When Pride Still Mattered

by David Maraniss

  Chuck Lane was heading out from the locker room to check the field when he met a group of assistants coming the other way. They had a message for the coach, an unwelcome one, the sort of news they would rather have Lane tell him. “Tell Lombardi that his field is frozen,” one said. Tell Lombardi that his field was frozen? That, Lane thought, would be like “telling him that his wife had been unfaithful or that his dog couldn’t hunt.” But that was his job, so he turned around and found Lombardi, who was leaving the locker room to check the field himself when Lane intercepted him. Lombardi seemed crestfallen, then angry and disbelieving. “What the hell are you talking about?” he thundered.

  The field could not be frozen. The previous spring, in his role as general manager, Lombardi had paid $80,000 for a gigantic electric blanket devised by General Electric. He had bought it from George S. Halas, Papa Bear’s nephew, who was the central district sales representative for GE’s wiring services department. The fact that the Bears did not have an electric blanket themselves, even though young Halas was also a Bears scout, did not make Lombardi suspicious; it just showed that he was less tight with his team’s money than old George. Lombardi loved modern inventions, and this electric blanket seemed to mean more to him than any play he had ever devised. Only the day before, he had taken a group of writers on a science field trip of sorts, first giving them a lecture on the underground magic, telling them how electric coils were laid in a grid the length of the turf, six inches below the surface and a foot apart, with another six inches of pea gravel below the coils and a drain below that. Then he led them back to a tiny control room off the tunnel below the stands.

  Bud Lea of the Milwaukee Sentinel was in the group. “He goes in that little room and all these lights are blinking, and he’s like a mad scientist in there, showing these writers from New York and Dallas how it all works,” Lea recalled. “All these bulbs are going on and off, and I don’t think Lombardi understood one thing about it, but, by God, he thought it was working.”

  It seemed to be working on Saturday when the grounds crew pulled the tarp off the field to let the Cowboys practice. Puffs of steam came out like a low rolling fog. The ground was cool but not cold, the turf soft but not soggy. Lombardi had been so satisfied then that he yelled over to the project engineer and gave him the okay sign with his thumb and forefinger. Even Tom Landry, the skeptical Dallas coach, who hated to play in Green Bay, had deemed the field “excellent” though a little damp. No dampness now. Parts of the field were frozen “as hard as a rock,” reported Jim Tunney, the alternate referee. It seemed that the coil system had malfunctioned. Heat might rise here and there and thaw parts of the field, drawing out moisture, but then the turf would quickly freeze again. George S. Halas insisted afterwards that there was nothing wrong with the system, but the controls had been mishandled. In any case, those who paced the sidelines that day were struck by the juxtaposition of a wide patch of frozen turf next to a sign warning: THIS FIELD IS ELECTRIFIED.

  In the locker room, Willie Wood took off his street clothes slowly, reluctantly, still convinced that the game would be canceled. “Man, it’s too damn cold,” he said to his teammates. “They ain’t going to play in this shit.” The room was full of smoke, cigarettes burning from the built-in ashtrays on almost every locker. Dad Braisher passed out long underwear to everybody, even Lombardi. Coach said it was okay to wear it today, but he didn’t want them stuffing too much underneath the uniforms; he had a thing about players feeling loose and easy. Lee Roy Caffey and Tom Brown wanted to wear gloves, but Lombardi vetoed that request. Linemen could wear them, but no gloves for anyone who handled the ball. Dave Robinson walked over to the equipment man as soon as Lombardi left the room. “Give me a pair of those brown gloves and he’ll never know the difference. I’m the only linebacker with brown hands anyway.” Braisher agreed to the conspiracy, and Robinson wore gloves the rest of the day.

  When the players took the field for warmups, most of them kept their hands tucked inside their pants. Every deep breath was an arrow shooting into their lungs. Donny Anderson, a Texan, had never played in weather like this before, but he had no choice because Elijah Pitts, the other halfback, was out for the year. Pitts had been enjoying his best season until the game in Baltimore, when he suffered a severe ankle injury. Jim Grabowski had been hurt during that same game when Bobby Boyd smacked him in the right knee. Grabo was making his way back and thought he might play against the Cowboys; the knee had felt good all week in practice. Then, during warmups, he went out on a pass pattern, a little fullback hook, and he planted his right foot and felt something pop, and his comeback was over before it started. Chuck Mercein would get most of the action at fullback.

  Of all the major characters in this game, Mercein was the unlikeliest. The former Yale star had begun the year feeling “humiliated, embarrassed” when Allie Sherman, coach of the New York Giants, had cut him from his squad. He practiced several weeks with the semipro Westchester Bulls, then was recalled by the Giants and cut again. After a tryout in Washington, Redskins coach Otto Graham agreed to sign him, and Mercein returned to Scarsdale and told his wife to start packing for Washington. Then, as they were loading the car that Sunday night, Giants owner Wellington Mara called. “Listen, Chuck, if you haven’t signed yet, I’ve been on the phone with Vince Lombardi and he inquired about your availability,” Mara said. Mara and Lombardi talked every Sunday night during the season; they’d been doing it for seven years. “I’ve recommended you to Lombardi, Chuck. Stay by the phone.”

  A few seconds later Lombardi rang him. “Chuck, I understand you’re available,” Lombardi said, according to Mercein’s recollection. “I want you to come out here and play for me. I don’t want you to play for the Redskins. We’re going to the Super Bowl, Chuck. You’re going to help us get the world championship. You’re going to be part of this team. We need you. We want you. If you want to be part of a championship, come out here and play for us.” That was it. “Absolutely, instinctively and intuitively I knew this was where I was going to play,” Mercein recounted. “I said, ‘Yes, sir. I’ll be on the next flight.’ I hung up the phone and turned to my wife and said, ‘Unpack the car.’ She said, ‘What?’ ‘Yeah, I’m going to the Packers.’ It was great. I was thrilled. Playing for the great Vince Lombardi!” He took the flight of the Blue Goose to Green Bay that Monday, and personnel man Pat Peppler picked him up at the airport. And now, with Grabowski hurting again, here he was starting in the NFL Championship Game.

  When the team returned to the locker room after warmups, the reality finally hit Willie Wood. “Well, it looks like we are going to play this game,” he said to Bob Jeter. Then came another thought. If we’re gonna play, we gotta make sure we’re gonna win. We don’t want to come out in these kinds of conditions and lose a damn ball game. Lombardi was of a similar mind, of course. He never wanted to lose any game, but especially not a game to Landry and the Cowboys. He had a thing about the Cowboys, according to Willie Davis. “Even in preseason he didn’t want Dallas to beat us.” Lombardi had always stayed one step ahead of his old Giants colleague and rival. He became a head coach in 1959, Landry in 1960. He turned a losing team around in one year, it took Landry six years before he could get his expansion Cowboys to a winning record. But now the Cowboys were being cited as the team of the future, with the flex and the Doomsday Defense and multiple offense, their flashy uniforms and speedy receivers.

  In his heart of hearts, Max McGee thought Dallas had the better team. “Not that they could beat us,” McGee said. “We had their number. Lombardi had the hex on Landry.”

  GARY KNAFELC, the old tight end, was in the press box that day. His playing career done, he could not stay away and signed on as Lambeau Field’s public address announcer. Looking out from his perspective atop the stadium, he was overwhelmed by the panorama. The players were the story, perhaps, and as the game went along they would rivet his and everyone else’s attention, but at first it was hard to take one’s eyes off the crowd in the
stands. “There was this incredible haze of breath, tens of thousands of puffs coming out. Like seeing big buffaloes in an enormous herd on the winter plains. It was prehistoric.”

  To many fans, attending this game was a test of their resourcefulness. Carol Schmidt and her husband, who worked in the oil business, sat in Section 24 near the twenty-yard line, where they snuggled inside a makeshift double sleeping bag made from the heavy mill felt used at the local paper mills. To warm their feet they turned a three-pound coffee can upside down, punched holes in the top and placed a large candle inside on a pie plate. Bob Kaminsky arrived from Two Rivers with his wife’s twin brothers and took his seat in the end zone, oblivious of the weather. “This is what I wore,” he reported. “Longjohns. Work shoes. Over the work shoes I put those heavy gray woolen socks that came over the knees. Pair of galoshes over that. Flannel pajamas over the longjohns. Work overalls. A T-shirt. Flannel shirt. Insulated sweatsuit. Heavy parka. Face mask with holes for mouth and eyes. Wool tassel cap. And then I climbed into a sleeping bag. I had foam on the ground and seat for my feet and butt. I was not cold.”

  Lombardi’s golfing pal Jack Koeppler and his son wore deer hunting outfits (red and black in that era, not yet the glaring orange). Two layers warmed their hands, first deer hunting gloves, then huge mittens. At their seats near the forty-yard line they zipped two sleeping bags together and slipped inside for the extra warmth generated by two bodies. Jerry Van, owner of the Downtowner Motel, where Hornung and McGee once lived, wore “two of everything.” He cut up several thick cardboard boxes into twelve-inch squares and put three layers on the concrete floor to keep his feet warm. Lois Bourguignon, the wife of Packers executive board member Dick Bourguignon, wore a plastic garment bag under her winter coat to keep the heat in. Red Cochran, the former assistant coach who had quit the year before, watched the title game in the stands with his six-year-old son, both wearing bulky snowmobile suits. Teenager Gary Van Ness, who had come to the stadium planning to sneak in, was given a ticket near midfield by a doctor who had decided to leave, and found himself amid a group of rich folks; he had never before seen so many fur coats.

  Fur coats? They were plentiful at Lambeau Field, even in arctic weather. The games were the social events of the year in Green Bay. Many women bought their fall and winter wardrobes with Sunday football games in mind and wore different outfits to every game. Mary Turek, Lombardi’s dentist’s wife, sat in prestigious Section 20, just above the players’ wives, in her heavy fur coat with fur-lined stadium boots that extended over her calves. Around her she saw women in less practical attire, many of them exposing their legs to the weather in nylons and high heels. They tended not to last long. Tom Olejniczak, the team president’s son, took a date to the game who left for the women’s room midway through the first quarter and didn’t come back until the game was over. Lorraine Keck, Lombardi’s assistant secretary, got stuck in a restroom for more than a quarter, the door blocked by paramedics treating a girl who had passed out. Throughout the game bathrooms and passageways underneath the stands were jammed with people trying to get warm. When Red Cochran took his young son to the men’s room, they got stuck in the human flow. It “was so mobbed,” he said, “you had to go with the crowd, wherever it took you.”

  The temperature on the field as kickoff approached was thirteen below, with an estimated wind chill of minus forty-six. The leather ball felt heavy and airless. The field had already been rendered more dangerous from the warmups. Players said it was as if someone had taken a stucco wall and laid it on the ground. Clumps of mud had coagulated and stuck to the rock-hard ground. Blowers on both sides of the field shot warm air in the direction of the benches, but you had to be right next to one to feel it. Some players huddled in makeshift dugouts constructed from wood and canvas, like duck blinds. Lombardi paced the sidelines in his long winter coat and black fuzzy hat with muffs. No matter how cold the Packers felt, one look across to the other side made them feel superior. The Cowboys, said Chuck Mercein, “looked like earthmen on Mars. The outfits they wore. Most of them had hooded sweatshirts on underneath their helmets, which looked silly as hell. And a kind of scarf thing around their faces with their eyes cut out. They looked like monsters in a grade B movie.”

  For the first quarter and most of the second, the Cowboys played like anything but monsters. Their main receiving threat, Bob Hayes, known as the world’s fastest human, also seemed to be the world’s coldest, and unwittingly gave away every offensive play. If it was a run, he tucked his frigid hands into his pants as he lined up; if Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith called a pass play, Hayes pulled out his hands. “You can’t catch a pass with your hands in your pants,” said Tom Brown, the Packers strong safety. “We played eleven guys against ten whenever he did that. He was just stone cold.”

  The first time the Packers got the ball, Bart Starr led them on an eighty-two-yard drive that culminated in a touchdown pass to Boyd Dowler from eight yards out. In the second quarter he hit Dowler for another touchdown, this one of forty-three yards, and the score was 14 to 0. If a blowout seemed to be in progress, lingering in the back of everyone’s mind was the memory of the previous year in Dallas, when the Packers had also bolted to a quick two-touchdown lead, then barely hung on to win the championship game on Tom Brown’s last-second interception in the end zone. Could Dallas come back again? The weather seemed to argue no; conventional wisdom dictated that these Cowboys just didn’t know how to play in subzero weather.

  Four minutes left in the half. Green Bay holds the ball on its own twenty-six, first down. Starr drops back to pass. There is no protection, the entire Doomsday front line is roaring after him; he drops farther, turns away from Bob Lilly, retreating nineteen yards the wrong way, back to the seven, where Willie Townes hits him. Starr’s hands are nearly numb, and he fumbles and George Andrie picks it up and plows into the end zone as he is being tackled by Forrest Gregg and Jerry Kramer—and suddenly a seemingly secure lead is cut in half. Two minutes later Willie Wood drops back to receive a Dallas punt. Wood has the surest hands in the league. In eight seasons as a return man, he has fumbled only once, during a rainstorm in San Francisco, and that time he recovered his own fumble. Now he is standing near his own twenty, looking up, and Danny Villanueva’s punt is fading on him. Wood is thinking too much: about how cold his hands are, about field position. Should he try to run it back or call for a fair catch? He puts his hand up, fair catch, and the ball fades away and when it hits his hands he can’t really feel it. Fumble—Frank Clarke recovers for Dallas. Four plays later the Cowboys get a field goal, and they race for the warmth of the locker room at halftime back in the game, trailing 14 to 10.

  The Packers are supposed to be winter’s team, yet ten points can be attributed to the weather and all ten are for Dallas.

  LOMBARDI HAD LITTLE to say at halftime. His assistant coaches did most of the talking. Ray Wietecha, the offensive line coach, was distraught over the way Dallas’s front line was breaking in on Starr. Another assistant pointed out to Starr that Dallas’s linebackers were dropping straight back on pass plays, so deep that he should be able to complete short passes to the backs—something to keep in mind. But mostly it was quiet, the urgency on getting warm, having a smoke, a Coke, a section of orange.

  Paul Hornung was in the locker room, another of Lombardi’s talismans. The coach had missed him all year, the good and the bad. He had missed having Paul to yell at, and he had missed having Paul to give the ball to in the clutch. On Friday, when Hornung entered the room during a press conference, Lombardi stopped in midsentence and put his arm around the Golden Boy, and the press corps watched the man who at times tried to bully them turn soft and sentimental. “Gentlemen,” he had said. “This man is like a son to me.” Perhaps a bit too much like a son, as far as Hornung was concerned. He had hoped to watch the title game from the press box, in relative warmth and comfort, but Lombardi insisted that he stand near him on the sidelines. Hornung and his buddy Max McGee, still in uniform, p
laying his last game in Green Bay, tried to position themselves in front of the blowers, but Lombardi kept looking around for them and calling them back to his side. Hornung was scheduled to be on national television at halftime, talking to Pat Summerall here in the locker room for CBS, but by then he was so cold that his mouth couldn’t move and Summerall decided against the interview.

  The wives of Dick Schaap and Jerry Kramer left at halftime and listened to the rest of the game on the radio. Schaap stayed in the press box, still uncertain how the final chapter of his book with Kramer would end. All season long Kramer had been talking into a tape recorder, providing daily material for the sportswriter to mold into a diary-style memoir. To this point, the story looked rich. Kramer had a poet’s eye for detail and was a natural storyteller, making his rough draft more in need of cutting than reshaping. For every five minutes of Kramer on tape, it seemed, four minutes were usable. Schaap had suspected that might be the case. When a publisher had first asked him if he could recommend a football player to keep a diary the way Jim Brosnan had for baseball, Schaap had answered immediately, “Sure, Jerry Kramer.” He barely knew Kramer at the time, but was basing his answer largely on an unforgettable first impression. It was at training camp in 1962, when Schaap was in West De Pere reporting a story on Jim Taylor. Kramer was then Taylor’s roommate, and when Schaap entered their dorm room he saw Taylor on one bed sleeping and Kramer on the other reading Wallace Stevens poetry aloud to himself.