The '63 Steelers

by Rudy Dicks

  With a first down at the Steeler 34 and time winding down in the third quarter, Wade came right back to Farrington, but Reger intercepted on the 21 and picked his way to the 38.

  Pittsburgh started to move. Dial made a leaping catch for a 13-yard gain to the Bear 45, and after Hoak gained 6 yards, Brown overthrew Dial at the goal line as the third quarter ended.

  On the first play of the fourth quarter, Johnson gained 9 yards with a catch out of the backfield, 5 more over left guard, and, a play later, ran over right tackle for 7 to give his team a first down at the 15. After Dial dropped a bullet at the 7, Hoak caught a pass and got as far as the 8, where Taylor grabbed the halfback’s right ankle and hung on for his life, a bit like a defender trying to tackle Jim Brown and clinging to the runner as if he were a horse rider caught in the stirrup and being dragged along. Hoak yanked himself loose, as if his galoshes had been stuck in the mud, and scampered into the end zone.

  Seven years earlier, when Parker threatened to quit over the incident in which Bobby Layne was blindsided by Ed Meadows, the coach charged that the NFL was being “run” by Halas and George Preston Marshall.105 On this day, a few people would tend to agree with that sentiment. Halas biographer Jeff Davis described the Bears owner and coach as “a flesh-and-blood Ursus horribilis: surly, snarly, sinister, and smart.” Davis quoted the sportswriter Bill Furlong as having described Halas as a man possessing “all the warmth of breaking bones.”106 He badgered, berated, and cussed out referees in shamelessly profane fashion, often to great effectiveness. After the Steelers’ 27–21 loss in Chicago in 1959—a game to which beat writer Pat Livingston devoted six paragraphs to inventory what he considered suspect calls that went in favor of the Bears—Parker remarked, “I’ll sure be glad to see Halas retire, then maybe you’ll be able to beat the Bears in this town.”107

  Whether the specter of another Halas obscenity-laced tantrum influenced the officials, subconsciously or consciously, is conjecture. After all, they weren’t in Halas’s hometown on this afternoon. But Hoak’s run was called back, the touchdown disallowed. Back judge Tom Kelleher had ruled the ball dead, even though Hoak later said he had not heard a whistle. The call enraged not only the fans but the players. Because of the configuration of Forbes Field, both benches were on the same sideline, putting opponents within shouting distance of each other.

  “I remember Ernie Stautner and Red Mack were chewing out George Halas, saying, ‘You’ve got the officials in your pocket, George,’” Hoak said.108 Russell recalled Stautner, Krupa, Pottios, and Johnson swearing at Halas, making the same accusation.109

  “You had to blow the whistle on that play,” umpire Fritz Graf said after the game. “A guy could get his leg broken on a play like that.” Kelleher was not available to comment. He had “set a record for getting out of the dressing room.”110

  Instead of a 21–14 lead, the Steelers had third-and-2 at the 8. Johnson went off left tackle for 2 yards and on fourth down leaped over right guard for a yard and first down at the 5. Johnson managed a yard, but Hoak was stuffed at the line by end Bob Kilcullen and linebacker Bill George. On third down, the Steelers made a peculiar call for that spot on the field: a double reverse to Ballman. That play had gained 8 yards early in the third quarter, but it came with the Steelers on their 28 on first down. This time, Ballman was nailed for no gain by Fortunato. Michaels connected on an 11-yard field goal, giving Pittsburgh a 17–14 lead with 8:35 left in the game. The way the Steeler defense was playing, the lead looked good enough to stand up.

  The Bears’ shot at tying the game or taking the lead “started inauspiciously, almost disgracefully,” on the ensuing kickoff.111 Five weeks later, in the NFL title game, a fumble recovery on a kickoff would be nullified because a member of the kicking team was offside, leading Red Smith to comment, “There isn’t much excuse for a professional to be off-side on a kickoff.”112 As daylight faded at Forbes Field, Charlie Bivins, pressed into action because Casares had sustained a separation of his right ankle, fumbled on the return and the Steelers’ John Burrell recovered on the Bear 18. But once again fortune seemed to be conspiring against Parker’s squad. The Steelers were called for being offside and had to kick over, this time with Bivins on the bench. Bull returned the kick to the 23.

  Bull picked up 5 yards, and Wade hit Morris for another 5, then Ditka for 14. The Steelers’ chances of holding their lead looked even better after Morris was called for illegal use of hands against Glass, and Krupa sacked Wade, leaving the Bears with second-and-36 at their 22 with five-and-a-half minutes to go. Wade wanted to call a deep route to Ditka, who had earned All-America honors three years earlier while playing at Pitt Stadium and on this day had family and friends from his nearby hometown of Aliquippa in the stands. Like Stautner, John Henry Johnson, and Mack, Ditka was a man driven to succeed by forces that seemed supernatural. “There’s a lot of Ty Cobb in Ditka,” the Pittsburgh sportswriter Roy McHugh observed.112 In their ferocity of play and desire to win, the only difference in the way they ran was that Ditka led with his head rather than with his cleats. “He was all business, both in practice or during a game,” one of his college coaches said. “He had that killer instinct.”113

  But Ditka was tired. He had run pass routes on the three previous plays, and he had already caught six passes. So he told Wade, “Bill, I can’t go deep. You throw me something short. I’ll go down about 14 yards and hook. Then I’ll try to run with it.” Years later, Ditka would call it “the luckiest run in the world.”114 Halas called it “one of the greatest individual efforts I have seen in 40 years of football.”115

  It started out, simply enough, as a short pass to the left side. Wade faked to a back releasing on the left side and got rid of the ball as Krupa bore down on him from his right. Thomas came in and skidded past Ditka. Reger dove from behind and missed. A trio of Steeler defenders converged, “and with a twisting Herculean effort of explosive strength, Ditka threw off all three men” and broke free, the ball tucked into his left elbow, his helmet hunched below the level of his waist, with a clear field ahead of him “in the ancient home of the baseball Pirates.”116 Ditka lumbered ahead, half limping, like an amateur marathon runner straining for the finish line, until Thomas, in a desperate sprint, dragged down the tight end at the Steeler 15 on the infield portion of the field, with Daniel right behind. The play covered 63 yards. Ditka lay spread eagle and was helped off to the sidelines.

  “Lord, I was exhausted,” Ditka said later. “I thought I was going to black out.” In the locker room afterward, Halas gazed at Ditka and said, “I can’t remember the last time I saw such a helluva play.”117

  “It was the greatest run I’ve ever seen,” said Bears defensive coordinator George Allen.118

  Steeler players and Parker insisted that the play should have been whistled dead, just as Hoak’s run had been with Taylor strapped to the Steeler’s ankle. “They were identical plays,” Parker said. Halas disagreed. “Ditka was churning his legs. Hoak was definitely stopped.”119

  The fates of both teams were at stake. A loss would knock the Steelers out of the Eastern race for good; a defeat would drop the Bears into a tie with Green Bay if the Packers beat the last-place 49ers. On first down, Bull slanted off tackle for 4 yards, and then Marconi juggled but lost a high throw from Wade. On third-and-6 from the 11, Farrington, open in the end zone, dropped a pass. Leclerc kicked an 18-yard field goal to make it 17–17 with 4:31 left in the game.

  The Steelers were in good shape after Thomas returned the kickoff 38 yards to the 45, but on third-and-9 Brown threw to Curry, and this time Bennie McRae intercepted at the Bear 41. The Bears needed only 20, 25 yards for a shot at a field goal, but on second-and-7 Reger dropped Marconi for a 9-yard loss on a screen pass, setting up third-and-16 from the 35. There would be no heroics this time: Michaels, Stautner, and Krupa smothered Wade for a loss of 12 yards.

  Following Green’s 43-yard punt, the Steelers took over on their 32 with two minutes left—the last chance to pull the
game out. Linebacker Larry Morris deflected a Brown pass, but Dial caught it for a 21-yard gain to the Bear 44. Hoak gained 2 yards, and with 1:04 left, the Steelers called time-out. Dial caught and then dropped a pass on the Bear 30, but from the 42, Michaels still had a shot at a field goal from 49 yards. On third down, however, Bill George dropped Brown for a 9-yard loss, back to the Steeler 49. The Steelers had no choice but to punt. Taylor dropped the punt but recovered on his 12. All Wade had to do was fall on the ball three or four times and the Bears could escape with a tie—and be grateful for it.

  But the fates weren’t finished teasing and tormenting the Steelers. The Bears’ offense had stuck to conservative play-calling, but “for only some reason understandable only to himself,” Wade decided to throw a pass in the left flat to Marconi.120

  Reger was surprised by the call, but he was ready. “I saw it coming,” he said. “I was merely trying to cover my man. I never expected a pass in that situation.”121

  Neither did Wade’s coach. The pass “almost caused Coach George Halas to swoon on the sidelines.”122 It was probably too much of a shock to Reger as well. “The ball hit me on the right forearm,” he explained, “so I had no chance to intercept.”123

  If Reger had caught the ball, he would have been a bigger hero than Ditka—and would have had about a quarter as far to run. “There was a clear field for Reger and page lines all over the sports world if he had nabbed the ball and scored,” Jack Sell wrote.124

  Halas rushed in guard Roger Davis with instructions to kill the clock, and with two carries time ran out. A tie didn’t hurt the Steelers—it kept them alive in the Eastern race, which saw the Giants, Browns, and Cardinals all tied for first place at 8–3 after St. Louis upset New York, 24–17, behind Charley Johnson’s two TD passes, and Cleveland beat Dallas, 27–17. A tie not only let the Bears, at 9–1–1, hang onto first place in the Western Division, ahead of the 9–2 Packers but it also left Halas thankful for escaping defeat. “We’ll settle for the tie,” the coach said.125

  He had every reason to feel relief. Chicago Tribune sportswriter George Strickler said of Halas’s team: “Today they were not what the advance notices had proclaimed. They were just lucky.” Or embarrassing. “We played like a bunch of jackasses,” Morris said.126

  Parker showed no frustration, no bitterness over the tie, the officials’ calls, or the breaks of the game. “You’d think we won,” he said with a laugh. “Well, it was almost like winning.”127

  The angriest person in either locker room hadn’t suited up that day; it was a Pittsburgh newspaperman upset over the officiating. “I do know the writer chased Halas and yelled, ‘You paid the officials,’” Ditka recalled years later. “A couple of us grabbed that guy and ran his ass out of there.”128 The writer, later identified by Myron Cope as one P. Murray Livingston, said the confrontation was overblown, and he returned to apologize, but the Tribune reported that he had threatened “to punch Halas in the nose.”129 There is no evidence that the writer had his hands taped as Parker did when he went after Big Daddy Lipscomb and John Henry Johnson in Dallas.

  On their flight home, the Bears were still buzzing about Ditka’s run. “I have never seen a play so great,” Pyle said years later.130

  A day of mourning lay ahead for the nation. If fans leaving stadiums in the dusk could not deny or ignore how their world had changed so abruptly and irrevocably, some did find a brief distraction, a fleeting escape, at least in one city, before having to resume the task of groping for comfort or some peace of mind. Maybe it was, as Sandy Grady seethed, “a dismally farcical moment for child’s games,” and maybe the most reverent, thoughtful, and decent thing for any citizen to do was to pause and bow his head for the day.131 But for some, maybe the only response to tragedy was to find some kind of reminder of what makes a person feel alive and vital, and perhaps they found it at a football stadium.

  As the fans filed out of Yankee Stadium, one man said to another, “I wonder if they should have played?”

  “I don’t know,” the second man replied. “I’m not God. Where else were they going to go today?”

  “Or maybe they were looking for someplace to go.”132

  By late afternoon, as people made their way home by subways, cars, buses, streetcars, or on foot, it was time to return to a national Götterdämmerung.

  “In a way,” wrote Arthur Daley of the New York Times, “the fans at the Stadium yesterday could not have been blamed for letting their heavy hearts have a stimulating fillip for 2½ hours on a bright, brittle afternoon.”133

  Two seasons earlier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sports editor Al Abrams had made his remarks about how the sports pages offered a “vicarious” relief amid the turbulence and violence of everyday life. On a grim Sunday four days before Thanksgiving, a real-life spectacle in seven cities across a dazed country put that notion to the test. “While the world rocked and reeled under the impact of weightier and more important happenings in Dallas the past few days,” Abrams wrote, “Pittsburgh district fans forgot assassinations and murders for a couple of hours to watch pro football. They saw it at its toughest best as two hard-bitten teams, battling for flag contention, clawed at each other from start to finish.”134

  It was easy to indulge in platitudes and sanctimonious pronouncements about John F. Kennedy’s beliefs and “what he would have wanted” in this raw situation. Most likely, what he would have loved to do on a Sunday afternoon in late November would be to watch the Redskins on TV, then round up eight or ten people, grab a football, and pick up sides on a patch of green lawn. Dave Hackett, a family friend, once wrote a tongue-in-cheek set of “Rules for Visiting the Kennedys,” and it included one obligatory activity the family insisted on: “It’s touch football but it’s murder. The only way I know of to get out of playing is not to come at all, or to come with a broken leg.”135

  It sounded as if Ditka would have fit right in at a Kennedy pickup game. He had played with a fury to match the passion of the Steelers. It was not a day to have fun at a kid’s game, or to savor athletic achievement. But Ditka was a professional, and he played like one, and he tried to express the right sentiment for his president. “I think everyone felt something,” Ditka said. “Not having known the man, however, I think he would not have wanted it postponed. So we go out on the field—and it’s business to us—and after the first kickoff, all you think about is the Steelers.”136

  In Milwaukee, where the Packers beat the 49ers, 28–10, Vince Lombardi was asked if he was troubled that they were playing “on this day of world gloom.”

  “If this had been designated the day of national mourning, instead of tomorrow, I’m certain it would not have been played,” he replied. “Really, tho, [sic] there was no reason for postponing today’s game. Knowing how Mr. Kennedy’s thoughts were on sport, I believe that he would have been the last one in the world to ask the game be called off.”137

  But no one, Lombardi said, was immune to the despair that hung over the nation. “If you have any kind of feeling,” he said, “you have to be affected.”138

  In two weeks, the Steelers would travel to the Cotton Bowl in Dallas to face the Cowboys. But first, they would have a rematch with the Philadelphia Eagles.

  On Tuesday, the Steelers would still be off, but stores, schools, and government offices would reopen, and people would try to get back to their regular routines, even though they would have “to explore the unknown and test the uncertain,” as Kennedy had said the day before his death. And on Tuesday, the New York Daily News ran a front-page photo of Jacqueline Kennedy; her daughter, Caroline; and son, John-John, saluting, with the headline “WE CARRY ON.”

  GAME 12

  VERSUS PHILADELPHIA EAGLES

  AT FORBES FIELD

  DECEMBER 1

  Among the rejects and snubbed players Buddy Parker had assembled, no one burned with more passion to prove himself than Gilbert Leroy “Buddy” Dial, born in Ponca City, Oklahoma, and raised in Magnolia, Texas.

  As an end
at Rice, he caught passes from future pros King Hill and Frank Ryan, was named sophomore lineman of the year in the Southwest Conference, averaged 24 yards a catch as a junior, and was a consensus All-America as a senior, when he was cocaptain and most valuable player for the Owls. The Giants took him in the second round of the 1959 draft with expectations of greatness. Dial was glib, likable, irreverent, and as down home as a slice of cornbread—a person with deep religious faith, and talented enough as a musician and singer to record an album of gospel songs. He also had an uncanny ability to catch a football—so good, in fact, that he drew the envy of Jimmy Brown.

  “If I had Aladdin’s lamp,” Brown said, “I would ask the jinni to give me Buddy Dial’s hands, Bobby Mitchell’s moves, Lenny Moore’s change of pace.”1 Erich Barnes, the Giants’ All-Pro defensive back, insisted, “Dial has better moves than Mitchell.”2 The combination of skills made Dial about as good a receiver as there was in the NFL in 1963—and good enough to compete in just about any era.

  But no one would ever dare barter with the devil and make a deal for that talent if he had any inkling of the fate that was to befall Buddy Dial, a husband, father, and two-time Pro Bowler who would go on to be elected to the College Football Hall of Fame.

  A life as cursed would have killed most men, a former teammate said.3

  Halfway into the ’63 schedule, Dial was off to the best start of his five-year career, ranking second in catches behind Bobby Joe Conrad but first in receiving yardage, ahead of Mitchell. Even though his thirty-six receptions left him trailing Conrad by eight, Dial loomed as a threat to win the NFL receiving title.