Football When Men Were Men
“One of the results of this high finance in football today is that the guys don’t hang around together the way they used to when I played. I mean, you just don’t see quarterbacks drilling forward passes into the lineman’s schnozzes to slow down their rushes and then buying you a beer afterward, the way Norm Van Brocklin used to drill me and buy for me.“
-Art Donovan, from his 1988 book, Fatso
Could you imagine elite quarterback’s like Matt Ryan or Tom Brady drilling defensive linemen in the face then buying them a few rounds after the game? Or guys like Jim Harbaugh “borrowing” a taxicab to drive an over-served teammate back to the team hotel?
“We were playing an exhibition game in Milwaukee once, and a bunch of us, naturally, we’re drinking in a local bar. Around midnight, most of us left, but Shula stayed there with Carl Taseff, another defensive back. We were back up at the hotel for a little while when suddenly the cops showed up. Uh-oh. One officer walked up to me and said, “We know one of you Colts stole a taxicab. Who was it?” What happened was Shula and Taseff honked the horn of a cab outside the bar, but the driver didn’t show up. So Shula put Taseff, who was stewed to the gills, in the back of the cab, put the cabbie’s hat on, and drove back to the hotel. And you know, they never would have gotten caught, except Taseff was slow getting out of the cab. He wanted to pay Shula the fare.” – Fatso
According to Art Donovan, the league was built upon two things in those days. Johnson & Johnson tape, and beer. A time where toughness and discipline were tops on the list of what made a great player, and year-round training was unheard of. These guys were playing the game because they loved it. The salaries were modest. Donovan signed his first professional football contract for an unguaranteed $4,500, which would be $76,800 in today’s worth.
-Darrel Norenberg/NFL
Not only were they working class, but the majority of them went overseas in WWII defending our country. Hall of Famers like George Halas, Chuck Bednarik, Marion Motley and Otto Graham all fought. It was a different kind of man who played pro-football in that day. As David Rowe writes,
“The commercialization of sport and the commodification of athletes (transformed from casual ‘players’ into sportsworkers selling their athletic labor power as ‘products’ bought and sold on the sport market) opened up a deep schism within the institutional ideology of sport itself.”
Well, I’m not here to provide any social commentary, I’m just here to share some good stories from Art Donovan, the League’s greatest story teller. His nights on David Letterman were a riot every time. But the all-time greatest Art Donovan story comes from 1945, when he was stationed in Guam, awaiting the call to invade Japan.
“One night we were working all night on the docks near Agana, Guam’s capital, emptying cargo ships and getting all this stuff ready for the invasion of Japan. We were sure it was going to be ordered any minute. At about four in the morning, I and a couple of other guys found a case of Spam down in the hold of a troop transport. So I grabbed it, loaded it onto our truck, and finally stashed it under our tent.
Well, the next day there was a typhoon, a real gullywasher, and wouldn’t you know it but that’s the day this young lieutenant just in from the States, a real greenhorn, picked to pull tent inspection. Jesus Christ, can you imagine tent inspection in a war zone? Anyway, he looked under the floor of our tent, and the rain had washed away the dirt we had dumped on the case of Spam. He said to us, “What’s that?” Nobody said nothing, so he ordered us to pull it out. Finally he asked, “This is government property. Where did you guys steal it from?” Still nobody said nothing. He asked again, “Who does it belong to?” After a long pause, I told him it was mine. He asked me where I got it, and I lied to him. I told him I found it on the side of the road.
The greenhorn left, and the next thing I knew a runner came up and told me to get dressed in khakis and go see the regimental adjuttnt. The adjutant’s name was Joe McFadden, and he was from New Jersey. He was also the former quarterback of Georgetown’s football team. I stood there shuffling my feet and finally Major McFadden asked, “Donovan, where’d you steal the Spam?” I told him I found it laying by the side of the road and he said, “Goddamnit, Donovan, don’t lie to me.” So I admitted that I took it from the hold of a troop ship we were cleaning out. And he said to me, “What were you going to do with it? Sell it to the gooks?” And I said, “No sir, I’m going to eat it.” He said, “I told you not to lie to me. Nobody eats that crap.” I told him, “I do. I like it.”
Then he asked me where I was from. I told him New York, and he asked me if I was in any relation to the fight referee. I told him that ref was my father. Now I figured a McFadden from New Jersey who played football at Georgetown is not going to throw a Donovan from New York who played football at Notre Dame into the brig over a case of Spam. Sure enough, Major McFadden told me he was going to give me a week to eat the whole case, or, as he put it, “your ass belongs to me.”
I ate the whole case in six days.
Thirty pound of Spam. I was the company hero. The cooks used to come over to our tent and put the Spam in batter and cook it up for me. Twenty-four hours a day I’d be eating Spam. And loving it. They let me off the hook and, I still have a soft spot in my heart for Spam.”–Fatso
Jake Berent 