When Pride Still Mattered

by David Maraniss

  From the beginning the relationship of Lombardi and the Wisconsin press was a curious one. During his years in New York, Lombardi was known to the big-city writers as Vin or Vinnie. They sought him out for explications of the Giants offense, for analyses of the opposition, for quotes before and after games. They drank with him in the midtown restaurants and saloons. He was by turns gregarious or earnest, playful or professorial. This was the largest sporting press tribe in the world, hard to control, fiercely competitive—yet Lombardi had few problems. It was only after he arrived in Wisconsin, where the press corps was thin, unassuming and generally compliant, and where reporters deferred to his title, calling him Coach or Coach Lombardi, that the relationship gradually soured. The transformation could be explained by the change in jobs as well as settings. As an assistant coach, Lombardi acted as aides traditionally act, serving as a liaison between the head man and the players and the press. His friendship with many New York journalists was authentic, but his demeanor might also have been shaped by an appreciation of the balance of power. Certainly the writers needed him for tips and insight, but he needed them, too—to promote him as a brilliant assistant who deserved a head coaching position.

  But did he need the Wisconsin press? Perhaps to help fill the seats every Sunday, at least in the wake of the Ronzani-Blackbourn-McLean era, when City Stadium and Milwaukee County Stadium were far from sold out. Lombardi was so eager for publicity about the team then that he persuaded the Milwaukee papers to cover the Packers training camp full-time, something they had not done before. “He said if you wanted to cover the team you had to come up and stay at camp,” recalled Bud Lea, the beat reporter for the Milwaukee Sentinel. “I think he must have done that because he felt he was up in the boonies. Not that he liked us one single bit, but going to Green Bay was said to be like falling off the cliff at the end of the earth—and he needed some coverage to prove he existed and to generate ticket sales.” Even with the Milwaukee writers on hand, it was a slim journalism brigade: Daley and Remmel from the Press-Gazette, AP and UPI, usually the three sports directors from Green Bay television, no radio. The whole group of regulars totaled ten at most.

  Local writers tended to view Lombardi as a mixed blessing. Yes, he brought winning to Green Bay and winning made their jobs glamorous, but something was lost in the bargain. Life had been relaxed before, and now, as Bud Lea said, “this guy came in and suddenly all the rules were changed. Actually, there were no rules under Scooter.” In the old days Art Daley could amble into the office and get the coach to say whatever was needed. Lombardi put up barriers, verbal when not physical. Once Daley was in Lombardi’s office “fishing for a story” and getting terse non-answers. “Damn it,” he finally blurted out in frustration. “If I stay here long enough I’ll get a story out of you.” Lombardi promptly rose from his chair and left the room and disappeared. When the coach deigned to answer questions, it was rarely an easygoing process. Chuck Johnson of the Milwaukee Journal wrote many of the main Packers stories and also edited the sports section. Every Tuesday morning after a game, while sitting in the slot laying out the afternoon paper, he was allowed to call Lombardi at nine o’clock sharp for a follow-up story. If he phoned a few minutes late, Lombardi might not take the call. Johnson wrote out his questions in advance, and he knew that he had to read fast and could not pause to collect his thoughts or Lombardi would say, “That’s enough, gotta go,” and hang up on him.

  Terry Bledsoe was the Journal’s cub reporter on the Packers in 1962, assigned to write postgame locker room features. He would never forget the first time he was assigned to get some quotes from the coach. “I walk into the shower room and here’s this little short, fat guy toweling himself off, and he sees me and snarls, ‘Who the hell are you?’ He answered a few questions, but it was clear I was on borrowed time, so I got the hell out of there.” Sometimes subjects who appear surly to writers soften up around photographers. Not this coach. When word spread that Lombardi had received a congratulatory telegram from President Kennedy after the title win, the Press-Gazette dispatched photographer Russ Kriwanek to shoot a picture of him sitting at his desk holding the prized memento. “He was gruff as hell when I got there,” Kriwanek said later. “He kept saying, ‘Let’s get this over with!’ Then, just when I took the picture, he broke into a beautiful smile. And it was a beautiful picture.”

  He was the Pope and he made the local media genuflect. The sports directors at the three television stations in Green Bay were allowed to travel to away games on the team charter, but they had to ask the coach individually every week whether there was room. “You can’t imagine how difficult and demeaning it was to go to his office, wait until he would see you and humbly ask, ‘Is there any room?’ Sometimes he would drag it out and say, ‘I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see later in the week,’ ” recalled Jim Irwin, who later became the radio voice of the Packers. Al Sampson, as the producer of Lombardi’s weekly television show, had the strongest connection to the coach, but even he waited to find a seat in the back of the plane. On occasion during flights home he was invited up to first class, where they served liquor instead of beer, but this was no bargain. The invitation would come from Marie Lombardi, who wanted to change seats with Sampson because her husband was in a particularly surly mood.

  When entertaining the press, Lombardi often took on the role of benevolent despot. He hosted an annual off-season party for the media at Oneida Golf and Riding, but according to secretary Ruth McKloskey, after he stood for a few minutes of pleasantries with his guests, she might find him hiding off in a far corner playing gin with his country club cronies. At gatherings of the Five O’Clock Club, whether in the lounge at St. Norbert during training camp or in the coach’s hotel suite for road games once the season began, reporters lived by Lombardi’s rules. Drinks started at five and stopped exactly at six, no lingering. “At five of six, when you saw the hands on the clock getting around to there, you were preparing to depart,” said Remmel. While sipping scotch and water, reading the waiver wires that his personnel man brought in, or the newspaper, or even occasionally watching cartoons on television, Lombardi would lead an off-the-record discussion. He controlled the topic, whether football, politics or the latest corny jokes. “He was friendly in that atmosphere,” according to Jim Irwin. “But you were always wary of saying the wrong thing. I did a lot more listening than talking.”

  Bud Lea came to think of the Five O’Clock Club not just as a jocular gathering of sportsmen, but as another way for Lombardi to control his domain. “It was almost like checking in,” Lea said decades later. “You had to go to that damn thing whether you wanted to or not. What power he had then! The power was about as one-sided as anything I’ve seen in my reporting life.” Now and then on the road, Lombardi would announce that everyone was going to dinner after the Five O’Clock Club. Reporters who had made separate plans rearranged them. Lombardi chose the restaurant, usually Italian, and sometimes ordered the meals all around as well. Heinz watched with bemusement once as Lombardi raved about the linguine with clam sauce, and commanded everyone in his party to get it—which they did—and then ordered antipasto for himself.

  There was a method to Lombardi’s often brusque or domineering approach to reporters. He cut them off or tried to control them in part because he feared that rather than simply being immaterial to his mission, they could harm him by providing valuable material to the opposition. In a locker room where the walls were plastered with aphorisms on winning and effort, one of the largest signs instructed the players on their bond of silence. It read:

  What You See Here

  What You Say Here

  What You Hear Here

  Let It Stay Here

  When You Leave Here

  Al Del Greco, a writer for the Bergen Record who had followed Lombardi’s career since his days in Englewood, New Jersey, said little had changed over the years in that respect: “He just can’t lay it on the line to writers because he thinks giving out informati
on is helpful to the enemy.” What sorts of information? Injuries, first and foremost. Lombardi was obsessed with keeping news on the condition of his key players away from the press and the opposition—and he could do it rather successfully before the era of twenty-four-hour radio sports shows and strict league requirements on reporting injuries. Not only did he pressure reporters not to write about certain injuries, but he also tried when possible to keep the news from them in the first place.

  Robert Strom, then an X-ray technician at St. Vincent Hospital on Van Buren Street, later related a story revealing the lengths to which Lombardi went in that regard. Strom once got a call from Dr. James Nellen, one of the two team physicians, after a home game. “Our X-ray department had a fire door in the back that you could get out, but it was not supposed to be an entrance,” Strom recalled. “Nellen called and said, ‘Bob, meet us at the back door in exactly thirty minutes. Be there!’ Thirty minutes later a car pulls up by the back door. Nellen, Vince Lombardi and Bart Starr get out. Bart had an injured finger. Vince wanted to hide all his injuries from the media and the league. Nellen said to me, ‘This is not to be recorded.’ Every patient had to have a number and a file. ‘No number, Bob,’ he said. So I didn’t record it in the book. I took the picture. They waited for it to be developed. And before anyone else saw it, Dr. Nellen took it. Lombardi came along to make sure none of the media saw it. It was a cloak-and-dagger thing. When they left, Nellen said, ‘If anyone calls and asks, any Packers here? You know what the answer is.’ ”

  Journalists sometimes mistakenly assumed that Lombardi was oblivious, so preoccupied with coaching that he had no idea who they were or what they wrote. In fact, he read almost everything, and paid more attention to them than he let on. With the flinty eyes of a censor, he edited every press release and game program that his publicity department published. He combed the papers looking for stories that might distract his players from the mission of winning the next game. He studied the power and influence of various sportswriters. When he brought his West Point ally Ockie Krueger to Wisconsin to run the Milwaukee ticket office, he gave him one bit of advice: “The only man you’ve got to get along with in Milwaukee is Ollie Kuechle.” Krueger made a point of befriending Kuechle, the lead columnist of the Milwaukee Journal. Bud Lea of the Sentinel grew close to Krueger, too, but never felt the same about Lombardi. “Honest to God, I wanted to get along with the guy,” Lea said later. “It was a great opportunity. He was a great leader. But I never felt at ease with him.” Once, after having a few drinks at the Five O’Clock Club on the road and screwing up his nerve, Lea confronted Lombardi—almost.

  “I’ll take this stuff, but only one thing,” Lea said.

  “What’s that?” Lombardi asked.

  “Don’t lose!”

  “Mister,” said Lombardi, “I don’t intend to.”

  HE VERY NEARLY kept his word in 1962. The Packers were so talented and prepared in Lombardi’s fourth year that they barely needed the multiple skills of their left halfback. Paul Hornung was out of the service. “HORNUNG ARRIVES IN PACKERS CAMP!” shouted the headline in the Chicago Tribune when he joined his teammates on July 24 to prepare for the College All-Star Game, a reflection of how big he had become. The Golden Boy returned to the Packers with a new glow, having snubbed a $250,000 offer to switch leagues and play for the New York Jets of the American Football League. Players were worth more than they were getting, Hornung said. But a quarter-million dollars? “Nobody is worth that much.” Besides, leaving the Packers for the Jets would be like “leaving the New York Yankees for the Louisville Colonels.” Hornung stayed, but in the fifth game he was slowed by a knee injury that sidelined him for several games and forced him to relinquish his kicking duties for the rest of the year. Tom Moore, Elijah Pitts and the rookie Earl Gros filled in nicely when needed in the backfield, and Jerry Kramer, the strapping offensive guard, took over the placekicking, booting thirty-eight extra points and nine field goals in eleven attempts. Bart Starr, also ailing, had an average year, throwing nearly as many interceptions (nine) as touchdown passes (twelve). Most of the offensive load was carried by Jim Taylor, who had been improving every season and now had the best year of his career, pounding for 1,474 yards and nineteen touchdowns, surpassing the totals that year of the immortal Jim Brown.

  The Packers amassed more than thirty points eight times that season, outscoring their opponents by a total of 415 to 148 and compiling the highest point spread of the postwar era—19.1 points more than their opponents per game. It was their defense that made them nearly invincible. Ray Nitschke had tamed his self-destructive off-the-field behavior and channeled his aggression into playing a ferocious middle linebacker on Sunday afternoons. He had always seemed like an angry man, especially when he had drunk too much, when even his teammates were afraid of him. Nitschke had grown up virtually parentless on the West Side of Chicago. His father had died when Ray was three, his mother when he was thirteen. He lived with an older brother and roamed the streets feeling that the world had been unfair to him and that he wanted to even the score. “I took it out on everybody else,” he said later. “A day didn’t go by that I didn’t belt some other kid in the neighborhood. I was like that right through high school and college and even after I joined the Packers. Didn’t take anything from anybody.” Now he was married, and calming down, six days a week at least. In front of Nitschke, Willie Davis and Henry Jordan were having dominating years on the front line. And behind him, Herb Adderley at cornerback and Willie Wood at safety lifted the play at those key positions to unparalleled heights, combining to stifle the opposition’s passing game every week. Wood intercepted nine passes and Adderley seven, returning them an average 18.8 yards. “We were a great, great team in 1962,” Wood said later. “We were well oiled. We had talent everyplace. Every guy knew what he was supposed to be doing. We were veterans then. And I thought we were awesome.”

  Bill Heinz had circled the date back when he left training camp in early August. He would return to Wisconsin for the September 30 game against the Chicago Bears. It was the third game of the regular season. Green Bay by then had swept through six exhibition games and the opening two against Minnesota and St. Louis without a blemish. Chicago had started on the coast with wins over San Francisco and Los Angeles. Packers versus Bears seemed to offer everything Heinz needed to lend character and depth to his progressive narrative: the longest-running rivalry in the league, Halas and Lombardi, Papa Bear and the Pope. Casares and Taylor, Bill George and and Nitschke, Doug Atkins and Willie Davis, J. C. Caroline Adderley. It sounded dramatic in theory, but it did not turn out that way. Taylor scored three touchdowns, Starr, Ron Kramer and Pitts one apiece, and Adderley returned an interception for another score. The Packers were nearly perfect, which was fine, but the game was utterly without suspense—a 49 to 0 shutout would not do for Heinz’s purposes. Heinz knew he had to stay for at least another week. The Detroit Lions were coming to Green Bay next. “I’m hoping they win this one and it’s a good game,” Heinz said later. “I can’t stay there forever waiting for a game I can use.”

  He got the game of a writer’s dream, or at least the ending. The Packers are trailing 7 to 6 with less than two minutes remaining. The game has been draining, grudging, alternately brutal and sloppy. The same offense that humbled the Bears cannot cross the goal line, scoring only on Hornung field goals. The Lions have the ball near midfield. Terry Bledsoe of the Milwaukee Journal is on the Packers sidelines, plotting in his head the lead to a story about the team’s first loss. There is no way for the Packers to win, he is thinking. Detroit is in full control. And then … Milt Plum, the Lions quarterback, decides to throw a pass, down and out to the flanker. But the receiver slips. “I see the ball pass his outstretched hands and then I hear the thop-sound it makes as it hits Herb Adderley’s hands, and he’s got it,” Lombardi recalled later. “He’s got it, and he’s racing right by me now, down our sideline.” Adderley glides all the way down to the Lions eighteen. After two running
plays, Lombardi calls for a field goal on third down, and Hornung boots the three points that win the game, 9 to 7.

  The Lions leave the field in disarray: big Alex Karras, the defensive tackle, throws his helmet in disgust in the direction of his errant quarterback, Plum. Lombardi chokes up in the dressing room as his troops chant “Herb! Herb!” Bledsoe is amazed by what he has witnessed. He calls it an “absolutely illogical result” brought on by only one thing: “I attribute it to Lombardi’s will.” And Heinz has his book. He is a pro and knows how it works. “Sometimes,” he says, “it just drops in like that.”

  After a final day of wrap-up reporting, Heinz bade farewell to Green Bay and returned home to Stamford to begin writing the Lombardi book. He spent several days organizing his notes, a process of remarkable precision and simplicity. All of his material was contained in six of his little ten-cent memo books. They were filled in pencil from top line to bottom, both sides of the paper, from the first page to the last, with legible and orderly notes. On the right margin of every page, he drew a bracket down from the top line of a specific subject to its last line, and on the outside of the line wrote in vertical letters a simple subject heading. When he finished this task for all six books, he created a master index, listing all the subjects and the notebooks in which they appeared. No computer of later generations could be more efficient than W. C. Heinz and his sixty cents’ worth of indexed notes.

  The Packers and Heinz worked on nearly parallel schedules through the rest of the season. They practiced at nine. He began writing at nine. They broke for lunch and worked into the afternoon. He did the same. They were led by Lombardi. So was he. In fact, for the purposes of the book he had become Lombardi. In the end, after all, this was Lombardi’s book, written in the first person. The first word on the first page would be “I,” meaning Lombardi. For the book to work, he had to capture how Lombardi thought, talked and felt. Heinz had the proper disposition for the task. He was not as obsessed or temperamental as his subject, but he got along with Lombardi and thought he understood the coach and appreciated his greatness, despite the apparent flaws. “The thing that hit me with Lombardi and that we agreed on right away is that if you are gifted you have a moral responsibility to fulfill that gift as best you can,” Heinz reflected later. “I always believed it. And Lombardi believed it all the way.” The book would be straightforward narrative, not a philosophical treatise, yet driven by that single overarching idea: the moral imperative of paying the price to be great.