The '63 Steelers Read Free Page A

Wright of the Paley Library at Temple University, Chris Willis of NFL Films, Bryan Winfrey of Arizona State University, Roy McHugh, Lee Kim, Carl Kidwiler, George Gaadt, and Andrew O’Toole. Plus, a big cheer to personnel at libraries from Dallas to Philadelphia who provided microfilm from 1963 or copies of game stories.
    Finally, I want to salute all the newspapermen who chronicled a unique season in history—in particular, Pat Livingston, Al Abrams, Jack Sell, and Jimmy Miller, all of whom covered the Steelers. Any reader cannot help but be impressed by the high quality of journalism of the era: the storytelling of Myron Cope, McHugh, and Arthur Daley; the passionate essays of Sandy Grady and Red Smith; and the reportage of Milton Gross, William N. Wallace, and Alvin Rosensweet, just to name a few of the newspapermen from the time who distinguished themselves.

AUTHOR’S NOTE
    I relied on the official play-by-play accounts from individual games, along with descriptions in game stories from as many different newspapers and wire services available, in reconstructing the Steeler games from the 1963 season. I found a couple occasions where there appeared to be a discrepancy of a single yard in citing yardage gained or lost, or the yard line where a ball was spotted, but these situations were isolated.

AFTERWORD
    The eleven-year-old kid who watched the Steelers cling to a championship dream bounced back, too. Days after the 33–17 loss to the Giants, he even made the front page of the
Youngstown Vindicator
, standing in a sleigh driven by Santa Claus and pulled by a couple of donkeys wearing fake reindeer antlers. Sitting in a sleigh pulled by donkeys was probably the Christmas equivalent of playing in the Runner-Up Bowl. The headmistress of the school had arranged the event and alerted the newspaper to a good photo opportunity. It was no Morris Berman photograph of Y. A. Tittle for eternity, but it was good enough for a sixth-grader. And he had a broad grin despite the frigid weather and the aftermath of the Steeler loss.
    Christmas was a week away, and four days after the holiday, the NFL title game between the Bears and Giants was held at Wrigley Field on another frozen field, with temperatures in the single digits. If you were a Steeler fan, it was tough to resist watching and imagining how Pittsburgh would have done in a rematch with Wade and Ditka. Hampered by an injured knee, Tittle threw five interceptions, and Del Shofner dropped a pass in the end zone. For a Steeler fan, it figured that such lapses couldn’t have happened against Pittsburgh two weeks earlier. The Bears won, 14–10. The winner’s share, per player, was $5,899.77, the loser’s share $4,218.15, a much better payday than the Steelers got playing in the Playoff Bowl the year before. 1
    With little off-season coverage, the draft over, no such thing as sports talk radio shows, and no 24–7 sports on TV, football practically went into hibernation until the College All-Star Game in the first week of August in ’64—which brought one more reminder that it could have been the Steelersplaying George Mira, Carl Eller, and Charlie Taylor instead of the Bears. But there were other diversions to keep a young Steeler fan from dwelling on disappointment.
    The Beatles were only weeks away from appearing on
The Ed Sullivan Show
, opening up a whole new world of transistor radio, rock ’n’ roll, and 45 rpm records to a sixth-grader. The Beatles would even play at the Civic Arena, the same venue Leonard Bernstein had condemned for its acoustics. Later, there would be a school dance with Beatles songs playing on a record player, and the discovery that a girl’s hand in yours could feel as soft and comfortable as a nicely broken-in baseball glove. And probably smell better.
    And there would always be reminders of life and death. At the end of July, during training camp, Willie Galimore, who had scored the opening