Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Pity the poor Packers
As a lifelong Chicago Bears fan I am all broke up that the
Packers lost a game they should have won.
Wah, Wah, Wah. Had it been
anybody else I might have actually had a twitch of remorse, but the
Packers? Let ‘em suffer. You don’t think these guys have gotten the
benefits of some bad calls over the years?
I have hated the green-and-gold my whole life, just as every
Bears fan does.
My earliest football memories are seeing Vince Lombardi
holding his clipboard while Jim Taylor, Paul Hornung, Bart Starr and company
ran roughshod over the NFL. Most people
are too young to remember that the Bears were the Monsters of the Midway in the
early days of the NFL, and were powerhouse all through the 1950s. In 1963 I remember watching the Bears play
the New York Giants for the NFL championship.
There was no Super Bowl then, the AFL still considered by
those of us in old-line NFL cities to be little more than a glorified minor
league with gimmick rules like the use of two-point conversions. Championship of the NFL was world
championship. Owners had not yet figured
out that universal television coverage was the key to untold riches, and so
home games were blacked out. This
actually prevailed into the 1970s in most places. When we moved into an apartment in 1968 one
of the selling points was that with a good antenna it was possible to pick up
the Bears broadcasts from a station in South Bend, IN. (It turns out that trying to watch a game
from there required staring through static so bad it looked as if every game
was being played in a blizzard. Games in
actual blizzards were indiscernible.) So
our only option in 1963 was to head to McCormick Place a giant convention
center to watch the game on closed-circuit television.
Actually, this was really fun. Sports is always best when watched in a
crowd. (Well, as anyone who knows me
understands, I exempt baseball when watched in a crowd of people who don’t
understand, don’t care about, and are not watching the game, which pretty much
describes Coors Field. In those circumstances
watching the game without the crowd around is a pure experience comparable to,
I imagine, watching the sunrise from the top of Mt. Everest or viewing a meteor
shower on a completely dark night.)
McCormick place held hundreds of people, almost all men and boys. Like any football game we ate hot dogs,
bought a program, and cheered loudly.
The Bears, led by Bill Wade and Mike Ditka beat Y.A. Tittle, Frank
Gifford, and the Giants 14-7. I remember
my dad taking off his heavy winter coat and laughing at how comfortable we were
inside while those at the game were freezing.
(Game-time temperature was four degrees.)
The Bears soon fell into a state of embarrassing ineptitude.
It got so bad they finished 1-13 in 1969, and didn’t even get the first draft
pick. They lost a coin flip with the
equally inept Pittsburgh Steelers who chose Terry Bradshaw. The Bears then traded away the second pick
for three no-names to, of all teams, the Packers. The rest, of course, is history. Bradshaw is in the Hall of Fame with four
Super Bowl rings, and the Bears have only a single world championship since
(albeit with the greatest time in football history).
The Packers, of course, ruled football in the late 1960s,
winning the final NFL championship before the merger and then the first two
Super Bowls. I will never forget the
famous “Ice Bowl” game of December 31, 1967.
The Packers played the pre-Jerry Jones Cowboys, not yet calling
themselves America’s Team, and still a sympathetic underdog. A year previous the Packers eked out a
victory over the Cowboys in Dallas when Dan Reeves dropped what appeared to be
an easy touchdown pass. As dedicated
Packer haters my brother and I sat down to hopefully watch the Cowboys prevail
in the rematch.
As everyone now remembers, the weather in Green Bay was
brutally cold. Each time the teams lined
up before the snap the steam of their breath obscured the line of
scrimmage. This time, the Cowboys took
the lead late in the fourth quarter, even though they were obviously struggling
in the brutal weather. Reeves seemingly
had redeemed himself, throwing the touchdown pass which gave his team a 17-14
lead. But an entire quarter remained.
Sure enough, with a little over four minutes to go, the
Packers drove almost the length of the field.
The shadows were long, and the temperature had dropped down to artic
levels. My brother Mark and I inched
closer to the tv. (Remember, a big
screen back then was 21 inches. We were
fortunate to have one of the few colors tvs on the block.) Our parents weren’t home and my brother and I
had eaten tv dinners on folding tv tables.
The remains of our meals still sat on those tables. As the Packers moved closer and closer the game
got more tense, and my brother, 17 years old, strong and athletic grew more
agitated. He was more invested in
football than I was. He hated the
Packers. I didn’t like them much, but I
respected the hell out of them. To me,
the Packers won because they deserved to win.
I didn’t like that but I accepted it.
But my brother wore his devotion to the Bears closer to his heart.
At any rate, we knelt in front of the tv, pulling for the
Cowboys to finally dispatch their, and our, hated rivals. The Cowboys were a likeable bunch, despite
being coached by the Plastic Man, Tom Landry.
Don Meredith played quarterback, perhaps the most happy-go-lucky player
in league history. Reeves was a
good-old-boy. His touchdown pass went to
Lance Rentzel, a smooth wide received who married starlet Joey Heatherton,
making him one of the most envied men in America until he exposed himself to a
10-year-old girl years later. Dallas
featured Bullet Bob Hayes as the other wide received. Hayes was the Olympic gold medalist in the
100 meter dash in 1960, and though his hands were not nearly as talented as his
feet, he brought a level of excitement to every play where Meredith had time to
throw.
But as time wound down, Bart Starr, at the time heralded as a
great leader, but now forgotten as a Hall of Fame quarterback, led his team
closer and closer to the end zone.
Somehow it felt as if Packer victory was inevitable, and yet Mark and I
clung to hope that maybe this year would be different. Closer and closer the Pack moved, the clock
ticking down but their drive moving closer.
The Cowboys then seemed to find new life, twice stuffing runs on the
one-yard line. With only 16 seconds left
the Packers faced the play of the year—third and goal from the one. By now Mark and I were inches from the
screen. At the snap both lines collapsed
into a frozen pile of large bodies, but we could see clearly Starr following
his Hall of Fame linemen over Dallas’s huge defensive line and into the end
zone for a 20-17 lead. Mark
erupted. “God damn it,” he shouted, loud
enough to rattle the windows. Right next
to him stood one of those folding tv tables.
Mark pounded it with all the force in his fit 17-year old frame. The table shattered, splinters flying by my
face. The Packers had won, and we had
lost some furniture.
Green Bay, of course, went on to win the Super Bowl,
cementing their legacy. Through the
years the Packers have tormented the Bears, and yes, I cringed when the Packers
beat the Bears in Soldier Field two years ago on their way to a Super Bowl. So, while I revile the replacement referees
like everyone else, I will shed no tears for the Green Bay Packers.
Comments:
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Great post. I need to find a way to easily link my husband and his sports-crazy buddies up to your blog. They would LOVE this!!
Great post. I need to find a way to easily link my husband and his sports-crazy buddies up to your blog. They would LOVE this!!
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