Category: SPORT

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People We Should Know #34 – Bart Starr

Sunday morning one awoke to the terrible news that Bart Starr had died. Terrible, in that the sense of foreboding of the announcement has lain like a fog over the last several years as the once indomitable individual had been struck with health insult after health insult, leaving the inevitable seemingly possible with each passing day. First stroke, then another stroke , then heart attack, then seizures assaulted this once great athlete, leaving him a whisper of his former self and fragile to the the clock running out without a redemption story. And yet, as one who grew up with the legend of a champion unbowed by any challenge, Starr turned his competitive fire onto his health crisis like the final drive in the fourth quarter, and sought victory against the tremendous odds. At one point unable to speak or walk, Starr, through tortuous therapy, stem cell injections and indomitable will managed to rouse himself on a cold rainy night to attend Brett Farve’s Green Bay induction into the ring of immortality during his number retirement in November, 2015 creating one of the great emotional passing of the torch moments in sports history.

It was Brett Farve’s night, but the crowd responded to the presence of the frail Starr with a heightened roar that let all know the emotional core of ultimate greatness for all who were present resided in the unique personhood of one Bart Starr. Greatness in sports translates for most into greatness in life – the ability to maximize one’s available capacities thrown against severe challenge to not only compete, but surmount and ultimately conquer. Few conquered life and provided such an exemplary example for others to emulate as did Bryan Bartlett Starr, and in celebration of his life, resounds proudly as Rampart’s People We Should Know – #34.

“He’s got to have the respect of his teammates, his authority must be unquestioned, and his teammates must be willing to go through the gates of hell with him ”

Bart Starr on what defines a great Quarterback

There was nothing to suggest the rookie drafted by Green Bay in 1956 in the 17th round from the University of Alabama was such a quarterback. A quiet, to some overly polite, physically unimpressive young man was almost invisible to the other players on the Packers, who assumed he would be another one of those players who drifted in, and out, of the NFL without tracing any memory on those who played with him, or those who watched. He was the fourth of four quarterbacks available to the new coach in 1959, Vince Lombardi, hired to somehow shake the Packer franchise out of the losing doldrums that had seized the once great franchise and threatened its very survival. Coach Lombardi was earthshaking in his approach, unforgiving of casual effort, careless mistake, and to some brutal in his drive to seek perfection. For many veterans, Lombardi was a intolerant taskmaster. To Starr, he was like an epiphany. Frankly, Lombardi reminded Starr of his unbending, difficult to please military father, and Starr understood how to deal with stern discipline better than most. Interestingly, Lombardi saw in Starr what others did not see, a field general that would be capable of translating Lombardi’s vision onto the field of play, and be his perfect reflection. Soon, other players noted that Starr was tireless in his study, repetition, and discipline, and although Lombardi was harsh and unyielding to others, he rarely raised his voice to Starr.

The results of their combined contribution was almost immediate, and progressively spectacular. Within a season, the heretofore placid Packers were the irresistible force of the league, getting to the championship game in 1960, winning the NFL title in 1961, and crushing all before them in 1962. Among the many star players, the duet between the coach and his field reflection the quarterback was the premier example of excellence in all of sports. The team was anything but boring, with philanderers, gamblers, carousers, and warriors, but on Sundays the nation was captivated by a team that had made perfect execution its goal, and more often than not, carried it out to perfection. At the center of the maelstrom was the quiet leader who said yes, sir , no, sir to his coach, was not heard to swear, didn’t smoke, and went home to his wife and family. Starr went to church, always had time for anyone who wanted a moment or an autograph, and was a leader in charity and community. Starr was what the mythic example of the perfect leader so treasured by Americans but rarely seen in real life – humble, deferential, and at moments of stress and crisis, inspirational. Amazingly, what you thought you saw, was absolutely what you got.

Starr was not just a great leader of men; he could play. In a time when running the ball was king, and passing was an afterthought, Starr was a four time All Pro, the era’s most accurate passer, and a devastating play caller who befuddled defenses with unpredictable downfield gambles and led the league in yards gained per completion. The team responded to his call for total on field authority, and followed him through the gates of hell to 5 NFL championships in 7 years, including three in a row. He was the MVP and winning quarterback of the first two Super Bowls. He was absolute steel in stressful moments, playing a position that in the 1960s held none of the physical contact protections slathered on quarterbacks today. The image of Starr in the picture above, a single thin bar between his face and the surrounding violence was emblematic of the physical abuse the quarterback was expected to endure.

“Coach, the linemen can get their footing for the Wedge, but the backs are slipping. I’m right there, I can just shuffle my feet and lunge in.” Lombardi told Starr, “Run it, and let’s get the hell out of here!”

Sideline conversation during final timeout between Starr and Lombardi, December 31,1967 – the ‘Ice Bowl’ NFL championship game Green Bay vs Dallas

Nothing defines Bart Starr or the mythic status of the Green Bay Packers as does the final drive of the so called “Ice Bowl” of December 31, 1967, in the NFL championship game between the aging Packers and the upcoming Dallas Cowboys, in possibly the most appalling conditions for an extended sporting event defined by violent contact. The field temperature at game time was an all time frigid -13 degrees F, wind chills -50 degrees, and the conditions deteriorated from there. The playing of the game under such conditions was epic in its ludicrous expectation by the league for athletes to actually perform in such a dangerous and unyielding environment, much less the 56000 bundled eskimos masquerading as attending football fans. What was even more ludicrous was how well they performed. The so called warm weather team, the Cowboys, improbably outplayed the Packers after falling behind 14 to 0 early, a deficit that would have eliminated almost any other team, but with 4:30 to go in the 4th quarter, the Cowboys had dominated the second half, and the Packers were left on their 32 yard line, down 17 to 14. The Packers had been pummeled by the Cowboy defense in the second half, and recognized this was likely their last chance. The field was an ice rink, the players beyond weak with frostbite, and a field goal in such conditions to tie, an abomination to the kicker’s foot. The story of the final drive huddle was as epic as the situation – players said afterward Starr entered the huddle, looked in their eyes, and stated the time was now, and they were going to score.

And so the The Drive began, with Starr positioning short passes to receivers with treacherous footing, and catching the Cowboys off guard with miss direction runs. With less than a minute to play, Starr had brought them down within a yard of the goal line, and like the champions they had always been, they could smell the win. The treachery of the field, however, awful in other places, was beyond comprehension near the south end zone of Lambeau Field. On two consecutive running plays, the running backs slipped and fell, barely returning to the line of scrimmage. With 16 seconds left, Starr called his final timeout, came to the sideline , and had the above conversation with Lombardi. Lombardi admitted after the game, he was so cold, he was not sure what play Starr stated he would run, but they both knew the years of preparation had led them to seek victory and not play for a tie, magnified by the desperate field conditions.

With no timeouts, the Cowboys assumed a roll out pass, and Starr in the huddle called another running play. He told no one that it was his intention to live or die on his own, and took the ball over the guard in the most famous play in the most famous game in NFL history.

It was the triumph of a career of triumphs, made special by the recognition that people performing under such conditions elevates our understanding of what is human capacity to other-worldly levels.

Bart Starr went on to other triumphs, but nothing cemented the vision of his unique triumphant stature like his determination to take the solitary plunge across the line in the twilight of an arctic wasteland. He could do no wrong after that play, and further lived up to his impossible standards off the field as well as on.

No one who met him ever left him feeling untouched by his deep humility and humanity. He was the superhero who acted like the everyday man, and his later foibles as a coach unable to explain to younger players how to function at the olympian levels he had functioned at, left no mark on his greatness. I recall in grade school, my teacher asked of the class who they wanted to most be like when they grew up, and when the hands went up, Bart Starr gave Jesus Christ a predictable beat down. People wanted to be seen with him, charities could always count on him, and when the Packers found their way out of the wilderness after 20 years of losing following Starr’s playing days, he was the revered father figure to the Hall of Fame quarterbacks, Farve and Rodgers, who eventually returned the team to greatness (though not at Starr’s level of greatness).

His last years were harsh, but punctuated by one final Starr turn, the magnificent curtain call in front of 80,000 and Farve. He looked so happy, one more time back in his element, in the place he loved, with the people who loved him, unadulterated . He drove out to meet Farve in a covered golf cart, in miserable, cold and rainy conditions, crossing the south end zone, where 48 years before he had found footing, and carried his team on his back, into history.

Greatness is not just performance beyond expectation. For Bart Starr, it was a continuous state of being oriented toward a heightened expectation of self, in what he expected of himself , what he was willing draw from others, and what he expected to give to others. He is one of the few people in this world who lived up to his myth and made those around him better for having known him. In a world where celebrity often leaves no trace of contribution, this was one shooting star who left a brilliant effervescent path through the heavens. As he likely is now doing, with his characteristic perfect execution …

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Sports As Epic Story- The Kaiser in Kitzbuhel

Franz Klammer 1976 Innsbruck Winter Olympics
Franz Klammer 1976 Innsbruck Winter Olympics

The 2014 winter Olympics at Sochi has had its fair share of distractions somewhat obscuring the always interesting stories behind competitive sport.  Pictures of inadequate toilet facilities, rancid water, Olympic rings that don’t open  and overbearing Russian presidents have distracted from the games inherent value, the celebration of human capacity and courage.   I have no doubt, though, that great accomplishments will soon take over from the other nonsense and give us some really stirring memories.

Sport is unique in that characteristic – creating a universally shared suspense and awe at what the athlete, challenged, can achieve.  The venue is intense competition without violence.  The Olympics, specifically, allowing nationalist fervor without the need for rancor.  In some venues of course, the lack of violence does not imply the lack of pressure or the lack of danger.  There is perhaps no more dangerous venue to the athlete than the Alpine Ski Downhill, and perhaps no less forgiving of an error.

There have been many great downhills in my memory that etch intense memory, but nothing comes close to the accomplishment of Franz Klammer at the 1976 Winter Olympics.  The story has all the components of an epic, the tension of watching something unbelievably special unfold.  As acts of profound human accomplishment in the face of overwhelming pressure, the Kaiser at Kitzbuhel has them all beat.

Austria is a nation of skiers and assumes their champions will represent the country as champions at the pinnacle of the sport. The test for the Austrian athlete is demanding – win and be immortalized, or lose and be forgotten.  In 1976, the Olympics came to Austria at Innsbruck, and fittingly, the one of the most epic two minutes in sport, the Men’s Downhill, was placed at the most demanding course for that event in the world, the Streif run on Hahnenkamm mountain in Kitzbuhel.  The Streif, a run with a 840 meter vertical drop and average 27% angle of decline with maximums of 40 degree inclines can break the will of the most courageous skier.  The word, loosely translated from German as “graze” or “streak”, lives up to its foreboding reputation from the very outset, with the skier instantaneously assuming top speeds  approaching 140 kilometers an hour. The course enters almost immediately into the famous ‘mousetrap’ where a jump of  nearly 300 feet leads to an almost immediate left turn, resulting in severe gravitational compression and many falls off the course. The run continues with steep drops, hairpin turns and infamous limited visuals that can bring the bravest skier to feel apprehension not only for failure but for injury or worse.  In a race often determined by hundreds of a second in outcome, a moment of hesitation can be fatal to success.

In 1976, the most prideful Alpine skiing nation hosted the greatest skiers on its greatest downhill course, and put forth its greatest champion.  Franz Klammer known as the Kaiser for his domination of World Downhill from 1974 onward, was the greatest of Austria’s formidable team, and was holding the entire nation on his shoulders when he took the last run at the Streif on February 5th, 1976.  He trailed the defending Olympic champion, the great Bernhard Russi of Switzerland, by a half second, with the course rutted, icy, and extremely treacherous from the courses of so many previous competitors.

The Starthaus at the top of the Streif at Hahnenkamm
The Starthaus at the top of the Streif at Hahnenkamm

Klammer was considered unconquerable in the downhill event, having won 8 of 9 on the world championship circuit and genetically bred for this particular downhill and its terrifying turns.  Regardless, it is difficult to identify with the pressure he felt when he stared out of the starting gate down at the mousetrap and the perils beneath.

Of course, that’s where champions live – the place the rest of us can only dream of.  Klammer, with the weight of his country and his own sense of history on his shoulders, determined to leave all caution behind, and release his skills at their maximum, regardless of personal risk – and see what would happen.  What happened of course was epic. The world watched a person defy physics skiing at the edge of control and disaster, and determining go even faster.  On two occasions, he seemed completely out of body control, hurtling sideways, and heading into hay bales and fences. Most of the time he somehow controlled speeds of 60 to 80 miles an hour on one ski, absorbing ruts and ice with perilous angles.  His goal after all, was not to finish, not to survive – but to win.

The grainy video does not do the original visual full justice but the announcers let you know what is being witnessed, because they know the fine line this man has chosen between victory and perhaps death. It is perhaps even more intense in local television broadcast.  The Kaiser at Kitzbuhel made all of humanity shimmer that day in the glory of a man conquering his own mortality, and a nation explode in the pride of watching someone prove to be even better than advertised.  With such moments, sport reaches perfection.

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Miracle On Ice

To see it as a television projection is ultimately the most appropriate way.  The memory after all, for all but the 8500 people in the stands of the Lake Placid hockey arena on February 22, 1980 is a gift of the medium of television.  Mike Eruzione, a college player from Boston University, is caught at the moment of release of a shot that had incredible repercussions in sport, national relations, and history. Its impact continues to this day as a defining event of the later half of the 20th century and indirectly affected the lives of tens of millions of people through memory and inspiration.  Instead of epic, sacred, or profound, it occurred, of all things, in a hockey game.

33 years later, the anniversary of one of sports and history’s epic events was brought to the forefront by an auction.  Eruzione, whose life has been molded by the Game, determined to get value out of his jersey and hockey stick from the event, for the purposes of value to himself and his charity.  The jersey sold for 657,250 dollars, the hockey stick for 262,900 – the memory obviously for everyone who experienced the moment, priceless.

The funny thing is, almost nobody out of the arena saw the event live.  Television wasn’t the superconnected force it is in today’s society.  The Olympic hockey game between the United States and the Soviet Union occurred in the afternoon prior to prime time television and the game was broadcast on tape delay.  I was a college student at the University of Wisconsin and went to a bar on a snowy, cold night with two friends to watch(drinking age was 18 years of age then, but that is another story) as none of us had a TV, and all of us had interest in hockey, particularly with the local connection to Wisconsin players in the game such as Mark Johnson and Bob Suter.  It is hard to imagine in today’s world of instant Internet informational access, that nobody outside of Lake Placid had any idea what had transpired.  We watched the game with complete innocence, and progressive, utter disbelief.

The game itself had ridiculous connotations beyond what a hockey game, or frankly, any sporting event deserved.  The United States in the late winter of 1980, was in a world of psychological hurt. the previous decade had seen ignominious defeat in Vietnam, the devastating effect to the concept of moral leadership of Watergate, the economic blow of the rise of OPEC and resultant oil embargo and rationing, the national paralysis over the impudent Iranian takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran, and the rise of Soviet aggression in Afghanistan.  President Jimmy Carter, an ineffective , righteous micro-manager, appeared helpless in the face of such forces, and determined to take out his anger with the Soviet Union through sport, having threatened through his Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, just before the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid to boycott the Summer Olympics in Moscow later that year, summarily in protest for the incursion into Afghanistan.  The United States as an international force for stability and good, was felt to be a hollow shell of its former capacities, and the world was moving onward toward progressive volatility without it.

The game was positioned to be as David vs Goliath as any sporting event in history. The United States team was filled with obscure amateurs from a country in which the best athletes participated in sports such as basketball and football.  Most Americans watching hockey for the first time were likely unaware that US colleges even  fielded hockey teams, as  so few universities actually supported such a minor sport.  The Soviet Union, on the other hand, had a team of professional players practicing year round with financial support and state of the art facilities sponsored by its military superstructure, making the team a propaganda arm of Soviet might.  The Soviet team was deeply comprised of hall of fame quality depth, that made a practice of devastating other professional teams from Europe and the National Hockey League.  It was without doubt, the finest professional team currently playing, and the idea that upstart college players from a minor hockey country like the US could compete in a match was considered fantasy, the proof of the pudding a nasty 10-3 spanking the Soviets applied to the US team just ten days before.  Having already “proved” parity in the international basketball arena by defeating the US in a controversial upset at the 1972 Olympics, the Soviet team was not about to make room for the upstarts in the sport they owned.

The amazing thing about sport is, of course, the incredible power of carrying a chip on your shoulder.  The American team underwent blast-furnace coaching by Herb Brooks, determined to use the psychology of “shocking the world”  in preparing his team.  The game in his mind was to break fine crystal; in other words wreak havoc on the precision of the Soviets through contesting every minute as a physical contest of wills.  The Soviets, convinced of their overwhelming superiority, expected the Americans like every other team,  to  wilt under the continuous pressure of superior talent and precision play.  Brooks was more interested in the game becoming a survival of the fittest contest.

The Soviets ended up helping the Americans every chance they could.  They allowed the game to unfold exactly as Brooks hoped for, with the unease all on the Russian side.  An early goal by the Russians was answered with an American goal, but the pressure was all Soviet on the beleaguered American defense and its goalie Jim Craig, the Russians peppering him with numerous blasts and taking a 2-1 lead,, until the inconceivable happened that changed the game, and history.  With seconds to go in the first period almost empty of any US offensive plays,  a long, loose slap shot by the Americans on the Soviet goal was poorly handled by the indisputably best goalie in the world, Vladislav Tretiak, allowing the rebound to inadvertently end on the stick of Wisconsin’s own Mark Johnson, who calmly slapped it by the stunned Tretiak with a second to go.  The game, expected to be a blowout was now tied, 2-2.  The Soviet coach Viktor Tikhonov then did the unthinkable – he apparently determined to “punish” Tretiak by pulling him from the game and inserting his backup goalie Vladimir Myshkin.  In the hallowed halls of impetuously stupid coaching maneuvers, this was took the cake, giving the Americans a win on the game’s strategic chessboard they had no reason to expect.

The second period was all Soviet, scoring a goal, and out-shooting the Americans 12 to a pathetic 2 shots on goal and taking a 3-2 lead.  The game was nowhere near as close as that, as Soviet bombardment continued on goalie Craig unabated, with shots deflected by the netpipes and by Craig with near equal occurrence.  Then suddenly Mark Johnson, as those of us who had seen him play so often with the University of Wisconsin team, took advantage of opportunity as only a true scorer does, making the most of a rare American power play man advantage, scoring on Myshkin with just over 8 minutes left, tying the game again at 3-3.  I can still remember my friends and my shared excitement at the idea that at this late stage in game, the upstarts were in a position to do the unthinkable, and potentially actually WIN.  Many camera angles began to capture two amazing sights.  The first was the ‘carnivore tensing for the kill’ expressed in Coach Herb Brooks face as he realized how close the team was to achieving the greatest upset since David slung the rock at Goliath; the second was the incomprehensibly worried looks on the Soviet players as they felt destiny pressing against them with overwhelming force.

With exactly ten minutes left, destiny called Mike Eruzione, and he answered, with a slapshot just inside the right faceoff past Myshkin into the net.  The greatest team in hockey, the pride of the Soviet Army, the unstoppable force of collectivist organization, was now trailing the collection of college hobbyists from the United States on the world stage.  The pressures from this point onward, the gritty defense of the United States against the greatest offensive players in the world, the goalie Craig who was summoning from nowhere one of the greatest displays in goalie play ever witnessed, the power of intense humiliation staring the Soviet professionals in the face, the incredible tsunami wave of emotion pouring forth from the disbelieving crowd, made the last ten minutes hockey an epic of memory never to be forgotten.  Shot after shot, wave after wave of Soviet drives against the ramparts of the American will to persevere defined every succeeding second, until ABC’s TV announcer Al Michaels made his career in broadcasting by framing the final seconds in immortality:

 11 seconds, you’ve got 10 seconds, the countdown going on right now! Morrow, up to Silk. Five seconds left in the game. Do you believe in miracles?! YES!

The impact of what had just happened (actually what had happened several hours before due to the TV delay) was indescribable. My friends and I were stunned by our own emotional exhaustion, and I remember few words were expressed.  The overwhelming emotion was elation, at its purest derivative.  It describes the sensation, however indirectly, of having participated in something you know is life affirming, and unique in your exposure to it.  It brought to the world possible, out of all that was felt impossible, and I suspect for the next decade drove a resurgence in can do spirit for which the 1980’s became known for.  It is  possible that such elation in its highest form fueled the spark of Solidarity, that out of the factories of Gdansk, took on and eventually dismantled the Soviet omniscient hegemony. It may have brought the can do spirit that caused the American economy to roar back under President Reagan, when framed in prism of what an individual is capable of. It may have powered the return of American creativeness and individual will to succeed that created the Information Revolution and ascendancy of American invention and entrepreneurship.

All that from a hockey game? Maybe, maybe not.  Mike Eruzione is smart enough to understand the power of the symbols of that game to everyone and auctioned some material items off for monetary gain.  He is also smart enough to know, however, that the ultimate prize from the game is the crack in time that is fused forever in the television frame above, where his destiny, and the history of humanity, was briefly fused in undeniable joy.  Such memories are unauctionable; his, mine, and for millions who saw it – ours forever.

 

 

 

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A New Age Quarterback

As hard as it was to watch my vaunted Green Bay Packers crumple like a paper  mache’ balloon last night, one could not help but recognize that a major shift in how the storied game of football is going to be played was on display.  Colin Kaepernick schooled a proud defense on what a new age quarterback is capable of.  Kaepernick was the central force in a 45-31 rout of the Packers by the San Francisco 49’ers, passing for 263 yards and two touchdowns and running for an astonishing 181 yards and two touchdowns.

The Packers were supposed to be the team with the quintessential quarterback type in Aaron Rodgers.  The NFL has changed the rules of the game to create a quarterback league, in which a bright, strong armed quarterback is allowed to dissect the defense like a surgeon, with his body and the passing lanes he is throwing to protected to rev up the scoring game for the fans.  For twenty years, the Marinos, Favres, Bradys, Mannings, Brees and Rodgers prototypes have been what every team has prayed to be lucky enough to find.  To protect this commodity, the NFL assured that their survival would be paramount, and assured the quarterback would be as immune as possible to hits around the knees, the head, and from any over exuberant force.  This has resulted in high scores and extended lives to quarterbacks.  Brett Favre was the epitome of this, playing at a high level for twenty years and setting the record for the most consecutive games played by any position player at over 290 straight games.  Rodgers has been the heir to Favre’s throne, durable, smarter, more mobile, and every bit as strong armed.  Last night, however, his prototype was yesterday’s news.

Colin Kaepernick performed the position of quarterback in a way that will convert the league to a new way of thinking.  Smart enough not to panic with his initial mistake throwing an early interception for a touchdown, Kaepernick made quality safe throws, and punished the Packer’s with a devastating display of quickness and running dexterity.  The original mold breaker was Michael Vick, with his 4.4 speed and runner first mentality, but the game will be permanently changed by a Kaepernick that can throw as well as he can run.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the golden age of the NFL was dominated by running backs like Jim Brown, Jim Taylor, OJ Simpson, Franco Harris, and Walter Payton.  The sorry truth of the glamour of the running back was that the position battered the physical and mental health of these players. Given the exceptional monetary investment in star players, teams have figured out that the beating these players take wore them out by age 30, and has made an “experienced” running back a worthless addition to the team.  The modern running back is around at most five to eight years, before they are replaced with younger legs, and clearer minds. The glamorous running back has been replaced by the glamorous quarterback, protected by the rules and capable of making the team’s extended financial investment a more secure bet.

Now, with Kaepernick and Robert Griffin III we see the new model, the running quarterback that can throw.  The combination can be a devastating offensive tool, but the reality is that the rules to protect quarterbacks were based on the consideration that they would be primarily pocket passers and would attempt to run only rarely, sliding to a safe landing, with no hit of significance allowed.  What is to now become of the defense’s willingness to “pull back” now that the quarterback is willing to project down the field with his legs?  I think we already have the answer in RG III, who didn’t get through his first year without a devastating injury.  As beautiful as it was to watch Kaepernick, it is almost a certainty, that he will face a hit that will eliminate his “elusiveness”. It happened to Vick. It happened to RG III.  And it will happen to Kaepernick.

When the quarterbacks of the future determine to leave the cocoon of the passing pocket routinely, defenses are not going to take it without responding.  As spectacular as the new age quarterback is to watch take over a game, I’m afraid his moment of glory as a game changer in the NFL is going to be short lived.  We will see if teams are going to be willing to invest in the quarterback position, when quarterbacks have the playing life that turns out to be as short as the glamorous running backs they replaced in the klieg lights of NFL stardom.  To Colin Kaepernick, I salute you.  It was a beautiful performance of athleticism. Unfortunately, I’m afraid the moment of glory is going to be brief, and the end, eventually, hard to watch.

 

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Bushville Wins!

The summer has proved to be oppressively hot, the news of the day generally negative, and my own baseball team is mired in mediocrity.  It seems to be a perfect time to indulge in some nostalgia and sit down with a good book that speaks to an earlier, happier time.  John Klima’s book Bushville Wins! fits the bill very nicely.  A tome to the love affair between the city of Milwaukee and its Braves baseball team reminds us of the special link sports and sport teams have to the esteem, pride and general well being of their partner cities.  Klima tells the story of a forward thinking owner, Boston Braves owner Lou Perini, who determined to change the face of baseball by directing his 1953 Braves team to leave its spring training home in Florida and return not to its ancestral home in major league Boston, where it had existed as one of the founding members of national professional baseball since the 1870’s, but instead go west and take its chances in a backwater minor league town of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  To the East Coast teams and the writers that covered their seasons for the public, this was a move to Podunk, USA, and guaranteed to fail, given the last of sophistication and understanding of baseball in the rubes of the west outside of St Louis and Chicago.

What Perini saw better than most though, was the enormous change that had come over the nation since the cataclysm of the second world war, and the potential for re-invigorating his sport of baseball, his team the Braves, and certainly his personal prosperity.  His Braves were permanently mired as the second alternative to Boston fans to the exalted Boston Red Sox.   From the beginning the Braves had suffered the loss of players, prestige, and loyalty of fans to their American League competitors, and despite having recently played in the 1948 World Series  with a young and talented team, could barely draw 300,000 fans a year to their park, a financial loser of epic proportions.  Perini sensed that the compressed east coast league geography that allowed the financial and on field dominance of the New York teams was ripe for change after World War II. Distances that seemed scheduler breakers were contracted by the new flexibility provided by air transport.  Cities in the west had taken huge roles in providing the manpower and industrial muscle of the American war behemoth and were financially awash in a prosperous and hardworking  populous.  Most importantly, Branch Rickey’s rupture of the color line in baseball opened up a huge influx of spectacular talent to all teams willing to search the Negro Leagues and a new fan base available in towns that had supported Negro League teams.  The gems to be mined might eventually be far west in the burgeoning cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco, but Perini wasn’t interested in waiting for their development.  The twelfth largest city in the USA had city leaders that wanted their city to be major league, and had taken the spectacular risk of build a major league ballpark to house their minor league team, just in case someone might take notice and move their team.  In 1953, Milwaukee County Stadium was ready made and Perini had found his match in Milwaukee.

And what a match it was.  When the team got off the train from 1953 spring training to begin the season in Milwaukee, an estimated throng of 60,000 fans were there to greet them, and the love affair only grew from there.  Perini, in spring of 1953 contract negotiations with his star pitcher Warren Spahn offered him his base contract of 30,000 or a contract of 10 cents for every patron that came through the turnstiles in Milwaukee.  Spahn, who knew how the Braves had struggled to draw 300,000 fans the year before took the guaranteed money – to his spectacular detriment.  At a time in baseball when drawing a million fans was considered a great season,  the 1953 Braves drew 1.85 million, smashing all current attendance records, and would have made Spahn the richest player in baseball at over 180,000 dollars- it would be twenty years before a major league baseball player would be paid more.  The city became the turnstile king of the 1950’s frequently topping two million fans a year and treated their baseball heroes like royalty that could do no wrong.

All that was left to make Perini’s fantasy complete was to win a World Series and to do it, he would need his Babe Ruth.  The Milwaukee Braves of the 1950’s were an extremely talented team with future Hall of Famers slugger Eddie Matthews and ageless pitcher Warren Spahn anchoring the team, but the magic came with the signing of an unassuming young Negro League Indianapolis Clowns infielder with the bat quickness and sting of a Scorpion tail  and wrists of iron, Henry Aaron.  Baseball produces great athletes but snagging the special ones, the Ruths, Williams, Mantles, and Bonds, are a once in a lifetime proposition and Hank Aaron was once in a lifetime special.  Paired with slugger Eddie Matthews the pair would together hit 853 home runs for the Braves, one of the most prolific tandems in baseball history.  The already dangerous Braves lineup was now the rival of the Dodger, giants, and Yankees and by 1957 it appeared the inevitable was to take place.  The upstart westerners from Milwaukee, the podunks from the sticks, were going to have their shot at the mighty Yankees, and the baseball world would see if there was a new order in the universe.

Klima’s book is full of wonderful stories of a baseball world gone by, played by men who had second jobs in the off season and who played the game with a special desperation, managed by men who had played with Ruth, and edgy and confrontational at a time before baseball business was forever exposed to modern media and its political correctness.  It also captures the world of a confident post war America anxious to prove itself the best in whatever the competition, and will to slather its love on any entity that would fulfill its image as major league in every way.  Like all love stories, the end of the Braves’ romance with Milwaukee was a sad one with the team abandoning the fans for Atlanta in 1965, despite all that Milwaukee had done for the Braves. Klima’s story is however about requited pure love between  a team and its city, and makes this summer’s stress take a backseat to a great story worth living one more time.  In America, if you play hard and compete to be the best, Bushville can win – isn’t that the way it always should be?

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Fall Classics, Everywhere You Look

   

  For most, baseball is an acquired taste.   Slow moving, long on tactics and at times short on action, with byzantine and at times inscrutable rules and traditions, the game struggles to hold the attention of the casual fan.  When the long summer days turn to fall, however, the air grows crisp and the nights cool, something transforms this stodgy game into an epic shared human experience.   That something special is occurring becomes clear to both spectators and participants alike, and the antiquated structure of the game becomes structural perfection, the emotional tie between the participant and spectator simultaneous.  Baseball,  a sport played by millionaires for teams owned by billionaires, is transformed into the Fall Classic, and becomes the most unique shared experience in sport.

   This past week the Fall Classic began to evolve a story that promises to be spectacular.  The season ended in a desperate final day where four teams struggled to get into the mix. The two survivors, Tampa Bay Rays and the St Louis Cardinals, were considered also rans just ten days earlier, but strained and pushed and succeeded driving out two teams, the Boston Red Sox and Atlanta Braves, who experienced freefall collapse and devastating failure.  In classic baseball fashion and by the device by which the baseball game weaves its special beauty, there is no time limitation, there is no over ’til its over – and down to the last batter it went.  The difficult physics of trying to strike a moving round object traveling at 90 miles an hour with another moving round object moving just as fast are magnified a thousand fold when a six month journey of a season comes down to the intense struggle of individual failure or triumph between pitcher and batter in front of millions.

   The season’s spectacular end led to a ratcheting up of the tension in divisional playoffs, and improbably, the pressure and the performance went up immeasurably.  Millions were treated to Detroit’s Justin Verlander grinding out a critical win, Arizona’s Ryan Roberts smacking a authoritative grand slam to keep Arizona in the conversation,  the Texas Rangers declaring last year was not a fluke, and the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies laboring to produce at the impossible level of their economic commitment to their megastar filled teams.

     But last night was yet on another level.  The upstart Cardinals faced Cy Young award winner Ray Halliday, the definition of a big name pitcher, and Halliday did what he had to do, producing a dominating performance holding the Cardinals to one run, and stifling the Cardinal power trio of  Pujols, Berkman, and Holliday 0 for 10 at bats.  His opponent, Chris Carpenter, however, proved to be the greater warrior.   Carpenter, who has had to will his fragile body through twelve major league seasons, determined to be one run better, and was helped by a stifling defence led by Rafael Furcal.  The team of the decade, the Philadelphia Phillies, were forced to learn what many great teams have learned painfully.  In baseball, a season’s greatness can crumble in a moment’s weakness.

    The other national league game was even more epic.  Arizona and Milwaukee produced almost mirror image seasons, and the playoff between them proved no different.  A final game was played on the home field of the Brewers, the team that earned that right by being one game better out of 162.  The last five innings were the stuff of legends.  Matt Kennedy, the stalwart pitching ace of Arizona faced the hostile crowd and engaged Yovanni Gallardo of the Brewers in a gritty battle, 1-1 after five innings.  The wheels of fortune began to turn in the sixth.  The Brewers took the lead in the sixth on a single by the classic baseball immigrant, a Cuban player who speaks Spanish with a Russian first name and a French surname, Yuniesky Betancourt, but the game drama was saved by an impossible over the shoulder leaping catch on the dead run by Chris Young  of the Diamondbacks of a screaming drive by Jerry Hairston, preventing the game from breaking wide open.  And so it built from there.  A perfect inning by forty one year old Takashi Saito of the Brewers, who learned his game growing up in Miyagi City, Japan, worshipping the baseball legend of Sadaharu Oh rather than Ted Williams. A turbulent eighth inning by Francisco Rodriguez of the Brewers, creating his own peril by loading the bases with Diamondbacks, causing 45,000 anxious Milwaukee fans on site to become nauseated, only to pull them back from the brink by calmly eliminating the next two batting threats without giving another inch. The Diamondbacks finding a way in the desparate ninth  inning to scratch out a tying run against the Brewer’s John Axford, who had closed the door  in 45 prior consecutive games and five consecutive months of play, with a perfectly executed suicide squeeze bunt.  Then Axford, having to deal with his closer nightmare of not only giving up the win  but placing the opponents winning run ninety feet from home, calming stopped the bleeding in time in the ninth and then produced a dominating close down tenth inning. Finally a bottom of the tenth ,  in which a five tool player who has foundered for three teams trying to untap his enormous talent, Carlos Gomez, got himself on base, and an even bigger journeyman , a player with with more personalities then Eve and the ability to irritate everyone, Nyjer Morgan, came to the plate against the stellar reliever JJ Putz and determined not to be denied triumph.  Two strikes, then a bounding seeing-eye single up the middle that Putz desperately tried to knock down to no avail with his foot, and the speedy Gomez made sure no throw, no matter how great, would catch him.  Great stories, great triumphs, great plays – baseball experience perfection.

     And so it goes like it has since 1903 – baseball will provide a magnificinet storybook of memories, and in the end , there can be only one.  The year 2011 is looking to become one of the all time greats and we all get to go along for the ride.

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Super Sunday

     The football contest between my Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers to be played later today in Dallas, Texas has world event  ramifications.  It is estimated a billion people will watch the game, and the lucky 100,000 on site attendants will have forked over considerably more than the listed 1500 dollars a ticket for the privilege to be present at the event.  During the game, television commercial sponsors will pony up 3 million dollars for 30 seconds of air time for the exposure to the teeming masses watching the game.  What a change from the first “super” bowl contests between the Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City chiefs in January 1967, and subsequently the Green Bay Packers and the Oakland Raiders in January, 1968.  The ticket price to the first game came in a very tolerable twelve dollars, and barely 60,000 seats were able to be sold in the cavernous Los Angeles Coliseum, leaving large swaths of the stadium uninhabited.  By the second game in Miami, Florida, there was considerably more buzz and attendance, but the game featured the mighty Packers, who were felt to be too dominant for a lowly American Football League team to compete with.

     In a general sense, the pressure was all on the Packers, who had everything to lose in terms of prestige in the case of an upset to the upstarts from the AFL.  The NFL team owners had been under a progressive financial onslaught from the newer American Football League for some five years, as the burgeoning technology of 1960’s television broadcasting and its higher revenues made clear to all  that the real money was to be made not in ticket sales, but commercial sales.  The Packers, as representative of the establishment, were expected to uphold the quality standard of the NFL, but in truth the dispersal of talent through money was progressively “leveling” the talent pool between the two leagues. 

     There is still a bit of the quaint quality to looking back at the simpler processes of the first two super bowls when compared to the current extravaganza. Perhaps this is most epitomized by a game the Raiders participated in the following year.  With the New York Jets leading the Oakland Raiders with a few minutes to go in the fourth quarter of a late season AFL contest, the NBC television network broadcasting the game ran up against the hard hour change of their scheduled Sunday television event and simply left the game in mid-stream  to go to the  broadcast of  the movie “Heidi”.  The nation, tuned in to the game, was left blind to a stunning comeback by the Raiders, scoring two touchdowns in the last minute to defeat the Jets, viewed by no one except those in the stadium.  It was the first occasion for the network to understand the attraction and power building in the public’s passion for the sport event Peter Rozelle, the NFL commissioner was devising, as howls of protest for the nation’s fans watching nearly shut down the network.  It was a blunder that NBC, nor any other television network for that matter, would ever make again.  By the second super bowl game, it was becoming clear that the public was becoming attached to the winter spectacle of a final professional game clash between the two “best” teams, and the game, initially referred to as the NFL- AFL Championship Game, had metamorphosized into something “Super”. 

     On the occasion of hopefully the Green Bay Packers achieving their thirteenth professional football world championship and fourth Super Bowl triumph today, let’s look back at the two games that started it all:

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The Ice Bowl

     Today’s National Football Conference championship game between the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears is expected to be played in fairly frigid conditions with highs in the teens and wind chill factors hovering around zero.  The field has not been re-sodded most likely in an attempt by the home team to slow the fleet Packer receiving corps, and will be patchy, hard, and slippery.  Not ideal conditions for a match of superb athletes and their fast twitch fibers and highly developed coordination.  No matter.  The conditions will be positively balmy compared to the arctic tundra of the greatest game ever played under the worst conditions ever devised, the 1967 National Football Championship game between the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys on December 31, 1967 in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

     The farther one gets away from the game referred to as the Ice Bowl, the more deservedly mythic it becomes.  The conditions were absolutely inhuman and atrocious, with a game time temperature of 15 degrees below zero and a wind chill of 46 below.  The surface conditions, as intolerable as they were, were magnified by the complete absence of an adequate playing surface.  The field had an underground wiring system to maintain ground thaw in cold conditions that had to be turned off in preparation for players standing above the electric grid.  The result was the melting permafrost from the day before quickly froze and turned the field into a literal ice skating rink, as hard as it was slippery.  The clothing technology for the players in the 1960’s were no match for the conditions and frost bite, muscle spasm, and wandering concentration from direct exposure to arctic conditions became the reality of the day.

     Yet what a game they played.  The Dallas Cowboys, theoretically the “southern” team, initially looked overwhelmed by the conditions as Green Bay struck for two early touchdowns and seemed dominant.  Green Bay, however, was the older team, and coming to the end of its spectacular run as the definitive NFL team of the 1960’s.  The younger Cowboys, soon to be a perennial Super Bowl contender, toughened up defensively, and forced the Packers into uncharacteristic errors, with a Bart Starr fumble leading to a touchdown, and a Willie Wood muffed punt leading to a field goal.  Suddenly, in the third quarter, a spectacular trick play, a halfback option pass from Dan Reeves to Lance Rentzel for a touchdown, stunned the home crowd and the Packers, and the “warm weather” team took the lead 17 to 14.  The game essentially seemed over as the field became unplayable, with neither offense achieving any traction or identifiable offense.

     It all came down to the last four and one half minutes.  The Packers held the ball one last time, and over 60 ice filled yards between them and the end zone.  That last drive is the defining event of the legendary status of the Green Bay Packers and perhaps the national football game itself.  A perfect drive in incalculably intolerable conditions led the Packers to the 1 yard line with a third down, 16 seconds and no time outs left.  A field goal would tie the game and send it into over time, but a kick in such conditions was completely unpredictable.  A running play if not successful, would have the Packers unable to get another play off.  Two previous unsuccessful running plays had shown the footage at the south end end zone where the saga was to be played out completely unstable.  The quarterback of the ages, Bart Starr,  came to the sidelines to converse with the coach of the ages, Vince Lombardi, and informed the coach he planned to run a quarterback sneak, and take the onus to succeed or fail upon himself.  The cold coach stated matter of factly, “Well then, score, and lets get the hell out of here.”  Starr told no one in the huddle his plan and called a running play, timed the snap count and drove himself over guard Jerry Kramer’s shoulder in the spot where Cowboy defensive tackle Jethroe Pugh had stood, and scored.  The best game ever played in the worst conditions ever played was over, and the legend of the greatness of the Green Bay Packers was sealed.

     The weather will be cold today, but it will look like a cold weather game, not an epic battle for survival and triumph.  The Ice Bowl deserves a special place in history in what people are capable of when all else around them is challenging their very capacity to perform.  I hope today’s Packers see the historical achievement possible today as another in the long line of great Packer moments.  Go Pack Go.

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Play of the Year – Man Learns to Fly

     Every once in a while sport provides us with moments of awe of what humans are capable of. And what they are capable of sometimes exceeds the laws of physics. In a college football game on Saturday night, in-state rivals Oklahoma and Oklahoma were locked in duel and Oklahoma State was getting the short end of it, when Oklahoma quarterback Landry Jones was flushed out of the pocket and decided to throw the ball away out of bounds. Unfortunately for him, defensive back Broderick Brown of Oklahoma State determined to take that very moment to defy the laws of gravity and several other undetermined laws of physics. In a perfectly timed flight, he tipped the ball to his teammate in an unconscionably spectacular play that deserves viewing if you haven’t seen it. It didn’t help Oklahoma State win, losing again to their rival Oklahoma, 47-41, but it did move the eternal and ongoing measure of human experience one positive molecule forward.

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“Like A Tremendous Machine!”

     A new movie reminding  all of us of the excitement surrounding one of the great “athletes” of any generation is moving into theaters.  The movie is about the horse Secretariat, the magnificent triple crown winner of 1973.  I expect to go see it and cry like a baby. Why? Because Secretariat is intimately tied to my life long emotionalism regarding the concept of being a witness to an act of perfection.  Whether it is Usain Bolt winning the 100 meters at the Olympic games in a style so thoroughly outclassing his opposition,  Roy Halladay pitching a no hitter, or Franz Klammer skiing at the edge of catastrophe and death willing himself to victory in the downhill at Innsbruck in 1976, I have always struggled with my composure at the moment of triumph.  Amazingly, in 1973, the hero-athlete was a horse and an epic one at that.

     Secretariat was not a great story that snuck up on anybody that year.  He was from the moment he stepped on the track at age two already a horse with incredible attached expectations.  He looked like a winner, with a beautiful sorrel finish, three white stockings and a blazing white star on his forehead. And Secretariat was huge; 16.2 hands tall and in his prime cracking the scales at a Peterbilt size of 1,175 pounds.  He had a appetite like a glutton, and a bizarre “human” personality – spunky, confident, and particularly fond of crowds and cameras.  He was in short, “the Natural”, at a time when the national media was capable of framing a story and the public was desperate for a feel-good true life hero.  At the end of his entry year in racing, he was already voted Horse of the Year by the horse racing establishment,  and was the odds on favorite to bring home a triple crown for the first time in 25 years – consecutive wins in the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont over a 5 week period.  Considered the ultimate racing competition , this marathon process demands progressively longer distances out of the race horse until the final sprint of the Belmont, where the animal is expected to duel over 1 and1/2 miles to complete the crown.

    Like any great victor, Secretariat needed a foil.  In the Triple Crown races of 1973, it was an extremely talented horse named Sham, who it seemed was capable of matching Secretariat stride for stride and clearly was the class of the competitor group.  Sham dueled with Secretariat in the Kentucky Derby, requiring a track record performance by Secretariat to nose out Sham by 2.5 lengths.  The Preakness followed, and the duel continued with Secretariat again applying a late surge to catch Sham and win the Preakness.  With the Preakness win, Secretariat was reaching legend status and simultaneously appeared on the covers of Tim, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated as “Superhorse”, a level of celebrity hard to describe at a time when there was no internet or 24/7 coverage of events as the Internet and cable TV now provide.

     The Belmont loomed as the ultimate match race between Sham and Secretariat, as other horse owners cowed by Secretariat’s dominance refused to participate in the expected humiliation of their prized horses. As a result, only three other non-descript horses were entered in the race.  Ali had his Frazier, Laver had his Newcombe, and now Secretariat would have his Sham.

     I was a child at the time but it seemed that all the world was watching on that Saturday afternoon, June 9th, 1973, for the great Belmont Stakes duel.  The Triple Crown was on the line, the hype of a “superhorse”, and the overflow New York crowd at the Belmont bet on Secretariat for the simple right to covet the winning ticket if Secretariat could pull off the win, as the winner was going to collect only 20 cents on a 2 dollar ticket.  The right to say “I was there” with the momento was felt to be more important than cashing in the ticket.  The crowd was psyched and wanted to see something special – and that is what they got.

     The horses broke and by the first turn the two protagonists had separated themselves from the others. Secretariat and Sham pressed each other neck and neck through the first mile at a blazing speed. Sham’s jockey Laffit Pincay, Jr. a hall of fame jockey knew his horse was at maximum capacity, and prayed that Ron Turcotte, Secretariat’s jockey was as concerned about his steed.  It didn’t really matter what Turcotte had in mind.  At the 6 furlong mark, Secretariat pushed into the lead, and created a level of performance no jockey had any right to control.  As unforgettably described by Chic Anderson, the legendary horse race announcer on CBS that afternoon, the unfolding event stunned Anderson into emotional awe – “Secretariat is widening now! He is moving like a tremendous machine!” 

     No one had seen anything like it in a championship event.  The horse was now 9 lengths, now 16 lengths, now 20 lengths, and finally an impossible 32 lengths in front of the field.  He stormed down the stretch alone, no whip driving him, the hysterical crowd roaring, to the fastest quarter ever recorded, and the fastest mile and 1/2 distance in history. In a race records set by tenths of a second, Secretariat would break the Belmont record by 2.5 seconds and crushed the competition  in a performance for the ages.  Pincay, knowing the challenge was hopeless in the face of such greatness, eased Sham back to a last place finish to preserve the competitive colt’s body against certain destruction.  I will never forget the unforgettable moment, the sense of perfect beauty and power that this special horse provided in that two minute interval of my life.  Secretariat averaged almost  38 miles an hour, and was still accelerating at the finish. 

     When the great horse died of laminitis at age 19, an autopsy revealed what we all suspected – the great heart of Secretariat was at least two times the size of an average thoroughbred.  In a world where thoroughbreds were driven by propellers, Secretariat was powered by a jet engine.  Behold –  “Superhorse”.