Less than two years earlier, the Packers had made Hornung the first overall pick in the 1957 draft, thinking he would become their biggest star. During his college career at Notre Dame, he had been a triple threat on offense, running, catching, and passing the ball (as well as kicking it) and had won the Heisman Trophy as a senior. The Packers had been so excited about his potential as a quarterback that they traded Tobin Rote, their longtime starter, who had passed for more than eleven thousand yards, and signed Hornung to a three-year contract that included a $2,500 signing bonus and a $17,500 annual salary, more than many veterans earned.
But once Hornung was in uniform, the Packers realized he didn't have a strong enough passing arm to be an NFL quarterback, and also lacked the speed to be a running back or receiver. He was a player without a position.
Blond and handsome, he had been nicknamed the Golden Boy at Notre Dame because he seemed to have everything going for him. He played football with swashbuckling style and a nose for the end zone. Hollywood producers liked his looks and gave him cameo roles. He knew more beautiful women than any one man deserved to know; his female fan mail piled so high he paid a classmate to handle it.
But the Golden Boy had become tarnished. Lisle Blackbourn, the Packers' coach before Scooter, had tried him at quarterback and fullback without success. It was believed that Hornung cared more about what he did off the field. When the Packers played the Rams in Los Angeles in 1957, an attractive young woman approached him on the bench and asked to have her picture taken with him —during the game! Her request was audacious, but Hornung stood and posed with her, a move some teammates and fans interpreted as clear evidence of his priorities.
Most of his teammates liked him in spite of it all. Although they derisively called him Heisman or Golden Dome or, worst of all, Goat, because he resembled one, being thick and strong from the waist down but narrow up top, they knew Hornung could take a joke. He was a man's man, hard not to like as he flaunted rules with a wisecrack and twinkling eyes. His best friend, McGee, was a kindred spirit; they shared an apartment, girls, and booze, and were regulars at bars and clubs all over Green Bay, where they were widely known as good-time guys who weren't too serious about football.
In truth, Hornung desperately wanted to play—he was embarrassed to stand on the sideline. But Scooter, like Blackbourn, didn't know what to do with him.
Discouraged, Hornung had started to contemplate giving up football. With his looks and personality, he could go to Hollywood and star in movies, or sell real estate back home in Louisville, Kentucky, where he would always be a hero. He craved more excitement. The guys playing for the Browns, Giants, and Lions had it so much better; they won games, played for championships, and still had a good time. In Green Bay, playing for the Packers, Hornung had a good time, but the team was unorganized, the environment unprofessional, the experience disappointing.
Feeling bored leading up to this rematch with the Colts, he mentioned to Howton and McGee one day that they should take the nineteen points that bookies were offering for a bet on the Packers. Having grown up in a city where horse racing was popular and the Kentucky Derby was held every year, Hornung enjoyed gambling and followed the football betting lines coming out of Las Vegas. Nineteen points? The game was bound to be closer than that, right?
The NFL strictly forbade players from betting on games, fearing a point-shaving scandal, but Hornung, knowing he wouldn't be playing in the matchup against the Colts, figured he could make his Sunday afternoon more exciting if he had money on the line. He told Howton and McGee he could get a bet down. They agreed to take part in the wager.
But Hornung tried without luck to contact his bookmaker connection as the Packers completed the week's practice and flew to Baltimore. By Sunday morning, it was too late. Hornung shook his head as the team bus rolled toward Baltimore, depressed about not playing and disappointed about the easy money he believed he had lost.
A chilly rain fell as the bus approached Memorial Stadium. The streets around it were filled two hours before kickoff, the fans seemingly unconcerned about the weather. The throng was so thick that policemen, arms waving and whistles blowing, had to clear a path for the bus to reach the players' entrance.
Baltimore, a working-class city that had been without major-league sports until recently, was jazzed up about its winning team. The Colts' offense shredded opposing defenses with playmakers such as Unitas, receiver Raymond Berry, halfback Lenny Moore, and fullback Alan Ameche, and the Colt defensive included All-Pros such as end Gino Marchetti and tackle Art Donovan. And their home crowd was intimidating. The stadium would be packed with raucous fans and a white pony named Dixie that had become a celebrity for crossing the field after Colt touchdowns. A sportswriter would soon call Baltimore's crowd "the world's largest outdoor insane asylum."
The Packers found their cramped locker room, put on white jerseys, gold pants, and gold helmets, and jogged out for warm-ups, eliciting boos. The wet afternoon was so dank the stadium lights were on, setting an eerie tone. Parilli, who would start at quarterback, zipped passes to Howton. Ringo and the other linemen got down in their three-point stances and burst forward, working their muscles. Hornung practiced field goals. The Colts soon joined them, coming onto the field as the Baltimore Colts Marching Band played, and the fans stood and cheered for the opening kick, which sailed into the mist and lights and through the back of the end zone—first down Packers, at their 20-yard line.
The Packers' offensive starters jogged onto the field and formed a huddle. Other than Ringo and Howton, it was a nondescript group. Parilli, a former first-round draft pick, had accomplished little in the NFL. Young linemen Jerry Kramer and Forrest Gregg were raw unknowns. Of the veteran regulars—tackle Oliver Spencer, guard Hank Bullough, halfback Don McIlhenny, and fullback Howie Ferguson—only Ferguson had made it to the Pro Bowl, the NFL's end-of-year all-star game.
As those players formed a huddle, Bart Starr, Jim Taylor, and Hornung watched from the sideline, relegated to the second team.
Parilli called the first play, a run by Ferguson off right tackle. The Packers broke their huddle and trotted to the line of scrimmage, where the Colt defense waited. The crowd roared in anticipation. Pro football, since its inception just after World War I, had always been among the roughest of sports, an organi zed brawl between rugged athletes who relished violence, many having experienced real combat in World War II or Korea. They kicked, scratched, and clubbed each other, gouged eyes, knocked out teeth, and tackled around the neck.
But the game had evolved far beyond its simplistic roots, with offenses and defenses now employing sophisticated strategies and multiple alignments. Toughness remained the quality a player needed most, but speed was almost as important. The Los Angeles Rams were so desperate for it that after this season they would trade nine players for Ollie Matson, a big-play back with the speed to win games by himself.
The Packers had their share of tough guys but little speed. Ferguson picked up three yards on first down, and then McIlhenny, running left, gained one. On third down, Scooter put in veteran Al Carmichael to run a deep pass route. Carmichael broke open twenty yards upfield and Parilli hit him with a perfect toss, but Carmichael dropped the ball. McGee, who doubled as the punter, booted the ball away on fourth down.
The Packers' defensive starters met in a huddle and shouted at each other to play hard. The core of the group—Bettis and Forrester, linemen Dave Hanner and Nate Borden, and backs Dillon, Hank Gremminger, and John Symank—had played together for several years with mixed results. The right side of the line was porous (crusty end Len Ford had played a decade, mostly in Cleveland, and was ready to retire) and the secondary was struggling. The Packers had yielded an average of thirty points a game so far in 1958. Deep down, the players knew this could be a long afternoon.
They started well, making stops on the Colts' first two possessions. But Parilli, looking lost, threw two interceptions, and the Colts turned the second opportunity into a score. When
Baltimore's Lenny Moore crossed the goal line with the game's first touchdown, the fans cheered, a cannon situated behind the end zone boomed, and Dixie, the white horse, sprinted across the field, ridden by a smiling teenage girl wearing a frilly cowboy outfit and a white hat, tied under her chin by a string.
Bettis recovered a fumble at midfield early in the second quarter, but Parilli, with Marchetti and Donovan harrying him, missed receivers on first and second downs before finally registering his first completion, a six-yard pass to McIlhenny. Scooter sent in Hornung for a fifty-yard field goal attempt. The kick fell short.
Then the Colts began to roll. Unitas hit Moore with a pass in the left flat, and Moore, exhibiting the speed the Packers lacked, darted between defenders and raced down the sideline for sixty-three yards to the Green Bay 6. Ameche scored on the next play, and Dixie set off across the field once again as the cannon boomed. Following the kickoff, Parilli threw deep but was intercepted, and after two Packer penalties moved the ball near the goal line, Unitas hit a wide-open Ameche in the end zone. Again, the band played, the fans cheered, and Dixie ran. The Colts led, 21–0.
Standing on the sideline, Hornung shook his head sadly—not about the game so much as how badly he had misjudged it. Those nineteen points from Las Vegas were already gone! Jiminy! It looked like the Colts would cover the spread with ease. Hornung lamented the loss of his golden touch. He had thought the Packer defense would be able to keep the game close, but it was getting picked apart.
And I can't even get on the field in a ridiculous game like this.
With rain dripping off his fedora, Scooter looked even more confused than Hornung on the sideline. His offense was having just a terrible time. Parilli had completed one pass to a teammate and three to the Colts, and Kramer, the rookie guard, was no match for Donovan, a veteran tackle with an assortment of tricks. Instead of bulling past Kramer when the ball was snapped, Donovan stood, wiggled his square body, and waited for Kramer to come at him, then blew by the lunging, bewildered youngster. He was in the Packer backfield on every play.
Scooter, who liked to alternate quarterbacks, put in Starr, an earnest third-year pro with a lamentable record. Since making the team in 1956 as a seventeenth-round draft pick, he had started a lot of losing games and drifted in and out of the lineup, keeping his job because he spent hours studying film and was always prepared to play, ideal traits for a backup. Starr moved the offense better, but a fourth-down pass in Colt territory fell incomplete.
Unitas returned to the field and drove the Colts toward another touchdown just before halftime. He passed to Berry on the right sideline for ten yards, and after Moore danced off left tackle for eight, hit Berry for thirteen. The Colt offense knifed through Green Bay's defense, every turn crisp. At the Green Bay 19, Unitas dropped back, saw no one open, and dashed up the middle, his high-top black cleats churning. Symank, a small but tough cornerback, knocked him down and kneed him in the ribs. Unitas stayed down, and the crowd protested what it thought was a cheap shot. (No flag fell.) Unitas slowly rose and was helped off the field. His backup, George Shaw, finished the drive by throwing a touchdown pass, and the crowd booed the Packers as they left the field for halftime, trailing 28–0.
Scooter walked around the locker room but didn't know what to say. What a horrendous showing. His receivers couldn't get open and his linemen were being tossed around. Kramer had to come out; the youngster couldn't block Donovan. The Packers seemed overmatched everywhere, on both sides of the ball.
Hornung just sat quietly, staring at his cleats.
The Colts, meanwhile, were furious about Unitas's injury. The quarterback had gone to the hospital to have his ribs x-rayed, and his teammates vowed to pour it on. The Colts took the second-half kickoff, moved right down the field, and scored on a Shaw touchdown pass that sent Dixie off to the races. Then Starr's first pass of the second half was intercepted. Ameche dragged a pile of defenders twenty yards, finally going down with a splash just short of the end zone. When Shaw scored from the 1, Dixie, still breathing hard from the last sprint, took off again.
As the colt tired, the Colts taunted Symank.
You little bastard, John can't hit you back so we're doing it for him.
Symank, a spunky Texan who had made the Packers as a twenty-third-round draft pick, virtually spat back at his tormentors.
Fuck all of you. I'm just playing ball.
Between the band, crowd, rain, cannon, and Dixie, the Packers were living a nightmare. There were still twenty-five minutes to play. At this rate, the Colts would score eighty points. But rather than fight, some players eased up so obviously that Green Bay Press-Gazette sports editor Art Daley, watching from the press box, was outraged. Normally supportive of the team, he would write in Monday's paper of "an almost complete lack of effort" in the second half, and call the performance "the biggest 'quit' in Packer history."
For a franchise that had experienced many highs through the years but only lows recently, the players' capitulation during a game was the true depth of despair.
Colts coach Weeb Ewbank pulled his starters to keep the score down, but Shaw continued to puncture the Packer defense with his throwing and running, and Dixie circled the field for the seventh and eighth times in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, Starr kept misfiring; he would complete just three of fourteen pass attempts, his misses splashing and skipping wildly across the turf like stones flung onto a pond by a boy.
Looking for someone, anyone, to make a positive play, Scooter gave eight Packers a chance to run the ball, including Taylor, the young fullback, and Jim Shanley, a free agent from Oregon who seldom played. But Hornung, the supposed star, never left the side line. Looks like I'm on the end of the bench now—the last man on the worst team in the league.
With the score 56–0 and time running out, Carmichael returned a kickoff sixty-one yards to put the Packers in scoring position. A final drama played out. All but a few of the soaked fans were still in their seats, relishing the mismatch. They exhorted their defense to play tough. The Colts had never shut out an opponent.
Scooter replaced Starr with Joe Francis, a rookie from Oregon State who could run but had little passing skill. Francis gained twenty-one yards on scrambles as the Packers moved inside the 10. There was time for one more play. The Colt defense dug in, determined to keep the Packers out of the end zone. Francis ran again, put his head down, and tried to bull into the end zone, but three Colts threw him down a yard short. The fans cheered so hard, the final gun was barely audible.
Back in the locker room, the Packers slowly pulled off their muddy uniforms after the worst defeat in the long history of their franchise. The players sat at their lockers, stunned and embarrassed. Jerry Kramer stared dully at the floor; he had thought he was hot stuff starting as a rookie, but Donovan had schooled him. He spoke to Gregg, who had been similarly manhandled by Gino Marchetti.
Jesus, Forrest.
I know.
Scooter let reporters into the locker room but was uncharacteristically terse. "There just isn't anything I can say," he said. As the players showered and dressed, a few visitors tiptoed in. One was Ron Kramer, a young Packer tight end sitting out the season while he fulfilled a military-service commitment. Posted for a year at an Air Force base in nearby Washington, he had come to support his teammates and watched the massacre from the bench. He spoke to Hornung.
Holy shit, Paul.
We don't look too good, huh?
What is going on?
Hell if I know.
Don McIlhenny's older brother, Jim, a shoe-company executive in New York City, had come down on the train to see his brother play. He visited the locker room before the Packers' bus left for the airport. A canny businessman, Jim shook his head ruefully. Normally, he said, it takes a few years of observation to know whether a business is succeeding or failing. But in this one day, he told Don, he could tell the Packers were the football version of a failing business.
Don shook his head slowly from side to side;
there was no disputing his brother's assessment.
2
GALLOWS HUMOR PREVAILED as the Packers' charter flight from Baltimore landed in Green Bay late Sunday night, hours after the 56–0 loss. McGee, ever the comedian, wondered if their wives and girlfriends would be at the airport to pick them up or just ignore their existence and stay home.
I might need a ride, guys.
Some players normally spent Monday, their day off, at the Picca-dilly, the Candlestick, and other bars and clubs around town, but they agreed not to venture out after such a pitiful game, figuring they should just lay low. As Monday dawned, a low-flying blanket of dark clouds spit sleet, and Green Bay's mood was as grim as the weather. People shrugged into heavy coats, pulled wool caps low over their eyes, dropped the kids at school, and drove to work with their headlights on and windshield wipers thumping, listening to radio newsmen discuss Sunday's debacle. At the paper mills, cheese factories, rail yards, hospitals, and department stores where they worked, they shook their heads and commiserated with coworkers.
Did you see that?
Yeah.
Good gracious.
Yeah.
A mill town situated at the mouth of the Fox River in northeast Wisconsin, Green Bay was, in the late 1950s, predominately white, Catholic, conservatively Democratic, and, with sixty-two thousand residents, vastly smaller than America's urban centers. But the Packers' hometown had a lot going for it—four paper mills, three rail hubs, good schools, tidy parks, and a traffic-clogged downtown lined with restaurants, clubs, and department stores.
People worked at thriving local businesses such as Schreiber Cheese, Larsen Canning, Green Bay Packaging, and Schneider Transport & Storage, or at the rail yards serving the Chicago and North Western, Milwaukee Road, and Green Bay and Western lines, which brought clattering trains through town all day and night. The Fort Howard Paper Company employed three thousand people at its mill. The National Cheese Exchange set prices for buyers and sellers across the country out of an office on the east side of town.
That First Season: How Vince Lombardi Took the Worst Team in the NFL and Set It on the Path to Glory Page 2
