I'd never realized it until today, but George Blanda's Topps 1976 might get my vote for best football card of all time. Blanda was approaching 49 years old when this card was released that summer, and he ended up being waived into retirement by the Raiders before the regular season. So, for starters, it has his complete, tremendous professional-football record on the back ...
Even an 8-year-old kid like me in 1976 could not have read the statistics had Topps gone to a smaller point size on the record, in order to squeeze in some cartoon and/or anecdote on the back--such as this one from his 1972 card ...
I think I actually read that autobiography. I know I read Ken Stabler's, and I think I might've also read George Blanda's--or at least most of it before mistakenly leaving it behind in the backseat of a cab riding home from a post-Natalie Merchant 10,000 Maniacs performance around Washington in the late 1990s. But, back to the card, ...
The picture is just dynamite. As a kid, of course, Blanda looked ancient, and, now, he looks so virile and defiant. (Which is how he apparently went out--"I just want to get out of here now," he's quoted as saying in the Associated Press report of his slipping out of the locker room quietly and without any sort of press conference on August 25.) I also love it that there's nothing in the picture that makes it look more like Blanda is part of a football game than he is waiting on his fillup at a self-serve Sunoco or Phillips 76 on a chilly evening.
The card also brings up a couple of questions for me about Blanda. He was from Illinois; how'd he end up playing at the University of Kentucky? (I have some ideas on this, but I've also read a book about Joe Namath, and I think I might be mashing into Blanda's story some of Namath's story about considering going to Kentucky before ending up at Alabama.) And Blanda was born in 1927 and went to college and made money by playing football; did he ever slide into self-doubts around leading a more frivolous life than the people just slightly older than him who dropped out of school to go fight in World War II and came home if they were fortunate to scrape out a living doing actual-tough-guy jobs like construction? I'm not saying that Blanda should've been embarrassed about the life he lived; I'm just saying that is very definitely a thing for some people, and I wonder where Blanda came down in those mysteries.
Anyway, lots of stuff to think about in 1976 Topps No. 355. It's quite a relic of the United States into which we were born.
Today's date, Sept. 28, was a Tuesday in 1976. In my young-man pretend from this time, I'm checking out of Dallas this morning after watching the Cowboys outlast the Colts, 30-27, a couple of days ago. We're three weeks in to the NFL season, and here are the standings ...
On to somewhere. Haven't decided yet. Could be Rams at Dolphins, but pretend me just saw Los Angeles. Could be Raiders at Patriots, but that's a long haul up to Foxboro. Probably should be Steelers at Vikings for Monday night, but pretend me just got out of Minnesota. Should've planned better.
With all those questions, I'd say you need to get a copy of his biography and finish reading it.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's called Alive and Kicking, and I still have it. So it was some other paperback that I left in the back of the cab. I actually remember the rest of that episode so well.
ReplyDeleteIt was the only time I ever went to any sort of show like this by myself, and I was so interested to see the band after Natalie Merchant had left. It was about a 3-mile walk from my apartment in Cleveland Park to the 9:30 Club in Adams-Morgan. I debated myself about whether to take the book. I wanted to because I knew I was going to stop and get something to eat along the way and I thought the 10,000 Maniacs might start late or whatever. But it was old enough that I knew the book would come apart at its binding if I put it in the back pocket of my jeans. The jacket I was wearing had pockets on the outside--but not a deep pocket on the inside breast. Anyway, I decided to take the book and put in the jacket pocket, even though it stuck out and could easily fall out.
So I walked to the show and really enjoyed the entire evening. I stood on the balcony basically over Rob Buck, the lead guitarist, on the stage, and, with Natalie Merchant gone, he played several longer, loud solos than what he did in, for example, the big Our Time In Eden concert in Nashville that we saw. It was clear they were going to have a different life without the obvious star at the front, but the new 10,000 Maniacs were good, and they seemed to be enjoying themselves. The 9:30 Club was packed, and we all had a blast. I can really, really yell, and, at the ends of the songs where Rob Buck would do one of his solos and we'd all be going nuts and cheering, I'd boom out this big, deep, rapid-fire "BUCK! BUCK! BUCK!" from that balcony just over his head. I do believe he genuinely loved that. He was never going to be a big music star, but he was pretty darn big that night in Adams-Morgan, and I think he loved the experience.
So then I start walking home, but it was a work night, and it was late, and I was ready to go to bed. I flagged a cab for the short, cheap trip, and, as soon as that dude started to pull away from the front of my apartment building, I thought to myself, "I think my book fell out of my pocket as I was stepping out of the back seat." And that was that.
I still have that jacket, and now my daughter wears it from time to time. Rest in peace, Rob Buck of Jamestown, New York (1958-2000).
One of the best things human beings ever do is cheer for each other.
DeleteYes.
DeleteBy the way, I flipped back through the book quickly over this weekend. I didn't see anything about his feelings about just missing World War II involvement.
ReplyDeleteAs for how he got to UK, first off, Blanda was from western Pennsylvania, not Illinois. I knew this but forgot and was thrown by his current residence on the Topps card. Anyway, Blanda was one of 11 kids. His dad was a coal miner, and his mom was a housewife ...
Kentucky did not go to either the Orange or Sugar Bowl in Blanda's freshman season, 1945. Kentucky went 2-8. Shively was actually the interim head coach; he had been an assistant coach under the previous guy, Ab Kirwan (for whom Kirwan Tower was named). Shively also served as athletics director, and at least his Wikipedia page credits him with hiring UK's next guy--Bear Bryant.
ReplyDeleteKentucky then went 7-3, 8-3 and 5-3-2 in Blanda's last three seasons there. The Wildcats made their first-ever bowl appearance in his junior season (and first as starting quarterback), 1947. Kentucky beat Villanova in Cleveland's Great Lakes Bowl, 24-14, with Blanda contributing a field goal and three extra points.
ReplyDeleteBlanda never played on the basketball team, and he never played in the Orange or Sugar Bowl.
This is 55-year-old 1976 me watching today's game on TV in Madisonville. The 25-year-old 1976 me is in Miami for Monday night's Rams-Dolphins game.
ReplyDeleteOh, I should've noted that I don't know if the book I read is the "autobiography" that the 1972 card illustrated Blanda typing. The book I read is not an autobiography; Blanda: Alive and Kicking is a biography published in 1972 and written by the rollicking Wells Twombly. Check out his terrific dedication on this book:
ReplyDeleteTo the memory of Albert F. Twombly--who brought the Sporting News home every Monday night, who knew all there was to know about the infield fly rule, the buck lateral series and the two-handed push-shot, and who died one awful night in 1953, erroneously thinking he was a failure,
and ...
to the memory of Michael Blanda--who worked down deep in the mines, who came home filthy black on weekends, who raised eleven children, never letting them know they were poor, and who died only thirteen days after he escaped into retirement,
and ...
to every other victim of the Great Depression, who taught a son how to compete ...
That's really good. The Great Depression was no joke.
DeleteAfter he retired, Blanda did have an autobiography come out, Over Forty: Feeling Great and Looking Good!, which was written with a fellow named Mickey Herskowitz. I guess it's possible that Blanda had typed out a lot of that book in the early 1970s, and that's what the Topps cartoonist was imagining. But I'll bet it's the Twombly book that Topps was talking about, given that it was fresh in the doing.
ReplyDeleteI really loved this book when I read it. I've highlighted all over the place in it:
ReplyDeleteSo, on the murky gray morning of October 25, 1970, with wild geese honking in the air above his apartment located on a lagoon near the western shore of Alameda Island, George Frederick Blanda staggers to his feet and starts his rendezvous with destiny by going to the toilet.
And:
ReplyDeleteOther teams approach professional football from other angles. The Raiders are a paramilitary organization, about as frivolous as the Gestapo, about as lighthearted as the CIA. They are commanded by Al Davis, who believes that other people are watching. He may be right. Security is strict with the Oakland club. Nobody gets near practice without proper clearance. Squad cuts are never announced to the press. Reporters simply have to hang around and see who's missing. Player deals are Byzantine in nature. Taxi squads--the ready reserve units of the National Football League--are limited to seven athletes, but the legend is that Al Davis has 20 men hid out in the hills. Bartenders at the Orinda Country Club all weigh 285. Either that or they can get to your table in 4.7 seconds, even if it is located 40 yards away.
And:
ReplyDeleteThis is when professional football grabs the nation, when it ceases to be organized mayhem and turns into chess on a meadow. It is this curiously cerebral quality to the game that gives it its mass appeal. The violence is taken for granted, a fact of living. Now one team is maneuvering. It is no longer a sport, it is a 100-yard war and everyone sitting in front of a television set is either a quarterback or he is George S. Patton.
I seek out that type of writing more then than I do now. But it's still, obviously, fantastic.
ReplyDeleteSought out.
DeleteUK finished off Penn State, 22-6, and Ray Scott said it was the biggest crowd ever to see a football game in the state of Kentucky. The Wildcats are 3-1; the Nittany Lions, 1-3.
ReplyDeleteI remember when this happened. It was a stunning result to young me.
Delete