up an average of nearly 138 yards more per game than Chicago’s unit.

  Doug Atkins, a future Hall of Famer, anchored one end spot, and Ed O’Bradovich the other. Bill George, Larry Morris, and Joe Fortunato formed a rugged trio of linebackers. Parker said that the Bears had the best defensive backfield in the league. One safety, Roosevelt Taylor, was leading the league in interceptions, with seven; the other, Richie Petitbon, would go on to a career as coach, rising to defensive coordinator and, briefly, head coach.

  The Bears weren’t doing anything flashy. They were winning with sheer physical play. “They beat the hell out of us,” Vince Lombardi said after his team’s 26–7 loss.16 Jim Taylor, who had rushed for 141 yards against the Steelers, gained only 23 against the Bears, and the Packers had a total of only 71 on the ground.

  Both the Steelers and Bears had a key injury. While Halas had to deal with a season-ending ankle injury to fullback Rick Casares, Parker was facing a second straight game without Brady Keys, who had sat out the Redskins game with bruised ribs. Now Keys was hemorrhaging in the chest cavity.17

  Before practice at Wrigley Field on Wednesday before the game, Halas made it sound as if the Steelers were more fearsome than the defending champion Packers. “My gosh they have a fine team,” he said. “That John Henry Johnson is some runner, and now they’ve come up with this fast young fellow named Ballman.”18

  The player who was perhaps most eager to face the Bears was the man who knew them best: Ed Brown, who was with Chicago for eight years through 1961. “Beat the Bears?” Brown said right around the time Halas was raving about Pittsburgh. “I want to beat them in the worst way.”19

  Brown still harbored a grudge for having to split playing time with Wade and Zeke Bratkowski after Chicago was routed by the Giants in the 1956 title game, 47–7. “After the 1961 season I was fed up, and asked to be traded,” Brown said.20 In ’59 he completed 125 of 247 passes for 1,881 yards and thirteen touchdowns, all personal highs for his pro career in Chicago. His playing time dropped off over the next two years, and in ’61 he threw only ninety-eight passes. Then Parker rescued him.

  “Certainly this game means more than most,” Brown said. “Everybody is a little bitter after being traded, even if you ask for it, and this is one way to get back. Besides, I’ve got a lot of friends on the Bears, guys I came into the pros with, and I’d like to beat them.” Brown spoke evenly, but his coach knew that his feelings ran deep. “He’s the type of guy who doesn’t say much but I know he wants nothing better than to beat the Bears,” Parker said.21

  Brown’s old teammate
s still respected him, and they knew how dangerous he could be with a football. “Ed Brown was our man, and we loved him,” Casares said of the quarterback.22

  The morning of Friday, November 22, 1963, brought cloudy but mild weather, with temperatures expected to hit the 60s, while out West the first major winter storm of the season was gaining strength. The lead story in the Post-Gazette warned that the city was facing a December 8 strike by 1,300 trolley and bus operators. Robert F. Stroud, “the Birdman of Alcatraz,” had died at age seventy-three. Joey Bishop, Joan Crawford, and Jack E. Leonard were scheduled to appear at a benefit Sunday night at the Penn Sheraton Ballroom. And a page 1 story described President Kennedy’s dedication of the Aerospace Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, the day before. “The conquest of space must and will go on,” the president stated. In the spirit of the time, he said, “doing and daring are required of all who are willing to explore the unknown and test the uncertain in every phase of human endeavor.”23

  As a security precaution, the Steelers held a “secret practice” on Thursday at Forbes Field rather than at South Park. There was no indication that Parker had anyone monitor the surroundings with binoculars, although ten years earlier a bit of paranoia surfaced while he was conducting a Detroit Lions practice. As a railroad switch engine passed on a track by the practice field, the coach noticed the engineer and fireman watching the workout, so Parker stopped practice. “For all I know, George Halas could be sitting in the cab of that locomotive,” Parker said.24