Boring reminder

10 Comments

1. 

   Arthur Gilroy on August 19, 2012 at 11:43 am

   Romney’s 2005 Tax Return has already joined so that should give you some incentive.

   Yeah, but it will only admit to one of its choices and that one is Y.A. Tittle at quarterback.

   Snort.

   AG

   • 

     Steven D on August 19, 2012 at 11:52 am

     Easy pickens then, eh?

     • 

       Arthur Gilroy on August 19, 2012 at 12:20 pm

       Yup.

       But he’s in danger of being suspended for throwing games.

       AG

       • 

         Arthur Gilroy on August 19, 2012 at 12:21 pm

         Luckily for him, the two leagues are in on it.

         AG

         • 

           Arthur Gilroy on August 19, 2012 at 12:25 pm

           Come to think of it…so are the broadcasting networks.

           The Fantasy Reality Show.

           The really, really “big show.”

           Bet on it.

           AG

   • 

     BooMan on August 19, 2012 at 2:20 pm

     

     • 

       Arthur Gilroy on August 19, 2012 at 4:18 pm

       He was a man-and-a-half.

       AG

       • 

         Arthur Gilroy on August 19, 2012 at 4:48 pm

         But that was then, of course.

         Now?

         The steroid-freak generation?

         Probably not. One of those behemoths would have hit him so hard in college or his early pro life that photo would never have been taken.

         Too bad, but that’s what football is now.

         Mastodons and prima donnas.

         AG

       • 

         BooMan on August 19, 2012 at 4:57 pm

         The photograph captures a moment on a Sunday afternoon in Pittsburgh in September 1964. For three years, Tittle had led the Giants to the National Football League championship game, only to lose each time. He had been the league’s Most Valuable Player in 1963. He was also a football ancient–38 years old–and looked it.

         On the play preceding this moment, he had thrown a screen pass that was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. He had held his arms high as he threw. John Baker, a 270-pound defensive end for the Steelers, drove his helmet into Tittle’s sternum and slammed him to the turf. A fair, if brutal, hit. Tittle could not breathe.

         Still, being hurt was nothing new. Tittle had played organized football since the sixth grade in East Texas and had suffered a partially collapsed lung, a broken left hand (mercifully, he’s a righty), a crushed cheekbone, broken fingers, fractured vertebrae, separated shoulders and muscles torn so deeply they took months to heal. “Every injury I ever had in my lifetime, I could tape it,” he says. “Every injury I ever had, I could Novocain it.” Not this time; the pain he felt now was different.

         An X-ray revealed no broken bones. But his ribs were bruised, and the muscle was torn from his rib cage. He spent the night following the game in a hospital. And he played the following Friday.

         He had lived his life refusing to give in to pain because, he recalls, “If you say something, they’re going to get the next guy to do your job, and he may do it better.” But when he returned to the game after this injury, he was not the same quarterback, as became ever more apparent as the season unfolded. The pain “made me one thing I never was,” he says. “It made me gun-shy. For the first time in my life I didn’t want to get hit, because I couldn’t get up.”

         If you couldn’t get up, you couldn’t play. And if you couldn’t play, he says, “you’re no place.”

         The season ended. The Giants had gone 2-10-2. Tittle retired. When he considered a comeback the following season–his injuries had healed–his wife advised him against making a fool of himself. Instead, he went into the insurance business. He entered pro football’s Hall of Fame in 1971.

         link

         • 

           Arthur Gilroy on August 19, 2012 at 8:23 pm

           I repeat…today he would have been out by his early pro career if not before. 270 lbs? A freak then. Now? Run of the mill. The combination of advanced training techniques, advanced nutritional approaches and gonzo Big Pharma additives has produced out-sized freaks of every variety. Tittle was no more than 6 ft. tall and weighed about 180 lbs. Plus, the rules of football at the time allowed almost unlimited hits on quarterbacks. His courage would have gotten him crippled or even killed today.

           AG