The '63 Steelers (34 page)

The slaying presented the modern sports world with a dilemma it couldn't have imagined. Up to then, the slayings, tragedies, mayhem, and unspeakable
acts that routinely made the front page of the newspaper were reported solemnly, and readers gasped and lamented the random cruelties that intruded on their lives … and the games went on. But the assassination of a president at a time when the nation was swirling with civil rights, Cuba, Vietnam, and the notion of putting a man on the moon was enough to petrify the soul of any American. Formulating an appropriate response was a challenge.

Post-Gazette
sports editor Al Abrams wrote in his Saturday “Notes” column: “President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas yesterday was horrible, shocking and beyond belief. But things like this will continue to happen so long as there are human beings who act like mad dogs because they hate.”
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Abrams's commentary appeared in the first section of his column, but it was the eighth item he addressed, preceded by snippets about the nice fall weather, a mention that Pirate pitcher Bob Friend was visiting Hong Kong, and a get-well wish to a
Post-Gazette
truck driver who was hospitalized. Most likely, the column had been written and filed early, before the assassination, and the commentary added later. After his brief remarks on Kennedy, Abrams returned to news and notes from around the world of sports. The
Press
offered no sports commentary on Kennedy the day after his death.

Many columnists expressed their outrage that sports—the NFL, in particular, because the AFL postponed its games—did not come to a complete standstill at a time of national grieving. For some sportswriters, struggling to provide a voice and perspective for the fan put them in an awkward, uncomfortable position. Gordon Cobbledick of the
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, in his Sunday column about the unchecked rough play in the NFL, wrote in his lead that it was “appropriate” to address the issue “because it's a time of shocking violence.”
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His remarks were, no doubt, well intentioned, but in retrospect there was really nothing in sports to equate with the assault that had been inflicted on an entire nation.

The NFL would carry on, but it would make one concession. The week before, a
Chicago Sun-Times
story stated that sales of color TVs were “booming.” The report said that, by conservative estimates, 700,000 color sets would be sold in '63—twice the previous year's total—and that some estimates were as high as one million sales for the year. Sales were so good that, with Christmas approaching, there could be a shortage of sets available for consumers. “The public is buying everything that is offered,” Sears, Roebuck and Co. said. But on Sunday, November 24, no fans were going to tune in their Motorola, Zenith, or RCA color TVs to an NFL game. The games were not going to be televised. Yet interest in the Bears game in the Chicago area did not fade. The
Chicago Tribune
reported that it received
9,729 telephone calls from fans seeking scores and information during an eight-hour period during and after the game in Pittsburgh. Calls were coming in at a rate of twenty per minute.
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Blocking, tackling, and catching passes might have been the last things some players wanted to do, but they had no choice. They would await instructions and perform their duties just as they carried out their assignments when a play was called in the huddle. And most of the players assumed that the games would go on as scheduled.

“We figured, unless there's a drastic change, we're going to play,” Lou Michaels said.
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Once the decision had been made, players tried to focus on their opponent and somehow block out distracting thoughts. “They said you're gonna play, you're gonna play,” Red Mack said. “You just concentrate on the Bears. Once you make the kickoff, you're into the game. It don't make any difference what happened. After the game, you're back like you were before. You're wondering, ‘What's going to happen to the country?' It overwhelmed you before the game but during that game it just didn't have anything to do with our play. Not really.”
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“When game day came around, it was tunnel vision as to how do we beat these Bears,” Andy Russell said. “You were thinking of your individual responsibilities.”
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Fans did not accept the decision with equanimity. Some reacted with outrage. Steeler offices were “bombarded” by fans angered by Rozelle's thinking. One caller threatened to picket the game. Approximately 150 tickets were turned in for refunds Saturday, but as of mid-afternoon, more than 300 tickets had been sold over the counter, bringing the game closer to a sellout.
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Dozens of callers phoned the
New York Times
, but most simply wanted to know if the Giants-Cards game was going to be played. “A highly vocal minority” said they were “shocked,” “aghast,” “ashamed,” or “horrified” that the game would be played. One caller said, “Tell Rozelle and [Giants president John] Mara, we couldn't care less about tomorrow's game. It's deplorable that it's being played.”
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The
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
reported that it received more than 200 calls of protest. Los Angeles newspaper offices took a “considerable number” of similar calls.
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It was a struggle for players to generate enthusiasm for playing, but they had no choice, no say in the matter. “A lot of our players wanted to cancel the game,” Y. A. Tittle said. “It was a big letdown. It just seemed like something we shouldn't be doing.”
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Thirty-eight years later, one Steeler in particular regretted the decision to play the games.

Joe Krupa was a six-foot-one, 240-pound defensive tackle who looked a bit like Popeye and had the same fighting spirit, to boot. The Steeler media guide called him both “a player's player and a coach's player,” an unsung grunt whose approach to football made him a perfect fit with guys like Ernie Stautner and Myron Pottios. After his playing career came to an end, he envisioned a career in education, an extension of his off-season job. “I want to teach kids,” he said, “young, impressionable kids who can be taught the values of life.”
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As the 1963 season headed into the stretch, Krupa, in his eighth year in the league, was on the way to earning his first Pro Bowl appearance.

Years later, in the hours after 9/11, Krupa thought back to the Bears game, held only forty-eight hours after Kennedy was slain. “Boy, that game should never have been played,” he said. Krupa was in good company nearly forty years earlier. The morning of the Bears game, he saw Art Rooney Sr. in church. “He told us, ‘There's no way there should be a game today,'” Krupa recalled.
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But others thought it was the right call. Twenty-four hours after the assassination, and the day after his twenty-fifth birthday, Charley Johnson of the Cardinals sat in his room in the Hotel Manhattan in New York and declared that it was a positive move to play the next day. “I think people want something to get their minds off the situation,” he said. “President Kennedy was too dynamic a person to want us to be stagnant at a time like this.”
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After the Cards won the next day, Johnson admitted, “It was hard to think about football before the game.”
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Chicago center Mike Pyle, three years out of Yale, wanted to play. “I didn't feel the world had come to a stop. For a period of time on Friday, yes,” he said. “But sitting home all weekend, I wouldn't have been as happy as doing what I felt my job was.”
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But even those who were grief stricken could understand—if not accept—the rationale for going through with the games. Huff, a West Virginia native, had met Kennedy and campaigned for him. “I feel depressed,” Huff would say after the game.

I feel as bad about it as anybody. But staying home and moping around wouldn't do any good. Last year, Jimmy Patton's father died the day before the Dallas game. Nobody can say he didn't grieve, but he played the game.

That is our life. The people who don't like it, that's their right. Maybe that's what the President died for.
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The NFL schedule provided one meager bit of fortune in the schedule, and it figured in Rozelle's decision to go on with the games. The Cowboys were scheduled to play in Cleveland, not at home in Dallas. “That,” Rozelle conceded, “would have presented a different set of problems.”
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Browns owner Art Modell said he pleaded with the commissioner to cancel the full schedule. “Trust me, don't play those damn games,” he recalled telling Rozelle.
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People felt the irrational sting of a wound that no one knew how to soothe, and they struck out and flailed in misguided attempts to vent their anguish. As the Cowboys' team bus pulled up to the hotel in Cleveland, bellhops refused to help with the players' bags. Before the game, the public address announcer was instructed to use the word “Cowboys,” and not “Dallas,” in any references to the visiting team.
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Cowboy running back Don Perkins was in his third pro season, out of the University of New Mexico. His college coach, Marv Levy, future coach of the Buffalo Bills, called Perkins “the greatest natural ball carrier I've ever seen.”
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He was coming off a 945-yard season and was en route to his third straight Pro Bowl appearance, but there was no place for anyone associated with Dallas to escape the stigma of a murder. “I just wanted to go hide somewhere,” Perkins said.
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Modell prepared for the most extreme reactions. He stationed police sharpshooters throughout the 83,000-seat Municipal Stadium and on the roof. “I felt like George Patton,” Modell said. “It looked like an armed camp when I got through with it.”
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And the fans turned out. Whether they were distraught, anxious to find an escape, or desperate to find consolation among 40,000 or 50,000 strangers with a common bond, pro football fans showed up on Sunday. As the headline for a Dick Young story in the
New York Daily News
read, “They Came with Mixed Emotions—but They Came.” Yankee Stadium was jammed with 62,992 fans, including Dianne Ebert, a student at Martin Van Buren High School in Little Neck, Long Island. “I think it should have been called off, but I have been looking forward to this game for so long,” she said. “It's my only time this year, and I just couldn't stay away.”
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Others could, like Kenny Byrnes and Jim Fargardo of Manhattan, who had seats in the lower stands. “We've been looking forward to going to
this game,” Fargardo said. “Anyone can tell you how hard it is to get these tickets. But out of respect for the president, we're not going in. I'll show you,” he added, and then he tore up his ticket, and Byrnes did the same.
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Red Smith was an angry opponent of the decision to play the games and an unforgiving critic of Rozelle thereafter. His Monday column in the
New York Herald Tribune
opened, “In the civilized world it was a day of mourning. In the National Football League it was the 11th Sunday of the business year. …”
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Another columnist, the
Philadelphia Evening Bulletin
's Sandy Grady, who had written with the awe of a fan about the battle between the Steelers and Lions in the Runner-Up Bowl, savaged not only the league but the fans in a commentary oozing with sarcasm and venom. Philadelphia mayor James H. J. Tate had protested the playing of the game against Washington, and Eagles president Frank McNamee refused to attend the event, the first time he had missed a home game in fifteen years.

The total number of fans who attended the seven games was 334,892, according to the Associated Press. Grady called it

a great tribute to the sports fan. The insularity of his dreamland is complete. Even the slow drums of national tragedy cannot be heard in his beautiful cocoon.

In Franklin Field [in Philadelphia] they held a football game that adults would have canceled, in a stadium that should have been empty, before a mob that should have been invisibly mute.

For the first time in his sportswriting career, he said, “I am ashamed of this fatuous dreamland.” He concluded, “Even the burlesque house in town had the dignity to shut the doors.”
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But there was room to empathize with fans who sought a refuge from the unrelenting sense of despair that came through the news nonstop. “There weren't very many channels, no cable,” Frank Atkinson recalled. “So all you heard was funeral music and sadness. People needed a break from it, so they went out and bought a ticket to a football game.”
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Late Friday afternoon, CBS, NBC, and ABC announced the suspension of all entertainment programs on TV and radio. This was uncharted territory for the blossoming age of television. “Uncertainty and bewilderment seemed to characterize the TV networks' reaction to the national disaster,” wrote Fred Remington in the
Pittsburgh Press
. “Television, sometimes called an
escapist medium, offered no escape,” he wrote after a full day of coverage on Saturday. Most radio stations filled air time with “solemn” music.
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“I thought the games were a good relief for everybody,” Art Rooney Jr. said.
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Uncertainty and bewilderment were the justifiable reactions of most people. Whether it was OK to play a football game—or a hockey game, or to hold a dog show, for that matter—was a polarizing dilemma. Dick Young of the
New York Daily News
, who never saw a controversy on which he couldn't pick a side and take a jab, withheld judgment on the issue. “Some men pray aloud, with much pomp and manifestation; some men speak quietly to their God, and some do not pray at all. Yet, they are good men,” Young wrote. “And if you ask which is right, I cannot tell you, because I cannot tell you what a man feels in his heart.”
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