The '63 Steelers (35 page)

Rozelle said he had made his decision on Friday afternoon. While attending the game at Giants Stadium on Sunday, he added, “I realize some feeling has developed since then. The continuous television has deepened the sense of tragedy we feel.”
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The drama was intensifying that day. Some of the Steeler wives would park their cars at the Roosevelt Hotel and take a cab together to Forbes Field (or Pitt Stadium) and, after the game, return with their husbands to the hotel. “Well, on this particular Sunday when we got in the cab, the driver said, ‘Can you believe what has happened?'” Ruth Daniel recalled. “Thinking he was referring to the assassination, we answered appropriately. But as we talked back and forth, we realized that something else had happened. We were not even aware that Lee Harvey Oswald had been shot—and on television at that! Can you imagine in this day and age not to even know about something like that happening until hours later?”
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Browns quarterback Frank Ryan, who grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, and was a teammate of Buddy Dial at Rice, was sitting on the bench at Municipal Stadium before the game with the Cowboys when he heard voices on the coaches' headsets. He put on the headset and listened to two voices talking about Oswald getting shot. “I just thought that was bizarre,” Ryan said years later. “I wondered what type of conspiracy was going on here.”
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The Giants Stadium crowd was “unusually quiet.” The customary player introductions were omitted. At Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, Minnesota, where the Vikings were hosting the Lions, 20,000 copies of “The Star-Spangled Banner” were passed out to fans. The crowd of 28,763 at the site in suburban Minneapolis was the smallest of the day.
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The capacity crowd of 45,905 at Milwaukee County Stadium stood in silence for a minute before the kickoff. The Packer Band played “The Star Spangled Banner” and then put away their instruments for the rest of the afternoon.
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The only halftime entertainment was the Punt, Pass & Kick contest. Vince Lombardi had said there would be no commercial announcements, not even notices on “the flash-o-gram space” on the scoreboard.
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In Cleveland, which had stuffed in 80,000-plus fans for the Steeler game, only 55,096 came out on a sunny day. A week earlier, 75,932 had shown up for the Cardinals game. A halftime tribute to retiring star Ray Renfro was called off. Notified of the change of plans, the slick receiver known as “the Rabbit” replied softly, “That doesn't matter. I'll have lots of days. President Kennedy won't have any more.”
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The weather in New York was appropriately stark—a perfect shade of gloom for the conflicted state of mind of seventy-four players, the coaching staffs, and nearly 63,000 [the actual figure was 62,992] people more aptly described as onlookers than as fans. “The sky was grim and gray and outlined against its somberness all the flags flew half staff around the roof of the Yankee Stadium and you had to wonder what the two teams were doing on the football field playing a game,” syndicated columnist Milton Gross wrote. “Then you looked through the stands where 63,800 people sat subdued and, it seemed, ashamed and you had to wonder whether it was disrespect to the memory of the President or the understanding that life and games do go on in the midst of the tragedy or death.”
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Players struggled with their emotions. “Let me tell you something,” the Eagles' Tommy McDonald, a native of New Mexico, said decades later. “The two worst days of my life were when they made us play after JFK was assassinated and when I had to leave the game. I never felt such an emptiness.”
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“I didn't want to play, right up until the moment they played taps on the field,” said Bobby Mitchell of the Redskins. “In losing the President, I felt like I'd lost a brother. Then the game started and I tried my best.”
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So, too, did players around the country, but for some, their hearts didn't appear to be in it, nor their heads. Once the game began at Giants Stadium, wrote Jim Becker of AP,

the players went through all the motions down there on the green field in the late November haze, but it seemed as if they were moving with the jerky movements of a man whose leg has gone to sleep and is trying to walk it back to life again.

The eye played tricks and slowed everything down. When there were cheers they sounded thin and unreal, as if they came from somewhere else far away.
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Huff played, but he admitted, “My heart wasn't in it. That's the only game in my life that I didn't wish to play in.”
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Nothing was at stake between Washington and Philly, two teams fighting to stay out of last place, but 60,671 fans turned out on a windy day to watch “a strange and, at times, almost listless contest.”
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The last 1,500 tickets were sold just before game time.
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The players, Grady wrote, “played like sad marionettes in a sad puppet show.”
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Pittsburgh was different. What transpired in the melancholy environment at Forbes Field was “a vicious contest of long marches, and lost opportunities,” one of the Bears' “most grueling battles of this or any recent season,” a brawling tug-of-war speckled with controversy and the boos of riled fans and angry players, the case of a first-place team that came “strolling into town … to hunt rabbits … but ran into a horde of tigers,” and one epic play that would be remembered for decades.
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It was sixty minutes of football on the ugliest, most misbegotten of days that a generation would experience, an afternoon that summed up the season of a renegade team scratching and clawing for its ultimate due. Bears quarterback Bill Wade said afterward, “We ran into a team that wanted very, very badly to win.”
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From a strictly professional perspective, Parker could never have imagined a worse scenario. He had a team that he felt was susceptible to pressure, and he had to get it ready to face the Western Conference leaders. St. Louis coach Wally Lemm had to prepare his team for a chance at snatching a share of first place from New York, but he admitted, “Frankly, I didn't know if they could keep their mind on football.”
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The players on all fourteen teams had to cope not only with their private feelings but also with the conflict of fulfilling their professional obligations on a day when the rest of the country was grieving. Amid all the distractions, the man from Kemp, Texas, about forty miles southeast of Dallas, was experiencing anxiety from something else.

“Buddy Parker was terrified,” Rooney said. “We're standing out there on the field before the game. He said, ‘People are nutty about their president getting shot, and the only Texan they know is me. Boy, it'd be an easy shot to pick me off.' Buddy was odd that way.”
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(Buddy Dial, John Burrell, and
Charlie Bradshaw were also from Texas, as was Bobby Layne, retired as a player but working in a scouting capacity.)

Forbes Field, like the other stadiums, was subdued, even though the crowd of 34,465 was the largest of the season there. “Boy, I'll tell you, that was a somber, somber crowd,” Atkinson said. “It was a packed house.”
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It was 40 degrees at game time, with the sun peeking through the clouds, and no precipitation. Beginning with the opening kickoff, which Lou Michaels drilled into the end zone, it was no surprise that the Steelers “appeared tense and taut.”
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Wade got the Bears moving, running Willie Galimore for 8 yards, hitting Joe Marconi for 10 yards, and Ditka for 14.

A 15-yard penalty for illegal use of hands pushed the Bears back to their own 45, making it third-and-21. Wade was nearly caught as he dropped back, but he got off a 54-yard pass to end John Farrington, who made it to the 1 before he was stopped by Dick Haley and Clendon Thomas. Galimore took a handoff and darted to the right side, cutting sharply inside defensive back Glenn Glass and into the end zone with 4:51 elapsed. Leclerc kicked the field goals, but rookie tight end Bob Jencks handled the conversions, and his point-after put Chicago up 7–0.

The teams exchanged punts, but late in the quarter the Bears got a break and a first down when Andy Russell was flagged for roughing the punter, former Steeler Bobby Joe Green. On third-and-7 from his 31, Wade threw a pass intended for Galimore, but Haley intercepted and returned it to the Bear 10. “I thought I had thrown it high enough,” Wade said. “It looked like a touchdown. Haley made a perfect play.”
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Hoak was tackled for a 4-yard loss, and a pass to John Henry Johnson gained nothing as the quarter ended. On third down, a call against Chicago for illegal use of hands gave Pittsburgh a first down on the 6. Behind blocks by Preston Carpenter, Johnson, and Ray Lemek, Hoak went off left tackle, “tip-toeing through a path of fallen Bears” to tie the game with Michaels's conversion.
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Starting from their 20 after the kickoff, the Bears advanced 15 yards on a penalty against John Reger for tripping. Wade hit Morris for 9 yards and then found Ditka on a crossing pattern for 18 yards, down to the Steeler 32. Offside on Pittsburgh gained another 5 yards.

Johnny Morris, a shifty flanker, had tied Ditka for the team lead in receptions and touchdowns the year before, and in '64 he would lead the league in catches (93) and yards receiving (1,200). Wade had missed Morris with a pass from midfield, but the quarterback tried again for what could have
been a 27-yard TD pass. However, Glass had Morris covered at the goal line, and Thomas leaped in front of the receiver to pick off the ball.

Johnson and Hoak ground out enough yardage to get the Steelers to the Bear 49 but, facing fourth-and-1, Brown punted to the 17. Needing 4 yards for a first down from his 31, Wade twice tried to hit Ditka, but Thomas broke up both passes.

Green, who was born in Vernon, Texas, and would finish the year with a 46.5-yard average, boomed a 59-yard punt that backed up the Steelers to their 9. Brown fumbled a handoff on third-and-8 for a loss of 5 yards, forcing him to kick out of the end zone. His feeble punt of 31 yards, after a fair catch, left Chicago 37 yards away from a go-ahead touchdown. After Ronnie Bull gained 11 yards off left tackle, Ditka caught a pass over the middle for 16 yards and then went flat out to make a catch for eight yards that put Chicago on the 1. Bull went around the left side for the touchdown, giving Chicago a 14–7 lead with 1:57 left in the half, and leaving “a suspicion that the Bears were going to have no trouble preserving their full game lead on Green Bay.”
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But that's when Brown did a pretty good Bobby Layne imitation. The Steelers got good field position after Gary Ballman returned the kickoff 23 yards to the 25, and another 15 were tacked on for a penalty when he was tackled out of bounds. Dial caught a pass and fumbled, but Hoak recovered for a 7-yard gain. Brown underthrew Ballman, but a 13-yard pass to Dial was on target, and the flanker stopped the clock by stepping out of bounds at the Bear 35. Brown overthrew an open Ballman, but Hoak gained 4 yards on a trap play, setting up third-and-6 from the 31.

Roy Curry, a twelfth-round pick activated from the taxi squad, came in for Hoak. Curry's pro career had gotten off to a start similar to Ballman's. Like his second-year teammate, Curry had size (he was six foot one and 205 pounds) and speed and showed hints of stardom. Unlike Ballman, Curry had been a quarterback in college. He was also black. The
Pittsburgh Courier
, which scoured the country to report on talented black football players, had twice named the Jackson State (Mississippi) QB to its All-America team. As training camp opened, the newspaper intensified the expectations for the rookie from Clarksdale, Mississippi. “Experts, who have seen Curry perform, to the last man, will vow that he has the gifts to become extraordinary Steelers' property,” the
Courier
reported.
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But Curry wasn't going to do it by throwing passes.
Ebony
magazine, in its November issue, ran a football preview that broke down the “tan” players by position, noting, “Conspicuously absent in U.S. professional football are
Negro quarterbacks.” All too aware that the rookie was not going to make his mark by taking snaps from center Buzz Nutter, the
Courier
envisioned him developing into “what is known as a Gifford-type operative”—a versatile player who can run, catch passes, and throw an option pass, like the Giants' all-purpose star.
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As Brown backed up in the shotgun, Curry lined up on the right side. With John Henry Johnson handling the blitzing linebacker Bill George, the rookie wide receiver veered to the sideline in front of Rosey Taylor, who would finish the season as the NFL leader in interceptions, with nine. Brown fired away. Taylor lunged for the ball, but it sailed past him into Curry's arms at the 8-yard line, and “in three easy strides,” the game was tied 14–14 with thirty-one seconds left in the half. It was the first catch of Curry's NFL career, and it would turn out to be the only one.
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Maybe Brown's drive shifted the momentum, or maybe Parker's staff made adjustments at halftime. Maybe, at last, the Steelers were getting that lift, that boost, from up above to make up for all the years of misfortune. Whatever it was, the Steelers came out for the second half “an inspired, almost infuriated aggregation.”
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Two days earlier, Layne, who continued to work for the Steelers from the scouting booth on game days, had commented on reports that Lions coach George Wilson had tried to lure the quarterback out of retirement. Layne had been out pheasant hunting when the phone call came. “I thought he was kidding,” Layne said. “Actually, I don't believe he expected me to play very much, only to help out the team's morale a bit.”
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