Toughest Colt lifted up a city

Johnny Unitas, displaying his famous flat-top haircut and old Colts uniform, is shown in a 1960 photo.

Michael Olesker
Baltimore Sun
September 12, 2002

It must have been a blind-side tackle that took John Unitas yesterday. The man who made Sudden Death part of the American language would have headed downfield in that determined crablike scuttle of his if he had seen the real thing coming. Anybody could tell you: Give Unitas a few final ticks on the clock, and he could bring triumph out of almost any disaster.

He did it once upon a time, didn't he? Didn't he fade into that pocket long ago in the frozen dusk at Yankee Stadium, and didn't he lead a team called the Baltimore Colts to a world championship after regulation time had run out? Didn't he throw touchdown passes in 47 straight games with behemoths draped all over him? And didn't he swell the collective chest of an entire community that had never before imagined such a sense of pride?

Didn't he? It's all so long ago, and the story's so wondrous that it kills us to see it end. John Unitas didn't just play football, he defined a generation of Baltimoreans. Baltimore was no longer that marble-step city stuck somewhere on a railroad track between New York and Washington. Now it was the place where John Unitas orchestrated miracles across 17 autumns.

He gave Baltimore a new image to see in the mirror. In him, we saw the ordinary man who did extraordinary things, the crew-cut working stiff who put aside a lunch pail and threw footballs across the horizon. Stripped of his uniform, he was a pale, practically albino scarecrow. But, in high-topped shoes and helmet, the scrawny Ray Bolger became the unconquerable John Wayne.



Signed as a free agent in 1956 after being cut by Pittsburgh, John Unitas was a smiling member of a Colts championship team in 1958. (Sun file photo)

To say his name is to evoke a whole series of snapshots. Unitas finding Raymond Berry in a swirl of dust in that miraculous '58 overtime game; Unitas pulling out some improbable last-minute victory, and then laconically trotting off the field, oblivious to the roar of the adoring crowd; Unitas, tough beyond imagining.

"Out of all those old Colts," I once asked Art Donovan, the Hall of Fame defensive tackle, "who was the toughest you ever saw?"

I imagined he'd say Bill Pellington, the homicidal linebacker, or Don Joyce, who wrestled professionally in the off-season, or maybe Gino "The Giant" Marchetti.

"Unitas," Donovan said without pause. "Because he took the most punishment. And never said a word about it."

Remember? It's 1958, and the Green Bay Packers' John Symank knees Unitas so badly that he badly damaged a lung. Unitas sits out a few games, then returns against the Los Angeles Rams wearing a vest to protect his injury.

On the first series from scrimmage, he heaves a 70-yard touchdown pass to Lenny Moore. Memorial Stadium erupts so loudly you can still hear the echoes. And, above the roar, Chuck Thompson dryly tells his radio audience, "Gosh, how rusty can a guy get?"

That was the year of the first world championship. In '59, he scored two touchdowns in the second title game. And then came the '60 season, when the Colts and Bears went at it late in the year. They were tied for first. Donovan, who served in the South Pacific during World War II, once said, "That game against the Bears in 1960? That was worse than World War II."

With barely a minute remaining, the Colts trailed by a couple of points. Doug Atkins hit Unitas in his backfield and broke Unitas' nose. The Colts called time out, but they couldn't get the bleeding to stop. Jim Parker, the Hall of Fame offensive lineman, remembered years later, "It was awful. You couldn't even look at John's face, it was so busted up. And the blood kept coming. Finally, Alex Sandusky reached down and grabbed a clump of mud and shoved it up Unitas' nose."

Several months back, I asked Unitas about the story. He remembered Coach Weeb Ewbank trying to pull him out of the game.

"You do," Unitas told Ewbank, "and I'll kill you."

Moments later, with seconds left on the clock and tacklers descending on him, Unitas lofted a game-winning touchdown pass to Lenny Moore, who leaped over the Bears' J.C. Caroline in the corner of the end zone.



Always the competitor, John Unitas seemed happiest and his most effective when he was a little banged up. (Sun file photo : 1960)

Over the years, Unitas took some hellacious shots to the body, and paid a price for the rest of his life. He strode like a guy who'd just gotten off a horse. For years, he took physical therapy. A while back, the TV reporter Ron Matz went to Kernan Hospital to interview a couple of the old Colts about a team reunion.

He found Unitas walking into the hospital - with Lenny Moore and Jim Parker. Parker had had a stroke some months earlier. Now, he was leaning on Unitas and Moore for help as the three of them gimped in.

Matz thought about the irony. For years, it was Parker who'd opened the running holes for Moore, and Parker who had protected Unitas as he dropped back to pass. Now it was the two "little" guys protecting him.

"John was the Babe Ruth of the National Football League," said Mike Gibbons, director of the Babe Ruth Museum. He said it the day Unitas donated all his memorabilia to the museum.

"I always felt it should remain here in Baltimore," Unitas said. "People here have always been so gracious to me."

Gracious doesn't cover it. For a whole generation, John Unitas defined a way of life around here. Boys grew up hunching their shoulders because Unitas did. They wore crew cuts like his, and closed their eyes at night and imagined themselves with the number 19 on their jerseys, and the crowd roaring.

The doctors say it was a heart attack that took Unitas. Maybe it wore itself out. For so many years, he gave a whole community its heart, and its sense of a better self.



Quarterback John Unitas, known as "The Golden Arm," once held nearly every NFL passing record. (Sun file photo)


The Golden Colt

On arm of No. 19, NFL spiraled to new heights

By John Eisenberg | Baltimore Sun Staff
September 12, 2002

John Unitas' importance in pro football history can't be emphasized enough. He was not only one of the game's all-time greatest quarterbacks, but also a central figure in the NFL's rise from relative obscurity to the nation's No. 1 sports obsession.

When Unitas broke in with the Colts in 1956, pro football still lagged behind baseball, boxing and horse racing in the hearts and minds of many sports fans. But a new medium - television - and a small cadre of indelible characters would soon send the NFL hurtling toward the top.

In the corridors of power, there was Pete Rozelle, the boy wonder commissioner who recognized TV's awesome potential.

On the sidelines, there was Vince Lombardi, the jut-jawed coach who molded a dynasty in Green Bay.

And in uniform, there was Unitas, the Baltimore quarterback who made the impossible seem routine.

"He was, in a way, the face of the league as it grew," said Tex Schramm, who worked for the Los Angeles Rams and CBS television in the '50s and was later one of the architects of the Dallas Cowboys' dynasty. "There were a few guys who people looked at and said, 'There's pro football. There's one of the guys who make this game so great.' Johnny Unitas was one of them."

His timing was as perfect as his sideline tosses to his favorite Colts receiver, Raymond Berry. Pro football was just evolving when he arrived, with offenses becoming more sophisticated and exciting as they moved away from the running game and old-fashioned sleight-of-hand trickery and toward the passing game.

"There were guys like Otto Graham and Sammy Baugh who were great passers, but Unitas was really the first, great, unbelievable passing quarterback," Schramm said. "We'd never had anything like that before in the league. His passing was remarkable. He could hit anything. And he did it late in close games. There was just so much drama with Unitas. He was a player that people loved to watch."

People in Baltimore were the ones who loved to watch him the most, of course. The city's major-league papers had just been stamped a few years earlier, with the Colts arriving in 1953 and the Orioles a year later.



John Unitas was the best quarterback when TV's power and pro football's rising popularity began to create what is now the nation's No. 1 sports obsession. (Sun file photo : 1970)

"We'd never had anything - anything! - and then this guy just appeared out of nowhere," said sportswriter Frank Deford, who was a Baltimore teen-ager when Unitas came along. "He was like someone who had come to us from another planet. No one had ever heard of him. We didn't even know how to pronounce his name. We called him 'Uni-tass' at first. But then he was almost immediately this God-like figure, throwing passes and pulling out games. He could do no wrong. He was Robin Hood. It was amazing, wonderful. And it climaxed that day in New York."

The Colts' defeat of the New York Giants in the 1958 championship game at Yankee Stadium was a watershed moment for the NFL, the day the sport arrived at the forefront of the nation's sports awareness. Millions across the country were watching on TV as the Colts rallied to an overtime victory in a taut drama that underlined the pro game's best aspects. Unitas was the star of the show, coolly rescuing the Colts with his passing and courage.

"Unitas had something that you can't exactly put into words - a form of quiet leadership that you don't see much of anymore, and it was never more evident than that day," Schramm said. "As the audience for pro football grew with that game and others that followed, Unitas represented something to the public."

His timing, again, was perfect. He was the game's best quarterback at the precise moment when TV's power and pro football's rising popularity began to create the monster that would one day dwarf all other sports.

It was an epic time for myth-making in America, with the space program taking off and the country turning to a new generation of heroes such as astronauts and football players, who were engaged in "new" endeavors seemingly as fantastic as they were dangerous. Unitas became a fixture on that dramatic landscape.

The irony, of course, was that he was as old-fashioned as they came, a classic American underdog, hunch-shouldered, buzz-cut, sparing with words; willing to stay in the pocket and take a fearful beating as long as it meant he'd win. Reared in the blue-collar hills of Western Pennsylvania, he had been ignored and disdained before coming to the Colts as a graduate of a semi-pro league.



Former Colts quarterback John Unitas walks off the field at Memorial Stadium after being honored with the retiring of his famous No. 19 during halftime of a game against the Miami Dolphins. Unitas, after an 18-year Hall of Fame career, would be labeled the greatest player in the first 50 years of the NFL. (Sun file photo: 1977)

"I saw him three or four years ago, and he was all beat up," Deford said. "He paid for all those years of staying in the pocket. But, oh, was he gutsy. On top of everything else, his great skill, you will never find a gutsier athlete."

He lived long enough to see his sport become a multi-billion dollar industry, an ultra-modern mega-game.

"His time was just a little bit before the wave [of popularity] really broke for the NFL," Deford said. "There was more [adulation] for, say, Joe Montana, who was a generation later. But people in the East knew about Unitas. People in New York certainly did.

"There's a great appreciation now for how good he was. He was right on the cusp of it all as he played. It started with him, it really did."