Welcome to Steelers Takeaways! – Page 138 – More than 1,000 interviews of Steelers players, coaches, front office staff, media and more with those that played in the 50’s through today’s current roster.

Thomas White, Author, Forgotten Tales of Pittsburgh

Thomas White:

First, what got your started as an archivist both at the Heinz History Center and at Duquesne?

I’ve always been interested in history since I was a child, so when I went to college that was the field that I chose to study. In graduate school I specialized in the area of Public History, which covers things like archives, museums, oral history, historic preservation, and historical editing.

Public historians take academic ideas about the past and apply them to local history while at the same time making them accessible to a general audience. I gravitated toward the archives aspect because I enjoy working with original documents, photographs and maps.

How do you come upon new materials for those collections?

As an archivist I’m always coming across old newspaper stories and obscure first-hand accounts of events. Anytime I see anything interesting I save it.

With folklore, my first encounter with stories if often by word of mouth. When I hear about a legend I collect as many different “versions” of the story as I can and then to determine the historical truth behind it.

What have been the stories that have fascinated you most in your research, and what made them so interesting for you?

It is difficult to pick just one or two because there are so many good ones. I’ve always been a fan of the story of the Lost Bomber of the Monongahela, the B-25 that crashed in the river in 1956 and was allegedly secretly removed by the government. It is probably Pittsburgh’s most popular conspiracy theory/urban legend.

But I like all of the legends that have hidden cultural meanings because they are both entertaining and provide insight into our society at the same time.

Much of what you write on is based on Pittsburgh folklore and history – from books like the Forgotten Tales of Pittsburgh and Legends and Lore of Western Pennsylvania. What makes Pittsburgh’s lore and culture unique, in your opinion?

Western Pennsylvania is an area rich in folklore and legends. This region was forged by blood and steel and innovation and faith. It has been many things—a battleground, a gateway to the frontier, a workshop for the world, and a center of religion, education and medicine.

Tradition thrives here. Families took root in western Pennsylvania and stayed for generations. They formed stable, tightknit communities in the city and surrounding towns. Even when these natives they leave, they still carry the Pittsburgh identity with them (hence the Steeler Nation). That stability has allowed the population to maintain connections to the past, and regional folklore has flourished.

Traditional beliefs, customs, and stories have been handed down orally and in writing. Legends that might have been lost in an area with a more transient population have survived here.

How much have sports played a part in the stories you’ve included in your work and the folklore of Pittsburgh, and how so?

So far I haven’t written specifically about sports directly (though I hope to gather some sports legend in the near future), but I do write about some of the places and social factors that impact local sports culture.

My favorite piece relates to the lost islands that were once located across from the Point where the stadiums are today. They were eventually back filled or washed away, and the land became home to Pittsburgh’s Exhibition Halls and eventually Exposition Park, where the Pirates played in the first World Series.

In the 1700s the islands were allegedly cursed and served as the site of execution for many of the captives of the Braddock expedition during the French and Indian War. Later they were the site of several ghost stories.

In modern times that strip of land housed Three Rivers Stadium and later PNC Park and Heinz Field.

Who are some of the Pittsburgh sports figures over history that you feel have most impacted Pittsburgh’s culture and history, and how so?

Obviously Art Rooney Sr. had a huge impact in a variety of ways, but most everyone is familiar his story. Roberto Clemente as well, who stood as an example of how a professional athlete should act on and off the field.

But I would have to say the largest impact on Pittsburgh collectively was the 1970s Steelers as a whole. They provided the region with something to be proud about while it was facing the decline of the steel industry and economic uncertainty. They really became a key factor in defining the modern identity of the city.

Being such a huge follower of Pittsburgh’s history and culture, how much of a concern do you have that Pittsburgh’s unique culture and history get overshadowed by Pittsburgh’s sports reputation and image?

I think Pittsburgh’s sports reputation is inseparable from the other aspects of its unique culture. Together they make up Pittsburgh’s identity. On some level it is all tied to the city’s work ethic – a town that works hard and plays hard.

In many ways (and us Pittsburghers often forget it) this city “built” modern America. From the industrial era when our steel literally did build the country anew, through all of our technological advances like Westinghouse’s first atom smasher and atomic power plants and our current medical advances, to the Steelers, who helped redefine professional sports in the 70s making it the industry that it is today.

We could list important things that have come out of this city all day, but they all represent part of the same character and culture that define this region.

What new books are on the horizon?

I should have a new one out by the end of the summer titled Gangs and Outlaws of Western Pennsylvania, co-authored with Michael Hassett. It covers exploits of some of the areas less-than-respectable characters.

Any last thoughts for readers?

I’d just like to remind everyone to take the time to appreciate the great history and culture of the city that they live in. There are not many places where you can go to a Smithsonian affiliated museum, listen to a first class orchestra, ride on tracks up the side of a mountain, take a trip on a riverboat, watch a championship sports team, go to an amusement park, and eat a sandwich with French fries and coleslaw on it all in the same weekend.

Marvin Cobb, Steelers Safety, 1980 and Independent Retired Players Summit Director

First, can you let readers know about the Independent Retired Players Summit and your work with retired NFL players in general? What is the mission of the summit and how did you get involved?

I became involved in advocating for better pensions and medical benefits for pre-1993 retired football players about five years ago after reading more and more stories of players committing suicide, being homeless, struggling to make ends meet, etc.

It turns out there’s enough money in the NFL to provide a measure of dignity to all who played the game, and that is the mission of The Summit. We are aiming to educate and motivate as many retired players as possible to join the advocacy movement for better pensions and access to our disability benefits.

Continue reading “Marvin Cobb, Steelers Safety, 1980 and Independent Retired Players Summit Director”

Dan Stryzinski, Steelers Punter, 1990-1991

First, can you let readers know about your automotive business and other post-NFL endeavors?

My wife started a licensed car dealership in 2002 before I knew her. We got married in ’07. I was out of football in ’04 and a buddy of mine knew her and knew I wanted to get involved with something that would utilize my finance degree. She taught me how to get my dealers license. Then we got engaged and merged our businesses,

Now, we’re partnered with a credit union and have thirteen branches, We help people get loans to buy our cars – we usually have about sixty cars in inventory – or others.

It’s a unique business. The majority of people here are county workers and teachers. They don’t have the time to shop for cars and make sure they are serviced and cleaned and had no accidents.

Continue reading “Dan Stryzinski, Steelers Punter, 1990-1991”

Bill Castle, Lakeland High School Coach, on Steelers Running Back Chris Rainey

Bill Castle, Lakeland High School Coach, on Steelers Running Back Chris Rainey:

First, tell us a bit about your program and what’s made you and it so successful?

I was fortunate – we had a lot of good teams over the years. We were the state champions six times and the mythical national champions twice. We have four kids now in the NFL from Chris’ team alone – Maurkice and Mike, Chris and LeMont Black, who’s now in Tampa Bay.

What’s made you so successful?

I’ve been here for forty years – the head coach for thirty-five. I think the stability of the staff and the community support. There are a lot of intangibles that go into success. Having people believe in everything you do. You don’t build it overnight. I didn’t think I’d ever be here that long…

Tell us about Chris Rainey. What does he need to do to be successful in Pittsburgh?

The biggest thing is, he needs to stay healthy. He’s an explosive guy – whether it’s returning kicks, blocking field goals and extra points or being a third-down situational player. He really is an unbelievable explosive runner. He’s defintely an asset to them if he can stay healthy.

Can he block and become that third down back?

He has the heart. It comes down to size and the matchups – I’m not sure what he can do there. He’s got a big heart – he’s a tough kid, I’m telling you that. The big question will be his blocking, but there are other ways they can use him on third downs.

What would surprise people about Chris Rainey?

Nothing has surprised me. He’s done a great job in high schoo, and the University of Florida and I’m proud he got his degree.

Tell us a bit about him as a person – he got into a bit of off-field troube – can he stay out of trouble in Pittsburgh?

Everything he’s done has been mischevious stuff- nothing serious. He’s a playful guy – he’s got great charisma. He’s a good kid – a fun kid.

He’ll had to adjust to the style of living in the NFL – it’s new to all of those kids, having that kind of money for the first time.

Does he have that support system in his life?

He’s got good support around him – plus Maurkice is there in Pittsburgh – he and Chris grew up together so I expect he’ll be helping him a lot.

How would you like to see him used in Pittsburgh?

Get him in space, however you do it. With sweeps or short passes – he’s best in space, and he’s a tough kid for his size. He’s physical – he can bring it if cornered, but yeah, he’s best at making people miss.

Jim O’Brien: Recalling a strange story in hockey history

Pittsburgh sports author and Valley Mirror columnist Jim O’Brien

It was one of the strangest stories I encountered in my career as a journalist. I never knew the full story. I still don’t. No one does. No one really wanted me to know the full story. It stays with me like one of those cold cases they feature on crime shows on television.

I have been watching the National Hockey League Stanley Cup playoffs and the National Basketball League playoffs on television, switching back and forth from the Pirates’ games.

With the Penguins’ unexpected early exit in the playoffs, I had to find other teams to root for and I found them in the New York Rangers in the East and the Los Angeles Kings in the West.

With the Los Angeles Lakers out of the NBA playoffs, I am now rooting for the San Antonio Spurs or the Oklahoma Thunder to go all the way and claim the crown.

Seeing the Rangers reminds me of time spent at Madison Square Garden, and the days in the early ‘70s when I covered some of their games for The New York Post. My main assignment back then was to cover the New York Nets of the American Basketball Association starting in 1970 and then the New York Islanders when they came into being as an expansion franchise in 1972.

I saw the Islanders put the pieces together that would win them four consecutive Stanley Cups in the early ‘80s. Bill Torrey, whom I first met when he was the General Manager for the Pittsburgh Hornets, was the architect of those Islanders’ championship teams. He is one of seven men associated with that team who is honored in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

I benefited from that Pittsburgh bond when I covered the Islanders. I was, in fact, the first writer in New York to refer to the team as “the Islanders,” before the team chose its official nickname. It seemed logical enough.

I lived on Long Island in a community called Baldwin about five miles from the Nassau Coliseum, still the home of the Islanders. The Nets have been playing in New Jersey in recent years but will move to a new arena in Brooklyn next season.

Dr. J, Julius Erving, was the star of the Nets and the ABA back then, and now they show him from time to time sitting in a special suite at the 76ers’ games with the Boston Celtics. Erving was traded by the Nets to the 76ers when the ABA was absorbed into the NBA in the late ‘70s. He is now a Philly icon.

The other development that made me think about the strange story involving the Rangers was the death on St. Patrick’s Day of this year of former Rangers’ defenseman Ron Stewart. He was 79 when he died of cancer.

Stewart was one of the figures in the strange story I referred to in the first paragraph.

There’s been some rough play in the NHL and the NBA playoffs, sometimes to the extreme, but none of it compares to what happened in a drunken brawl between two teammates on the Rangers back in 1970.

I was relatively new to New York in April of 1970, having just moved there after a year’s stay at The Miami News.

On the evening of April 29, 1970, Ron Stewart and Terry Sawchuk, a Hall of Fame goalie who was winding up his storied career as a backup goalie for the Rangers, got into a fight in the backyard of the house they were renting in East Atlantic Beach on Long Island, and Sawchuk died from a blood clot at a nearby hospital.

I was told that Stewart had kicked Sawchuk in his groin with such force that he drove his plumbing deep into his stomach and injured his gallbladder and liver. Sawchuk underwent surgery three times during his short stay in the hospital.

Sawchuk took the blame for the brawl. He said, “It wasn’t Ron Stewart’s fault; don’t blame him. I was the aggressor in the whole thing.”

Sawchuk was one of the greatest goalies in the NHL and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame a year after his death. He held the record for most shutouts in NHL history (103) and his final one came against the Pittsburgh Penguins in New York during that 1969-70 season.

I was sent out to do a story on the Rangers at their practice rink at New Hyde Park on Long Island. I stopped Stewart as he was coming out of the clubhouse and took him aside to interview him. I wanted to get his side of the story.

No sooner did I start talking to him, alongside one end of the ice rink, than Emile “The Cat” Francis, the general manager and coach of the Rangers, came out of the clubhouse and caught me at work.

I can still picture that moment, just a snapshot in my life as a newspaperman, of Francis moving fast in my direction. I see a lot of dark green (the color of the seats in the rink) behind Francis. He positively pounced on me. They didn’t call him “The Cat” for nothing.

Francis swore at me and told Stewart to get out of there in the same sentence. Stewart seemed surprised by Francis’ facial expression and he left the building, leaving me behind with an empty notebook. Francis was a little fellow, probably 150 pounds, but he looked fearsome to me that afternoon.

A week later, during a quarter-final Stanley Cup round with the Boston Bruins, I was standing at the back of a pack of reporters in the Rangers’ dressing room at Madison Square Garden. We were interviewing Emile Francis.

One of the reporters, Gerald Eskenazi of The New York Times, turned to me and said, “I’m surprised to see you here after the way Francis treated you the other day.”

And I told Eskenazi, “I’m just doing my job. The readers could care less if Francis gave me a hard time. I have to write a story and I have to hear what he has to say about this game.”

Francis had created a community of sorts for his Rangers on East Atlantic Beach, near Long Beach on Long Island. That was about a 20-minute car drive to the Rangers’ practice rink at a public facility in New Hyde Park.

The Rangers and the Knicks seldom had an opportunity to practice at Madison Square Garden because that building hosted so many different kinds of entertainment offerings. The Knicks often practiced at high school gyms on Long Island.

Francis felt it was safer for his players if they didn’t have to drive in the demanding traffic that led in and out of Manhattan. So he told players it would be better to live on Long Island than in the city.

It didn’t save Sawchuk. Precisely how the fight started and how Sawchuk incurred his injuries remains murky, but a Nassau County grand jury found the death to be accidental, absolving Stewart of blame.

None of the news media in New York really dug into this story, which still seems unbelievable. I don’t think that would be the case today.

Sawchuk, who had been a star mostly with the Detroit Red Wings, was known to be a moody sort, and was disclosed to have suffered from depression at times. Playing goalie in the NHL without a face mask might do that to an individual.

He was also known to be “a bad drunk.”

I visited my neighbor Eddie Johnston recently and asked him what he knew about the incident involving Stewart and Sawchuk.

Johnston, who has served in so many capacities with the Penguins, including stints as coach and general manager, said he didn’t know much more than what was in the newspapers at the time.

“I knew that Sawchuk could be a nasty sort when he got into one of his moods,” said Johnston, the last NHL goalie to play every game in a season and someone who once played the position without a protective face mask. “Terry was a great one.”

Sawchuk and Stewart shared a home on Long Island during the hockey season. They had been at a local bar that night and had gotten into an argument. Sawchuk may have owed Stewart some of the rent money for the home they shared. They started shoving one another. And it carried over when they reached their home later.

The dispute resumed and they started pushing each other on the lawn by their home. Witnesses said Sawchuk fell into a barbecue pit.

I came home to Pittsburgh in April of 1979, nine years later, and was determined to be a positive writer. I had found that in stints in Miami and then New York that it wasn’t worth writing controversial stuff.

So I am in Pittsburgh about a month and I hear that Jack Lambert of the Steelers has been assaulted at a downtown night club. Someone slammed a beer mug against his ear and cut Lambert badly, causing him to bleed quite a bit. At least two guys jumped him.

I attempted to find out what happened. Lambert, after all, was the star linebacker for the Steelers, who had won their third Super Bowl the previous season. Lambert was regarded as one of the toughest players in the NFL. Who’d jump Jack Lambert?

I called Lambert on the telephone at his home three times but he never returned my calls. I went to Chuck Noll to discuss the incident, but he was not happy with me for wanting to talk about it. He offered little help or direction. He didn’t want me to deal with the subject.

I would later learn that the editor of my paper was aware of what happened at The Happy Landing – that was the name of the night club, interestingly enough – and the police reporter on both newspapers knew about it. A police report had been filed on the skirmish. The beat reporter on the rival daily knew about it.

No one wanted to write the story.

I wrote the story, or what I could piece together, and I lived to regret writing the story. I didn’t receive a pat on the back at the office or from any readers, and it got me off to a bad start with Lambert. He snarled at me, breathing flames I swear, when I encountered him at St. Vincent College at the team’s summer training camp.

I went to his room and we worked out a peace pact. If I wrote something like that again, he warned me, I would pay the consequences.

I later learned that the guys who jumped Jack Lambert that night were bad news. They intended to hurt him. They had said they were going to cut the ligaments in his legs.

There was a third guy at the bar that night who was reluctant to take on Jack Lambert. He stayed back when his buddies jumped Lambert. He was later shot and killed by one of the combatants because of his failure to join in the fray.

I told you these guys were bad news. The killer was sent to prison and had quite a rap sheet to show for his history of misbehavior.

Martin Brodeur, the goalie for the New Jersey Devils, broke Sawchuk’s record for the most shutouts (103) in an NHL career. Brodeur is still the backstop for the Devils and continues to add to his record. He’s had 24 shutouts in the playoffs alone.

I saw Brodeur and the Devils play at Consol Energy Center this past season, and I asked my friend Ken Codeluppi, who has season tickets for the Penguins, if he had ever heard of Terry Sawchuk. He was not familiar with the name. Our seats were three rows behind one of the goalie nets, and I ducked at least a dozen times when a puck struck the protective glass in front of us.

I scolded him, saying that if you were going to call yourself a hockey fan, you had to know about Terry Sawchuk. He was one of the greats of the game.

Stewart bounced back from that dark night on Long Island to continue playing for the Rangers. That fight on the lawn was called “a tragic, senseless, bizarre” incident, in the words of the Nassau County district attorney, William Cahn.

Stewart would later, strangely enough, be named the coach of the Rangers. He’d enjoyed quite a career until he retired as a player in 1973. His heyday had been during his 13 seasons with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

It was Emile Francis, by the way, who hired Stewart to succeed him as coach of the Rangers, the same Emile Francis who chased Stewart from the rink at New Hyde Park when I was trying to interview him.

Here’s another note about Emile Francis: back in 1945, when he was a professional goalie, he was the first goalie to use a first baseman’s glove with a cuff added to protect his hand and wrist. Before that, goalies wore the same kind of gloves as their teammates. It had to be difficult to catch a flying puck with those regular gloves.

If you’re going to call yourself a hockey fan you need to know that sort of stuff.

By the way, when I was in Los Angeles this past February, we went to see the Kings play the Boston Bruins at the Staples Center. The Kings were in last place in their division at the time. “They can’t be very good,” I said on the day of the game.

That night we watched the Kings defeat the Bruins, who had won the Stanley Cup a year earlier. Afterward, I observed, “Hey, the Kings look pretty good.”

Lo and behold, the Kings won the West and are in the Stanley Cup championship round. And most Pittsburgh hockey fans thought the Penguins would be playing for the Cup once again.

Pittsburgh sports author and historian Jim O’Brien has written about the Penguins and other local sports stars in his “Pittsburgh Proud” series of books. His website is www.jimobriensportsauthor.com

John Hilton, Steelers Tight End, 1965-1969

First, thank you for taking the time to talk. I wanted to start things off by acknowledging that you’ve been suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s. How is your health?

I have been yes. I just tell people I can’t remember everything and don’t get into it more….

What have you been doing since your time in the NFL?

I was in the equipment rental business and loved it.Everyone knew me so I went to all these different places around where I lived and told them stories about the NFL. I had a ball. I remember one guy who held the ladder for me at a job site and started shaking it as I climbed up. I asked him what the heck he was doing and he said that I played in the NFL so I should be able to handle this (laughing).

Continue reading “John Hilton, Steelers Tight End, 1965-1969”

Jim O’Brien: Spending Weekend with Steelers and Pirates

O’Brien: Spending weekend with Steelers and Pirates

Pittsburgh sports author and Valley Mirror columnist Jim O’Brien

It was a wonderful extended weekend, with temperatures into the 70s each day, as good as it gets in May inPittsburgh. I spent time at three different venues with some of my favorite people in Pittsburgh sports.

There was a dinner at Heinz Field on Thursday night, a brunch at The Club at Nevillewood before a golf outing on Friday morning, and three days at the Sewall Center at Robert Morris University in Moon Township.

And, thanks mostly to good luck and good timing, I found openings to see the finish of the Preakness with I’ll Have Another finishing ahead of Bodemeister once again, Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers tossing a one-hit shutout against the Pirates, and Andrew McCutchen hitting a pair of two-run homers to lead the Pirates to a 4-3 victory over the same Tigers in Detroit.

What a great weekend.

The 36^th annual Andy Russell Celebrity Classic and the XXXIV Annual Classic Sports Card and Sports Memorabilia Show were both enjoyable events. Andy Russell’s uniform number was 34.

It usually rains or rain is threatened at Andy Russell’s golf outing and loyal participants were saying this was the best weather ever for the event. I’ve been to at least 15 or more of these outings, going back to one of the early ones where Arnold Palmer participated as a host at the Latrobe Country Club back in the late ‘70s. I was happy for Andy that the sun was shining on his big day.

Russell raises money to support the UPMC Department of Urology, the UPMC Sports Medicine Concussion Program and the Andy Russell Charitable Foundation. He’s raised millions through the years for local non-profit organizations.

I was able to spend time and talk to Gerry “Moon” Mullins, Franco Harris, Frenchy Fuqua and L.C. Greenwood, and touch base with John Banaszak, Mike Wagner, Dwayne Woodruff, Lynn Swann, Craig Bingham, Robin Cole, Emil Boures, Glen Edwards, Marv Kellum, Mike Merriweather, J.T. Thomas, J.R. Wilburn and, of course, Andy Russell at Heinz Field and The Club at Nevillewood.

My wife Kathie and I sat next to Joe Gordon at dinner. Gordon was named the best public relations man in the league during the ‘70s, and was a valuable aide to all of us on the beat. Gordon is now a good friend.

I also spoke with Steve Blass and Kent Tekulve, two former Pirates who participated as celebrities in the fivesomes, as well as Troy Benson, a member of the Pitt football team when I served as assistant athletic director for public relations at Pitt in the mid-80s.

Anybody who loves sports would have enjoyed tagging along, as did my good friend Gene Musial.

I had a chance to say hello to two of my all-time favorite Pirates, Dick Groat and El Roy Face, at the RMU campus, as well as Mike “Hit Man” Easler, Whammy Douglas, Bob Bailey and Jim Rooker.

I also visited with Jim Gentile, who was a power-hitting first baseman with the Kansas City Athletics. I was an editor at the U.S. Army Home Town News Center inKansas Cityin 1965 and helped out in the press box at Municipal Stadium in the evenings when Gentile was playing for Charles O. Finley’s A’s in the American League.

I also worked in the press box as a spotter at the same stadium when the Kansas City Chiefs of Len Dawson and Buck Buchannan were playing there in the American Football League.

That was one of those fortunate developments in my life, serving in the U.S. Army and getting a chance to see the pro teams in “the other league” while I was in Kansas City.

L.C. Greenwood was the lone figure in the dinning room at Nevillewood for a brief spell on Friday morning. Everybody else had gone out to play golf, but Greenwood stayed behind.

Gene Musial and I joined L.C. at his table. “I can’t play today,” said Greenwood. “My back won’t allow it.”

He told us he’d had 15 surgeries on his back since he was a star defensive end for the Steelers in the ‘70s. He was a stalwart member of the Steel Curtain. He always stood out in the crowd, at 6-6, and he just always stood tall and walked tall. There has always been a noble look about L.C. Greenwood.

I asked him if he was still a member of the Williams Country Club inWeirton,West Virginia. “I still pay dues,” he said, “but I haven’t played golf there in quite a while.”

I knew that he had grown up in Canton,Mississippi, and I knew that he should have ended up inCanton, Ohio, as a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He and teammate Donnie Shell and Andy Russell and Mike Wagner, to name a few, suffer because there are so many of their teammates in the Hall of Fame.

There is a reluctance to name too many Steelers to the Hall of Fame. Two more, Jack Butler and Dermontti Dawson, are going in this summer, along with two Pitt products, Chris Doleman and Curtis Martin. Greenwoodis no longer eligible in the regular voting having been on the ballot for the maximum 15 years. His only chance now would be to get nominated by the veterans’ committee, which is how Butler became a Hall of Fame inductee.

I also knew that when L.C. was a young man he wanted to be a pharmacist. He went to Arkansas AM & N on an academic scholarship.

“I spend a lot of time in pharmacies these days,” said L.C., smiling that great warm smile of his. “I used to go to the pharmacy only to pick up some aspirin. Now everyone in the pharmacy knows me. ‘Hi, Mr. Greenwood, how are you today?’ I am a frequent visitor.”

Greenwood still works as a broker in the coal business out of an office in Carnegie and he does not complain. “Hey, I thank the Lord each morning when I wake up,” he said. “I just lost a former teammate, so many of the guys I played with here are gone. I’m thankful to be around. I count my blessings.”

“Moon” Mullins still works as well. He owns the Industrial Metals & Minerals Company inSouth Fayette, near the Bridgeville border. I have been to his office as well asGreenwood’s through the years when I interviewed them.

“You were one of the guys we trusted,” Mullins told me at Heinz Field. “We could talk to guys like you and Myron Cope and we knew you weren’t going to throw us under the bus. I’d tell Myron something and he’d say ‘a little bird told me’ when he’d use the item on his show. You guys weren’t out to hurt us. That wasn’t true with some of the media.”

Mullins reminded me of just how good we had it in those days. I came to cover the Steelers for the 1979 season after spending the previous nine years inNew York, and one year before that inMiami.

The Steelers would go on to win their fourth Super Bowl title in six seasons under Coach Chuck Noll. “They used to have that big room in that building off by the dorms,” recalled Mullins.

“The offensive line used to have our post-practice meetings in a room under that room that was reserved for the media and the coaches. I went in there once and, man, you guys had a big supply of beer and wine and whiskey. That was tempting, I’ll tell you.

“Ray Mansfield always had us leaving the dorms after our curfew and going down the road. I told him we ought to just go down to that media room. But I am sure we could have gotten into trouble for that, too.”

The Steelers’ coaches would go to that room following the second practice of the day, and the writers and broadcasters were invited to come as well for “happy hour.”

You could talk to the coaches, but everything was off the record. It was not a place to conduct an interview. But I always found that I learned something I could discuss with a coach later, on the record.

They had a family day then, too, with wives and children and friends of the players invited to come for a picnic style outing. The media was welcome to join in the fun. The media has not been welcome at that picnic for the last 30 years, not since Bill Cowher replaced Noll as the head coach. The media used to stay in the same dorm as the players, but that ended around the same time that “happy hour” went by the boards.

Since then the media has been made to feel like second-class citizens. In my days on the beat, we could make arrangements on our own with a player to do an interview, and then visit him in his room between sessions. The media must request interviews through the public relations office these days. Some interviews are monitored by a member or the p.r. staff.

Now the media grabs a player or two on a sidewalk outside the dining room and is lucky to get five to ten minutes of time, usually with a half dozen leaches with tape recorders shoving them into the faces of any mouth that is moving in the Steelers’ ranks.

Let’s just say it’s not the ideal situation. The fans don’t get as close to the players or have the freedom they did in those days. There are more security guards, more ropes, more restrictions, and more boundaries. The media, for the most part, is kept at a distance.

The p.r. staff behaves more like security guards; timing the interviews and cutting them short for no legitimate reason, just to control the action. It’s much more challenging for the writers and broadcasters to get to know the players, and to get their best stories.

I’m glad I came along when I did. Chuck Noll used to sit down with us once a week and we’d just talk about the team and how things were going. It wasn’t a TV reality show. It was just for us. The TV interviews came later.

I am pleased to learn, so many years later, from Andy Russell and Moon Mullins, and Mel Blount, that there was a trust factor. I always felt that if you exercised some journalistic judgment, and respected what the players said was on the record and off the record, and you didn’t take cheap shots, that in the long run you would have more and better stories.

Some of those old Steelers even give me a hug now that we’re all seniors, still moving, and doing our best to stay erect. We shared something special together and we remember the great times we were fortunate to experience together.

Some one chided Craig Bingham for calling me Sir. “I do that out of respect,” Bingham came back.

“Because he’s your elder?” the man persisted.

“No, because that’s how I was raised,” said Bingham. “Besides, he’s not much older than me any more.”

We hear about so many former football players who have difficulty dealing with the real world, but those Steelers of the ‘70s have been pretty good about getting on with, what Chuck Noll always referred to, as “their life’s work.”

Pittsburghsports author Jim O’Brien has written a series of books about the Steelers, including “Steeler Stuff” and “Lambert” and “The Chief,” that are still available in area bookstores. His website is www.jimobriensportsauthor.com

Tim Jorden, Steelers Tight End, 1992-1993

First, can you let readers know about what you’ve been doing since your playing days and how you got involved in your line of work?

I have been in the mortgage and banking industries for the past 17 years. I started as a Loan Officer in the off-season before my last season and it has turned out tobe a good career for me. In 2002 I started a bank with some fellow bankers and we sold the bank in 2006. Since that time I have been running the Arizona operations for a mortgage lending company.

Continue reading “Tim Jorden, Steelers Tight End, 1992-1993”

Stephen Austin, Director, NFL Regional Combines

Stephen Austin:

First, can you let readers know how you got started in the combine business?

I got into it by chance. I was working in DC for an insurance company giving a presentation to employees. I was twenty-eight years old then and two retired football players were in the audience. I didn’t know they were players – they looked athletic but that was all I knew.

Those guys were Frank Grant and Dennis Johnson – former Redskins. After the speech, they asked me to visit with them. They told me they wanted to be agents and needed a business man to help them. Well, my business was not that great and I loved football, so I jumped at the chance.

I worked with them in their agency for a couple of years. In ’84, I decided to try to be an agent on my own. At the same time, the USFL had just come into being. So, I jumped into it. Back then, becoming an agent was easy. There was no certification – you could wake up one day and decide you want to be an agent.

I found I was more of a manager than an agent of the players., I had to make sure they were ready. I found out their workout numbers were not what they told me they were. They all ran 4.4, no matter if they were receivers or linemen (laughing).

I recommended a player to George Young – New York’s GM. The player was a tight end and told me he was 6’5″ and ran a 4.6. Well, it was the biggest mistake and best thing I ever did. The player ran a 5.0 flat and was 6’2″. I got an earful from George and vowed after that that I would never recommend any player until I measured them myself.

So, how did you do so?

The USFL’s San Antonio team called me and said they had twenty guys they wanted me to get together for them to take a look at. Their GM and head coach were coming in. Well, word got out, and by the time they got there we went from twenty to 120. Then, I was in the combine business.

I had an epiphany and wrote down the words “Scout camp”. I had the combine title. What I did was different than others at the time. I introduced pre-registration. Instead of half players and a bunch of drunks guys, I just had football players. We were going to run six combines with a target of 300 players. Well, we ended up with 740 and ran them in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago, Tampa, Rutgers and Houston.

Twenty years later, the NFL bought me out and hired me.

How did you plan those first regional combines and fund them?

I was an agent then. When it took off I wouldn’t take on new players – I just let my current players retire. My life was the combine. My regional directors were players and clients who were popular in their cities. We needed about ten guys for each combine to get and receive the equipment, to be the eyes and ears of the combine. Then we got Wilson Sporting Goods as our national sponsor which gave us credibility right off the bat.

I was $80,000 in debt then. I went to my banker friend to borrow another $5,000. I told him if he didn’t loan me the $5,000 he’d never see the $80,000. Worst case, I would owe him $85,000….He said ok, and I used every penny to launch those pre-registrations by mail. When we got those $85 checks back, we went from there.

How were the regional combines accepted by the NFL front offices?

We didn’t do more than what was needed. these were qualifiers for the Super Combine. It didn’t mean teams didn’t come and look – but we never advertised them to the general public. This was supposed to be a substantive view of these players and the evaluation process. We didn’t want to make it a function of entertainment or commercialize it. We had no clever awards or prizes. We wanted to be a part of the NFL and to be taken seriously.

The older GM’s and front office people were reluctant to accept us. They were stuck in their ways. They weren’t fans of technology and I was. We had streaming videos in ’96 before most people had email. The guys who got it then were today’s bosses now.

Do you think the older teams viewed this as cutting into their scouting edge over some of the poorer teams in the NFL?

That’s a good point. That was a philosophy shared by some teams. Bobby Beathard’s view of scouting was the beat the bushes and find the diamonds-in-the-rough. he and others didn’t want a centralized staging of players. They viewed it more like a treasure hunt, while others wanted it all out i front of everybody.

I took a lot of negative “communication” from clubs not wanting me to stick my nose in their world. It took years for many of them to retire, get fired or lose power. I had to outlast them.

When did you know you succeeded?

The watershed moment was when we launched the first online, searchable database of players. We did it before the NFL Teams would use it and tell us they weren’t, but they didn’t know we were tracking their usage – they had to key in a username and password. I told the GM’s who weren’t using it that they looked at a number of player profiles, and they just let the conversation end (laughing).

Ray Anderson – the Executive VP of the NFL, was a friend of mine then and still is. As was Tony Dungy, Ozzie Newsome and the players’ union. I became a known person in the NFL.

When NFL Europe shut down and the Arena League went dormant, they needed a player development system. Ray said, “Why reinvent the wheel?” They bought out my combines. Ray stuck his neck out and it went well for everybody.

What would surprise readers most about the combines today?

How quiet they are. There are 250 kids and you can hear a pin drop. We’re highly focused. It’s scientific measurement – we need to be accurate to capture the data on that day. We identify size, speed. quickness, strength and lower-body explosion. We run players through the Indy style drills by position after and film it all. teams can see all the results and footage online the next day.

Now, they can go into the database and, say the need a wide receiver. They can search by position, minimum height and weight, speed …basically create their own player and it will produce a list of only those players that meet or exceed those requirements. Complete with a profile, picture, video, contact information, their agent, coaches, college infomration….everything….

We don’t do drug or Wonderlic tests – those are left for the Super Combine.

How do you select who of all of those players go to the Super Combine?

We start off with 2,500 kids across the regional combines. It’s very structured. After each regional combine the NFL flies in three former NFL scouts. They meet with three of our combine scouts – usually former players who conducted the drills. And one consultant – John Beake – the former GM of wo Super Bowl winning Broncos teams. So there are seven guys, and me.

We all go to a room at a hotel after the combine and discuss each position one at a time. We go around the room and settle on one of three classifications for every player: A – invited; B – on the bubble; C – rejected. We present the list for John Beake to sign off on. The “B” players may end up being added later if we have room after all the regionals are done.

If we have more “A” players than we expected, we don;t limit it to 150 invites. We can go to a day two, and we’ve done that.

As the level of play in college improves over the years, how do you redefine what an “A” player is?

The best player in the last group scouted becomes the standard. All the guys in the next combine have to be at that level. The bar changes, but we know what we are looking for. It’s the small things that separate scouts from fans. Fans could probably pick out 90% of these guys to invite to the Super Combine. But scouts know the finer points of the last ten percent.

Ever run one in Pittsburgh?

I did years ago. I planned it too early and it snowed. We were all wondering what we were doing there. I’d like to come back to Pittsburgh but we want the clubs to reach out to us and tell us as we use their facility. We don’t invite ourselves. But you better believe the next time we do it will be indoors!

What’s next on the horizon for you and the regional combines?

It was the general vision of Ray Anderson to start with the regional combine and make sure they were successful first. The next step is to deal with the fact there is more talent than there are spots for on the clubs. You don’t want to waste that talent by sending players home where they lose their skills and real football conditioning. Where their only workouts are at the local gym.

The next step we are looking at is to organize an Academy. If a player is not drafted but is a rock solid guy, he can live and work out and the NFL Academy and will be game ready as clubs suffer injuries during the season and need players. This way they aren’t coming in off the street.

We could have twenty-five to thirty to start with and build to a hundred or so guys. Then you can start a grapefruit league and they can play games against each other and be really game ready. This would begin to supplant NFL Europe. It’d be much less expensive and much more manageable.

We’re also talking about more network broadcasted content – shows like “Undrafted” and “Dream Chaser” may or may not come to pass.

I would also like to resume the clinics we had for players on how to become a scout, how to be a trainer, how to be a coach….There’s a lot of content and things we can spin-off from the combines.

Jim O’Brien: These Pirates of the past part of special times

O’Brien: These Pirates of the past part of special times

Pittsburgh sports author and Valley Mirror columnist Jim O’Brien

A youngster with the wonderful name of Nicholas Nottingham sends me e-mails from time to time. I met him at a book fair at the Greenville Library last fall. He’s on the middle school’s wrestling and football teams and seems like a nice kid. He recently sent me an e-mail with a photo attachment. It showed a baseball with a signature that wasn’t so clear, and asked me if I knew the name of the ballplayer. I told him it looked like Ralph Kiner to me. Nick wrote back and asked me if Kiner was any good. I told Nick that Kiner was a Hall of Fame outfielder for the Pirates back in the ‘40s and ‘50s and had the distinction of leading the National League in hitting home runs for seven straight seasons. No one else can make such a claim.

“How much is that ball worth?” wrote Nick in his next e- mail. I told him I don’t know the value of sports memorabilia, but suggested he contact a friend of mine, Diamond Jim Tripodi at his sports memorabilia shop in Rochester, Pennsylvania, or attend the annual Sports Card and Sports Memorabilia Show at Robert Morris University where there were hundreds of card dealers from around the country who could tell him the value of a baseball signed by Ralph Kiner. That show, the 34th of its kind at the Sewall Center at Robert Morris University in Moon Township, is being held this weekend, from Friday afternoon through Sunday afternoon. I will be there to sell and sign the sports books in my “Pittsburgh Proud” series, and visiting with some ballplayers who once played for the Pirates and some from other National League and American League teams.

The best known ballplayers are Dick Groat and El Roy Face, heroes of the 1960 World Series champion Pirates. Most of the rest of the autograph signing cast were not headliners, but they were part of special events in baseball history. Long-time Pirates’ fans will be familiar with Bob Bailey, a third baseman from Long Beach, California who was a “bonus baby” with the Pirates in 1961. There was no draft in those days and teams tried to outbid one another to get a whiz kid to sign with their club. The Pirates signed Bailey to a contract for $135,000, the largest ever paid to a ballplayer at that point in baseball history. A “bonus baby” had to stay with the major league team as a rookie and bypass the minor leagues. It was part of the system. Bailey, who will turn 69 this October, played five seasons with the Pirates and 17 years in the big leagues and had a career batting average of .257. His best season with the Pirates was his fifth and final one, hitting at a .279 clip with 13 home runs. He hit 28 home runs and 26 home runs in two of his seven seasons with the Montreal Expos. Charles “Whammy” Douglas, who pitched briefly for the Pirates in the late ‘50s, is another intriguing figure scheduled to sign at the XXXIV Sports Classic Show. Douglas was toiling in the Pirates’ farm system when he was tossed into a trade with the Cincinnati Reds that I regard as the greatest trade in Pirates’ history.

On Jan. 30, 1959, the Pirates dealt Frank Thomas, one of the team’s all-time greatest home run hitters and a Pittsburgh product, along with Douglas, Johnny Powers and Jim Pendleton, to the Reds in exchange for Harvey Haddix, Smoky Burgess and Don Hoak. Haddix, Burgess and Hoak would all play major roles in the Pirates’ winning the National League title in 1960 and then beating the highly favored New York Yankees in the World Series. That’s when Bill Mazeroski hit the home run leading off the bottom of the ninth inning to decide the contest, 10-9, in the Pirates’ favor. Maz, by the way, won’t be at this year’s sports card show even though he has been a mainstay for most of the previous events. Other Pirates participating in this show include Mike “Hit Man” Easler, who provided the kind of consistent offensive force the Bucs could use these days, was a productive player for the Pirates from 1977 to 1983, in his 14-year career. Jim Rooker was a reliable pitcher for the Pirates from 1973 to 1980, and later was a member of the broadcast team and the owner of a bar/restaurant in Ambridge called “Rook’s Saloon.”

Al Jackson started out with the Pirates as a left-handed pitcher in 1959 and 1961 but was picked up by the New York Mets in the expansion draft in 1962. He also pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals during his ten years in the major leagues. Hobie Landrith, who’s 82, will be there, too. He never played for the Pirates, but he was witness to one of the most spectacular home runs in baseball history when he was catching for the Chicago Cubs. Hobie Landrith sounds like the name of a baseball player and he had the distinction of being the first player picked in the expansion draft. Casey Stengel, the manager of the Mets, defended the draft choice by saying, “You gotta have a catcher or you’ll have a lot of passed balls.” Landrith was looking through his catcher’s mask behind home plate when Roberto Clemente hit the only inside-the-park home run in baseball history to win a game, 9-8, at Forbes Field on July 25, 1956. Pittsburgh sports broadcaster John Steigerwald was there and has included it in his book “Just Watch the Game.” Former Pirates’ pitcher and broadcaster Nellie King told me about that game when I interviewed him for one of my books. King said he came in as a relief pitcher in that game and threw one pitch and was the winning pitcher and that Jim Brosnan, later famous for writing the behind-the-scenes book called “The Long Season,” threw one pitch and was the losing pitcher. The bases were loaded and the Pirates were trailing 8-5 when

Clemente came to the plate in the bottom of the ninth inning. He swung at the first pitch by Brosnan and hit what Steigerwald called “the ultimate grand slam.” A player has hit a grand slam home run to win the game only 20 times in baseball history, but Clemente is the only one to do it with an inside the park home run. King said the ball struck the base of a light pole at the scoreboard in left field and caromed along the wall to the deepest part of center field (458 feet) at Forbes Field. Steigerwald says he can still see Hobie Landrith jumping up and screaming at the umpire when Clemente was called safe sliding under the tag at home plate. It was that close. Landrith later hit a home run of his own that became part of Mets’ lore. It was his only home run as a Met. He was sent to the plate as a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the ninth inning with the Mets down 2-1. He was facing Warren Spahn, one of the all-time great left-handed pitchers. Stengel called time out and went up and whispered something in Landrith’s ear. Then Landrith hit a two-run home run to win the game. After the game, when asked what he had said to Landrith, Stengel said, “I told him to hit a home run.” No wonder the New York writers loved Casey Stengel.

I was a college student at Pitt in 1962 and interviewed Stengel after a Pirates-Mets game at Forbes Field and he was delightful, offering his best stuff even for a college student on one of his early magazine assignments. The Mets, by the way, won that game for their first victory after losing, I think, their first eight games. In typical Mets’ fashion that first year in the National League, the win was almost voided when Rod Kanehl, a pinch- runner for Gil Hodges, failed to touch third base on his tour of the bases. Solly Hemus, the third base coach, gave Landrith a sign to hold up between second and third and ran after Kanehl and escorted him back to the bag. If Landrith had passed him and touched third before Kanehl it would have voided one of the two runs.

In 1961, in his debut for the San Francisco Giants, the Pirates were up 1-0 in the bottom of the 11th inning when Landrith hit a game-tying home run to deep left field off relief ace El Roy Face. So Landrith had his moments in major league baseball. I’ve always said that you never know what you might see that you’d never see again when you attend a baseball game. These guys are proof of that. To check the lineup and the signing times for this show, check jpaulsports.com. Admission is $5 a day and children under 12 are admitted free. Friday’s time frame is 4 to 9 p.m., Saturday it’s 10 a.m. till 6 p.m., and Sunday it’s 10 a.m. till 4 p.m. It’s fun just to walk around and see all the baseball and sports cards, the old photos and sports publications, the old uniforms. The Pirates are on the road, playing Jim Leyland’s Tigers in Detroit, so it’s a good weekend to get out for a nostalgic look at baseball.

Pittsburgh sports author and Valley Mirror columnist Jim O’Brien will be appearing all three days at the sports card and sports memorabilia show at Robert Morris University. His website is www.jimobriensportsauthor and his e-mail address is jimmyo64@gmail.com