by Jerry Kramer
The TV people returned, and I was one of the first men led in front of the cameras. “There's a great deal of love for one another on this club,” I said. “Perhaps we're living in Camelot.” I was referring to the idea of one for all and all for one, the ideal of King Arthur's Round Table, and I meant it. And then I talked about Lombardi.
I'd been waiting for a chance to talk about Vince. A story had appeared in Esquire magazine a few weeks earlier making him look like a complete villain, like nothing but a cruel, vicious man. The story had hurt Vince; I had heard that his mother had cried when she read the story. I thought the story gave a distorted picture of the man; it showed only one of his many sides. “Many things have been said about Coach,” I said on TV, “and he is not always understood by those who quote him. The players understand. This is one beautiful man.”
I loved Vince. Sure, I had hated him at times during training camp and I had hated him at times during the season, but I knew how much he had done for us, and I knew how much he cared about us. He is a beautiful man, and the proof is that no one who ever played for him speaks of him afterward with anything but re- spect and admiration and affection. His whippings, his cussings, and his driving all fade; his good qualities endure.
Over and over and over, perhaps twenty times, the television cameras reran Bart's touchdown and my block on Jethro Pugh. Again and again, millions of people across the country saw the hole open up and saw Bart squeeze through. Millions of people who couldn't name a single offensive lineman if their lives depended on it heard my name repeated and repeated and repeated. All I could think was, “Thank God for instant replay.”
Kenny Bowman came up to me smiling and said, “Don't take all the credit, Kramer. Don't take all the credit. I helped you with that block.”
“Shut up, Bow,” I said. “You've got ten more years to play. You've got plenty of time for glory. I ain't telling anybody anything. If they think I made that block alone, I'm gonna let them think it.”
I was only kidding Bowman, of course. But I've got to admit that I didn't tell many people about Bowman's part in the block. I stayed around the locker room as long as I ever have, talking to all the reporters, answering all their questions, accepting all their kind words. I felt like a halfback. I stayed till the last dog was dead.
I drove home from the stadium in an icebox. The heating unit in my Lincoln was frozen, and so was I. For an hour or two I relaxed with a few friends and with my family, letting the circulation come back all over my body. I watched part of the American Football League title game, watched the Oakland Raiders kill the Houston Oilers, and then I went in my room and changed into my fancy, black-striped walking suit, putting it on over a white turtle-neck sweater. I put on my black cowboy hat and stuck a fat cigar in my mouth, and I felt like a riverboat gambler. And then we all took off for Appleton, about thirty miles away, for the Left Guard Steak House, owned by Fuzzy and Max, for a big, beautiful celebration.
It was 20 degrees below zero outside, and the heating broke down in the restaurant, but the cold didn't bother me at all. I drank toasts with Hornung and toasts with Jordan and toasts with Max, and, somehow, I managed to notice that Donny Anderson had, for company, a girl who had once been a Playmate-of-the-Month. Donny had certainly earned a big night out; he'd played almost the entire game, while Travis shivered on the bench.
I had a great time. At least everyone told me I had a great time. Fuzzy and I got carried away by the whiskey man, and we ended up the evening greeting the New Year with toasts—toasts, naturally, to the two greatest guards in the history of the whole world.
JANUARY 1
When I woke up this morning, my first thought was that the game against Dallas and the block on Jethro Pugh were only dreams. I thought that we hadn't really played the Cowboys yet. Then I felt the soreness in my legs, in my body and in my head, and I realized that I hadn't been dreaming, that we had played the game, that we had defeated Dallas, 21-17.
For the third straight year, we had won the championship of the National Football League. Even the soreness felt great.
JANUARY 2
I woke up today wondering who'd won the game. I was almost as foggy as I was yesterday. After Barbara assured me that we had actually won the game, I got dressed and drove over to the stadium for a sauna. We had an extra day off from practice because we're not playing Oakland in the Super Bowl in Miami until January 14.
Outside the training room I saw Coach Wietecha and asked him how Oakland looked. I knew he'd been working on the movies already.
“Hard to say,” he said. “They have a lot of defenses. They jump around a lot.”
“Who's my man?” I asked.
“Three people,” said Wietecha. “They change defenses so much you'll be seeing three different people. They look pretty good.”
I didn't ask any more questions. I didn't want to start thinking about Oakland just yet. I wanted a few more days to enjoy the victory over Dallas.
I found out today we won't be leaving for Florida till Sunday. We're going to be working out here all week, on the frozen ground, in subzero temperatures. I'm a little disappointed, and so are all the guys. Maybe Vince is afraid we'd get soft in the sunshine.
Phone calls and telegrams and letters have been coming in from all over. A fan called from New Jersey just to say congratulations. A kid at the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity house at North Dakota State phoned and said that he simply wanted to talk to a Packer and that he'd gotten my number from information; we chatted for ten minutes. A guy in the Philippine Islands wrote and offered to get me a job as a Japanese sumo wrestler. I'm not that big; he must've been thinking about Fuzzy.
A sportswriter from Philadelphia phoned and wanted to know what I meant by my remark on television that perhaps we're living in Camelot. I told him I felt that Camelot was the ideal situation, the perfect place, the epitome of everything good. For example, I tried to explain to him the attitude of the guys on the club. I mentioned Doug Hart. “He was a starter in '65,” I said. “He played the whole year, did a great job, then lost his position to Bob Jeter in 1966. He should be upset. He should be sulking or demanding to be traded. Right? Wrong. Not here. He's one of the best men we have on our special units. He hustles harder than anybody on the club.”
Then I told him about Fuzzy. “When Gilly took over this year,” I said, “I'm sure it hurt Fuzzy. I'm sure he felt bad about losing his job. But he sat behind Gilly in every movie, he talked with him, he coached him, he was just like a big brother. He did everything he could to make Gilly a better ballplayer. This is why we win, I guess.” The sportswriter didn't argue with me.
JANUARY 3
We certainly are tickled pink to be working out in Green Bay. When we reported to the stadium this morning, the temperature was a whopping 5 degrees above zero. I stepped on the scales and found out I was up to 260 pounds, and I know I'm not going to sweat off any pounds up here. I think I've also got a case of walking pneumonia.
While I was weighing myself, Ray Nitschke climbed up on the trainer's table to have his toes treated for frostbite. Both his big toes were bandaged. Ray said the doctor had told him the only way he could avoid getting frostbite again was to stay out of the cold.
“How the hell do you do that,” Ray said, “and go out and practice in 5 degrees?”
Just then, Coach Lombardi wandered in. “You just go out and get up a good sweat,” he said.
Ray started to ask how you get up a good sweat at 5 above zero, then gave up and said, “Aw, forget it, man.”
Lombardi eased over to me, came up close to me and said, “I want to thank you for the things you said on television.”
“Coach,” I said, “it was something that needed saying and I felt very happy to have the opportunity to say it.”
“I've had a lot of calls about it,” Vince said. “A lot of people have commented on it. It was a wonderful thing to say in front of 50 million people.”
Coach really seemed grateful, and it made me feel ev
en better about what I'd said. It proved my point.
We watched the films of the Dallas game, and Coach did a lot of hollering and screaming, mostly at Gilly and Ski and Marvin. He was particularly rough on Gilly; he chewed him for everything. Vince talked a lot about Boyd's great catch for our second touchdown, but he didn't say hardly anything about my part in the game. I had quite a few good blocks, but I guess he felt that I'd come in for enough praise already. When we watched Bart score the winning touchdown, Lombardi said, “Well, gentlemen, we finally scored, with the help of God.”
“Yeah,” somebody shouted. “And with the help of a helluva block.”
On the way out of the movies, Gilly, naturally, was dragging a little. “Hey,” he said, “how bad did Dallas beat us?”
On the field, Coach talked a little about Oakland, about how good they looked and about how bad we'd look if we lost to them. The ground had softened, and steam covered the whole field. It looked like the Scottish moors, very eerie, very mysterious. We warmed up, ran through our calisthenics, then played our touch game. We killed the defense, of course. Tommy Brown began organizing another volleyball game for Florida. Our team, the Cicero Sissies, demanded a new commissioner or at least a new head linesman.
Then we ran through a few plays and heard about a few of the Oakland defenses. Sometimes I'll be blocking the defensive end, Ike Lassiter, and sometimes I'll be blocking the defensive tackle, Dan Birdwell, and sometimes I'll be blocking the left linebacker, Bill Laskey. The scouting report on their tackles wasn't too encouraging. They've got one guy who's 7 feet tall and weighs 300 pounds. Fortunately, he's a second-stringer. I bet he's a real darling.
We found out after practice that Jim Grabowski was going to the hospital tonight for a knee operation. My older brother, Russ, who came down from his home in Alaska to see the Dallas game, went in tonight, too, for the same operation. Russ figured that as long as he was here, he might as well get his knee fixed up. They'll both be operated on in the morning.
My cold's killing me. The doctor gave me a shot in the training room this morning and came by the house this evening to give me another shot. The cold's all down my bronchial tubes and into the stomach. I can't wait to see Florida.
JANUARY 4
It was 6 degrees below zero this morning, with 15-mile-an-hour winds. The doctor gave me another shot and checked me out for pneumonia. He took his stethoscope and listened to my lungs and said, “I can't hear any rattle. Go ahead and practice.”
I didn't want to practice in the worst way. “I won't go out if you don't go out,” Lionel Aldridge offered. Nitschke was getting treatment for his frostbit toes again, and he said he wouldn't go out, either. Coach Lombardi came into the dressing room, and Willie Davis called, “Hey, Coach, what's the temperature down there, anyway?”
“Down where?” Lombardi said.
“Down in Florida,” said Willie.
“About 78 degrees. Why?”
“Oh, nothing, Coach. I was just wondering.”
We were all wondering what in the world we're doing in Green Bay. When we went outside, we all got ice on our eyelashes, and our eyes wouldn't stop tearing. Chandler wore a surgical mask over his mouth, and everybody wore stocking caps. Half a dozen guys felt they were coming down with the flu. We were supposed to stay outside for an hour, but after forty-five minutes Vince said, “The hell with it. Let's go in.” I was the first one inside, and, instead of going into the dressing room, I went right into the sauna room and thawed out for about five minutes.
We watched some Oakland movies, the Raiders against the New York Jets. We didn't see anything funny about the Raiders— the previous year, before the Super Bowl, we actually laughed out loud at some of the antics of the Kansas City Chiefs—but the Jets did have a few linemen who were kind of humorous to watch. Lombardi delivered two conflicting speeches, which is not unusual for him. First, he said, “Our prestige and the prestige of the National Football League is at stake. You damn well better not let that Mickey Mouse league beat you. It'd be a disgrace, a complete utter disgrace.”
Then, he added, “They've got a helluva good football team. They've got some good football players. You'd better be ready to play or they'll knock your blocks off. We're not going down there for a vacation.”
When Vince finished, I looked at Gregg and Gilly and said, “Can you imagine anyone fool enough to think that going anywhere with this man would be a vacation?”
“Sure ain't my idea of a vacation,” said Forrest.
Gilly, Fuzzy, and I sat together to watch the Oakland movies, and we concentrated on the pass rushes by the defensive tackles and ends. Gilly occasionally will have to handle Ben Davidson, their right defensive end, who's about 6′7″ and 280 pounds and wears a flowing moustache. Ben played here in Green Bay one year—he wasn't too much of a ballplayer then—and I was teasing Gilly, “You're gonna try to block that big fellow and he's gonna knock you right on your can.”
“No, he won't,” Gilly said. “I'm gonna grab him by that big moustache, and I'm just gonna hold on.”
We're supposed to practice indoors tomorrow. The temperature's supposed to hit 25 below zero during the night, and Vince couldn't get me outside with a whip.
JANUARY 5
My lungs are giving me trouble—I'm pretty sure I got them frostbit or something—but I worked out today, in sneakers, in a local high-school gym. We had a pretty good session. Then we saw a few movies, and my tackle, Dan Birdwell, looked like he's going to be a chore. He's quick. I think he's the best pass rusher on the Oakland Team.
I'm driving myself now. Just one more week of concentration, I keep reminding myself. Just one more week to drive that mind and drive that body. One more week and it'll all be over.
As we were emptying out of the locker room today, Fuzzy yelled to everybody, “Gentlemen, next week we begin the big push.”
JANUARY 6
We had today off, and I spent the whole day running around with my brother, helping him shop for a car. He left the hospital less than forty-eight hours after his knee was operated on, and he feels pretty good. Grabo's in good shape after his operation, too. He can start getting ready for next year.
From Miami, I'll be going straight to Los Angeles for the Pro Bowl game January 21. I'll be away from home for at least two and a half weeks, so when I packed tonight, I packed eight suitcases, enough to last for about a year or a year and a half. I spent an hour and a half searching for my blue golf shoes, and I finally had to give up. I could only find my black-and-white golf shoes. I was very disappointed. How can I go to Florida without the proper clothes?
JANUARY 7
We left Green Bay today with great reluctance, of course. The temperature was 7 degrees below zero, and when we landed in Florida the temperature was 75. During the flight, Marie Lombardi, Vince's wife, walked over to me and said, “I've got to kiss you.” And she did. “That was a wonderful thing you said on TV in front of 50 million people,” she said, “and you meant it, didn't you?”
“Of course, I meant it,” I said. “I meant every word of it.”
We're staying at the Galt Ocean Mile Hotel in Fort Lauderdale, a typical Lombardi maneuver. We're about an hour or more from Miami and Miami Beach, far enough to discourage us from going off to sample the night life. And just in case we get bored, I suppose, Coach has scheduled a meeting almost every afternoon and every evening. We had the first one tonight. Vince reminded us that we're not down here to vacation. Nobody seemed very surprised.
Dave Hanner told me that he'd picked out the Galt Ocean Mile Hotel when he was down in Florida on a recruiting mission for Coach Lombardi last February or March. Coach told him to see if he could find a good place for us to stay when we played in the Super Bowl. Vince does believe in planning ahead.
JANUARY 9
Dozens of reporters and photographers covered our workout this morning, and I'm getting more attention than I ever got before. I've always been a good source for certain sportswriters— they've phoned m
e whenever they needed a comment on just about anything—but now, suddenly, everyone's coming up to me. Everyone wants to talk about the block I made on Jethro Pugh, about the remarks I made on television. It seems that a lot more people know my name this week than knew it two weeks ago.
I've learned to live with the obscurity of being an offensive lineman, which is probably why—when I'm honest with myself— I've never had a great deal of regard for myself as a football player. I've always felt that I play a secondary position, and I've never been terribly impressed with the fact that I play professional football. I remember reading John O'Hara's The Last Laugh, about a movie star who had been an SOB all his life and at the end of the book, after he had gone completely downhill, he said something like, “At least I've been a big-time movie star and nobody can take that away from me. Ha, ha, ha, ha.” Big deal. Who cares? It's not as though you were a doctor or a lawyer, not as though you were doing something constructive.
I guess I wouldn't get these occasional feelings of depression if I were to carry the ball or pass the ball or do something important.
JANUARY 10
Vince has started calling Bob Hyland “the Boston strong-head.” Hyland got quoted in the papers the other day saying that he thought it was a smart thing for professional football players to have agents, business representatives. I think he's probably right, but you shouldn't say such things where Lombardi can hear them, or hear about them. Vince has very strong feelings against agents for football players; Hyland's getting the brunt of those feelings now.
