JERRY SLOAN AND PROJECTING THE SIXTIES INTO THE MODERN NBA & NFL

I wrote another long essay, this one starting off as a sort of tribute to the late Jerry Sloan, one of my favourite basketball players when I was a kid. Thinking about Sloan's qualities led me to write another 1,000 words about how he and players from his era might project into the modern NBA, and THAT led to another 1,000 words about how NFL (and AFL) players from the Sixties might project into the modern NFL. It was an exercise that fascinated me...you can read it at my Patreon site, which is an extremely reasonable $3/month to subscribe to, and I was be starting my preseason looks at all the NFL teams soon...you can link to FMTE at Patreon here.

BOSTON'S OTHER BABE: BABE PARILLI, THE QUARTERBACK'S LIFE

Looking at the life of Babe Parilli, who died recently, was more compelling than I'd thought it would be, for not only was Parilli probably the first star the Boston Patriots ever had, and one of the biggest names in the early years of the AFL. Parilli was known as a leader, an erratic but strong-armed quarterback not afraid to take chances, and was a decent runner, especially in his early years. He was also good looking and known to enjoy a good time. Babe was in many ways a poster boy for the life of NFL quarterbacks in the 1950s, and of those retreads and journeymen who populated the position in the early years of the AFL as well.

The Babe was, until Tom Brady's 2007 season, still the Pats' record holder for TD passes in a season; Brady had broken his yardage mark in 2002. Parilli's 1964 season was one of the biggest of any AFL season, 3.465 yards and 31 touchdowns. The shortlist of great Patriots' quarterbacks is very short indeed. Steve Grogan is the gridiron embodiment of the franchise for its first four decades, gritty, tough, trying hard but not talented enough. Tony Eason, Drew Bledsoe and Parilli each led the Pats to one championship game, and each lost that one. Bledsoe's probably the number two, and I'd be tempted to list the Babe at number three; they were in some ways pretty similar: pocket passers with big arms who trusted their arms maybe more than they should. Pats fans tend to put Grogan up there, and ignore Eason who was basically a two-year wonder, with a bad year in between. Which, as it happens, was very much the Parilli pattern.

Vito Parilli was born May 7, 1930, in Rochester Pennsylvania; the fertile area which produced so many great quarterbacks: Johnny Lujack, John Unitas, Dan Marino, Jim Kelly, etc. He was recruited by Bear Bryant to play at Kentucky, where he followed George Blanda. Parilli ran Bear Bryant's T-formation perfectly, where ball-handling was his first responsibility; he got the nickname 'Houdini Hands'. His second  responsibility may have been running, but he was a good passer and probably the best QB in the SEC following the time Billy Wade played tailback at Vanderbilt. He told the story of playing with an injured arm against LSU; Bryant put him what amounted to a shotgun formation, he was never touched, and the Wildcats won the game. He took Kentucky to wins in the '51 Sugar Bowl over undefeated Oklahoma and in the '52 Cotton Bowl over TCU. Those wins probably put Bryant on the watchlist for SWC teams; after the '53 season he would be hired by Texas A&M.

The Packers drafted Parilli with their first pick in the 1952 draft, which was odd since they had drafted Tobin Rote of Rice with their second pick in 1950. Rote was a good but erratic passer, and a tremendous runner. Parilli and Rote shared the job in '52 and combined for 26 TD passes (Babe 13/17 Rote 13/8) which should have augered well for the future. Don't forget, in these days defenders could contact a receiver from the line of scrimmage until the pass was actually in the air; completions were a lot harder to come by. But in '53 Babe slid to 4 TDs and 19 picks; Rote played along with 5/15, meaning they combined for 34 picks with only 9 scores.

The New York Times said Rote played in Canada in 54-55, but he was actually in the Air Force, and when he left the Packers traded him to Cleveland in a package for QB Bobby Garrett of Stanford, whom the Browns has drafted first overall in the '54 draft. Garrett, it turned out, stuttered. Scouting wasn't what it is today, and Paul Brown found this too much. Garrett never started a game, played in a few for the Packers, and was out of the league. Paul Brown got Parilli because he was looking ahead to when Otto Graham retired, although Graham's backup, George Ratterman played well the next two years (in '55 Brown had to lure Graham back with a huge $25,000 deal). With Graham gone in '56, Ratterman took over, and in the fourth game suffered a knee injury that ended his career. Parilli took over, got four starts, and then was injured himself. Tommy O'Connell played the rest of the year as the Browns finished the year 5-7, their first-ever losing season.

This was life in the NFL in the Fifties. Although Parilli had loved Bear Bryant he didn't really get along with the cutting and sarcastic Paul Brown, so in 1957 Brown traded him. Back to Green Bay. It was 10 player deal that some say included the rights to Bobby Garrett. This kind of stuff happened all the time. George Blanda hated Bears' owner/coach George Halas with a passion, and Halas, whose evaluation and use of quarterbacks was always suspect (he ruined Johnny Lujack, dumped Bobby Layne, and dumped on Blanda, all of whom he had at the same time in the Forties behind Sid Luckman). Anyway, Blanda once traded Blanda to the Colts, to Blanda's delight, then bought him back a week later.

The Packers had picked up Parilli intending to trade him on, so instead they traded Tobin Rote to the Lions. Bobby Layne got hurt that year, and Rote stepped in to lead Detroit to an NFL title. Coach George Wilson decided he didn't like Layne, and the next year he traded him to Pittsburgh, where the Steelers turned into winners while Rote turned into a pumpkin, turning in 5TD 19 int passer rating 29.8 season. In 1960 Rote was playing in Toronto, where he threw 38 TD passes and led the Argos to a divisional title (actually, the championship of the Inter-Provincial Rugby Football Union).

Parilli mentored and relieved Bart Starr, a 16^th round draft pick, and actually won the first game at Lambeau Field, then called City Stadium. But when Vince Lombardi arrived, Parilli was gone. Babe said it was because he'd beaten Lombardi at golf, and Vince didn't want to pay him the one dollar bet. He claimed Lombardi told him “that will be the last dollar you ever get from me.” He landed with Ottawa in the CFL, but played behind the great Canadian QB Russ Jackson and the veteran Frank Tripucka. Tripucka's another one of those crazy Fifties stories. He was drafted in the first round by the Eagles in 1949: then traded to Detroit in mid-season without having played a down. You wonder if they scouted him or just figured that a star QB at Notre Dame was worth a first-round pick. The Lions sent him to the hapless Chicago Cardinals, who traded him to the even more hapless Dallas Texans. Tripucka saw the light and bolted for Saskatchewan, where he played for Frank Filchock and, apparently, was making a lot more money than he ever got in the NFL.

But in 1960 the American Football League was launched, and they needed quarterbacks. Tripucka had retired and was assistant coach to Filchock in Denver. After a couple of practices, they realised he was much better than the guys they had, so he became the starter. Parilli signed with Oakland, where he shared the job with the starter Tom Flores, a local product of College of the Pacific who'd been cut by the CFL the year before. George Blanda was signed by Houston and led them to the championship, beating Jack Kemp and the Los Angeles Chargers in the final. Tommy O'Connell resurfaced as the starter in Buffalo, and got injured in the first quarter of the first game against the New York Titans, whose starter Dick Jamieson was benched in the first quarter for Al Dorow.

In 1961 Oakland traded Parilli to the Boston Patriots, whose QB in 1960 had been Butch Songin. Songin, a hockey and football star at Boston College, had last played football in 1954, for Hamilton in the CFL. That's the kind of league it was. They split time in '61, but in '62 Parilli took over and had what may have been the most efficient season of his career. Completing 55.3% of his passes, 18 touchdowns and only 8 picks, and a passer rating of 91.5, which is probably the equivalent of something at least ten points higher today. The next year Babe regressed to 13 scores and 24 picks, but the Patriots went all the way to the AFL championship game, where the Chargers destroyed them 51-10, with Keith Lincoln having a game for the ages. The Chargers, whose coach Sid Gillman supposedly spied on the Pats to get their game plan, were quarterbacked by, wait for it, Tobin Rote, whom Gillman had signed because he'd lost Kemp and thought John Hadl wasn't yet ready. Rote had suffered his usual reversion to below the norm in Toronto, and been released after the '62 season.

Parilli had that big year in '65, then two more typical Parilli years. In 1968 the Pats traded him to the Jets for Mike Taliaferro, who had lost his job to Joe Namath. Namath was from Beaver Falls, Pa, about five miles away from Rochester, and the first quarterback he idolized growing up was Babe Parilli. Parilli was a perfect backup for the Jets; under Weeb Ewbank he was consistent when he had to play. He did the holding so Namath didn't have to risk injury, and the New York press made as much of his ball handling as Jim Turner's holder as the football writers had made of his ball-handling at Kentucky. When the Jets won Super Bowl III, Parilli got his championship ring at last, and as an AFL original, and as a typical gypsy QB of the NFL's Fifties, he deserved it.

After the 1969 season, Babe retired. He was a quarterbacks coach for the hometown Steelers, mentoring Terry Bradshaw (whose first few seasons' stats could be mistake for a Parilli years). He then  coached in the World Football League, and later for many teams in the Arena League, which was the kind of game made for the Babe Parillis and Tobin Rotes of the 50s NFL. He retired to Colorado, where he died July 15^th. RIP. 

CLAY AND LISTON: THE PUNCHES ECHO FIFTY YEARS ON

Is it really fifty years since Cassius Clay stopped Sonny Liston, shocking the boxing world and inaugurating a new era in sports? The fight's anniversary has attracted lots of attention, and you could argue that it probably has not attracted enough.

As a boxing phenomenon, Clay-Liston ranks as one of the great upsets in history. The challenger was a 7-1 underdog, coming off a string of less than impressive wins over less than impressive opponents—remember he'd barely survived Henry Cooper; indeed many still argue that Angelo Dundee did indeed slice Clay's glove open, buying him extra time to recover.I worked with Angelo a few times, and never got a straight answer to that one.

Remember too that Sonny Liston was regarded as the baddest man alive, and merely finding someone willing to get in the ring and endure the punishment his fists provided was close to impossible. He'd beaten the former champ, Floyd Patterson, twice, in the first round both times. Since 1961, he'd spent barely six rounds in the ring. Yet Clay would taunt him, insult him, and brashly proclaim victory—even having a poem read on the TV show I've Got A Secret in which he promised 'a total eclipse of Sonny'. It was the beginning of a new era in sports in the same way the Kennedy triumph over Nixon in the televised debates began a new era in politics.

Even during the fight itself, there was a moment after the fourth when Ali, blinded, didn't want to continue, and Dundee had to push him back into the ring. Some say he'd got liniment from Liston's shoulder in his eyes, others that Liston's corner had put whatever coagulant they were putting on Sonny's cuts onto his gloves.

Ali exploded out after his eyes cleared in the fifth, and after taking punishment in the sixth Liston simply sat in his corner, refusing to come out. He seemed at the time like a confused wounded animal, resigned to his ultimate fate. Now we wonder if the fix was in. Seven to one is pretty long odds for a heavyweight championship (Jim Braddock won his title at 10-1) and that's hard for the wise guys to resist. There is a problem, though, and if we jump forward to the rematch in Lewiston, Maine, and the so-called 'phantom punch' it becomes clear. If that were indeed a dive, as so many have claimed, it was done the way dives are supposed to be done, literally by diving. You don't sit on your stool in your corner saying 'No Mas'. Doctors after the fight confirmed Liston had a torn tendon, and Sports Illustrated's Tex Maule said Liston had been unable to lift his arm.

But Clay had done the unthinkable. He'd humbled the baddest man in the world. More importantly, he'd said before the match that he would. He ran to the edge of the ring, pointed at the reporters, and yelled 'eat your words!'

This was something unprecedented in the ethos of sport. Sportsmen didn't brag, they didn't call untoward attention to themselves, and they never challenged authority, at least not with impunity. Like soccer players well into the late part of the past century, American sportsmen were supposed to be loyal, quiet servants (note that NFL players and coaches still call the owners 'Mr.' and the league gives the Super Bowl trophy to the guy who signs the checks). Clay changed all that. Joe Namath would soon follow in his footsteps, unafraid to state brag as fact, as would Fred 'The Hammer' Williamson, promoting himself relentlessly (only to be knocked cold by Donnie Anderson in the first Super Bowl).

It went beyond the undeniable flair Ali brought, the heavyweight who moved quick as a middleweight, the handsome fighter whose face stayed unmarked. Looking at footage of Joe Louis being interviewed after the first Liston fight, you think they're not just from different generations, they're from different planets. So too when Clay went crazy at the weigh-in, taunting the scariest man in the world. All those stare-downs you see before fights nowadays are a direct response to the first Clay-Liston fight.

You'll often read about Ali modelling his public persona after Gorgeous George; the young Ali was a big wrestling fan, and the adoption of wrestling promotion was a conscious choice by Clay. But if you watch his style, if you consider where he grew up and when, and who he was most likely to see, you would find it easy to conclude that much of his bombast and braggadoccio actually came not from George but from 'Classy' Freddie Blassie, the self-proclaimed 'King of Men'. I never thought it was coincidence that when Ali 'fought' the Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki, it was Blassie whom he chose to be his 'manager', and Blassie did much of the talking in what people assumed was an imitation of Ali's style.

This meant Clay had a huge appeal to kids around my age, who'd probably just gone through their own 'golden age' of wrestling, and recognised and enjoyed Ali's public bombast. I still have my 45rpm record Cassius Clay recorded, 'this is the story of Cassius Clay, the most beautiful fighter in the world today. He talks a great deal and brags indeedy, of a powerful punch that's incredibly speedy....This kid has power, speed and endurance; if you sign to fight him, INCREASE YOUR INSURANCE!...If Cassius says a cow can lay an egg, don't ask how...GREASE THAT SKILLET!' I was mesmerised.

The adult (white) world was torn. Sonny Liston had destroyed Floyd Patterson, a 'credit to his race', and was a scowling ex-con you would run across the street to avoid if you saw him coming. But Clay was 'uppity'; an odd way to describe someone so clever, articulate, handsome, energetic, and so much fun. Who could they root for? For me, and many of my peers, the choice was easy. We may not have been convinced that the cow could lay eggs, or that the big ugly bear would indeed be beaten, but it was an idea that spoke to us.

It's no coincidence that the Beatles visited Clay's training camp in Miami. Or that Clay and Liston were both in the audience in Miami when the Beatles played there on the Ed Sullivan Show. You could look at them the same way you looked at Clay. It wasn't just that they were different; the Beatles were quite as scrubbed clean as the Bobby Rydells and Paul Ankas of the white pop world, but like Clay they were livelier, a breath of fresh air in a stale business. And like Clay, they didn't seem in thrall to the business itself. I still remember a Time magazine profile of the Beatles, marveling that they weren't slaves to the profits of the music industry—that they spent their money on simple things, like beer and fags, or something like that. I remember how it struck me as just as odd as Time intended it to sound, as if there were something wrong with not chasing the lifestyle of showbiz. Of course all that would change pretty quickly, but I think you can also argue that both the Beatles and Clay saw the sudden celebrity they received as something less important than they were supposed to.

And you can argue that Clay used that celebrity in a way that made the most of it, something unmatched even by the most famous pop group in the world (George's Bangladesh and Lennon's sleep ins for peace notwithstanding).

After the fight, Ali was with Malcolm X, Jim Brown, Sam Cooke. You can watch him pull Cooke over to an interviewer at ringside, and say, 'talk to him he's a famous pop star'. This was a veritable black Mount Rushmore gathered just at the time Clay would make probably the most momentous off-field decision made by any sportsman of the century.

The next day Clay announced he was a Moslem, a member of the Nation of Islam (aka the Black Muslims) and that he was renouncing his 'slave name' and had taken the name Cassius X. A week later, Elijah Muhammad would rename him Muhammad Ali.

Asked about his conversion, sometimes with respect but more often with at best an assumption he had been somehow led astray, and at worst outright hostility, Ali's personality changed from pro wrestler to someone thoughtful and sincere. He argued with authority the positive tenants of his new religion,  echoing Malcom X's refusal to accept debate on someone else's terms. He demonstrated some of Jim Brown's massive inner strength and drive to self-determination. What this said to the black community has been explained by people better qualified than me to do that, but it had a wider resonance too. It came at just the right time, after Kennedy's assassination, when many verities seemed to be challenged. Lyndon Johnson was pushing the Civil Rights Act through Congress, and it cleared its first hurdle at the same time as the fight.

I'd been lured in by Ali's showmanship, now I was convinced by his seriousness and his sincerity. The same attitudes my own minister had instilled in me by riding freedom buses in the south, the same consistency of religious belief with moral action, was being demonstrated in front of me by a trash-talking (the phrase hadn't been invented yet) 22 year old. Within a few years Ali would refuse induction into the Army, be stripped of his heavyweight title, spend years in exile speaking to college audiences of kids just like me, and eventually win in the courts, and embark on his second career, with all its epic moments, the true stuff of classic heroism and tragedy.

When I applied for my conscientious objector status, I don't think I used Muhammad Ali as an example, or a reference, though Lord knows I used about every other public thinker I could find. I wasn't anywhere near as glib then as I am now, and there was more at stake too. But I'm sure I wished I could find the articulateness of Ali as I wrote my statement, the articulateness that belied the persona who could trump Joe Frazier or Howard Cosell with equal ease and precision.

The echoes of Cassius Clay remain even in the now sadly limited Ali. The courage of his public transformation would echo far more vibrantly today, but the impact it had on society is undeniable. You can argue it changed some history directly. You could argue it was a major factor in the split in the Black Muslims that saw Malcolm X assassinated. You could argue many people bought into Ali's pride and defiance without buying the rest of the moral package. You could argue he was among the most visible and successful opponents of the Vietnam War. And you can argue that he changed sport in America forever and for the better. Just as Jackie Robinson's entry to Major League Baseball pushed the issue of segregation in the wider world, so Clay's conversion to Ali pushed it further. Jim Brown and Bill Russell (at the table in the photo right, with Lew Alcindor--later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) taught us about dignity, but they had none of the impact of Ali. He said it himself, at ringside after the fight, 'I shook up the world!...I talk to God every day... I must be the greatest!'