Mondays with Murray

Here is another edition of Monday’s With Murray. . . . If you’re new here, the late Jim Murray was one of the legends of sports journalism. He won a Pulitzer Prize, which pretty much says it all. . . . Anyway, I try to bring you one column a week, courtesy of The Jim Murray Memorial Foundation, which is dedicated to helping future journalists get the proper training. . . . With that in mind, why don’t you shimmy on over to this spot right here and check out one of the best-looking t-shirts on the market?
———
The column that follows first appeared in the Los Angeles Times of Sept. 18, 1961.
Copyright 1961/THE TIMES MIRROR COMPANY

All Hail the Pros

BALTIMORE — Baltimore is a body of land surrounded on three sides by water, warmed by gusts of hot air from Congress and cooled regularly by the New York Yankees. It is so old it thinks of Washington as a swamp that got lucky. It is a nice place to catch a cold.
   It is also, as it happens, the current citadel of pro football. It achieved this considerable eminence by the simple expedient of placing an 80-cent person-to-person phone call to a party named John Unitas, one of the most important uses of the instrument since Don Ameche invented it. If Mrs. Unitas had been on the line, like any other self-respecting wife, Johnny might still be driving a steam shovel and Baltimore would just be a town where crabs spend the summer.
   As this is written in a breezy press box, Lenny Moore, a halfback for Baltimore, has just run 38 yards for a touchdown against the Rams. The Rams are trying to scramble even and on my right, Ram coach Hamp Pool is in the terminal stages of St. Vitus Dance.
———
Dialogue of a Ram Coach
"Shinnick is wide, watch the trap. What's going on? That tackle was made by the outside man. Hey, Vic, Vic, Boeke pulls," he shouts into a microphone. His hand trembles, his cigarette is a stub that burns his fingers. He will not relax until sometime Tuesday morning.
   "Get it way down there," he pleads on the Ram kick-off. The kicker cannot hear him. Only Don Paul, who is a coach and on crutches, can. Hamp doesn't care. He would shout to himself if he were in a padded cell. "Oh, he got him, he got him! LoVetere!" He shouts as though everyone in the ballpark couldn't see.
   This is professional football — 1961. The big time. The high stakes. "What do you want, a limp or a career?" is a jest beginning to rattle in baseball's throat. There is a capacity house in Memorial Stadium. Signs, "Love Our Colts," festoon the stands with hearts in place of "O's." A braided horse gallops around the field with each touchdown. When Unitas is right his fractions are as slow as Silky Sullivan's by the fourth quarter. He is so pooped. Even the press roots. "Take 'em in, John," pleads a writer whose fingers tremble like Hamp Pool's in his anxiety for the home team.
———
Evolution of Pro Football
   Pro football was not always like this. Not so many years ago it was just a floating football crap game — a few high rollers but mostly a refuge of a lot of last-chance characters shooting for the moon with their last C-note.
   The pros always picked the biggest, roughest guys it could find, put them on a bus and hit the road till they found a level piece of ground. There, they got out, chose up sides and if anybody showed up, passed the hat.
   Today, they still pick the biggest, roughest of the race. Only now, it picks them 'neath the elms of dear old State instead of under the drop forges. It doesn't pass the hat. There are 54,259 here Sunday and they paid $5 apiece. Some of them paid $6. The game has been sold out since Eisenhower was President.
   Pro football has arrived. It is a game as precise as chess, as taut as surgery. But it still makes a low bow to its carnival past in its exhibition schedule. The pros used to play a whopping seven of them. It is now down to five — but versus a league schedule of 14 games the effect is a little like the New York Yankees showing up at the stadium in February for a 60-game spring training schedule — at mid-season prices.
   Some coaches treat exhibition games simply as full-uniform scrimmages. The public winds up paying clubhouse prices to watch Swaps breeze the rent money for amateur night or $5 to see Paul Brown get a line on his 26th draft choice.
   The point is, the public doesn't mind. Pro football is the filet mignon of sport at the moment and its fans will take it cold if that's the only way they can get it.
   The game is for keeps. Hamp Pool is not courting a heart attack and shredding his nerve endings for a pot with pennies in it.
   Bobby Kennedy is at the game. So is Milton Eisenhower. Cary Middlecoff, the golfer, is on hand with binoculars. They may not be rooting as hard as Hamp Pool whose seat in the box adjoining the camera recording every play looks like a command post in a hot war. But their interest is apparent.
   The Rams think they can win this game. The coaches are as keyed up as kids at Christmas Eve. This is a game they have plotted for, traded for, run more film than Radio City Music Hall. This game is a crucible for them. If they can hobble the sideline colt for this one afternoon they may be in the hunt.
———
Nobody Surprised by Unitas
   But first they have to hobble Johnny Unitas. At the half he took his team for a touchdown in less than three minutes. No one was surprised including the Rams.
   The kick-off is in the air for the second half. "Fumble!" begs Hamp Pool. It is on again, 30 more minutes of a cold hand squeezing the aorta. "Our ball! Our ball!" he goats as Charley Britt intercepts. One hour's litany of hope and despair. "It's a doggie," he shouts to nobody as the Colts thunder in like rodeo steers when the fence is pulled.
   Win or lose, the team piles into a bus and a plane immediately. It will be either the shortest or longest ride of the season, depending on the score. I'll be sitting next to Hamp Pool. He'll be the one wearing the jacket with the belt in the back — and the arms folded into it.

Reprinted with permission by the Los Angeles Times
 
Jim Murray Memorial Foundation | P.O. Box 995 | La Quinta | CA | 92247