Book Review- Johnny U: The Life and Times of John Unitas

'Johnny U: The Life and Times of John Unitas' by Tom Callahan

How quarterback went from Steelers reject to NFL legend

Sunday, September 03, 2006
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
By Allen Barra

The late Johnny Unitas was the National Football League's first household name, the first pro football player to be recognized on a level with Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays.

Modern pro football is practically dated from his first championship season in 1958. Amazingly, half a century after Unitas began his professional career, this biography by Tom Callahan, a sports columnist with the Washington Post, is the first book to tell us how and why Unitas kick-started a legend.

Callahan's writing is appropriate to his subject, lean and unpretentious, and to the point. Like Johnny U, he rises to the occasion in the big games. Those who were never fortunate enough to watch Unitas play will feel as if they have to clean grass stains off their pants after reading this book.

John Constantine Unitas was born in Pittsburgh in 1933 and raised by his Lithuanian immigrant mother on Mount Washington after his father died when he was 5.

He was born -- and stayed -- working class. At the height of his fame, gossip columnist Louella Parsons, who made a living from champagne-fueled conversation with Cary Grant and Clark Gable, sought an interview.

"Sure, Louella," he told her, inviting her to plop down and have a beer with him. Parsons fled.

Like most great stars of his generation, Unitas used football as a ticket out of a life of factory labor. He developed such mental tenacity that, according to one of his All-Pro receivers, John Mackey, "Playing with Johnny Unitas was like being in the huddle with God."

But not right away. After failing to gain a scholarship from Notre Dame and the University of Pittsburgh, he had an up-and-down college career with the disorganized Louisville program.

Upon graduation, no one wanted him; he was finally drafted in the ninth round by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1955, then cut after training camp. He worked construction jobs and earned $15 a game playing for the semipro Bloomfield Rams. It earned him a shot the next year with the Baltimore Colts, and he made the most of it.

Unitas came of age when the passing game was capturing the imagination of television viewers, when quarterbacks called their own plays and players' styles weren't subordinate to a brain trust of coaches.

The quarterback famous for his crew cut and high-top black shoes was the idol of another boy from a Pennsylvania steel town who became famous for long hair and white shoes.

"On Sixth Street in Beaver Falls," said Joe Namath, "I wasn't Joe Namath. I was Joey U."
From the late 1950s to the pro football merger in 1970, the game was played by men whose names now sound mythical, men who were paid not much better than Wal-Mart employees today.

"The time," as Callahan writes, "was different. The players lived next door to the fans, literally. There wasn't a financial gulf, a cultural gulf, or any other kind of gulf between them."
Unitas, with his laser-like passing skill and riverboat gambler's flair, helped change all that by ushering football into the big-money TV era.

The game changed, becoming glitzier and more sophisticated, but Unitas stayed the same. He never felt the need to unburden himself to the public.

When a sportswriter dryly inquired if he had written his own autobiography, he replied that "I didn't even read it."

When the Pro Football Hall of Fame asked him for his memorabilia, he gave them everything but his shoes. "They're great for cutting the grass," he explained. Unitas died in 2002.
That grass didn't grow in Indianapolis. When Colts owner Robert Irsay sneaked the franchise out of Baltimore in the middle of the night in 1984, Unitas requested that his statistics be removed from the Indianapolis record book. His explanation was simple: "I never played there."
One hesitates to call it a curse, but the Colts haven't won a championship since they left Baltimore.

(Allen Barra is a sports columnist and author of "Clearing the Bases." )