Ah, the Super Bowl. The perfect name for America’s greatest sports spectacular. It just wouldn’t work if they called it the “championship.” Can’t sell Budweiser and Ford trucks with that. Plus, a big game like this needs some fancy numbers, like kings and Olympic games.

Oddly enough, the Super Bowl used to have a fairly ho-hum name when it started in 1967 – “The AFL-NFL World Championship.” The NFL came to its senses by the third world title game in 1969. Even more odd, however, is that the origin of the Super Bowl name starts with a couple kids playing with a new toy in Dallas, Texas.

On June 8, 1966, representatives of the NFL and the rival American Football League revealed previously secret plans to merge the two leagues, thus ending a costly and bitter competition for players and TV money. Their joint press release, stealing a geographical spread from baseball, also declared that the two leagues would stage a “world championship game” at the end of the 1966 regular season.

NFL and AFL officials met regularly through the summer and fall of 1966 to iron out myriad merger details. One of the matters was the championship game – where and when would it be played, for example. Also, the men initially didn’t have a name for the title game. The Pro Football Hall of Fame has provided the recollections of Lamar Hunt, the owner of the AFL’s Kansas City Chiefs, on the naming discussions:

“One day at a committee meeting, I asked, ‘Should there be a week off for the championship game?’ And somebody else said, ‘The AFL championship game, or the NFL championship, or what?’”

Hunt responded, “Well I mean the final game, the last game, the ‘Super Bowl,’ you know what I mean.” Hunt admitted the words just popped out of his mouth, perhaps from his subconscious thoughts. (Unsaid, but the word “bowl” came naturally from the postseason rituals of college football.)

Hunt later said that he drew the name from toy balls that his wife Norma had given their two oldest children, Lamar Jr. and Sharron, at the Hunt family home in Dallas. They were Super Balls, made by Wham-O, the manufacturer of the Frisbee, Hula-Hoop and such.

“They were highly compressed rubber balls, which, when bounced on concrete, would literally bounce over a house,” Hunt said. “My son and daughter loved them and were always talking about them.”

The other committee members began to refer informally to the final game as the “Super Bowl.” However, the official name of the game would be the AFL-NFL World Championship. According to writer Michael MacCambridge, Hunt said that no one pushed to make “Super Bowl” the official name. “Far from it,” Hunt said, “we all agreed it was far too corny to be the name of the new title game.” Regardless, the term seeped into the news media and reporters began using it.

Pete Rozelle, the NFL commissioner who would run the combined league, didn’t like the “Super Bowl” name. He thought super was a slang word and inappropriate. Don Weiss, a long-time NFL operations chief, described Rozelle’s reactions in MacCambridge’s book, “America’s Game.” “He was a stickler on words and grammar, and ‘super’ was not his idea of a good word. He thought super was a word like ‘neat’ or ‘gee-whiz.’ It had no sophistication.”

Rozelle reportedly organized a naming contest among sportswriters, but suggestions such as “Ultimate Bowl” and “Premiere Bowl” didn’t light any fires.

The official program and tickets for the first championship game on Jan. 15, 1967, used the league-mandated name – AFL-NFL World Championship. The Green Bay Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10 in the Los Angeles Coliseum. Best in the world! Take that Europe and Asia.

By the third championship in 1969, the fans and news media were calling the game the “Super Bowl.” The program featured “SUPER BOWL” in huge letters in patriotic colors across the top, but the fine print at the bottom still included the words AFL-NFL World Championship. Rozelle, in his Jan. 10 news conference two days before the game, ruefully acknowledged that the name had stuck.

The Wham-O company draws attention to the Super Ball’s connection to the “Super Bowl” in the product packaging. “We are proud that one of our products inspired the name of such a prestigious event,” said Martin Marechal, the firm’s director of marketing.

Similarly, the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, displays a Super Ball in its Super Bowl gallery to remind visitors of the toy’s role in naming the game.

Now, about those annoying Roman numerals. The first four games got by without any numbers. Reporters and fans didn’t need designators for the games; they could just say “last year’s game,” or Broadway Joe Namath’s game. That got harder to do by 1971, and that year’s game was the first to use the Latin counting system – Super Bowl V.

Using the year of the game could be confusing because it happens early in the year following that of the regular season. Was the 1971 Super Bowl between the 1970 champs of the renamed AFC and NFC? Or the title game of the 1971 season? Hence the need for a designator not based on a calendar year.

Yet Super Bowl 3 or Super Bowl 5 seemed pedestrian in view of the growing enormity of the game. Roman numerals, on the other hand, carry more pizzazz and heft. Arthur Daley of the “New York Times” saw the distinction in 1971. “Kindly note the Roman numerals. The league historians are taking no chances that this should slip into the prosaic for want of impressive nomenclature.”

Weiss confirmed Daley’s thought in his 2003 book, “The Making of the Super Bowl.” “While we’ve been chastised to no end for appearing to be pretentious, our sole intent was to avoid confusion.”

Chris McCarthy of the NFL headquarters staff recently confirmed the nature of the Roman numeral usage. “They are unique to the NFL and provide even more status and importance to the Super Bowl. Numerals I through IV were added later for the first four Super Bowls.” Of course, the added benefit is how the Roman angle helps set the gladiator spectacle tone of the whole show.

Still, 99 percent of football fans, borrowing a measurement in the news, can’t tell Super Bowl XLVI from Shinola. Similarly, writers can’t easily use the labels without more information – “Super Bowl XLVI (46), played on February 5, 2012 between the 2011 regular season AFC champions New England Patriots and . . . .”

So that’s the short story of how the NFL super-sized its championship game.

Michael K. Bohn McClatchy-Tribune News Service

As the 2012 PGA Tour season tees off this month, golf fans wonder which Tiger Woods will show up this year. Will he be the erratic player who has struggled recently with aches of the body and soul? Or, as his many followers hope, will he again be the transformational athlete who ignited an explosion of money and media attention on the tour 15 years ago?

Sadly, though, no matter how Woods plays this year, the rapid growth he stimulated in the professional golf industry has slowed. In fact, the “Tiger Bubble,” has gone the way of other semi-irrational economic flurries of the 21st century. Moreover, and to the surprise of some, the Bubble lost steam several years ago.

The Bubble didn’t pop on Nov. 27, 2009 when Woods wrecked his Cadillac SUV. It didn’t collapse in reaction to revelations about his personal life the following month, or because of his uneven play and injuries in 2010 and 2011. The Bubble had already descended to more sustainable heights in early 2005.

The Tiger Bubble, a term Jonathan Mahler coined in the New York Times Magazine in 2010, got its first sizable puff of energy on Aug. 25, 1996. That’s when the 20-year-old golfer won his third straight U.S. Amateur Championship. NBC TV broadcast Woods’ final match and the network’s ratings and viewership numbers swamped those of CBS, which simultaneously carried the professional World Series of Golf featuring Greg Norman and Phil Mickelson.

After Woods turned pro and won his first PGA Tour tournament in October 1996, the Bubble lifted off. Winning the 1997 Masters by 12 strokes sent the Bubble into orbit. Its rapid ascent set a trajectory for much larger bubbles to follow — think dot-com and housing.

The Tiger phenomenon immediately drew vast amounts of money and attention to the tour. The total annual prize money on the PGA Tour tripled in the Bubble’s eight-year period of rapid expansion. In inflation-adjusted 2004 dollars, the number surged from $79.4 million (all figures U.S.) in 1996 to $239.6 million in 2004. That Bubble lifted all tour players to bigger paydays. Only nine of them won at least $1 million in official winnings in 1996, but 77 earned that hefty sum in 2004.

Yet since 2005, PGA Tour prize money growth has slowed, and lately, totals have even dipped. Pgatour.com lists a planned total purse of $278.5 million for its 2012 tournaments, down 3 per cent from 2004 in terms of 2011 dollars. Yet for the pre-wreck and pre-divorce period 2005-2009, Tiger annually averaged 6.2 wins and $9.5 million in prize money. Woods kept dominating, but what happened to the Bubble?

The PGA Tour of the mid-1990s was a healthy but relatively ho-hum affair. Arnold Palmer and Lee Trevino had taken their entertaining charisma to the Senior Tour, just as Jack Nicklaus had transferred his enormous talent. The regular tour putt-putted along with less colourful players.

“The Senior Tour was more popular in 1996,” recalled Jerry Potter, a retired USA Today golf writer. “The Senior Tour, now called the Champions Tour, was growing with all of the recognizable and TV-friendly players. The regular tour was stagnant.”

The period was a lull between stars on the PGA Tour. It has always benefited from cycles of individual brilliance that translated into media attention and prize money. Walter Hagen and Gene Sarazen led the way early, followed by Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead. Palmer made pro golf a TV sport, and along with the two other members of the 1960s Big Three — Nicklaus and Gary Player — changed the game. Lee Trevino proved that a wisecracking Mexican-American could be a star.

Along came Tiger. At the right time.

Lean, fit and powerful, Woods matched the American stereotype of a professional athlete. In a period when mostly golfers watched TV golf, and the players were indistinguishable from the viewers, Tiger broke the mould. His power game appealed to non-golf fans and his fist pumps and yells echoed the familiar gusto in the NFL and NBA. The beer-and-chips crowd could identify with Tiger when he spit and shouted F-bombs.

Beyond the broadening of the fan base, Woods’ strength and club-head speed, coupled with precise iron shots and a splendid short game, wrought changes in the sport.

“Before Tiger, the PGA Tour was a waltz,” Potter said recently. “Tiger wasn’t into waltzing. His show was a breakdance.”

And there was that thousand-watt smile, and teary embraces with his doting father that seemed drawn from a movie script. Bingo.

To its great good fortune, the PGA Tour had scheduled negotiations for a new TV contract following the 1997 Masters. The extraordinary TV rating that CBS achieved on the final round of Tiger’s breakout win gave tour commissioner Tim Finchem huge leverage with the networks. The $575 million deal for 1997-2002, almost doubling the previous $300 million contract, fuelled the first half of the Bubble.

Television networks eagerly signed up not only because of Woods’ appeal but also for the lucrative golf demographics. Golf viewers, especially well-heeled “baby boomers,” usually have money to spend on brands beyond Bud Light and Chevy trucks. So the Tiger Bubble became a perfect storm of TV money, eager advertisers and sponsors, and a star who could win about every third or fourth time he teed it up.

The TV money sent tour purses rocketing skyward. Other sources contribute to prize money, but the long pole in the money tent comes from rights sales to the networks.

Woods kept delivering the goods to the TV advertisers. His 2001 Masters victory gave him the “Tiger Slam,” simultaneously holding the trophies for all four of pro golf’s major championships — the final three in 2000 plus the Masters. The attendant froth shaped another enormous TV deal — $850 million for the period 2003-2006. Up, up and away went the Bubble.

Through shrewd planning by Deane Beman, Finchem’s predecessor, the PGA Tour business model was able to absorb the torrent of TV cash. Beman had made the tour a tax-exempt charitable organization, as well as insisting that all tournament organizers do the same. This allows net proceeds, after expenses such as prize money, to flow to charities instead of tax collectors. Further, the charity angle provides moral high ground for the tour when it fights antitrust actions and criticism aimed at overpaid millionaires enjoying a walk in the park every week.

The Bubble also has allowed the tour to charge tournament title sponsors seven-figure fees. Part of that sum has gone to the purse, but some monies have been set aside for guaranteed TV advertising buys for the tournament week. This lessened the broadcaster’s risk and helped underwrite the major expense of televising a golf tournament. This model remains in place, and the 2011 title sponsor fees for most tournaments reached the $7 million-$8 million range, according to Adam Schupak in his 2011 book, Deane Beman: Golf’s Driving Force.

By 2005, grumbling among the TV people about losing money on tour broadcasts began to seep out. GolfWorld magazine’s John Hawkins reported in March 2005 that TV ratings had flattened in 2004. “A TV executive confirms that for the first time,” Hawkins wrote, “the networks will lose money televising pro golf over the course of the four-year contract.”

Declining ratings depressed both advertising rates and the net TV revenue stream to the tour. Since purses generally move up and down with TV money flow, the squeeze is reflected in the abrupt slowdown in the growth of annual purse totals.

  Sources: 1986-2010  data, PGA Tour.  2011, GolfWorld.  Inflation adjustment by BLS/CPI.

The number of tournaments each year figures in purse totals as well. From 2000 to 2002, the tour held 49 official events. The number dipped to 47-48 during 2003-2009, and then dropped to 46 in 2010, and 45 in both 2011 and 2012.

To fight the effects of the softening Bubble, the tour created the FedEx Cup Playoffs. Finchem announced the scheme in November 2005, with a planned start in 2007. Another shrewd move, the playoffs also cut an overly long season and reduced the formidable challenge of keeping TV viewers tuned in during football season.

The reported decline in post-Bubble TV profits narrowed the bidders for the 2007-2012 TV package. Only NBC, CBS and one cable network, The Golf Channel, remained in the hunt.

The tour announced its new deal in January 2006, but refused to reveal the amount of money involved. Sources said the contracts involved only minimal increases in rights fees. Hawkins, who again had good insight into the process, reported an important change. Sources also say the tour will cut its subsidy of purses from 62 per cent to the low- to mid-50 per cent range. This meant that sponsors would have to pony up more to sustain the high purses or cut charitable donations.

All of this formed the backdrop for Tiger’s first prolonged absence after winning the 2008 U.S. Open on a broken leg and bum knee. He rebounded with a great season in 2009. But his spotty play in 2010 and 2011, resulting from injuries, swing changes and scandal shock, added to the negative economic forces of the Great Recession that began in earnest in 2008. The combined effects resulted in the recent downward trend in purse totals.

Soft bubbles and tepid purse growth notwithstanding, Tiger remains a powerful force in pro golf. His drawing power continues, even during his time of personal woes and injuries. TV ratings since 2008 have, on a basic level, confirmed the long-standing fact that more people watch PGA Tour events in which he plays than not.

For example, Tiger won the 2008 Buick Invitational, but did not play in 2009, when final-day TV ratings fell 52 per cent. Conversely, he missed The Memorial in 2008, won it in 2009 and the ratings jumped 100 per cent.

But ratings figures also expose a more subtle trend, one that fits with the weakened Tiger Bubble. Viewers’ interest in Tiger wanes when he isn’t in contention. A tie for 44th ain’t movin’ the needle.

This chart shows examples of final-round TV ratings associated with Tiger’s finish.

In 2010, sportswriter and commentator Michael Wilbon summed up viewers’ preferences. “They want to see Tiger up there, dominant, at least in contention. When he’s not, people don’t care.”

On Sept. 1, 2011, commissioner Finchem announced a new nine-year TV rights package with NBC and CBS starting in 2013. The tour is six years into a 15-year deal with The Golf Channel, so all three are committed through 2021.

Neither Finchem nor executives from NBC and CBS disclosed the contract values that day. Finchem only admitted, “Our rights are increasing.” However, he and the TV folks talked repeatedly at the press conference about “underpinning.” For example, Finchem spoke of the “significant underpinning support that the tour guarantees and delivers to the broadcast networks.”

The pinning under the networks is the cash that title sponsors provide for tournament operations, prize money and guaranteed advertising commitments. As Hawkins reported in 2006, the tour reduced by 8-10 per cent its pass-through of TV money to tournament purses during the 2006-2012 TV deal. If more money goes to guaranteed ads in the new contract, less will be available for purses and charitable contributions.

Tiger’s future on the PGA Tour remains a sports bar topic, and CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus acknowledged Woods’ uncertain future. “In our business plan, we did not assume any golfer was going to be as dominant as Tiger had been in the past.”

Woods’ fans are heartened, however, by his good showing in the President’s Cup, and his win in his own charity tournament in the Silly Season, the Chevron World Challenge on Dec. 4. Perhaps he’s ready to pump some air into the tired old Bubble.

By MICHAEL K. BOHN – McClatchy-Tribune News Service

Twenty-five years ago on Jan. 11, 1987, the boisterous fans in the Dawg Pound had plenty to bark about. Their beloved Cleveland Browns had just surged ahead of the Denver Broncos in the AFC Championship game, 20-13. Late in the fourth quarter, the Browns were less than six minutes from a trip to the Super Bowl.

Sensing victory, most of the 79,915 people on hand filled Cleveland Stadium with a roar that spilled past the Dawg Pound bleachers in the east end zone and out onto Lake Erie. The dispirited Broncos tried to ignore both the deafening rumble and the stiff wind in their face as they gathered for the kickoff return on the west end of the field.

Denver’s Ken Bell and Gene Lang were deep to receive, and they blew on their hands in the minus 5-degree wind chill. Cleveland’s kicker, Mark Moseley, planted his square-toed shoe on the ball’s equator and sent a knuckler into the following wind. The ball bounced on the Denver 15-yard line and caromed to Bell’s right and on toward the goal line. Bell retreated and tried to pick up the ball. Seeing the onrushing Browns, Bell gave up and covered the ball on his own 2-yard line.

The Broncos faced a march of 98 yards to tie the game with 5:32 left on the clock.

As the Denver special teams players headed for the sideline, they ran across the muddy and almost grassless field littered with dog biscuits. Taking a cue from the Dawg Pound fanatics, the Cleveland faithful had taken to pitching Milk Bones at opposing teams. One Bronco said later, “You could feel the things crunching under your feet when you ran.”

In the huddle, Denver guard Keith Bishop eased the tension a bit – “We got ‘em right where we want ‘em.”

Elway dropped back into the end zone on the first play and threw to running back Sammy Winder in the flat for 5 yards. Winder then ran for another 3 yards. Coach Dan Reeves, unsure if they needed 1 or 2 yards for the first down, called timeout.

The crowd’s din lessened as the action stopped. Reeves and Elway conferred on the sideline. Reeves said, “Send Winder over left guard.” Winder gained two yards and a first down on the 12-yard line.

After a Winder run for three yards, Elway dropped back to pass. “The rush came high and I kinda stepped up inside it. I looked up field and they were awful soft.” Elway pulled the ball down and took off to his left. Seeing Browns linebacker Chip Banks hurtling at him, Elway made a headfirst slide onto the ragged field.

First-and-10 on the 26-yard line. Hoping to exploit Cleveland’s two-deep coverage, Elway called a play-action pass – “Fire pass 94.” Receiver Steve Sewell knew he would be the first read. “I had the option of the corner or post,” he said. “I saw the safeties split and went to the post.” He went up high and made the catch just before safety Chris Rockins hammered him.

First-and-10 at the Denver 48. Elway connected with Steve Watson on a 12-yard out pattern. Two-minute warning.

KOA radio announcer Larry Zimmer witnessed the effect Denver’s drive had on the fans. “Denver suddenly took command of not only the game but the stadium. The closer Denver got to the end zone, the quieter the crowd got.”

First-and-10 on the Browns’ 40-yard line. Elway overthrew receiver Vance Johnson on the Cleveland 5-yard line. Despite the incompletion, the Browns know what a hot Elway can do. Defensive end Sam Clancy yelled, “Somebody’s got to get him.”

Second-and-10. Time: 1:52. Elway made a short drop and started to move up when defensive tackle Dave Puzzuoli met him head-on for an 8-yard loss. Third-and-a-bunch. Denver called timeout.

“Just try to get half of it,” Reeves told Elway. They both knew that a fourth down would not be a punting situation.

Third-and-18 at the Cleveland 48. Time: 1:47. The crowd had awakened and suddenly the noise in the stadium was overwhelming. In the huddle, Elway called the play and set up a silent count. Rookie receiver Mark Jackson later recalled his reaction. “Usually, John gives that play a quick read, from the top, or deeper, route to the bottom route. I was the guy who would be 20 yards deep.”

In the shotgun, Elway saw that the Browns’ safeties were playing deep. “I’m going to take a shot downfield,” he thought. He lifted a heel and Watson went in motion from left to right. Elway and center Steve Bryan mistimed the count and Bryan snapped the ball early. It hit Watson on the left hip.

The ball had enough juice on it to wobble back to Elway’s ankles. Recovering, he saw Jackson break into the hole in front of the safeties. Again, Jackson, “John drilled me with the ball.” Twenty-yard gain.

First-and-10 on the Browns’ 28-yard line. “At that point, I became concerned,” said Cleveland coach Marty Schottenheimer.

With Watson well covered, Elway overthrew him to kill the clock. He next called for running back screen to the left and it gained 14 yards.

“Man, we’ve got a shot at this,” yelled Bronco linebacker Karl Mecklenburg from the sideline. “We could do this.”

First-and-10 at the 14. Watson caught Elway’s pass, but out of bounds at the goal line.

Second-and-10. Time: 0:49. The Brown’s coverage forced Elway from the pocket and he made a beeline for the first down marker on the right sideline. He slid feet first just as linebacker Mike Johnson arrived.

Third-and-one at the 5-yard line. Time: 0:42. The play: “Option left 62 Rebel.” Receivers Johnson and Jackson were the main options on the left – Johnson in the flat, Jackson on a slant.

“My whole role was to rub Vance’s guy as he ran the shoot route and he was gonna catch the ball,” Jackson explained.

“I can remember seeing Mark wide open,” Elway recalled, “and saying to myself, ‘Get the ball to him as fast as you can.’”

“I wasn’t expecting the ball. All of a sudden, I see John’s eyes blow up and I see that he’s looking directly at me. As his arm goes back, I’m thinking Holy Smoke, the ball’s coming!”

Elway’s heater, low and away, found Jackson as he slid to the ground. Touchdown!

Barefoot placekicker Rich Karlis began his mincing off-balance run onto the field. “I just remember being a little bit more nervous about that because of the flying dog bones. The Dawg Pound was in a frenzy.”

Karlis made the extra point in front of the Dawgs. Denver kicked off and Browns quarterback Bernie Kosar took a knee. Tied, 20-20. Overtime.

Cleveland won the toss, but the momentum favored Denver. After three-and-out, the Browns Jeff Gosset punted. Gerald Willhite fielded it on the Denver 21, and was tackled after a 4-yard return.

First-and-10 on the Denver 25. After Winder ran to the 30-yard line, tight end Orson Mobley made a diving catch for a 22-yard gain.

“They went into a prevent defense,” said Karlis. “John just picked ‘em apart.”

Winder lost two, and Elway threw incomplete to Sewell on a screen. The momentum seemed to slow.

Third-and-12 on the 50-yard line. The Browns chased Elway from the pocket, and the quarterback sprinted to the left with defensive end Sam Clancy in pursuit. Dangerously close to the line of scrimmage, Elway saw defensive back Felix Wright slip as he covered Watson. Elway snapped a quick throw across his body. Watson jumped as high as he could and made a fingertip catch. Wright caught up with him on the way down. Twenty-eight yard gain.

“I was almost over the line,” Elway recalled. “I fell forward and when I got up, I was right on it.”

First-and-10 on the Cleveland 22. Karlis removed his insulated boot and began his warm up. Winder ran three times in the middle of the field to set up the game-winning field goal attempt.

Fourth-and-three at the 15-yard line. Time: 5:48. Karlis and Elway passed each other. “John was as wound up as I’ve ever seen him,” the kicker said later. “He was so uptight.”

“It’s just like practice!” Elway shouted at Karlis. And again. “It’s just like practice!”

Karlis paced off his approach. “Keep your head down and just swing through,” Karlis told himself.

The Broncos on the sideline craned to see the attempt, but two players drifted back toward the bench. Linebacker Jim Ryan recalled the moment. “Elway and Watson came over and said ‘We can’t look.’” Ryan couldn’t see the kick but when he saw everyone jumping and yelling, he said, “Boys, we’re going to the Super Bowl.”

And so goes the legend of “the Drive.” The Broncos magic that day boosted the 1986 AFC Championship into everyone’s list of NFL greatest games. To his credit, Elway engineered 46 similar feats in his Hall of Fame career – drives that led to scores and Bronco victories in final five minutes of a game.

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Cleveland’s professional sports teams have suffered enough other disappointing losses that each has gained a name like “the Drive.” Here’s a partial list.

The Fumble. Again facing the Broncos in the 1987 AFC Championship in Cleveland, the Browns had the ball on the Denver 8-yard line and trailed 38-31 with 1:12 to play. Running back Earnest Byner took the handoff from Kosar, but Broncos defensive back Jeremiah Castille stripped the ball at the 2-yard line. Dawgonnit again.

The Shot. In the deciding game in the first round of the 1989 NBA playoffs, the Cavs led the Chicago Bulls 100-99 with three seconds left. Inbound pass to Michael Jordon. Jumps, shoots, scores!

The Move. Browns owner Art Modell announced on Nov. 6, 1995, that he planned to move his team to Baltimore.

The Decision. NBA star LeBron James announced his decision on July 8, 2010 to sign with the Miami Heat.

Michael K. Bohn  MCT, December 31, 2011

This month’s NFL playoffs mark the 25th anniversary of a turning point in American professional football. The NFL’s last full-time “straight-on” place-kicker played his last league game in the AFC Championship on Jan. 11, 1987.

Many recall that game for another reason—“the Drive.” The Denver Broncos marched 98-yards in the final minutes march to tie the Cleveland Browns in regulation. Few, however, remember that Browns kicker Mark Moseley made two field goals in the game and his knuckleball kickoff trapped the Broncos on their 2-yard line.

All fans, though, should appreciate the irony of how that game ended. Denver place-kicker, Rich Karlis, beat the Browns in overtime with a 33-yard field goal. Moseley, he of the rugged square-toed shoe, left the NFL at the, umm, hand of the NFL’s last barefoot kicker.

Moseley is best known for his many years with the Washington Redskins, a run that included two trips to the Super Bowl. A major highlight came during the strike-shortened 1982 season when The Associated Press named Moseley the league MVP. The ‘Skins cut him, however, in October 1986 and he soon signed with the Browns for the remainder of the season.

During Mark’s NFL career, 1970-1986, he served as the poster boy for the disappearing art of straight-on place kicking. The soccer-style kickers arrived in the mid-1960s in the NFL, and they competed with the straight-on kickers until the 1980s.

That transition period was not a uniformly pleasant or even process. Early on, the “sidewinders” in the NFL seemed to be drawn from European soccer teams, and many players and fans doubted their size and manliness equaled NFL standards. All-Pro defensive tackle Alex Karras of the Detroit Lions captured those sentiments at the time, “I can’t stand the little jerks. They come in singing their little song . . . ‘I am go-eeng to keek a touchdown.’”

Place kicking was a part time job in the NFL until the 1960s. Hall of Famers who kicked in addition to their day jobs include tackle Lou “the Toe” Groza, running backs Ken Strong and Paul Hornung, and quarterbacks Bobby Layne, quarterback George Blanda. Generally, full time kickers began to appear in the late 1950s, with Pat Summerall being an early example.

Hungarian Pete Gogolak was the first to employ the soccer style to kick a field goal in the NFL in 1964. In 1966, his brother Charlie became the first kicker drafted in the first round when Washington selected him sixth overall. Norwegian Jan Stenerud, who joined the league in 1967, remains the only full time kicker in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

As the soccer-style kickers gained traction in the 1970s, their form proved more repeatable and powerful. Their angled approach allowed hip rotation to add to the force of the leg, and the larger surface of the inner shoelace area improved accuracy over the smaller toe tip of the sole. Groza’s career field-goals-made average, for example, was 55 percent, and Summerall’s, 47.  Conversely, Charlie Gogolak made 60 percent of his attempts, and Stenerud, 67. Two active kickers share the NFL career lead with 86 percent.

One straight-on kicker and two sidewinders share the NFL record for the longest field goal at 63 yards. Straight-on kicker Tom Dempsey of the New Orleans Saints set the record in 1970.  Born without toes on his right foot, he used a special shoe with a broad, flat front. Denver’s Jason Elam equaled the mark in 1998, with the Mile High City’s thin air likely helping. Oakland’s Sebastian Janikowsky tied the mark this season, again in Denver.

Straight-on place kicking has just about died away in all levels of football. “I can’t think of any in college, either Division I or II,” said kicking guru Gary Zauner. “The dinosaurs are about gone, although there are some in high school.” Rick Sang, of American Football Specialists and prokicker.com, confirmed that someone still pursues the art. “We sell about 300-400 square-toe kicking shoes a year, but I rarely get any of those guys in my kicking camps.”

v v v

      Moseley won all-state honors as a linebacker and running back at Livingston High School in East Texas. Just as in the NFL in the 1960s, high school coaches had their best athletes audition as kickers.

“I could always outkick everyone else,” Moseley said in a recent interview. That skill carried over to nearby Stephen F. Austin State University, where he played quarterback and defensive back. However, his kicking attracted more attention from the pros than his passing.

Philadelphia drafted Moseley as a kicker in the 14th round of the 1970 NFL draft—346th overall. He kicked for the Eagles for one year before being traded to Houston. Cut early in the 1972 season, he worked in commercial real estate and installed septic tanks for two years in Texas.

Moseley won a job with the Redskins in 1974.  He witnessed the ‘Skins move from the successful George Allen teams of Sonny Jurgensen and Billy Kilmer to the heady Super Bowl era of Joe Gibbs. Mark earned his pivotal role on those teams through hard work and attention to detail.

During every practice and game, he pulled five or six socks over his taped right ankle before squeezing into his size 10½-B kicking shoe. “I wanted a tight fit to keep the shoe from moving,” he explained. “Otherwise you lose power.” But he had to remove the shoe after each kick—“I laced it so tight that I’d lose feeling in my foot.” He wore an insulated boot between kicks in cold weather games.

He removed the front cleat of his kicking shoe and filed down those in the rear to keep from snagging the turf. Mark also practiced on 10-foot-wide goal posts, versus the normal 18 1/2 feet. “It makes me concentrate that much more,” said at the time.

Keeping his other football skills intact helped Moseley better connect with the team. He often quarterbacked the scout team against the ‘Skins first team defense and served as an emergency backup quarterback in games. “Coach Gibbs had five running and five passing plays for me, but I never got in a game.”

Both Moseley and his holder, Theismann, favored the throwback single-bar facemask, which the league has since banned. Moseley even had his lowered to chin level.  “I could see the ball and the spot better that way,” he said.

In 1982, NFL players held a 57-day strike, and when they returned to work in November, the league played an abbreviated nine-game regular season. The Redskins finished first in the NFC with an 8-1 record, with Moseley playing a key role.

He also set an NFL record of 23 straight field goals that season, three of which he had made the previous year. His streak ended in the final semi-regular season game against St. Louis on Jan. 2, 1983.

The following day, AP named Moseley the league MVP. The news wire cited his two last-second winning field goals, and how his kicks proved the winning margins in four other games. He had made the difference in six of the season’s nine games.

“I never dreamed a kicker could win an award like this,” he said at the time. Moseley went on to say that his contract, which had made him the highest-paid NFL kicker, didn’t even have an incentive clause for winning the MVP award.

Minnesota’s Rick Danmeier, also a straight-on kicker, retired after the 1982 season, leaving Moseley as the only full time place kicker to boot with his big toe.

The beginning of the end of Moseley’s tenure in Washington began in the second half of the 1985 season. He missed eight of his last 15 field goal attempts, including five of his last six. Moreover, he lost his long-time holder Theismann on Nov. 18 when the Giants Lawrence Taylor played pick-up-sticks with Theismann’s right leg.

In 1986, Moseley and his new holder, quarterback Jay Schroeder, failed to find a successful rhythm. In Texas for the Dallas game on Oct. 12, Moseley missed his field goal and extra point attempts. When the Redskins sent out punter Steve Cox to try a long field goal, Moseley sagged. “I felt that I was no longer on the football team,” he said later.

The ‘Skins released Moseley the following week, but his vacation was short-lived. Cleveland kicker Matt Bahr hurt his knee on Nov. 23, and the Browns quickly signed Moseley. In his first game on Nov. 30, he went in for a 29-yard field goal attempt with 16 seconds left in overtime to beat the Oilers. Facing a stiff wind gusting to 35 mph, Mark punched it through the uprights. The especially rabid Cleveland fans in the “Dawg Pound” section went berserk.

Cleveland’s two playoff games that season highlighted the ups and downs at the end of his career. Against the New York Jets on Jan. 3, 1987.  Moseley hit a 22-yarder with seven seconds left to force overtime. But he went from hero to goat in the first overtime when he missed a field goal from 23 yards.

Two minutes into the second extra period, Mark had a chance to lose the goat horns. After the Browns drove to the Jets 10-yard line, he made the game-winning field goal. Although he went three for six on field goals, Cleveland had won its first playoff game since 1969. The Browns would face Denver in the AFC Championship the following week, a game that proved to be Moseley’s last in the NFL.

Since retirement, Moseley has spent most of his time working as the director of sales for Five Guys Burgers and Fries, a fast food chain headquartered in Northern Virginia. “We’ve gone from five locations when I started,” Moseley said, “to almost a 1,000 now. We are about to go international.”

v v v

      Moseley did not kick the last straight-on field goal in the NFL. More from the Irony Department on that. Turns out Mark’s Redskins teammate, Steve Cox, holds the distinction.

As the Cleveland punter, 1981-1984, Cox made two field goals, one 58 yards and another, 60. Signing with Washington in 1985, Cox punted, kicked off and tried the occasional long field goal. In 1986, the year of Moseley’s departure, he made three of six field goals.

Cox made his bit of history on Sep. 13, 1987 in a game with Philadelphia. Washington’s place kicker Jess Atkinson went down with a broken ankle after being hit in the first quarter on an extra point. Cox filled in the rest of the game, making three extra points and a 40-yard field goal.  “No one expected much from me,” he said in a recent interview. “There’s no pressure, so I just let my natural ability take over.” The field goal was the last of his career, and the last by a dinosaur kicker in the NFL.

Army and Navy overcame animosities to restore rivalry of two lofty military academies

By MICHAEL K. BOHN - McClatchy-Tribune News Service

Copyright: Copyright 2011 McClatchy-Tribune News Service

The Army-Navy football game has a little something for everyone. Purists see it as a true contest among “student athletes.” Old-schoolers love the triple-option running game. The patriots among us savor the pageantry and pre-game march-on. And, of course, CBS television likes filling an empty Saturday date after the advertiser-friendly SEC games are over.

But whatever the viewpoint, the game is inarguably a chapter in a storied American sports rivalry. The matchup on Saturday in the Washington Redskins’ home stadium will be the 112th between the two service academies since they began playing each other 121 years ago. Hmm. What happened in the other 10 years?

Excessive game violence and fan rowdiness caused a five-year hiatus, 1894-1898. Death of a player, 1909. The War to End All Wars, 1917-1918. Interservice bickering over player eligibility rules, 1928-1929. You know, normal football stuff.

Football teams from the U.S. Military Academy and the U.S. Naval Academy first played in 1890, with the Midshipmen winning, 24-0. For the Black Knights, the football game was their first ever, while Navy had been playing since 1879.

In 1890, college football had stabilized a bit after its rapid evolution in the 1870s and 1880s from two antecedents – a soccer-like kicking game and rugby. Unfortunately, the new status quo became one of violent collisions on the field and unruly fans on the sideline. That energy erupted in the 1893 Army-Navy game in Annapolis.

While Navy won, 6-4, in a bruising slugfest typical of the time, things also turned rough in the crowd of 8,000 surrounding the field. The New York Times reported, “Bitter animosities were aroused, almost culminating in a duel between an old retired rear admiral and a brigadier general who were among the spectators.” While the two men ultimately kept their pistols holstered, friction lingered into the following year.

Citing the football’s “features which are most dangerous to life and limb,” as well as overzealous fans, the secretaries of war and navy jointly canceled the 1894 game. That ban continued through the fall of 1898. Each team continued to play other universities, but only at home, thus prohibiting either academy from traveling to the other’s location.

In August 1897, the assistant secretary of the Navy began a campaign to restart the Army-Navy football series. Theodore Roosevelt wrote the secretary of war, “My dear General Alger,” and went on to discuss possible means of preventing “any excesses such as betting” and “manifestations of improper character.”

The brass finally allowed a game in 1899, but only at a neutral site. The teams met at the University of Pennsylvania’s Franklin Field on Dec. 2, and Army beat the favored Navy team, 17-5. Two West Point cadets named Smith and Wesson played that day – left end W. D. Smith and quarterback Charlie Wesson – but there were no threats of gunplay in the grandstands. Early in 1903, representatives from each academy began a series of meetings to seek common player eligibility rules. Navy wanted to bar from team rosters any young man who had competed for four years at another college. Army, playing the stubborn mule to the Navy’s insistent billy goat, refused. At stake for Army was its fine quarterback Charles Daly. He had graduated from Harvard in 1901 after gaining All-American honors three times. He entered West Point in the fall of 1901, played two seasons for Army, but chose to sit out in 1903. That eventually led to Navy’s reluctant agreement to play the 1903 game in Philadelphia, but the Mids got thumped, 40-5.

Football continued its violent trend in the first few years of the 20th century. According to John Watterson in his book, “College Football,” the casualties reached alarming rates. In 1905, 18 players nationwide succumbed to football-related deaths (three in college) and 159 were seriously injured (88 in college). A debate over college football’s direction raged through newspaper editorial pages and college boardrooms.

Upset with the game’s ferocity in 1905, President Roosevelt, who had played at Harvard, met with officials from the big three football powers – Yale, Princeton and Harvard. He attempted to use his bully pulpit to force changes in the game. Other meetings followed, and to better confront football violence, 62 colleges formed the forerunner of the National Collegiate Athletic Association in 1906. Opponents of change argued the sport might become a “parlor game.” Others simply called football “a brutal, savage, and murderous sport.”

Franklin Field, 1911. LIbrary of Congress

The game claimed an Army casualty in the Harvard contest in 1909, one of 26 deaths that year. On Oct. 30, the Crimson called a “mass” play in which the entire team bunched around the center and moved forward at the snap as if a tightly packed herd of buffalo. Cadet tackle Eugene Byrne and his teammates tried to hold the line, however, Byrne died the following day from his injuries in the crush. Army canceled its remaining games, including the season-ending Navy contest.

The military higher-ups called off the 1917 game in light of America’s entry into World War I, but each academy played other opponents that year. In 1918, Army only played the Mitchell Field (N.Y.) Aviators, and Navy scheduled a few games against teams fielded by naval training sites.

Army continued to enroll players with prior college experience despite Navy’s protestations. Halfback Elmer Oliphant, for example, played three years at Purdue before graduating in 1914. He was a two-time first-team All-American at West Point in 1916-1917, and entered the College Football Hall of Fame in 1955.

Center Ed Garbisch enjoyed a doubly full college career – Washington & Jefferson (Penn.), 1917-20, and USMA, 1921-1924. An All-American in 1922 and 1924, Garbisch went on to serve 20 years in the Army. Hall of Famer.

Halfback Harry “Light Horse” Wilson apprenticed as an All-American at Penn State, before gaining the same honor at Army in 1926. “I think West Point was the only school where I could do that,” he said later. “I know Navy wouldn’t let you do that.”

The 1927 game was the last straw for Navy officials. Team captain Wilson, Bud Sprague (two letters at Texas) and Christian “Red” Cagle (Southwestern Louisiana, BA, 1925) helped hand the Mids a 14-9 loss on Nov. 26 at New York’s Polo Grounds. Navy had managed only two ties to accompany its four losses to Army from 1922 through 1927.

Within days of the loss, Naval Academy superintendent Rear Adm. Louis M. Nulton drew a line on the deck with his sword concerning player eligibility. He proposed that Army exclude from its football roster those players who had played three varsity seasons, a rule that Navy and most colleges respected in 1927. The Military Academy’s superintendent, Maj. Gen. Edwin B. Winans, refused to accommodate Navy’s request on Dec. 14.

Winans cited the long tradition at West Point that allowed any cadet to participate on any sports team if he was in good academic and disciplinary standing. It would be discriminatory, he argued, to bar a gifted athlete from the varsity because of his age or experience. Winans also pointed to the age limits for admission to West Point, 17 and 22, which he felt were best for the Army. Navy’s minimum and maximum were 16 and 20, ages that fit its three-year varsity rule. On Dec. 16, the two academies formally canceled the 1928 Army-Navy football game.

1916 at New York's Polo Grounds. Helmets optional. LIbrary of Congress

Recruiting of football players gathered plenty of attention within the press and alumni during the 1920s. Newspaper sports sections featured accusations about “tramp athletes” who serially played at several schools and halfbacks who hadn’t enrolled. The rumors and reports led to a landmark study, 1926-1929, of college sports underwritten by the Carnegie Foundation.

The 1929 Carnegie Report exposed what Watterson called “highly commercial and flagrantly deceptive practices in college athletics.” The report, which included findings at 130 institutions, detailed unsavory recruiting among big-time football programs, well paid no-work jobs, booster slush funds and systemic support of players in the days before athletic scholarships. More proof that there ain’t anything new in this world

Army and Navy again passed on the 1929 game, although the Oct. 28-29 stock market crash that year pushed many college football highlights to the back pages.

A downward spiraling U.S. economy and rising unemployment in 1930 proved, oddly enough, reason to restart the Army-Navy rivalry. Proposals to stage a benefit game for the jobless began to make their way to the secretaries of war and navy, and eventually to President Herbert Hoover. Chicago politicians wanted a game at Soldier Field, and New Yorkers pointed to Yankee Stadium. Some have written that Hoover ordered the academies to play, but he more likely opted to let business and market forces sort things out. Regardless, the services set the game for Dec. 13 at Yankee Stadium.

A crowd of 70,000 watched Army win 6-0, and the event raised $600,000 for unemployment relief. The two teams played another fund-raising game in 1931, with Army again the victors, 17-7. They only raised $350,000 at that game, reflective of the near doubling of the unemployment rate from the previous year.

The two academies resumed official games in 1932, but the eligibility differences continued to fester. The Big Ten banned games with Army in 1935 because of West Point’s unique approach to post-graduate football players. Army finally shifted to the three-year rule in Dec. 1937.

Navy leads the football series 55-49-7, and for the statistically obsessed, navysports.com has Annapolis leading the all-time, all-sports record between the academies, 941-714-39.

Postscript:

The official athletic nickname at the U.S. Military Academy is “Black Knights,” a contraction of Black Knights of the Hudson. West Point is a historic military site located on a promontory on New York’s Hudson River. That, plus the black football uniform and the connection to heroic mounted warriors of yore, contributed to the name. One, incidentally, that is way more cool than “Midshipmen.” The Navy’s nickname came from the rank the service gave to young officer apprentices during the days of wooden ships. In battle, their station was “amidships,” halfway between the bow and the stern. Today, midshipman is an officer-in-training rank just below ensign. The Naval Academy accepts the diminutive “Mids,” but winces at “Middies.”

1908 at Franklin Field, Philadelphia, PA. Library of Congress

McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Oct. 19, 2011

With the college football season running at full speed, fans have settled into the weekly rhythms of the sport. On Thursdays and Fridays, the hype and handicapping of the upcoming games fill the airwaves and 4G networks. Saturday is game day, and it stretches from the morning pregame shows to the final gun of the Oregon game.
Sundays rehash the upsets and big wins, and the armchair quarterbacks rule. Monday morning wraps up the drama with the latest national ranking of the top teams.

The granddaddy of the weekly ratings is The Associated Press Poll, which celebrates its 75th birthday this month. Along with its major competitor, the USA Today Coaches Poll, the AP voters cast their ballots for the top 25 teams within the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision. For you old-timers, that’s the newfangled name for the big boys, the Dee-Wun Ay powerhouses.

Remarkably, the past 75 years have seen few changes in the weekly AP Poll ranking process. Other polls have come and gone, and the Bowl Championship Series bulled their way into the sport in 1998. But the constancy of the AP Poll has equaled the Ohio State band’s ritual of dotting the “i.”

Since college football remains the only major national sport without a bracketed playoff, sportswriters have always daydreamed about the country’s best team. The big Eastern newspapers dominated the debate until the 1920s when emerging Midwest powerhouse teams excited both the regional and New York papers. Frank Dickinson pioneered the first quantitative judgment in the 1920s with a mathematical model. In 1933, Parke Davis scribbled and scratched his way to a retroactive selection of the mythical national champions from 1869 through 1933.

An AP sports editor named Alan J. Gould was part of the daydreaming crowd in 1935. Using informal inputs from his friends, Gould published his personal view of the top 10 teams at the end of the season. He had a three-way tie at the top—Minnesota, Princeton and SMU—all undefeated. The blowback from Minnesota fans was severe, and several hung Gould in effigy for daring to think any other team could match the Gophers.
Other reporters, especially Cy Sherman of the Lincoln (Neb.) Star, suggested that Gould move beyond voicing his opinions and develop a systematic rating system.
In a 1980s oral history, Gould recalled that after a few weeks into the 1936 season, he asked sportswriters to send a telegram with their rankings to him in New York. “We got a substantial response,” he said of the first voting cycle. Gould had no designated panel of voters, but rather asked the AP state bureaus to solicit input from papers that were AP members.

On Monday, October 19, 1936, the results of Gould’s first poll hit the AP wire, and the ranking appeared the next day in newspapers across the land. Minnesota topped the list of 20 teams, with almost double the points gained by second place Duke. Army was third. Each of the poll’s 35 voters awarded 10 points to his pick for the top team, nine for second, and so forth. Minnesota earned 345 points, almost a clean sweep. The accompanying text, without a byline but likely from Gould, offered the reasoning behind the choices.

After seven weeks of polling, the AP disseminated the final 1936 rankings on November 30. Minnesota had remained in first, edging Louisiana State, 332 points to 309. The Gophers received 25 first place votes, and LSU, nine. Pittsburgh was third, and Duke had slipped to 11th. Army had gone AWOL.
Gould acknowledged that the formal poll was not just about establishing rankings.
“It was a case of thinking up ideas to develop interest and controversy between football Saturdays,” he told AP writer Herschel Nissenson in 1985, eight years before he died. “Papers wanted material to fill space between games. This was just another exercise in hoopla.”

An example of Gould-induced hullabaloo occurred in 1979 when Ohio State won the AP regular season championship by a Buckeye-lash over Alabama. Although poll voters gave Alabama 29 first place votes, and only 16 to Ohio State, total points determined the rankings. Ohio State’s 1,267 edged Alabama’s 1,265 ½.
Crimson Tide hate mail flooded Gould. One was addressed to “To What Big Dummy It May Concern.” Another, “Alabama is and will always be No. 1. What does AP really stand for, Always Prejudiced?”

Gould’s rabble-rousing notwithstanding, the AP has tried to minimize unfair controversy by establishing a series of guidelines over the years. “AP wanted to make sure voters actually covered games and were not affiliated in any way with the schools,” explained Darrell Christian, an AP sports editor at large. Christian said in a recent interview that a fair and balanced approach was the goal.

A rival poll began in 1950 when the second major wire service of the day, United Press, recruited members of the American Football Coaches Association to rank teams. All voters were Division I coaches, which prompted the AP’s Christian to observe: “Our voters don’t have the inherent conflict of interest that the coaches do.”
UP became UPI in 1958, and then punted the poll to a USA Today/CNN partnership in 1991. ESPN later replaced CNN, and since the start of the 2006 season, the newspaper has run the poll alone.

In the years since 1936, other sponsors of college football polls have included the Football Writers Association of America, Helms Athletic Foundation, and Sporting News. The New York Times, Jeff Sagarin and others have produced rankings drawn from math models or computers.

From 1961 through 1967, the AP reduced its rankings to 10 teams before returning to 20 afterward. They expanded the list to 25 in 1989.
The AP conducted it final poll and named its national champion before the bowl games through the 1964 season. It experimented briefly with a post-bowl ranking in 1965 and caused a dust-up in the Midwest. When the regular season poll winner Michigan State lost to UCLA in the Rose Bowl, the Spartans lost the AP national title. The AP retreated to pre-bowl rankings in 1966 and 1967 before permanently shifting its final poll to after the New Year’s Day galas.

Both the AP and Coaches polls generally coexisted with the old-line holiday bowl games until the early 1990s. For years, some of the bowls had honored contracts with specific conferences, or had felt compelled to select at least one nearby regional team to fill the seats. Examples included the Rose Bowl, which had to offer bids to the winners of the original Pacific Coast Conference and Big Ten; New Orleans’ Sugar Bowl usually invited the Southeastern champ; and the Cotton Bowl, which matched the Southwest Conference winner against a good draw.

After a couple of false starts, the Bowl Championship Series arrived in 1998 and swept the AP and Coaches polls into its hissing and whirling ranking machine. After some unpleasantness in the 2003 season that questioned the independence of the Coaches Poll from the BCS, the role of polls in the BCS calculations came to a head at the end of the 2004 season.

The BCS released the bowl matchups for that season on December 5. Besides No. 3 Auburn grumping about missing the title game—Southern Cal and Oklahoma had bagged it—the battle for No. 4 and a lucrative spot in the Rose Bowl against Michigan gained the most attention.

A week earlier, AP voters had Cal-Berkeley at No. 4, followed by Texas at No. 6. The coaches had ranked Cal fourth and Texas, fifth. In the days following, Texas coach Mack Brown lobbied voters in both polls to raise Texas in their rankings. Some did, which allowed Texas to ease ahead of Cal by .0129 points in the final BCS calculation. The Yellow Rose of Texas bloomed in Pasadena.
Kirk Bohls, a member of the AP panel since 1989, was one of the voters who Brown had pressured. A columnist for the Austin American-Statesman, Bohls acknowledges that the incident made 2004 his worst year as a voter.

“I wasn’t swayed by Coach Brown, however. I just listened. I had watched Cal play that weekend against Southern Mississippi and I thought they had struggled. Texas was the better team.”

Since the AP panel members make their votes public, and the coaches do not, the resulting media attention focused more on the AP Poll. The oft-maligned BCS system has always gathered plenty of adverse attention, but feedback from their voters caused the AP to reconsider its role in the BCS. On December 21, the AP withdrew its poll from the BCS formula. Terry Taylor, the AP’s sports editor, talked at the time about ethical concerns and voter harassment. “It had just gotten to a boiling point. It was causing a problem for our members.”
Christian added a more recent explanation. “Objectivity is a basic principle of the AP. We cover the BCS, therefore we cannot be affiliated with the BCS, and their use of our poll was beginning to take on the appearance of crossing that line.”
Bohls agreed with the AP’s withdrawal from the BCS. “We cannot allow any perception of bias to exist.”

The Harris Interactive Poll replaced the AP poll in the BCS computer algorithm beginning with the 2005 season.

The current panel of voters that the AP uses for its college football poll contains a mix of 60 reporters, editors and broadcasters. Four are national, such ESPN’s Chris Fowler, and the remaining are drawn from states that have Division I FBS teams. The AP uses a formula to determine the number of voters—states with one to three schools get one voter; four to six, two voters; and so forth. Nine states have neither Division I FSB football schools nor voters.

“About 50 percent of our voters are new each year,” said Paul Montella, the AP’s sports “agate” editor. “The AP reporters and editors in each state select the voters. Also, each voter must work for a media outlet that is a member of the Associated Press.”
David Teel, sports columnist for the Daily Press in Hampton Roads, is the sole AP voter in Virginia. He rotates on and off the football panel, yielding to a reporter in Richmond. With only two FBS teams—Virginia and Virginia Tech—the commonwealth merits only one AP voter.

“It’s hard work with a tight deadline, Teel said in a recent interview. “The last Saturday game finishes after midnight my time, and I have to email my rankings by noon on Sunday.” Teel uses the precious week’s ranking as a starting point, watches a DVR of selected ESPN shows, checks sites on the Internet, and applies his own experience and feel to make his judgments. “Sometimes it’s a little easier,” he said. “Just look at LSU’s string of wins over ranked opponents in the first five or six weeks of this season.”
Bohls also begins his weekly ranking analysis with the previous poll results. He then charts the wins and losses, with emphasis on key variables. “I will reward a road win over a ranked opponent,” he said recently. “Mine is a results-driven process.” But he acknowledges that other voters have their own processes. “It’s like making chili—everyone has a different recipe.”

McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Oct. 12, 2011

This month is the 50th anniversary of the start of a dreadful period of stadium building in the America, one that stunted NFL growth and almost ruined the soul of major league baseball. The invasion of the “cookie-cutter,” multi-sport stadiums began with the opening of D.C. Stadium in October 1961. Now called Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, the round concrete convertible ushered in a 30-year pox on the country‟s two biggest sports.
The good news is that the two sports have largely recovered. Teams and their host municipalities have rebounded with a 20-year building binge that has rewarded the faithful with engaging single-sport venues that better fit the chosen game. The new throwback baseball arenas are again “parks,” with more intimate seating that envelops the game like a well-worn glove.
NFL teams, which play only eight regular season games at home, have built huge arenas for their huge shows. Pro football needs “stadiums” and “coliseums,” not parks, if the sport wants to keep its connection to the violent spectacle of Rome and the gladiators.
In Philadelphia, for example, both the Phillies and Eagles endured the cookie-cutter Veterans Stadium that opened in 1971. The Eagles bolted first, moving to the new Lincoln Financial Field in 2003. The Phillies opened the 2004 season in Citizens Bank Park. The site of the Vet is now a parking lot.

Just as cycles of change have influenced baseball and football during the last 145-or-so years, sports venues have reflected varying priorities of every era. Yet sports historians say that the 30-year run of the cookie-cutters was mostly a down cycle.

Author of Storied Stadiums, Curt Smith sees several stages in American ballpark development. During the first 60 years of the 20th century, Act I produced the classic baseball parks that thrived with “shirt-sleeve” crowds at day games, flannel uniforms and radio broadcasts. The names send tingles through loyal fans—Forbes Field, Comiskey Park, Crosley Field, Griffith Stadium and Fenway Park, for example. Cozy and friendly, they fit the measured pace of baseball.

Although built for baseball, those arenas occasionally accommodated college football, and more regularly, the NFL after it began in 1920. It was an awkward union, one of infield dirt, tight sidelines, uncomfortable end zone locations and skewed sightlines. The Bears, for example, played in Cubs Park (later Wrigley Field), the NFL Dodgers in Ebbets Field and the football Giants in the Polo Grounds. Major league baseball was the dominant sport, so NFL teams often became off-season tenants.

Act II spawned the cookie-cutters. “People wanted two parks for the price of one,” Smith explained in a recent interview. Professor Mark Rosentraub, a sports economics expert at Cleveland State University agrees, telling USA Today in 2005 that the economics of the sport at that time justified the combination arenas. City councils liked the efficiency, and the scheme filled more dates throughout the year, thus yielding more revenue to pay off the construction bonds. Team owners spurned the older parks and fields—those who had brung „em to the dance—and lusted for the circular concrete beauties. It was the time of the space race, technological leaps and engineering marvels. “Team owners wanted to be trendy and up-to-date,” said Smith. Besides, the Jetsons loved these new stadiums.
RFK Stadium hosted the Washington Redskins 1961-1996, and the Washington Senators from 1962 until the second collapse of big league baseball in the nation‟s capital in 1971. Washington‟s third major league team since 1960, the Nationals, played in RFK 2005-2007, before moving to their own home, Nationals Park, in 2008.

Other multi-sport stadiums cut from RFK‟s cookie dough rose quickly. New York‟s Shea Stadium opened in 1964, followed by the cookie-cutter quintuplets—Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium (1965), Busch in St. Louis (1966), Cincinnati‟s Riverfront (1970), Pittsburgh‟s Three Rivers (1970) and Philadelphia‟s Veterans. Oakland Coliseum (1966) and San Diego Stadium (1967) and were close cousins.

Three domed multi-sports stadiums were on an adjacent branch of the family tree: the Houston Astrodome (1965), Montreal‟s Olympic Stadium (1976) and the Minneapolis Metrodome (1982). Also symmetrically shaped, they offered the same disadvantages to baseball as the cookie-cutters did, but kept the rain out. Arlington Stadium near Fort Worth, Tex., was a circular baseball-only park that officials enlarged for MLB use in 1972. Not an actual cookie-cutter, it nevertheless shared some of the breed‟s unfavorable characteristics.

Most observers outside Philadelphia—fans, coaches, players and reporters—count the Vet as the worst of the group. The rug was a “playing surface from hell” that frequently caused injuries. The Giants Michael Strahan said in 2003, “It‟s a hellhole.” A section of stands collapsed in 1988 during an Army-Navy game. But of course, the rowdy Philly fans made a bad stadium a nightmare for visitors. Strahan said that the crowds in other stadiums yell and wave at opposing players, but at the Vet, “They give you the middle finger.”
Of these 13 cookie-cutter arenas, seven have been demolished. Three—Montreal, San Diego and Minneapolis—accommodate football only, and the Astrodome and RFK have neither the NFL nor MLB. Only one, Oakland, still welcomes two major teams, the Athletics and Raiders.

Good riddance perhaps, but what happened?

Rosentraub said the cookie-cutters‟ demise resulted from a natural business cycle. “We‟re talking about a complex business that went through substantial changes over three decades, the same as every business in America.”

Smith is more specific. “The cookie-cutters didn‟t work for baseball. It was like mixing oil and water. Baseball is played on a diamond, football on a rectangle.” Moreover, Smith points to subjective issues. “They were too sterile and standoffish for the Pastime. In baseball, the arena is a participant in the game, not a spectator.”
Smith includes a comment in his book from Phillies Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt on the cookie-cutters. “You‟d be kind to say they had the charm of a parking garage.”

Act III begins with the opening of Oriole Park at Camden Yards in 1992. According to Smith, Baltimore owners wanted a new park with personality, pointing to Forbes Field, the Pittsburgh Pirates old home, as an example. Camden Yards has been a huge hit since the first inning, and since early 1992, 20 new grass baseball parks have opened on its model. The architecture firm HOK participated in the initial design of 16 of them.
Ironically, baseball‟s push to build “retro” ballparks has yielded a bunch of conceptually similar retro ballparks. Each is a little different from the others, but you wonder if HOK is recycling some of the drawings.

The NFL has retreated largely to single-sport stadiums, with only two of the 32 teams sharing a venue with a baseball team in 2011—Miami Dolphins and Florida Marlins in Sun Life Stadium, and the Raiders and Athletics in Oakland‟s O.co Coliseum. The Marlins move to a new park next year.

In Washington DC, RFK Stadium welcomes visitors as an aging movie queen in a shopworn gown might greet her die-hard fans. Deserted by baseball and the Redskins, her major tenant is the DC United soccer team, which is looking for a soccer-only venue.
Nevertheless, District officials kicked off a three-month-long celebration of the stadium‟s 50th birthday on Oct. 5. “This old girl has a lot of fight in her yet,” said Gregory A. O‟Dell, chief executive of Events DC, the local authority that owns and manages the facility. Most of the fight, however, happened years ago.
The Redskins opened the 1961 season at D.C. Stadium against the Giants, losing 24-21. The following spring, Senators drew a solid crowd of 44,383 to their first game there and beat Detroit 4-1. President John Kennedy threw out the first pitch and stayed for the entire game. As he left, he told the team owner, “I‟m leaving you in first place.”

The buzz didn‟t last long, though. The team and town soon reverted to their customary place, “First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.” Ten years later, Senator owner Bob Short turned his team into the Texas Rangers and prepared to gallop out of town. On the sentimental last day of the 1971 season at RFK, the Senators led the Yankees 7-5 with two outs in the top of the ninth.

Instead of savoring the last out, unruly fans spilled out on to the field to grab souvenirs—bases, turf, scoreboard numbers and stray dogs. The umps called the game and forfeited it to New York. The Washington Post editorialized: “That—So to Speak—Was the Ball Game.”

With RFK lacking a major league baseball team from 1972 until 2005, the Redskins had it to themselves. And they eventually put a lot of fannies in the seats. In 1966, five years after opening the place, the Skins began a run of 229 consecutive sellouts that lasted until their final game there in 1996. The glory days included Super Bowl wins in 1983, 1988 and 1992, as well as NFC Championships in 1972-73 and 1983-84. Rabid fans particularly enjoyed the “bouncy seats,” a lightweight block of 6,000 that crews moved in the conversion between baseball and football. The whole section undulated with the stomping and jumping.
On December 22, 1996, the Redskins honored its past heroes during the final game at RFK before moving to their own stadium, a big house now called FedExField. Former quarterback Sonny Jurgensen said, “It‟s a special day. It‟s been a very special place.”
“This is a sad time in Redskins history, added Jeff Bostic, a member of the legendary offensive line called the “Hogs.”

Bostic must have had the inside scoop. Since leaving RFK 15 years ago, the Skins have won only two postseason games. The curse of the cookie-cutters lives on.

McClatchy-Tribune News Service, October 5, 2011

Cursing the NFL for not offering a game every evening, Morty slapped his remote into warp drive and sped through the high-def channels looking for sports.  He inexplicably paused on a tennis match long enough for his wife to plead, “Hold it there, dear.”  Morty, strictly a meat and potatoes sports fan, winced at the offering of steamed broccoli.

“This is the U.S. Open in New York,” Bernice said.  “Wud ja just look at the size of that crowd.”

Just then, the TV announcer whispered, “Federer was down love-40, but Nadal double-faulted twice and netted a backhand drop shot, so now it’s deuce.”

“What the hell’s this guy talking about?” groaned Morty.

Hardcore fans can cope with the major sports’ lingo, easily processing NFL-speak for example.  “The Giants have a third and forever with only a few ticks left.  They’re in a shotgun with trips to the right.  Could be Hail Mary time.”  The baseball faithful follow the national pastime’s numbers-based gibberish.  “Toronto’s Jose Bautista’s having a helluva year so far with 38 HRs, 85 RBIs, .642 SP, and .453 OBP!”

Tennis, as Morty can attest, has its own vernacular, one drawn from the game’s 800-year history.  It is a patois with roots in gambling, royalty and European traditions.

v v v

Tennis grew out of a medieval handball game played by monks in cloisters during the 12th century in what is now northern France.  The earliest surviving images show a player serving to another, who returns the ball.  An early name for the game was jeu de la paume, reflecting the use of one’s palm to hit the ball.

By the 1300s, the French aristocracy adopted the game, later playing on both indoor and outdoor courts.  King Louis X died after a match on June 5, 1316.  King John II, who reigned 1319-1364, enjoyed la paume and bet heavily on his matches.

The Middle Ages witnessed the emergence of a line to divide the ends of the court, and then later, a net.  Paddles replaced hands, and rackets strung with sheep gut appeared in the late 1500s.

Scottish royalty picked up the game to complement their interest in golf.  James I, king of Scotland from 1406 until 1437, had a court in his castle.  The English King Henry VII kept records of his wagering losses in tennis during the 1490s.

Tennis gradually evolved from jeu de la paume until the modern game appeared in 1874 when British Maj. Walter C. Wingfield patented a tennis game for playing on grass.  To help make his game unique enough for a British patent, he added the term “lawn” to distinguish it from indoor tennis.  The older game gradually became known as “real” or “royal” tennis.  In America, the indoor variety lives on as “court” tennis.  Tennis associations dropped the word lawn in the 1970s.

v v v

Although the tennis family tree has both ancient and modern branches, today’s game draws much of its terminology from times past.  Most of the scholarly exploration of tennis terms has come from Dr. Heiner Gillmeister, now a retired professor at the University of Bonn.  His book, Tennis: A Cultural History, is one of the definitive guides to the game’s history.

Gillmeister notes that while French and English nobles played at paume, common men played tenesse in England, tenes in Italy and teneys in the Netherlands.  He believes that “tennis” evolved from a warning cry that the server called out to the receiver when he was ready to hit, tenez! (Hold!)  The plural imperative of the French verb tenir, “to hold,” was tenys.  Gillmeister points to other ball games in the middle ages in which players used warning cries, with golf as a contemporary example: Fore!

The word racket grew from the French verb rachcier, which describes the return of service.  That word evolved into the Dutch-Flemish raket, which meant “strike a ball back.”  The English called the bat used in ball games a “racket,” and the French made it raquette.

In tennis, the first player to win four points wins the game.  It’s a mystery to every beginning tennis player, though, why you have to count in increments of 15.  Also, why not say zip or nil instead of “love,” and what’s all this stuff about “deuce” and “advantage?”

Early betting customs in tennis created the scoring system.  “Generally speaking, betting was common, if not the rule, in all sorts of medieval games,” Gillmeister told me in 2006.  “Tennis players have always competed for money.”  Men of all classes bet, although royalty kept more survivable records.

Gillmeister supports his conclusion by pointing to a common French coin of the time, the gros denier tournois, the Great Penny of Tours.  At the start of the 14th century, the coin equaled 15 deniers or pence.  Players bet one coin per point—15, 30, 45 (contracted then and now to 40) and 60.

Social pressures on betting during this time limited such casual wagers to 60 deniers, Gillmeister explains.  Four times 15 equals 60.  Game over.

A player must win by two points, so if two playrs were tied 40-all, each was two points from game.  According to Gillmeister, the French would say they were at deuce, “À deux!”  The English changed that to “I have a deuce,” and then simply, “Deuce.”

“Advantage” was a handmaiden to deuce in the late 1500s, as French players who had won the first of the two needed points recognized their avantage.  The English changed it to advantage

An oft-repeated tale holds that “Love” (zero points) comes from the French word for egg, l’œuf, because of the shape of the number zero.  Gillmeister likes another explanation.  Many people used the phrase “neither for love nor money” in the Middle Ages.  The words could have easily applied to a game played for either money or the love of the game.  If a player had zero points, he must be hanging on solely because of his passion for the game.  In Belgium and the Netherlands, through which both golf and tennis traveled to Britain, the Dutch equivalent of honor is lof, and omme lof spelen means “to play for the honor.”  (The Low Countries also gave the British the words cricket, golf, putt, and luck.)

“Wasn’t that interesting,” sighed Bernice.  “Morty, are you awake?”

McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Oct. 1, 2011

Sixty years ago this week, all three of New York‟s major league baseball teams finished the season in first place. The Yankees won the American League pennant, and the Dodgers and Giants tied with identical 96-58 records in the Senior Circuit.

To determine which team would advance to the Subway Series with the Yanks, the Dodgers and Giants met at Brooklyn‟s Ebbets Field on October 1, 1951 for a three-game playoff. The Giants won the first game, 3-1, but lost the next day at the Polo Grounds, 10-0. Game three, also at the eccentric, bathtub-shaped Polo Grounds, would decide the National League title.

A middling crowd of 34,000, well under its SRO capacity of 56,000, filed into the ballpark on October 3, and nervous tension mixed with excitement touched both the fans and players. The first-ever live national television broadcast transmitted the edgy anticipation from coast to coast. Radio, then still the lifeblood of professional baseball, likely reached most everyone else.

No one, however, knew they were about to witness one of the most dramatic events in American sports history. The game would offer both clutch heroism and panicky mistakes, as well as a bit of larceny that would ultimately threaten to undermine what The Sporting News called the greatest moment in baseball history.

On the morning of the deciding game, Bobby Thomson, the Giants third baseman, drove onto the Staten Island ferry en route the Polo Grounds in Harlem. The tall and rangy 27-year-old, who had been born in Glasgow, Scotland, felt good about his season—.293 batting average, 32 home runs, and 101 RBIs. He had hit a homer in the first playoff game and liked his chances against the Dodgers pitcher that day, Don Newcombe.
“If I can just get three for four,” he thought, “then the old Jints will be all right.”
Other than their pasting in the second playoff game, the Giants had months of momentum stored in their minds as the 1:30 p.m. game approached. Woefully behind the Dodgers on the morning of August 12—13 ½ games—they proceeded to rip off 16 straight wins, and go 37-7 through the end of the regular season. That streak had baseball insiders scratching their heads. The run seemed too good to be true.
In the visitor‟s clubhouse before the game, Brooklyn manager Charlie Dressen carefully summarized the scouting reports on the Giants hitters, a lecture lost on the players, who had faced the team 24 times already that year. When he got to Thomson, he told Newcombe, “Keep the ball low and away. Don‟t let him pull it.”
New York manager Leo “the Lip” Durocher sent Sal “the Barber” Maglie to the mound as his starting pitcher. Although Maglie sported a 5 o‟clock shadow at noon, he gained his nickname by his willingness to throw inside. A little chin music from the Barber could give a hitter a close shave.
Maglie, 23-6 for the season, got into hot water in the top of the first. He walked shortstop Pee Wee Reese and centerfielder Duke Snider, and second baseman Jackie Robinson singled home Reese. Brooklyn had the game‟s first lead, 1-0.
Newcombe, who was 20-9 at that point, was an imposing figure on the mound—6 feet 4, 220. The Dodger ace met his first test in the second when first baseman Whitey Lockman singled. Thomson, batting sixth in front of the 20-year-old rookie Willie Mays, hit a line drive down the left field line. Spurred by the team motto, “Let „er rip,” Bobby sprinted with his head down and rounded first thinking second all the way. When he finally looked up, he saw that Whitey hadn‟t been thinking third. Thomson was out in a run down.
By the fifth inning, Newcombe was rolling. “Up to that point,” Thomson said later, “Newcombe was really firing the ball, looking strong and confident.” Bobby was up to the task and doubled. New York Times sportswriter John Drebinger wryly attributed the two-bagger to the fact that “there was no one in front of him to watch.” The Giants stranded Bobby, but his two hits put him within reach of his goal of three for four.
Brooklyn pitcher Carl Erskine, 16-12 during the season, began to throw in the bullpen. Ralph Branca, who had lost the first playoff game, began lobbing balls in the bullpen, trying to loosen his stiff arm. Branca said later that throwing helped ease his nervousness. “I‟d never felt tension like this,” he admitted.
Thomson came up again in the seventh, with Monte Irvin on third. “With the tying run at third, Newcombe was going to pitch me tough,” Thomson recalled years later. Bobby fouled off three pitches before lifting a sacrifice fly to Snider in center. The Giants faithful finally exhaled. Tied, 1-1.
“I got nothing left,” Newcombe reportedly said before the eighth. “Nothing.” There are competing recollections about the level in Don‟s gas tank at this point. Roger Kahn offered this take in 1960. “My arm‟s tight,” he said to Robinson and catcher Roy Campanella, who was sitting out with a pulled thigh muscle.
“@#$%&*,” replied Robinson. “You go out there and pitch until your @#$%&* arm falls off.”
In the top of the eighth, the Dodgers took a strop to the Barber. Reese scored on a wild pitch, and now leading 2-1, Brooklyn had runners on the corners. Leftfielder Andy Pafko hit a ground ball toward Thomson, who Durocher had shifted from the outfield to third when Mays came up from Triple-A ball in May.
“The ball hit my glove just as I tried to grab it between hops,” Thomson said, “but my timing was off.” After it squibbed away, the friendly Polo Grounds scorer ruled it a hit. Snider scored, 3-1. But that wasn‟t all for Thomson that inning.
Third baseman Billy Cox then rifled a shot toward third. “Get in front of it,” Bobby thought, but the ball bounced past him. Scored as a hit. Dodgers, 4-1.
Newcombe, tired arm and all, breezed through the bottom of the eighth, and reached the dugout with a four-hitter going. Dodgers fans were thinking World Series tickets.
Larry Jansen pitched for Maglie in the top of the ninth and retired the Dodgers, 1-2-3. Three outs left for the New York baseball Giants.
Durocher had been coaching at third during the series in place of Herman Franks, who was nowhere to be seen. As Al Dark walked to the plate, Leo said, “It‟s up to you to get it started.” As the shortstop dug in, a Giant on the bench yelled, “Let ‘er rip!”
Dark‟s infield single brought a mild charge to the fans. The keen observers among them also noticed that Dodgers first baseman Gil Hodges seemed to be holding Dark on first as right fielder Don Mueller stepped into the box. Odd. Down 4-1, the Giants wouldn‟t be stealing. “When I saw Hodges,” Mueller said later, “I went for the hole between first and second.” Bingo.
Mueller‟s single to right put Giants on first and third with no outs. Irvin fouled out to Hodges. One down.
Dressen had been calling bullpen coach Clyde Sukeforth repeatedly to check on Erskine and Branca. “Who‟s ready? Who‟s ready?” Dressen usually would plan on when relievers would step in, so his nervousness was out of character, according to Sukeforth. Dressen also furiously paced the dugout, and several players thought he was losing control. Robinson yelled, “Will some tell Dressen to sit down. He‟s making us all nervous.”
Lockman doubled, scoring Dark. Mueller did not slide into third as many have said, but stepped awkwardly on top of the bag and badly sprained his ankle. He went down hard, the ump called time and the drama froze as trainers helped Mueller onto a stretcher.
Dressen went to the mound, and after talking with Reese, Robinson, Hodges, and Newcombe, he called for Branca. As the big right-hander walked in, Snider yelled, “Go get ‘em, Honk!” Called Honker and Hawk for his large nose, Branca didn‟t respond.
“Here,” said Dressen as he flipped the ball to Branca. “Get „em out.” Again, that was strange behavior from the skipper, who normally gave specific instructions to the reliever.
Clint Hartung came in to pinch run for Mueller at third. Lockman stood on second. One out, Giants down 4-2. Nineteen fifty-one was a time when “all the marbles” meant something to players and fans alike.
Thomson passed Leo as he walked to the box. “If you ever hit one, hit one now,” Durocher said. As he stepped in, Thomson thought about fundamentals. “Wait and watch for the ball. Wait and watch, you sonofabitch.”
Branca served up a fastball, waist-high, down the middle. Thomson took it for a called strike, but then thought, “Should have swung at that.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Branca heard Durocher yell at Thomson.
Catcher Rube Walker signaled for another fastball. Branca threw it high and inside.
Thomson took an aggressive cut as if he had been sitting on a fastball. Crack! The ball screamed on a line toward left. “Get down, get down,” Cox screamed at the ball, hoping it might drop in for just a single or double. Pafko took a few steps in left. Those in the Polo Grounds still sitting arose as one.
The sinking line drive just cleared the left field wall and snuck under the second deck scoreboard that jutted out over the lower level. After a heartbeat of shocked silence, the crowd roared, a noise that echoed across the country on TVs and radios. The Giants radio announcer, Russ Hodges, added what some have labeled the most famous call in sports.
Branca throws . . . There’s a long drive! It’s going to be, I believe! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! Bobby Thomson hits into the lower deck of the left field stands! The Giants win the pennant! And they’re going crazy!

The Yankees punctured the Giants balloon in the World Series, winning 4-2. But the buzz from the National League playoff still permeated the baseball kingdom. The stonemasons continued to chisel the names Branca and Thomson, as well as “The Giants Win the Pennant” in the highest frieze of the Amazing Games Museum.
In recent years, however, disheartening rumors began to dim the luster of the Giants win that day. Players talked about the Giants stealing signs throughout most of the summer as well as in the Brooklyn playoff.
Everyone in baseball tries to sneak a peek as the catcher flashes signs to the pitcher. Base coaches and men on second are supposed to do that. Knowing that a fastball or breaking ball is on the way doesn‟t guarantee a hit, however. A batter still has to use a stick to hit an aspirin that dips, slides, or curves. But knowing the pitch gives the batter an edge. However, elaborate and systematic schemes, especially involving a “mechanical device,” were not illegal until 10 years later. Nevertheless, in 1951 off-field sign stealing was generally taboo.
Branca relates in his just-released book, “A Moment in Time,” that he discovered the elaborate and closely held Giants secret in 1954. While playing for Detroit, one of Ralph‟s teammates told him that he had learned about it from Earl Rapp, a member of the 1951 Giants. Branca kept it to himself until 2001. “I don‟t want to be a crybaby,” he told his wife at the time.
On January 31, 2001, writer Josh Prager fully exposed the Giants sign-stealing system in the Wall Street Journal. He wrote that Durocher had gathered the team on July 19, 1951 to gauge the players‟ reaction to his plan to methodically steal signs in the Polo Grounds, and on the road where feasible. No one objected, but about half said they didn‟t want to be informed.
First Henry Schenz, a utility infielder, and then third base coach Herman Franks, a former catcher, trained a telescope on the opposing catcher while hidden in the Giants clubhouse deep in centerfield. After picking up the sign for the next pitch, Franks would notify reserve catcher Sal Yvars by pushing a button that rang a buzzer in the bullpen—one for a fastball, two for a breaking ball. Yvars then used a simple, visible sign to alert the batter—tossing a ball, flapping a towel, or remaining still.
Back to Branca‟s second pitch to Thomson. Did he use the sign? Prager wrote that Thomson replied, “My answer is no.” There seemed some equivocation in his other comments, though. Yet Thomson also denied getting a sign when interviewed by the New York Times later in 2001.
Branca and Thomson gradually had become friends and the two men eventually appeared as a team in the lucrative autograph and memorabilia industry. Branca writes that he called Thomson after the Wall Street Journal article appeared. “What do you think?” he asked.
“I think, Ralph, that you must feel exonerated,” Thomson said.

Thomson died in 2010. He had worked for 30 years as a business executive after leaving baseball in 1960. Branca retired after the 1956 season and enjoyed another career in insurance and financial planning.

McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Sep. 28, 2011

Many in the Yankee Stadium crowd of 58,000 had headed for the gates as New York pitcher Bud Daley closed out the Cleveland Indians in the top of the ninth. It was a satisfied throng, one buoyed primarily by the Yankees’ sweep of the Sunday doubleheader. There was also considerable buzz that day, September 10, 1961, about Mickey Mantle’s 53rd home run in the second game, the latest highlight in what the news media had dubbed the “Home Run Derby.”

Mantle and his teammate, Roger Maris, were the sensations of the national pastime 50 years ago, hitting home runs at a blistering pace. The “M&M Boys” were jacking baseballs out of American League parks at a rate that threatened Babe Ruth’s legendary 60-home run record in 1927.
Roger had hit his 56th the day before the Cleveland twin bill. He was by then four games ahead of Ruth’s pace, and Mantle, two behind.

Their slugging, plus a dynamite collection of other hitters and pitchers, had propelled the Yankees to an 11½-game lead over second place Detroit on September 10. The Yanks had won 12 in a row and their home record had reached a lofty 61-15.

Nineteen sixty-one proved to be a banner year for American League power hitters. The league had added two teams that year, and suddenly 20 pitchers who should have been minor-leaguers were in “the show.” Other sluggers also feasted on the diluted pitching—Baltimore’s Jim Gentile and Minnesota’s Harmon Killebrew each had 43 home runs by September 10, followed by Cleveland’s Rocky Colavito with 41. By the end of the year, home run production had risen 10 percent over the 1956-1960 average.
The expansion also led to an increase in games played, from 154 to 162, in order to balance the number of times each club played the others. This produced tension among the baseball faithful, since Ruth had hit 60 in 154 games. Were either Mantle or Maris to break the Bambino’s record by season’s end, how would baseball’s tradition-heavy bean counters handle the extra at-bats?

+ + +

That teammates were each making a run at Ruth’s hallowed record spoke to the strength of the 1961 New York ball club. On offense, a new Murderer’s Row rivaled the 1927 Yankees, with Yogi Berra, Elston Howard, Johnny Blanchard, and Bill Skowron backing up Mantle and Maris. Clete Boyer, Tony Kubek and Bobby Richardson anchored the infield, with Mantle, Maris and Berra in the outfield. Years of catching had worn down Yogi, so to extend his career, he frequently played left field and generally left his tools of ignorance to Howard and Blanchard. Whitey Ford, who would win 25 games that year, and Ralph Terry led the starting pitchers.

Mantle and Maris, who had come to New York in 1959 from Kansas City, proved to be a formidable duo the year before during the bittersweet 1960 season. The newcomer edged the established team star in the MVP voting, and the Yankees won the American League pennant by eight games over Baltimore. However, New York’s seven-game loss to Pittsburgh in the World Series ended the campaign with a thud.
The New York owners responded by hiring a new general manager and put manager Casey Stengel, the “Ol’ Perfessor,” on a train to a California retirement. To replace him, they hired Ralph “The Major” Houk, a journeyman big league catcher who had won a Silver Star in World War II.

Although Stengel had batted Maris fourth and kept Mantle, a two-time league MVP, in the three-hole, Houk soon flipped that order. Sportswriter Phil Pepe argues that the switch-hitting Mantle gave Houk more flexibility in the cleanup spot and a chance for more RBIs. Once Maris started hitting homers in bunches in May, Houk moved him permanently to third. Maris saw better pitches in front of Mickey and he didn’t draw an intentional walk during the season.

Mantle started the year with a bang, hitting five home runs in the first 10 games. Maris was as cold as a New York shoulder until April 26, when he hit his first in the team’s 11th game. By May 4, Mantle had hit nine, and Maris, two.

The Yanks sputtered along for much of May, as the team leaders alternated in batting slumps. However, starting on May 28 and continuing for four weeks, New York’s offense found its footing. On June 22, Maris’s home run total had reached 27 and Mantle’s, 22.
This home run explosion sparked national media attention in the M&M Boys, and the daily newspaper reporting began including the possibility of one or both breaking Ruth’s record.
After his 27th, a reporter asked Maris about his thoughts on breaking the Babe’s record. “I never give Babe Ruth a thought,” Maris replied testily. “Not now or ever.”
By about that point, some reporters had created a bitter personal competition between Mantle and Maris, hoping to sell more papers. There was no actual animosity between them, and they enjoyed several similarities.

Both were strong athletic men—Mantle was 5 feet 11, 195 pounds, Maris, 6 feet and 200. Each grew up in rural America, Mantle in Oklahoma and Maris, North Dakota. Both married high school sweethearts, had children, and in 1961, each of their families remained in their permanent homes in Dallas and Kansas City. At the start of the season, Mantle was 30, and Maris, 27.

Both arrived in New York generally quiet and socially withdrawn except among friends. Mantle gradually adapted to the big city and his personality became complex. He learned how to be a good interview and easily turned his boyish grin toward every camera, but also displayed a moody abruptness in later years.
As his fame surged, Mantle drank heavily, spent money like most New York sports heroes and displayed a lingering immaturity that idolatry can produce. Mantle biographer Jane Leavy described him as the “last boy in the last decade ruled by boys.”

Maris was naive and unpolished, and poorly prepared for the media glare in New York City. He had few apologies for his personality—“I was born surly,” he offered, “and I’m going to stay that way.”
Despite the observable differences, the Derby’s pressures ultimately drove them closer together. For a period during the season they shared an apartment in Queens with their teammate Bob Cerv. Maris had joined Cerv to dodge the media, and later convinced Mantle to join them.
“You can’t have a private life,” Mantle said at the time. “It’s just impossible. Everywhere you go, people think they know you.”

On July 4, Maris had 31 home runs and was on pace to hit 66 for the season. Mantle lagged behind with 28, but their power binge began to concern baseball commissioner Ford Frick.
An old-school baseball purist, Frick had been a sportswriter before he became president of the National League in 1934. Frick had been a Ruth ghostwriter and many believe that he had authored “Babe Ruth’s Own Book of Baseball” in 1928.

On July 17, Frick issued an edict that would govern the remaining laps in the Mantle-Maris Home Run Derby, an order that became known as the “asterisk ruling.” Any player who hit more than 60 home runs during his club’s first 154 games would earn the season record. However, Frick’s announcement continued, if a player needed between 155 and 162 games to break the record, “there would have to be some distinctive mark in the record books to show that Ruth’s record was set under a 154-game schedule.”

In response, both Mantle and Maris made muted public statements. “I think it’s right,” said Mickey. Roger declared that Frick shouldn’t have made the ruling, but added, “If Mick breaks it, I hope he does it in 154. The same goes for me.” Maris also tossed out another line that likely belied his true feelings, “A season is a season.”

The following week, a 12-year-old boy from West Islip, New York, named Ron Fitzsimmons, attended a July 25 doubleheader against the White Sox at Yankee Stadium. A keen fan and already a skilled player, the youngster reveled in the Yanks’ power that day. Mantle hit his 38th, and Maris erupted with home run numbers 37, 38, 39, and 40.
“We sat behind one of those concrete columns that they used to have in the old stadium,” Fitzsimmons recalled recently, “and had to crane our necks to watch the game, but it was worth it. The homers were flying that day.”

Fitzsimmons, who now lives in Alexandria, Va., has enjoyed a life-long passion for the Yankees. He collects team memorabilia and has assembled a set of 29 signed baseballs from pitchers who surrendered home runs to Maris in 1961.

Mid-August witnessed another Maris spurt in which he hit seven homers in six games. Mantle trailed by two on August 16.

The media frenzy also spurted to immense proportions. The New York reporters camped in front of Maris’s locker after home games, frustrating the unsophisticated and nakedly honest Dakotan with unending questions. He often blurted what was on his mind, but of course, that made good copy.
Maris admitted later that he perceived differences between the veteran reporters and the rookies. “The guys who had known Ruth didn’t want me to break the record. The others were trying to get enough of a story to be read.”

The Yanks swept a three-game series with Detroit at home, September 1-3, and effectively sealed the pennant race. Maris hit numbers 52 and 53, while Mantle parked 49 and 50. In the second game, Mantle tore a muscle in the left forearm with a vicious checked swing. As he had throughout his career, Mantle played through the pain.

+ + +

The M&M Express ran low on steam during a Yankee road trip following the Cleveland doubleheader on September 10. Mantle was out of sorts, and Maris went five games before hitting 57 in Detroit on September 16, but followed with 58 the next day against the Tigers. The Yankees had now played 151 official games, and the boys had only three games left before Frick’s ruling might prevent them from usurping Ruth’s place.
On September 18, an off-day before starting a series in Ruth’s home town of Baltimore, Mantle was a sick puppy with chills and a fever. He slept all day while Roger dealt with the unrelenting media crush.

The following day, Mantle was too ill to play in a Tuesday doubleheader against the Orioles. “That’s it, Rog,” he said. “I’m through. It’s all up to you.”

Maris responded poorly, going one for eight with a walk in the twin bill. The closest he came to a home run was a fly ball to right that either the wind or a puff from the Bambino’s ghost kept in the park. One game left to hit three homers.

Nervous as a turkey on Christmas Eve, Maris paced and smoked incessantly before game number 154 on September 20, also at Baltimore. “I knew if I sat down in front of my locker for long,” he said later, “my stomach would end up in a hundred knots.” The pressure had not only created emotional anxiety for Maris, but the physical manifestations even included losing tufts of hair from his scalp.

Only 21,000 fans showed up at Memorial Stadium, with the missing perhaps not wanting to witness a blasphemy of Ruth’s record. Maris got right to work and in his second at-bat, powered a Milt Pappas fastball over the right field wall at the 380 mark. One down, two to go.

Maris hit foul balls into the seats in the fourth and seventh, but failed to get a hit. In the ninth, with the Yanks in control of the game, Baltimore sent knuckleballer and Maris nemesis Hoyt Wilhelm to the mound. The Orioles were intent on keeping Roger away from Ruth’s legacy.

Baseball writer Pete Golenbock has suggested that Wilhelm might have been willing to groove a fastball for Maris at that point. However, the Oriole manager allegedly threatened to fine Wilhelm $5,000 if he threw anything but knuckleballs. Wilhelm apparently acquiesced, and on the third one, Maris grounded weakly down the first base line.

“I tried hard all night, but I only got one,” Maris said in the locker room. “Now I feel free and relaxed. I have no squawks.” Although the Yankees clinched the pennant that day, the froth surrounding Maris almost obscured the team’s achievement.

New York played the Red Sox in Boston on Saturday September 23. Although still quite ill, Mantle managed to hit his 54th and last home run. Searching for a magical cure, Mickey sought help from a quack named Dr. Max Jacobson in Manhattan on the team’s off-day, September 25.

“Dr. Feelgood,” as he was known, ministered to the celebrity set, including Elizabeth Taylor and President John Kennedy. He injected unknown chemicals, but likely including amphetamines, in Mantle’s rump. Within 24 hours, Mantle was in Lenox Hill Hospital with a nasty abscess the size of a baseball at the site of the shot. His regular season was over.

Maris tied Ruth with 60 home runs on September 26 at Yankee Stadium. He launched a curveball from Baltimore’s Jack Fisher into the third deck. Later Roger said, “I don’t remember what my thoughts were. I was in a fog.”

In the season’s next-to-the-last game, at home against Boston, Maris failed to hit the ball out of the infield. The next afternoon, Sunday, October 1, the house that Ruth built was two-thirds empty. Only 23,154 fans showed up to see if Maris could set a new home run record* for a season.

In his second at-bat in the fourth against rookie right-hander Tracy Stallard, Maris looked for a pitch to drive. Phil Pepe reported the call by broadcaster Phil Rizzuto on WCBS radio: “Here’s the windup . . . fastball . . . HIT DEEP TO RIGHT . . . THIS COULD BE IT . . . HOLY COW! HE DID IT . . . 61 HOME RUNS.”

After the game, Maris spoke directly about his feelings. “No one knows how tired I am. I’m happy I got past 60, but I’m so tired. I’m just glad it’s over.”

In the World Series, New York beat Cincinnati 4-1. Mantle, hobbled by the abscess, played in only two games and went one for six with a single. Maris had only two hits in 19 at-bats, including a homer. Perhaps the Derby had exhausted baseball’s excitement by that point.

“The 1961 team was my favorite of all time,” explained Fitzsimmons. “About eight years ago, I started collecting balls signed by the individual players on that team and other memorabilia.”

Two years ago, Fitzsimmons noticed that Tracy Stallard was at a signing event. “I thought it was interesting that he was seeking to capitalize on a negative event. That’s when I got the idea of collecting signed balls from the pitchers who coughed up home run balls to Maris.”

+ + +

Despite all of the talk about an asterisk on Maris’s record, none ever existed. In 1968, the special baseball records committee ruled that there would be no official sign used to denote the number of games scheduled when single season records were set. Major League Baseball reaffirmed that position in 1991.

The matter of asterisks on records arose again when Mark McGwire hit 70 in 1998, and Barry Bonds, 73 in 2001. However unlikely a hero that Maris may have been, he did it the old-fashioned way.

Mantle retired after the 1968 season, and baseball whisked him into the Hall of Fame as soon as he was eligible. Maris, who the Yankees traded to the St. Louis in 1966, helped the Cardinals win two pennants and the World Series before retiring in in 1968. The Hall of Fame holds the bat and ball from Roger’s 61st homer, but he has yet to be selected.

Both Mantle and Maris died early. Lymphoma claimed Maris at age 51 in 1985. Mantle, who had publicly expressed remorse for a lifetime of drinking in 1994, died the following year of liver cancer at age 63.