The '63 Steelers Read Free

world leaders and grieving citizens. No, it was the sight of the kid along the procession route saluting as the hearse and horses passed, with soldiers marching and a drum thumping, just like at my uncle’s funeral, but this time echoing the sound of an entire nation’s heart pounding in pain. What I thought at that instant was, “That kid lost his father. His dad is dead.” Then it all became clear to me. Then I understood.
    It took years, but slowly I came to realize the difference between losing a game and losing a loved one, between victory inside chalked lines on a scuffed up green field and what really matters in life.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    One of the most gratifying experiences in life is finding a person who grasps your vision, no matter what kind of dreams, aspirations, or goals you have. My hope in constructing this book was to pay tribute to a football team that gave a kid a season of thrills whose memories would reverberate into adulthood.
    The saga of the 1963 Pittsburgh Steelers is not your typical storybook sports tale that concludes with cheers and championship banners, so without the encouragement of Richard “Pete” Peterson, the odds of this book being published would have been even longer than those of the ’63 Steelers becoming NFL champs.
    Pete Peterson is as gritty as a steelworker in an open-hearth furnace, but he has an appreciation of adversity and empathy for the underdog befitting a kid who grew up on the South Side of Pittsburgh rooting for the woeful Pirates and Steelers of the 1950s. When I presented my project to Peterson, then editor of the Writing Sports Series for the Kent State University Press, he envisioned my book as a prequel to Roy Blount Jr.’s masterful “About Three Bricks Shy of a Load: A Highly Irregular Lowdown on the Year the Pittsburgh Steelers Were Super but Missed the Bowl.” Peterson’s conceptualization was both inspiring and intimidating. Linking me to a writer of Blount’s gifts, however tangentially, was a bit like inserting Johnny Unitas’s name into the same sentence with a fledgling quarterback prospect.
    I am grateful to the gracious staff at Kent State University Press for embracing the project and giving it a rigorous examination, and I thankthem—notably Joyce Harrison, Mary Young, Susan Cash, Will Underwood, and Christine Brooks—for their continuous help and support. Without their adventurous spirit and bold thinking, there might not be a place for idiosyncratic books that take risks and explore neglected territory.
    Among the team that makes the author look good, no one is more critical to the success of the finished product than the copy editor. Copy editors are a bit like offensive linemen in football. Linemen do the dirty work, often in anonymity, if not obscurity, but their contributions are indispensable. They are typically thoughtful and insightful, and they make the person who gets the recognition look good. I am most fortunate to have Sonia Fulop apply meticulous, painstaking attention and care to the structure, style, accuracy, and coherence of my manuscript, and fashion it into a polished book. To indulge in one more sports analogy, she is truly All-Pro as a copy editor.
    I would like to offer special thanks to Frank Atkinson, Judi Ballman, Jim Bradshaw, Preston Carpenter, Lou Cordileone, Willie and Ruth Daniel, Ed Fay, Dick Haley, Sam Huff, Brady Keys, Red Mack, Tommy McDonald, Lou Michaels, Art Rooney Jr., Andy Russell, George Tarasovic, Clendon Thomas, Y. A. Tittle, and Joe Walton for sharing their time and memories of a time when pro football was, in truth, a different game.
    Thanks also to Saleem Choudhry and Jon Kendle of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Lynne Molyneaux of the Steelers, Gil Pietrzak of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh—Main, Jeff Kallin of Clemson University, David Seals of the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, the University of Pittsburgh Athletic Department, Brenda