BALTIMORE COLT JOHNNY UNITAS--THE BEST THERE EVER WAS
RICK on JOHNNY UNITAS
I have gotten into countless debates about who is the greatest quarterback of all time. I have won every one of them because Johnny Unitas is the greatest of all time. That’s right. Johnny U. The Golden Arm. He completely revolutionized the quarterback position in a time when the NFL was run-oriented. He didn’t enjoy the roughing the passer protection that today’s signal callers have. Some of the game’s toughest and nastiest lineman and linebackers came after him; knowing if they could take Unitas out of the game, they had a chance to win. He called his own plays. He carved up defenses with laser-like precision. He invented the two-minute drill and put it on display in the 1958 NFL championship game; still referred to as the greatest game ever played. He was a national icon, but he belonged to Baltimore and he was as humble and unassuming as the come. Confident and not cocky because he believed he had the ability to get the job done. Everyone’s boyhood hero. The September 23, 2002 issue of Sports Illustrated had Unitas on the cover with the bold proclamation that he was "The best there ever was". And he certainly was.
In 1957, his first season as the Colts full-time starter at quarterback, Unitas finished first in the NFL in passing yards (2,550) and touchdown passes as he helped lead the Colts to a 7–5 record, the first winning record in franchise history. At season's end, Unitas was named the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA).
Unitas continued his prowess in 1958 passing for 2,007 yards and 19 touchdowns as the Colts won the Western Conference title.
By now, Baltimore's No. 19 was recognized as the best quarterback in the NFL. On December 28, 1958, the Colts faced the New York Giants in the NFL championship game at Yankee Stadium. This was the first football game in history to go into overtime, and—of perhaps even greater importance—the first football game broadcast to a national audience. The mythical quality of that event can be glimpsed in the fact that on the field that day were 12 future NFL Hall of Fame players, including Unitas and Frank Gifford, with three more Hall of Famers on the sidelines coaching.
Though suffering from three broken ribs, Unitas took to the field to lead his team. Near the end of the fourth quarter, the Giants were leading 17-14, with five of their points scored by another figure destined for national prominence, Pat Summerall. Then Unitas did something almost inconceivable: in the space of less than 90 seconds, he managed to complete seven passes, moving the Colts forward and setting up Steve Myhra for a game-tying field goal with just seven seconds remaining.
According to old league rules, the game would have ended with a tie, but as the fans discovered on that day in 1958, overtime—with its promise of a single victor, no longer how much struggle it took—added a great deal more excitement to the game. In the course of 13 plays, Unitas led his team forward by 80 yards, putting Alan Ameche in place for the touchdown that won the game 23-17. Not surprisingly, Unitas was named the championship's most valuable player (MVP).
John Constantine Unitas (May 7, 1933 – September 11, 2002), nicknamed "Johnny U," or "The Golden Arm," spent the majority of his career playing for the Baltimore Colts. He was a record-setting quarterback, and the National Football League's most valuable player in 1957, 1959, 1964 and 1967. For 52 years he held the record for most consecutive games with a touchdown pass (which he set between 1956–1960), until quarterback Drew Brees broke his long standing record on October 7, 2012. Unitas was the prototype of the modern era marquee quarterback with a strong passing game, media fanfare, and widespread popularity. He has been consistently listed as one of the greatest NFL players of all time.
After college at Louisville, the Pittsburgh Steelers of the NFL drafted Unitas in the ninth round. However, Unitas was released before the season began as the odd man out among four quarterbacks trying to fill three spots. Steelers Head Coach Walt Kiesling had made up his mind about Unitas; he thought he was not smart enough to quarterback an NFL team, and Unitas was not given any snaps in practice with the Steelers. Among those edging out Unitas was Ted Marchibroda, future NFL quarterback and longtime NFL head coach. Out of pro football, Unitas—by this time married—worked in construction in Pittsburgh to support his family. On the weekends, he played quarterback, safety and punter on a local semi-professional team called the Bloomfield Rams for $6 a game.
In 1956, Unitas joined the Baltimore Colts of the NFL under legendary coach Weeb Ewbank, after being asked at the last minute to join Bloomfield Rams lineman Jim Deglau, a Croatian steel worker with a life much like Unitas', at the latter's scheduled Colts tryout. The pair borrowed money from friends to pay for the gas to make the trip. Deglau later told a reporter after Unitas' death, "[His] uncle told him not to come. [He] was worried that if he came down and the Colts passed on him, it would look bad (to other NFL teams)." The Colts signed Unitas, much to the chagrin of the Cleveland Browns, who had hoped to claim the rejected Steeler quarterback.
Unitas made his NFL debut with an inauspicious "mop-up" appearance against Detroit, going 0-2 with one interception. Two weeks later starting quarterback George Shaw suffered a broken leg against the Chicago Bears. In his first serious action, Unitas' initial pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Then he botched a hand-off on his next play, a fumble recovered by the Bears. Unitas rebounded quickly from that 58–27 loss, leading the Colts to an upset of Green Bay and their first win over Cleveland. He threw nine touchdown passes that year, including one in the season finale that started his record 47-game streak. His 55.6-percent completion mark was a rookie record.
In 1959, Unitas was named the NFL's MVP by the Associated Press (AP) and UPI for the first time, leading the NFL in passing yards (2,899), touchdown passes (32) and completions (193). Unitas then led the Colts to a repeat championship, beating the Giants again 31–16 in the title game.
The AP Award was considered the MVP award, adopting that verbiage in 1961. The Associated Press had always called the pre-1961 'Players of the Year"' their MVP until 2008, when it was revealed to them that they had made certain errors in their listings, namely thatJim Brown was the 1958 MVP/Player of the Year rather than Gino Marchetti and that Unitas was the true winner in 1959, not Y.A. Tittle. Rather than correct the winners, the AP "disavowed" that the pre-1961 winners were indeed "MVPs" claiming that it was a different award. Nonetheless, UPI also voted Unitas the top player award and there is little doubt that through sports history "MVP" and "Player of the Year" are terms that are interchangeable.
As the 1960s began, the Colts' fortunes (and win totals) declined. Injuries to key players such as Alan Ameche, Raymond Berry andLenny Moore were a contributing factor. Unitas' streak of 47 straight games with at least one touchdown pass ended against the Los Angeles Rams in week 11 of the 1960 season.[12] In spite of this, Unitas topped the 3000 yard passing mark for the first time and led the league in touchdown passes for the fourth consecutive season.
After three middle-of-the-pack seasons, Colts owner Carroll Rosenbloom fired Weeb Ewbank and replaced him with Don Shula, who at the time was the youngest head coach in NFL history (33 years of age when he was hired). The Colts finished 8–6 in Shula's first season at the helm, good enough for only third place in the NFL's Western Conference but they did end the season on a strong note by winning their final three games. The season was very successful for Unitas personally as he led the NFL in passing yards with a career-best total of 3,481 and also led in completions with 237.
The 1964 season would see the Colts return to the top of the Western Conference. After dropping their season opener to the Vikings, the Colts ran off 10 straight victories to finish with a 12–2 record. The season was one of Unitas' best as he finished with 2,824 yards passing, a league-best 9.26 yards per pass attempt, 19 touchdown passes and only 6 interceptions. He was named the NFL's Most Valuable Player by the AP and UPI for a second time. However, the season would end on a disappointing note for the Colts as they were upset by the Cleveland Browns in the 1964 NFL Championship Game, losing 27–0.
Unitas resumed his torrid passing in 1965, as he threw for 2,530 yards, 23 touchdowns and finished with a league-high and career best 97.1 passer rating. But he was lost for the balance of the season due to a knee injury in a week 12 loss to the Bears. More postseason heartbreak would follow in 1965. The Colts and Packers finished in a tie for first place in the Western Conference and a one-game playoffwas played in Green Bay to decide who would be the conference representative in the 1965 NFL Championship Game. The Colts lost in overtime 13–10 due in large part to a game-tying field goal by Don Chandler that many say was incorrectly ruled good. Backup quarterback Gary Cuozzo also suffered a season-ending injury the following week and it would be running back Tom Matte who filled in as the emergency QB for the regular-season finale and the playoff loss to the Packers.
Unitas, healthy once more, threw for 2748 yards and 22 touchdowns in 1966 in a return to Pro Bowl form. However he posted a league-high 24 interceptions.
Unitas's reputation as "the Golden Arm" was sealed, and along the way he gained other epithets, including "Mr. Quarterback" and "Johnny U." Still, he seemed an unlikely hero. Teammate Alex Hawkins, who many years later recalled his first encounter with the new quarterback, described him thus in Sports Ilustrated: "Here was a total mystery. [Unitas] was from Pennsylvania, but he looked so much like a Mississippi farmhand that I looked around for a mule. He had stooped shoulders, a chicken breast, thin bowed legs, and long dangling arms with crooked, mangled fingers." And though today the name Johnny Unitas could not sound more perfect for a star quarterback, at the time it seemed embarrassingly ethnic in a sport that had theretofore been dominated by western Europeans.
True to his hardworking immigrant heritage, Unitas developed a reputation for his ability to withstand pain, as exemplified by the injured quarterback's performance in the 1958 championship game. Speaking to Sports Illustrated, Merlin Olsen later said of Unitas, against whom he played for the Los Angeles Rams, "I often heard that sometimes he'd hold the ball one count longer than he had to just so he could take the hit and laugh in your face." When Unitas retired, he wore the crooked index finger on his passing hand as a badge of honor.
After once again finishing 2nd in the Western Conference in 1966, the Colts rebounded to finish 11–1–2 in 1967 tying the Los Angeles Rams for the NFL's best record. In winning his third MVP awards from the AP and UPI in 1967 (and his second from the NEA), Unitas had a league-high 58.5 completion percentage and passed for 3,428 yards and 20 touchdowns.[13] He openly complained about having tennis elbow and he threw eight interceptions and only three touchdown passes in the final five games. Once again the season ended in heartbreak for the Colts, as they were shut out of the newly instituted four team NFL playoff after losing the divisional tiebreaker to the Rams, a 34–10 rout in the regular season finale.
In the final game of the 1968 preseason, the muscles in Unitas' arm were torn when he was hit by a member of the Dallas Cowboys defense. Unitas wrote in his autobiography that he felt his arm was initially injured by the use of the "night ball" that the NFL was testing for better TV visibility during night games. In a post-game interview the previous year, he noted having constant pain in his elbow for several years prior. He would spend most of the season sitting on the bench. But the Colts still marched to a league-best 13–1 record behind backup quarterback and ultimate 1968 NFL MVP Earl Morrall. Although he was injured through most of the season, Unitas came off the bench to play in Super Bowl III, the famous game where Joe Namath guaranteed a New York Jets win despite conventional wisdom. Unitas' insertion was a desperation move in an attempt to retrieve dominance of the NFL over the upstart AFL. Although the Colts won an NFL Championship in 1968, they lost the Super Bowl to the AFL Champion New York Jets, thus becoming the first ever NFL champions that were not also deemed world champions. Unitas helped put together the Colts' only score, a touchdown late in the game. Unitas also drove the Colts into scoring position following the touchdown and successful onside kick, but for reasons that to this day are unknown, head coach Don Shula eschewed a field goal attempt, which (if successful) would have cut the Jets' lead to 16-10. Despite not playing until late in the third quarter, Unitas still finished the game with more passing yards than the team's starter, Earl Morrall. Unitas, along with legions of Colts fans, believed had Johnny U been brought in earlier in the game, there would hve been completly different outcome
After an off-season of rehabilitation on his elbow, Unitas rebounded in 1969, passing for 2342 yards and twelve touchdowns with 20 interceptions. But the Colts finished with a disappointing 8-5-1 record, and missed the playoffs.
In 1970, the NFL and AFL had merged into one league, and the Colts moved to the new American Football Conference, along with the Cleveland Browns and the Pittsburgh Steelers. Unitas threw for 2213 yards and 14 touchdowns while leading the Colts to an 11-2-1 season. In their first rematch with the Jets, Unitas and Namath threw a combined nine interceptions in a 29-22 Colts win. Namath threw 62 passes and broke his hand on the final play of the game, ending his season.
Unitas threw for 390 yards, three touchdowns, and no interceptions in AFC playoff victories over the Cincinnati Bengals and the Oakland Raiders. In Super Bowl V against the Dallas Cowboys, he was knocked out of the game with a rib injury in the second quarter, soon after throwing a 75-yard touchdown pass (setting a then-Super Bowl record) to John Mackey. However, he had also tossed two interceptions before his departure from the game. Earl Morrall came in to lead the team to a last second, 16-13 victory.
In 1971 Unitas split playing time with Morrall, throwing only three touchdown passes. He started both playoff games, a win over the Cleveland Browns that sent the Colts to the AFC Championship game against the Miami Dolphins, which they lost by a score of 21–0. Unitas threw three interceptions in the game, one being returned for a touchdown by safety Dick Anderson.
1972 saw the Colts declining into mediocrity. After losing the season opener, Unitas was involved in the second and final regular season head-to-head meeting with "Broadway" Joe Namath. The first was in 1970 (won by the Colts, 29–22). The last meeting was a memorable one, which took place on September 24, 1972, at Memorial Stadium. Unitas threw for 376 yards and three touchdowns, but Namath upstaged him again, bombing the Colts for 496 yards and six touchdowns in a 44–34 Jets victory – their first over Baltimore since the 1970 merger. After losing four of their first five games, the Colts fired Head Coach Don McCafferty, and benched Unitas.
One of the more memorable moments in football history came on Unitas' last game in a Colts uniform at Memorial Stadium, in a game against the Buffalo Bills. Unitas was not the starter for this game, but the Colts were blowing the Bills out by a score of 28–0 behind Marty Domres; Unitas entered the game due to the fans chanting, "We want Unitas!!!", and a plan devised by head coach John Sandusky to convince Unitas that the starting quarterback was injured. Unitas came onto the field, and proceeded to throw his last pass at home as a Colts player. It was a short pass that wide receiver Eddie Hinton was able to turn into a long touchdown, and the Colts won the game by a score of 35–7.
Unitas was traded to the San Diego Chargers in 1973 after posting a 5-9 record in 1972 with Baltimore, but he was far past his prime. He replaced former Chargers quarterback John Hadl. He was replaced in Baltimore by Marty Domres, who had been acquired from the San Diego Chargers in August, 1972. Domres was ultimately replaced by LSU's Bert Jones, drafted with the number two overall pick in 1973.
Unitas finished his 18 NFL seasons with 2,830 completions in 5,186 attempts for 40,239 yards and 290 touchdowns, with 253 interceptions. He also rushed for 1,777 yards and 13 touchdowns. Plagued by arm trouble in his later seasons, he threw more interceptions (64) than touchdowns in 1968-1973. After averaging 215.8 yards per game in his first twelve seasons, his production fell to 124.4 in his final six. His Passer Rating plummeted from 82.9 to 60.4 for the same periods. Even so, Unitas set many passing records during his career. He was the first quarterback to throw for more than 40,000 yards, despite playing during an era when NFL teams played shorter seasons of 12 or 14 games (as opposed to today's 16-game seasons) and prior to modern passing-friendly rules implemented in 1978. His 32 touchdown passes in 1959 were a record at the time, making Unitas the first QB to hit the 30 touchdown mark in a season. His 47-game consecutive touchdown streak between 1956 and 1960 was a record considered by many to be unbreakable. The streak stood for 52 years before being broken by New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees in a game against the San Diego Chargers on October 7, 2012.
After his playing days were finished, Unitas settled in Baltimore where he raised his family while also pursuing a career in broadcasting, doing color commentary for NFL games on CBS in the 1970s. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979. After Robert Irsaymoved the Colts franchise to Indianapolis in 1984, a move reviled to this day in Baltimore as "Bob Irsay's Midnight Ride," Unitas was so outraged that he cut all ties to the relocated team (though his #19 jersey is still retired by the Colts). Some other prominent old-time Colts followed his lead, although many attended the 1975 team's reunion at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis in 2009. A total of 39 Colts players from that 1975 team attended said reunion in Indianapolis, including Bert Jones and Lydell Mitchell. Unitas asked the Pro Football Hall of Fame on numerous occasions (including on Roy Firestone's Up Close) to remove his display unless it was listed as belonging to the Baltimore Colts. The Hall-of-Fame has never complied with the request. Unitas donated his Colts memorabilia to the Babe Ruth Museum in Baltimore; they are now on display in the Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards.
Johnny Unitas was inducted into the American Football Association's Semi Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1987.
Unitas actively lobbied for another NFL team to come to Baltimore. After the Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore in 1996 and changed their name to the Ravens, Unitas and some of the other old-time Colts attended the Ravens' first game ever against the Raiders on Opening Day at Memorial Stadium. Unitas was frequently seen on the Ravens' sidelines at home games (most prominently in 1998 when the now-Indianapolis Colts played the Ravens) and received a thunderous ovation every time he was pictured on each of the huge widescreens at M&T Bank Stadium. He was often seen on the 30-yard line on the Ravens side. When the NFL celebrated its first 50 years, Unitas was voted the league's best player. Retired Bears quarterback Sid Luckman said of Unitas, "He was better than me, better than Sammy Baugh, better than anyone."
With his thrifty, hardworking, immigrant background, Unitas had long had an interest in business, and after retirement, he launched a second career as an entrepreneur. First he opened a Baltimore restaurant called the Golden Arm, then he became involved in Florida real estate. He served as spokesman for several companies, including manufacturers, a trucker, and a mortgage firm called First Fidelity Financial Services. This last involvement would prove troublesome to Unitas in the mid-1980s, when the company's founder was convicted of fraud, and Unitas himself became the target of a lawsuit for his endorsement of the company.
Though retired from the NFL, Unitas remained active in the world of football. Beginning in 1974, he spent five seasons in the CBS broadcast booth as a commentator, during which time he gained a reputation—as he had long before on the field—for candor and plainspokenness. In 1979, Unitas was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
In the last decade of his life, Unitas was chairman of Unitas Management Corporation, a sports management firm, and worked as vice president of sales for National Circuits, a computer electronics firm. He was also heavily involved in providing opportunities for promising young talents through his Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Educational Foundation. Just 69 years old, Unitas died on a heart attack in Baltimore on September 11, 2002.
Among the greatest of modern football's founding fathers, Unitas's career marked a high point between that of such early pioneers as Red Grange and the advent of the "hot shot," exemplified by Namath. In a world that has come to be characterized, all too often, by prima donnas, Unitas was as no-nonsense as his hairstyle, and he excelled at calling his own plays, something modern quarterbacks cannot do. The game has become too complicated today for any one quarterback to call all his own plays, and ironically, Unitas, by helping to inaugurate the modern era with that historic game in 1958, paved the way for the more complex game that came into being.
THE BEST THERE EVER WAS
by Frank Deford, Sports Illustrated 2/23/02
For the author—a Baltimore native and future sportswriter—the Colts’ quarterback was more than a boyhood hero. He was an inspiration for the entire city
Sometimes, even if it was only yesterday, or even if it just feels like it was only yesterday....
Sometimes, no matter how detailed the historical accounts, no matter how many the eyewitnesses, no matter how complete the statistics, no matter how vivid the film....
Sometimes, I'm sorry, but....
Sometimes, you just had to be there.
That was the way it was with Johnny Unitas in the prime of his life, when he played for the Baltimore Colts and changed a team and a city and a league. Johnny U was an American original, a piece of work like none other, excepting maybe Paul Bunyan and Horatio Alger.
Part of it was that he came out of nowhere, like Athena springing forth full-grown from the brow of Zeus, or like Shoeless Joe Hardy from Hannibal, Mo., magically joining the Senators, compliments of the devil. But that was myth, and that was fiction. Johnny U was real, before our eyes.
Nowadays, of course, flesh peddlers and scouting services identify the best athletes when they are still in junior high. Prospects are not allowed to sneak up on us. But back then, 1956, was a quaint time when we still could be pleasantly surprised. Unitas just surfaced there on the roster, showing up one day after a tryout. The new number 19 was identified as "YOU-ni-tass" when he first appeared in an exhibition, and only later did we learn that he had played, somewhere between obscurity and anonymity, at Louisville and then, for six bucks a game, on the dusty Pittsburgh sandlots. His was a story out of legend, if not, indeed, out of religious tradition: the unlikely savior come out of nowhere.
The quarterback for the Colts then was George Shaw, the very first pick in the NFL draft the year before, the man ordained to lead a team that was coalescing into a contender. Didn't we wish, in Baltimore! Didn't we dream! The Colts had Alan (the Horse) Ameche and Lenny (Spats) Moore and L.G. (Long Gone) Dupre to carry the ball and Raymond Berry and Jim Mutscheller to catch it and Artie Donovan and Big Daddy Lipscomb and Gino Marchetti to manhandle the other fellows when they had the pigskin. Then one day, as it is written, Shaw got hurt in a game, and YOU-ni-tass came in, hunched of shoulder, trotting kind of funny. He looked crooked, is how I always thought of him. Jagged. Sort of a gridiron Abraham Lincoln.
And on the first play the rookie threw a pass that went for a long touchdown. Only it was an interception; the touchdown went the other way.
For those of us in Baltimore, this seemed like the cruelest fate (however likely). Finally Baltimore was going to amount to something, and then, wouldn't you know it, Shaw gets taken from us. It seemed so terribly unfair, if perhaps exactly what we could expect for our workingman's town, where the swells passed through, without stopping, on their way to Washington or New York.
Of course, no matter who John Constantine Unitas had played football for, it would've been Katie-bar-the-door. But perhaps never has greatness found such a fitting address. It wasn't only that Baltimore had such an inferiority complex, an awareness that all that the stuck-up outlanders knew of our fair city was that we had crabs and white marble steps in profusion and a dandy red-light district, the Block. Since H.L. Mencken (he who had declared, "I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense") had died, the most famous Baltimorean was a stripper, Blaze Starr. The city hadn't had a winner since the Old Orioles of a century past. For that matter, until very recently Baltimore hadn't even had a major league team in the 1900s. Before the Colts arrived in 1947, the best athlete in town was a woman duckpin bowler named Toots Barger. Football? The biggest games in Baltimore had been when Johns Hopkins took on Susquehanna or Franklin & Marshall at homecoming.
But then, there couldn't have been a mother's son anywhere who knew exactly what Unitas had in store for us. Marchetti, apparently, was the first one to understand. It was a couple of weeks later, and he was lying on the training table when the equipment manager, Fred Schubach, wondered out loud when Shaw might come back. Marchetti raised up a bit and said, "It doesn't matter. Unitas is the quarterback now."
Evidently all the other Colts nodded; they'd just been waiting for someone to dare express what they were beginning to sense. Marchetti had fought in the Battle of the Bulge when he was a teenager and thus, apparently, had developed a keen appreciation for things larger than life.
But no mother ever took her children to her breast as old Bawlmer, Merlin (as we pronounced it), embraced the Colts. It wasn't just that they played on Sundays and thus finally made us "big league" in the eyes of the rest of a republic that was rapidly becoming coaxial-cabled together. No, the Colts were just folks, all around town, at crab feasts and bull roasts and what-have-you. Why, I knew I could go a few blocks to Moses' Sunoco station on York Road and see a bunch of Colts there, hanging out, kicking tires. Had I had a good enough fake I.D., I could've even gotten into Sweeney's, up Greenmount Avenue, and drunk beer with them. The Colts were real people, so we loved them even more as they went on their merry way to becoming champions of the world.
With each passing game, though, Unitas elevated above the others until, on Dec. 28, 1958, he entered the pantheon of gods. 'Twas then, of course, in Yankee Stadium itself, that he led us from behind to an overtime victory over the despised New Yorkers in the Greatest Game Ever Played. Yet even as we deified him, we still had it on the best authority that he remained one of the boys. Just because he was quarterback, he wasn't some glamour-puss.
Certainly he didn't look the part of a hero. This is how his teammate Alex Hawkins described Unitas when Hawkins first saw him in the locker room: "Here was a total mystery. [Unitas] was from Pennsylvania, but he looked so much like a Mississippi farmhand that I looked around for a mule. He had stooped shoulders, a chicken breast, thin bowed legs and long, dangling arms with crooked, mangled fingers."
Unitas didn't even have a quarterback's name. All by himself he redrew the profile of the quarterback. Always, before, it had been men of Old Stock who qualified to lead the pros. Baugh and Albert and Van Brocklin and Layne and Graham. (All right, Luckman was a Jew, but he was schooled in the WASP-y Ivy League.) Unitas was some hardscrabble Lithuanian, so what he did made a difference, because even if we'd never met a Lithuanian before, we knew that he was as smart a sonuvabitch as he was tough. Dammit, he was our Lithuanian.
They didn't have coaches with headphones and Polaroids and fax machines then, sitting on high, telling quarterbacks what plays to call. In those halcyon days, quarterbacks were field generals, not field lieutenants. And there was Unitas after he called a play (and probably checked off and called another play when he saw what the ruffians across the line were up to), shuffling back into the pocket, unfazed by the violent turbulence all around him, standing there in his hightops, waiting, looking, poised. I never saw war, so that is still my vision of manhood: Unitas standing courageously in the pocket, his left arm flung out in a diagonal to the upper deck, his right cocked for the business of passing, down amidst the mortals. Lock and load.
There, to Berry at the sideline. Or Moore. Or Jimmy Orr real long. Lenny Lyles. John Mackey. Hawkins. Ameche out of the backfield. My boyhood memory tells me Johnny U never threw an incompletion, let alone an interception, after that single debut mistake. Spoilsports who keep the numbers dispute that recollection, but they also assure me that he threw touchdown passes in 47 straight games. That figure has been threatened less seriously than even DiMaggio's sacred 56. Yes, I know there've been wonderful quarterbacks since Unitas hung up his hightops. I admit I'm prejudiced. But the best quarterback ever? The best player? Let me put it this way: If there were one game scheduled, Earth versus the Klingons, with the fate of the universe on the line, any person with his wits about him would have Johnny U calling the signals in the huddle, up under the center, back in the pocket.
I've always wondered how people in olden times connected back to their childhoods. After all, we have hooks with the past. When most of us from the 20th century reminisce about growing up, we right away remember the songs and the athletes of any particular moment. Right?
A few years ago I saw Danny and the Juniors performing at a club, and all anybody wanted them to sing was At the Hop, which was their No. 1 smash back in 1958, the year Unitas led the Colts to that first, fabled championship. About a year after I saw Danny, I read that he had committed suicide. I always assumed it was because no matter how many years had passed, nobody would let him escape from singing At the Hop, exactly as he did in 1958.
Unlike songs, athletes, inconveniently, get on. They grow old. Johnny U couldn't keep on throwing passes. He aged. He even let his crew cut grow out. Luckily for me, after I grew up (as it were) and became a sportswriter, I never covered him. Oh, I went to his restaurant, and I saw him on TV, and I surely never forgot him. Whenever Walter Iooss, the photographer, and I would get together, we would talk about Johnny U the way most men talk about caressing beautiful women. But I never had anything to do with Unitas professionally. That was good. I could keep my boy's memories unsullied.
Then, about five years ago, I finally met him for real, at a party. When we were introduced he said, "It's nice to meet you, Mr. Deford." That threw me into a tailspin. No, no, no. Don't you understand? I'm not Mr. Deford. You're Mr. Unitas. You're Johnny U. You're my boyhood idol. I can't ever be Mr. Deford with you, because you have to always be number 19, so I can always be a kid. But I didn't explain that to him. I was afraid he would think I was too sappy. I just said, "It's nice to meet you, too, Mr. Unitas," and shook his crippled hand.
A couple of years later I went down to Baltimore and gave a speech for a charity. What they gave me as a thank-you present was a football, autographed by Himself. When you're not a child anymore and you write about athletes, you tend to take 'em as run-of-the-mill human beings. Anyway, I do. I have only one other athlete's autograph, from Bill Russell, who, along with Unitas, is the other great star of the '50s who changed his sport all by himself.
After I got that autographed Unitas football, every now and then I'd pick it up and fondle it. I still do, too, even though Johnny Unitas is dead now, and I can't be a boy anymore. Ultimately, you see, what he conveyed to his teammates and to Baltimore and to a wider world was the utter faith that he could do it. He could make it work. Somehow, he could win. He would win. It almost didn't matter when he actually couldn't. The point was that with Johnny U, it always seemed possible. You so very seldom get that, even with the best of them. Johnny U's talents were his own. The belief he gave us was his gift.
REMEMBERING JOHNNY UNITAS
By DAN SHAUGNESSY The Boston Globe 9/12/02
You had to have lived in Baltimore, or at least followed sports in the 1950s and '60s, to truly appreciate Baltimore Colts quarterback John Unitas.
Johnny U died of a heart attack Wednesday in Baltimore at the age of 69 and took with him a part of every Baltimorean who followed the Colts in the early days of the NFL.
John Lennon said, "Before Elvis, there was nothing." That was pretty much the state of the NFL before Johnny Unitas. Today's young fans can't possibly imagine. There is no cyber character on "Madden 2002" with the impact of Johnny Unitas in the late 1950s and early '60s.
The best we can come up with is Mickey Mantle and his legions of Yankee fans from the days of the Eisenhower administration. These men are now in their 50s and still talk about the Mick the way the bobby-soxers talk about the King. That was Johnny U in Baltimore.
He arrived out of central casting, a Pennsylvania kid with a flat-top haircut and black, hightop shoes. He was a shot-and-a-beer guy in a hardscrabble league. It all worked. He threw flat, hard passes and had more confidence than anyone who had ever played. He called his own plays. And he became the greatest quarterback in NFL history.
He's still the one. You can take Marino and Elway and Montana and Warner and Baugh and Luckman and Tarkenton and Namath and Staubach and Tittle and Bradshaw. It doesn't matter. Whenever veteran NFL watchers gather to select their all-time team, Johnny U ends up being the quarterback.
Want to get the flavor of what Unitas was in his salad days with the Colts? Go to the video store and rent "Diner" the Barry Levinson coming-of-age movie from the 1980s. It will give you a sense of Baltimore in 1958 when Unitas was quarterback for the Colts in the greatest game ever played.
It's true. Joe Namath's Super Bowl win in 1969 was equally important, but it was the Colts-Giants overtime championship game that put the NFL on the map as a major sport in America. In the final 90 seconds of that game, Unitas completed four passes, taking the Colts to the 20-yard line to tie the game on a field goal. Then he drove them 80 yards for the winning touchdown in OT.
Giants general manager Ernie Accorsi, who worked with the Colts in Unitas's final years on the team, said, "I've always said the purest definition of leadership was watching Johnny Unitas get off the team bus."
How many guys can you say that about? Unitas was born in Pittsburgh and his dad, who delivered coal, died when he was 4. His mom went to night school and became a bookkeeper. She supported her four children.
He played his college ball for Louisville and was drafted by the Steelers in the ninth round, but they cut him before their season opener in 1955. He hitchhiked home and went to work as a piledriver. He spent that season playing semipro football for $6 per game on sandlot gridirons sprinkled with rocks and broken glass.
Colts coach Weeb Ewbank signed him the following year and he got a shot in the fourth game of the 1956 season. He won the job and two years later won his first of three NFL championships. When he retired in 1973 he held 22 NFL passing records. He was MVP three times and played in 10 Pro Bowls. From 1956-60, he threw at least one touchdown pass in 47 consecutive games. It is pro football's answer to Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak. The runner-up streak thus far is 30 games by Dan Marino.
And then there was Baltimore. I moved to Baltimore in 1977, four years after Unitas threw his last pass. The Colts were only a few years away from relocation to Indianapolis. But the presence of the old Colts was everywhere. It seemed like they all had bars and liquor stores. None of them ever left. Gino Marchetti. Ordell Braase. Jim Parker. Bobby Boyd. Lenny Moore. Art Donovan. And Johnny U. He owned The Golden Arm restaurant.
In 1977, Baltimore Evening Sun sports editor Bill Tanton wrote, "In my travels around the country people, when they speak of our city, mention eight things: H.L. Mencken, Babe Ruth, Johns Hopkins, crab cakes, marble steps, The Block, and John Unitas and Brooks Robinson."
Add Cal Ripken and Camden Yards in place of marble steps and The Block and it would pretty much be the same list today. But know that Robinson and Ripken were never quite as big as Johnny U. And no Baltimore Raven ever came close.
Here in Boston we had Ted Williams, Bill Russell, Bobby Orr, and Larry Bird. In Baltimore it's Johnny Unitas, Cal Ripken, and Brooks Robinson.
But Johnny U comes first. Always.
