Instant Replay: The Green Bay Diary of Jerry Kramer

by Jerry Kramer

  Henry joined the rest of us for the workouts this morning, and I guess Lombardi was in a playful mood. He started off complimenting us on our nice sun tans. “Look at the sun tans you're getting,” he said. “Isn't that beautiful? Just like a health spa here.”

  Coach Lombardi smiled. “You know,” he said, “a lot of people pay a lot of money to get sun tans like you've got.”

  The sun was beating down on us, the temperature was close to 92 degrees and, with a heavy scrimmage coming up, none of us was too enthusiastic about our wonderful tans. “Hey, Coach,”

  Dave Robinson said, “I've had this tan of mine all my life and I didn't spend a dime for it.” Robby spat. “But I've been paying for it ever since I got it,” he said.

  We scrimmaged, still without Fuzzy and Andy and Grabo and Long and the two All-Star rookies, and Marv Fleming suffered a slight shoulder separation. Naturally, the coaches allowed Marv to finish out the scrimmage. Under normal conditions, meaning anywhere except in the Green Bay Packer training camp, Marv's injury would be called a shoulder separation, and the guy would either have it operated on or set or something. But, in our camp, it's just a slight separation, just a small one, just enough for Marvin to get strapped up and keep hitting the sleds and hitting the dummies.

  Coach Lombardi never takes second place when it comes to Oral Roberts or any of the rest of the healers. He can just walk into a training room filled with injured players, and he'll say, “What the hell's wrong with you guys? There's nobody in here hurt.” And the dressing room will clear immediately. And all the wounded will be healed.

  JULY 23

  No practice today, thank God. I thought Sunday would never come. To relax, Don Chandler and I played a golf match against Max McGee and Zeke Bratkowski, our room against their room. Max and Zeke, the old men of the club at thirty-five, have been buddies for ten years, ever since they were pilots together in the Air Force.

  We had a time trying to decide how many strokes Max and Zeke ought to give Don and me. We were all lying about how bad we were. Finally, we found an impartial judge, Bart Starr, who people around here consider no less saintly than the pope himself. We knew Bart would never do anybody any wrong, so we let him fix the strokes. Zeke shoots in the middle 70 s, I'm around 80, and Max, who's erratic, and Don usually score in the 80 s. Bart ruled that they had to give us just three strokes. It wasn't enough. They beat us for about $50 apiece, but it was worth it, just to get away from football.

  The coaches made some cuts in the squad today. They dropped seven men, bringing us down to a total of sixty-one, twenty-one more than we can carry during the season. Six of the men who went were rookies; the seventh was Red Mack, the flanker we picked up last season after he was cut by the Atlanta Falcons, the team with the worst record in the league. I remember what a thrill it was for Red to come from a team like that to a team like the Packers, and I'll never forget the look on his face after we won the Super Bowl. He was walking around the locker room in his jockstrap, hugging everybody, tears just running down his face, and he was saying, “This is the greatest moment of my life. I just want to thank every one of you guys.”

  Red's a hard-nosed guy, the way he threw himself against Ray Nitschke in that first nutcracker drill, and he's spent six years in the NFL. I think he suspected he might go. He just packed up and left without saying good-bye. I don't think he wanted to face anybody. He left me a note saying he'd probably see me at one of the games during the season.

  Dick Arndt, the big boy from Idaho, survived the cut without much difficulty. He's a nice kid, with a real good attitude, a real willingness to work, and I'm pretty sure that if he doesn't make our club, he'll play somewhere in the league. The coaches tried him out first at offensive guard, then at offensive tackle, and now they're going to give him a shot at defensive tackle. I'll try to help him, try to give him a few pointers, because I've played against defensive tackles for ten years and I know how they can give a guard the most trouble. But the situation's touchy. First, when Dick was playing offense, he was competing against, besides me, Fuzzy Thurston and Forrest Gregg and Bob Skoronski, and these guys have been my friends for ten years. How am I going to coach this kid to take their jobs? I like the kid and he's close to me and I'm going to try to help him, and yet if I help him too much, these guys are going to start looking at me out of the corners of their eyes. Now, with Dick playing defensive tackle, Henry Jordan's my neighbor and he's been there ten years. I don't think there's any danger of Henry getting cut, now that he's made up his mind to play, but there could be if this kid came on strong, looked great. Then Henry'd never forgive me. The whole relationship between veteran and rookie is strange. You can help to a certain extent, but you can't go overboard.

  Arndt's shown one sign of progress. He's earned a nickname. We call him “Herman,” from Herman in The Munsters.

  JULY 24

  The drills and the scrimmages seem to follow one after one, day after day, and they all melt into one another. Even the day off didn't help. A fan gave me a ride this morning up the hill to the dressing room from the practice field, and he asked me what time we practice in the afternoon and I couldn't tell him. All I know is that when everyone else moves, I move, and when everyone else files out of the dorm, I file out, and when everyone else gets on the bus, I get on the bus. I get dressed with everyone else and I leave the locker room with everyone else. I really don't know what time it is, what day it is, what year it is. I don't know anything at all.

  We sat in a meeting tonight and went over plays and I began thinking, “How many years have I been sitting here in the same damned room in the same damned meeting on a hot summer night looking at plays?” It's been eighteen years, four years in high school, four years in college, and ten years with the Packers. It seems like every hot summer night as far back as I can remember I've been watching coaches draw O's and X's, and I don't know if I ever knew any other existence. I guess maybe this was all I was made for.

  My mind drifted, away from O's and X's. Where would I be without football? I didn't choose a profession; it chose me. In high school, I didn't study often, but I wasn't a bad student. I finished in the top fifth of my class. I liked to read even then and, because I was interested in astronomy and in physics, I took every math course and every science course. I thought of joining the Air Force.

  The first time I thought seriously about football, I was a sophomore. A coach from the University of Idaho visited Sand Point to talk to our coach and a few of our seniors. I was sitting on the bench and he patted me on the head and said, “You're the kind of boy we want to have at the University of Idaho one of these days.”

  It was unusual for anyone to notice a sophomore, and, for the first time, I began thinking about college. My family didn't have much money; my father always had to struggle. Nobody else in the family went to college and, without a football scholarship, I couldn't have gone, either. Once I thought of college, I started thinking about playing pro football. I saw the movie, Saturday's Hero, with Crazy Legs Hirsch, and I became a Los Angeles Rams fan. In my high-school yearbook, in fact, it says that my ambition was to play professional football for the Los Angeles Rams.

  In my senior year, colleges began to recruit me, partly for my football and partly because I broke the state record in the shot put. A bunch of schools wrote to me, but the only ones that really interested me were Washington State College, the University of Idaho, and the University of Washington. I eliminated Washington State fairly early, but by the time I graduated from Sand Point, I still hadn't chosen between Idaho and Washington.

  One of my classmates, Kenny Armstrong, a basketball player, had decided to go to the University of Washington, and as soon as we finished high school, he took a job in Seattle, painting fences— just the sunny side, I think—for a couple of dollars an hour. The university offered to find me a similar job. I happened to mention the offer to someone who had gone to the University of Idaho. The same night, a representative from Idaho came to my home— he'
d driven about one hundred and thirty miles—and said he had a job for me in Moscow, the site of the University. I figured I wanted to see both schools anyway, so I took a ride to Moscow. The Idaho people put me on a plane, flew me to Boise, got me a job in a sawmill and a room in a boarding-house and hid me, absolutely hid me. The University of Washington looked everywhere for me. They flew Kenny Armstrong to Boise two or three times in a private plane, but he couldn't find me. I made up my mind I was going to the University of Idaho. My father made up his mind, too; he told me not to talk to anyone from Washington. The Idaho people told me to save my money from my summer job, but, naturally, I spent it all on clothes. At the end of the summer, I went home to Sand Point to pack my winter clothes and move to Moscow.

  Kenny Armstrong flew in from Seattle. “It's all settled,” he said. “You're going to Idaho and I'm going to Washington. We won't see each other much. Let's go over to Spokane tonight, see a movie and celebrate.” We drove down to Spokane, some sixty miles, and he suggested we visit a prominent University of Washington alumnus. I knew I shouldn't, but I agreed to join him. “Why don't you two fly to Seattle this evening, take in a movie and watch practice tomorrow?” the alumnus said. I couldn't resist the chance to fly around.

  The next day, the Washington coach took me to practice and made me feel like a big shot. Bert Rose, who's now general manager of the New Orleans Saints, was then the public relations man for the University of Washington. “We guarantee we'll make you All-American in three years,” he promised. “We'll push you. We'll do everything we can.”

  School was starting at Washington a week later than at Idaho, so the Washington people offered to send me on a salmon-fishing trip for a week. They promised me a job in Alaska for the summer. It all sounded beautiful. “My folks want to see me play,” I said, “and it's a long way from Sand Point to Seattle.” The Washington people said they'd fly my folks free to every home game.

  “I'd better speak to my father,” I said. “I can't tell him I'm in Seattle. I better go back and talk to him.”

  The Washington people told me they couldn't get me a flight out of Seattle. They said everything was booked up.

  “I got to go,” I said. “I'll take a bus or hitchhike or walk.”

  Finally, they double-checked and put me on a flight to Spokane. There were about four people on the plane. I got home and spoke to my father and he told me I was definitely going to Idaho. He said that if he wanted to see a football game, he could drive there. He made up my mind for me, and I wasn't really upset. I was just happy to be going to college.

  The first week at Idaho, I wasn't so happy. I didn't get the job I'd been promised, and I felt cheated. I called Kenny Armstrong in Seattle. “These guys are putting it to me,” I said. “I'm not happy.”

  Kenny telephoned one of the Washington football coaches, who called me and said, “Get in your car and leave. We'll transfer you. We'll have somebody get your clothes. We'll do everything. Just get in your car right now and leave.”

  I was in the Sigma Nu house at the time, and I guess one of the brothers overheard my conversation. Less than ten minutes after I got off the phone, the Idaho football coach was at the fraternity house. “What's going on?” he said. We got everything straightened out, and I decided to stay at Idaho.

  I started in engineering, and in one of my first classes, a professor asked, “Are any of you people in here football players?”

  I told him I was.

  “It should either be football or engineering,” he said.

  “I'm in college on a football scholarship,” I said.

  “Then I recommend that you get out of engineering,” he said.

  He was an ass for telling me that. I could have stayed in engineering. I could have shifted into a five-year or even a six-year course. I really wanted to be an engineer. But he told me to get out, and I didn't know any better, so I got out of engineering and just drifted for a while, wondering what course to study. I didn't want to go into phys ed. so, finally, I settled on business administration. It wasn't difficult. I skipped a lot of classes and sort of wandered through school. Football seemed bigger and bigger, and I began thinking of myself as a football player first and as an individual second.

  I met my wife, Barbara, at a freshman orientation class the first week of school, dated her during my freshman and sophomore years and married her during my junior year. Our first son, Tony, was born the following year. Barbara knew nothing about football when we met, and she really doesn't know too much more now, but she always encouraged me to do what I wanted to do.

  I played good football at Idaho. I was never hurt, never missed a single practice. We didn't have too many bodies, and I averaged about 58 minutes a game my junior and senior years. Our best record was four victories, four defeats, and a tie during my senior season, and I made second-team All-Pacific Coast Conference. I might have been All-American at Washington, but I wouldn't have played quite so much football.

  During my final year, a few pro football teams wrote to me, requesting my vital statistics. I don't think I ever actually met a pro scout; they didn't bother watching the University of Idaho those days. I was picked by Green Bay in the fourth round of the draft, higher than I'd expected, and I was also drafted by Vancouver in the Canadian league. The Packers were my first choice. I told Lisle Blackbourn, who was then the Green Bay coach, that I wanted a starting salary of $8,000 plus a bonus. We argued. Eventually, I agreed to a salary of $7,750 and a bonus of exactly $250. Just the other day, I heard Gale Gillingham complaining about the contract he signed a year ago. “What kind of bonus did you get?” I asked.

  “Fifty,” Gilly said. “Fifty thousand. I should have gotten a lot more.”

  In 1958, I was very happy to get $250.

  “Flakey,” Bob Long, and “Grabo,” Jim Grabowski, reported for practice today, and to make them feel right at home, Vince saved a few extra grass drills and wind sprints for them. Grabo's a little underweight, at 211, because he's been going through Ranger courses in the Army, but we don't have to worry about him. He looks as if he's ready to move into Jimmy Taylor's old job.

  We had a good long song session after dinner tonight. Leon Crenshaw, who's got a beautiful deep voice, sang some soul music for us, and then Dick Arndt, who's got the worst voice God ever gave a human being, sang the Idaho alma mater, and I helped him out on the chorus. “Dr. Feelgood,” Willie Davis, climbed up on a chair and told everyone about a trip he had taken to New York. Willie wore a black mohair suit and a shirt and tie, and the doorman at his hotel mistook him for an African diplomat they were expecting. The doorman grabbed Willie's attaché case and held an umbrella over his head, and he got the full red-carpet treatment until he looked around and said, “Man, what in hell is going on?” The doorman threw the attaché case back at him.

  Then Fuzzy took over. He always sings “He's got the whole world in his hands,” always referring to Coach Lombardi. When Paul Hornung came back to camp after being suspended for a year for betting on his own team, Fuzzy got up and sang, “He's got the gamblin' man, in his hands.” Often he sings, “He's got the greatest guards, in his hands,” and, “He's got the greatest quarterback, in his hands.” But tonight Fuzzy led off with, “He's got Henry Jordan, in his hands,” and the dining room broke up laughing, and Henry laughed, too, and he wasn't embarrassed anymore about his temporary decision to quit.

  JULY 25

  I think I'm going to live. Just one more day of two-a-days and then we settle down to normal brutality. Vince is driving us like a madman; he never lets up. It's hard to resist hating him, his ranting, his raving, his screaming, his hollering. But, damn him, he's a great coach.

  I spend a lot of time thinking about him these days; I don't have much choice. I wish I could figure him out. I guess, more than anything else, he's a perfectionist, an absolute perfectionist. He demands perfection from everyone, from himself, from the other coaches, from the players, from the equipment manager, from the water boys, even from his
wife. Marie Lombardi joined us at a team dinner before one game last year, and the dessert was apple pie. Marie asked the waiter if she could have a scoop of ice cream on her pie, and before the waiter could answer, Vince jumped out of his seat, red in the face, and bellowed, “When you travel with the team, and you eat with the team, you eat what the team eats.”

  He pays such meticulous attention to detail. He makes us execute the same plays over and over, a hundred times, two hundred times, until we do every little thing right automatically. He works to make the kickoff-return team perfect, the punt-return team perfect, the field-goal team perfect. He ignores nothing. Technique, technique, technique, over and over and over, until we feel like we're going crazy. But we win.

  He seems so unfeeling at times. A few years ago, we played the 49 ers in San Francisco and I got banged up something terrible. My ribs were killing me. The next day, the team doctor gave me a shot or two of novocaine, and Vince told me to shake it off. We stayed on the west coast all week, and the following weekend I played the full game against the Los Angeles Rams. When we got back to Green Bay, I went to see my own doctor and he told me that I had two broken ribs, that they had been broken for at least a week.

  On Tuesday, I showed up at practice and I went up to Vince and I said, “Hey, Coach, you know I played that whole game Sunday with two broken ribs.” I thought he'd pat me on the head or say, “Nice going,” or something like that. Instead, he just looked at me and said, “I guess they don't hurt anymore.”

  Yet, in 1964, when I almost died with all my intestinal ailments, Lombardi visited me in the hospital and he told me not to worry, that the Packers would pay my salary in 1964 and 1965 even if I couldn't play and that the club would pay all my hospital bills. He does things like that. His players are his children, and he nurses them when they're sick and scolds them when they're bad and rewards them when they're good.