NFL Quiz: 1) Who has more career receptions, Jimmy Smith or
Rod Smith? [Bonus points if you can name where either one
went to school.] 2) Among active players, who has the most
fumbles? 3) In 1967, Travis Williams had four kickoff returns
for touchdowns. Only one other player in NFL history has
accomplished this and he did it in 1970. Name him. [Hint: at
least to me it is not an obvious name.] 4) Who has the record for
most punt returns for a TD, career? Answers below.
Babe Ruth….714
Barry Bonds..706 (thru Tues.)
Aagghhhhhhhhhhhh!
Any good baseball fan has to be sick about this. It’s truly
depressing. Jeff B. and I are praying Steroid Barry’s knees get
infected with flesh-eating disease, though a ruptured Achilles
tendon next spring training, at which point he’ll probably stand at
711, would suffice. Barry is in Washington as the Giants play
the Nationals and Selena Roberts of the New York Times filed
this report.
“Bonds had a brazen answer for everyone. Before the game
began, he refused to whisper his opinions about Congressional
politics even as a wanted man in the land of wiretaps.
“For one, he doesn’t care for the snooping of Congressional
investigators who are calling friends of Rafael Palmeiro in an
effort to find out if he perjured himself in March when he told
the House Committee on Government Reform that he never, ever
took steroids. Weeks later, Palmeiro’s positive test for an illegal
performance-enhancer was revealed….
“If investigators put Bonds on their speed-dial, if they rang him
to rat out his pal, he would naturally go into his bring-it-on
mode.
“ ‘They would have to contact my attorney first,’ Bonds said.
‘And we’d discuss that at that time.’
“The political pursuit of Palmeiro’s buddy list is a waste of time,
if you ask Bonds, who has been conveniently confused in the
past about how to define cheating.
“ ‘I think there are other issues in this country to worry about that
are a lot more serious,’ Bonds said, adding, ‘Right now, people
are losing lives and don’t have homes. I think that’s more
important. A lot more.’
“Was Bonds grandstanding as a diversionary tactic? Or has
Hurricane Katrina penetrated his insular life?
“Bonds might have more credibility if his history wasn’t laced
with self-indulgent, diva moments. After his speech on
perspective, Bonds was seen receiving a foot massage – one
masseuse for each foot – before the game.
“Bonds might earn nobility points if he didn’t habitually use his
insolence as a cover for his accountability. He owns up to
nothing. Not his image issues, not the logic behind the
suspicion. Bonds never concedes that he has been the artist of
his own caricature.
“There are questions about him for a reason – like his miracle of
muscle as he passed age 40*, like the steroid allegations from a
self-described ex-mistress and, most importantly, like the grand
jury testimony reported by The San Francisco Chronicle.
[*Ed. note. In the interest of accuracy, Ms. Roberts should have
said age ‘36’. That’s around when his head exploded in size, like
a deflated basketball being pumped up.]
“When first entangled in the BALCO scandal, he denied any link
to doping until The Chronicle reported that Bonds had admitted
to taking a substance that prosecutors presented as a steroid. He
doesn’t offer flat rebukes these days. Instead, he trumpets his
spotless doping tests in baseball’s rich history of drug diligence.
Yesterday, he said he had been tested three times, including
routine follow-ups, in three years – not exactly a hefty collection
of urine cups.
“Bonds is often suspected of steroid chicanery. Even his recent
promise to lose 30 pounds in the off-season sounds like a pre-
emptive strike at those who will see him as another curiously
shrinking slugger. To be fair, though, Bonds has never been
fingerprinted.
“And this fact has driven feds, drug officials and pols into
despair….
“Investigators could, however, drop a dime on Bonds in the
name of Palmeiro.
“This may be their only way to get a peak inside Bonds. Until
then, politicians can just sit back at the ballpark and boo Bonds
straight into the record books….
“ ‘I have been tarnished for years and years,’ Bonds said, adding,
‘There’s nothing else I can say. There’s nothing else I can do.
As nice as I am, or try to be, you guys make up more worse
things. It doesn’t matter. I’ve already come to that conclusion.
I’ve accepted it.’
“So persecuted, so unaccountable.”
I just want to scream.
Joe Bauman
Ironically, on Tuesday, Joe Bauman died. Who was Joe
Bauman? Until Barry Bonds hit his 73 home runs in 2001,
Bauman held the professional baseball record with his 72 in
1954. Back on October 2, 2000, I wrote of Bauman in this space.
Bauman was a real piece of work. Born in Welch, OK in 1922,
Joe grew to be 6’5”, 235 lbs.; quite an imposing figure in those
days.
Bauman started off in the minor leagues in 1941, but then World
War II hit and from 1942 to 1945 he didn”t play professional ball,
putting in a stint at Beechcraft in Wichita, KS before joining the
Navy. But this wasn’t your normal Navy stint. He was
stationed at Norman, OK the whole time, playing baseball. [A
former Cardinals shortstop was head of the athletic department at
the base and sought Joe out.]
With the war over, in 1946 Bauman played with Amarillo in the
West Texas League. His 48 home runs set the league record and
his contract was sold to the Boston Braves a year later. The
Braves then assigned him to Milwaukee and later Hartford of the
Eastern League.
Bauman hated it, didn’t play well, and saw his salary cut from
$600 a month to $400. Joe was told to take it or leave it. He said,
“Well, I’m leaving it,” and headed to Oklahoma City.
The town of Elk City, OK was undergoing an oil boom of sorts
at the time and the locals wanted a top flight semi-pro team that
could compete for the national championship so Joe Bauman, a
man with major league potential, was content to play semi-pro
ball for three years, 1949-51.
When the oil boom began to dry up, so did the owners’ wallets.
Joe listened when a doctor, who was just a plain old baseball
fanatic, suggested that he was going to buy Bauman’s contract
(the Braves still owned him, after all of these years) and wanted
Joe to play for a team the doctor was involved with down in
Artesia, New Mexico. The money was good and Joe accepted.
1952 was Bauman’s first year in the Longhorn League and he
slammed 50 home runs to go along with a .375 batting average.
The following season he went 53 – .371.
Then in 1954, with Artesia becoming affiliated with a Texas
League team (and losing its independence), Bauman signed with
Roswell of the same league. All he did that season was
accomplish something no professional ballplayer since had ever
surpassed until Steroid Barry. Bauman hit 72 home runs, drove
in 224, had 150 walks, and hit an even .400…all in just 138
games.
Three years later, Bauman was out of baseball, never having
made it to the majors, but he had established his mark; 337 HR in
just 3,463 at bats for his career. And those 72 in a single season.
[Source: “Baseball”s Forgotten Heroes,” by Tony Salin]
James Polk…taking on Mexico
Well, sports fans, I’ve created a monster here. It’s tough to start
a story like this and then suddenly say…. “and so the U.S. got
California, New Mexico and Oregon territory……the end.”
Thus, we pick up our tale of the 9th greatest president, James
Knox Polk, with the campaign of 1844. I mentioned last time
that he won a very tight contest against Henry Clay, but I came
across some details from this race that perhaps add a little color.
Following are two jingles used by Clay and Polk. The first is
sung to the tune of “Yankee Doodle” and was employed at Polk
rallies.
The Democrats will be triumphant;
The ladies their charms will display
And no man will they marry
Who will vote for Old Henry Clay.
And the Whigs’ response:
Hurray for Henry Clay,
Nobody care for Tyler
Van Buren’s out of the way
And Polk will soon burst his boiler.
Well, you come up with something better! What I failed to
mention last time, though, was that Polk needed a hook, aside
from being Andrew Jackson’s hand-picked candidate. So Polk
decided that he would declare a one-term presidency, a strategy
endorsed by Old Hickory. On June 12, 1844, six weeks after he
was nominated, Polk announced that if elected, he would “enter
upon the discharge of the high and solemn duties, with the settled
purpose of not being a candidate for reelection.” It was a pledge
he would keep.
Early on in his administration, President Polk set four goals, his
“great measures”:
–He would lower the tariff.
–He would re-create an independent treasury.
–He would acquire Oregon from the British.
–He would acquire California from Mexico.
We’ll focus on these last two; though know up front he
accomplished all four. But first, more on Polk’s personality;
which presents a rather stark contrast with the current occupant
of the White House.
From John Seigenthaler’s “James K. Polk”:
“For four years there would be no rest for James Knox Polk. He
was an obsessed workaholic, a perfectionist, a micromanager,
whose commitment to what he saw as his responsibility led him
to virtually incarcerate himself in the White House for the full
tenure of his presidency. He rarely went out to visit. Sometimes
he took a walk, usually to attend church with his wife. On very
rare occasions he took a horseback ride for exercise. He almost
never attended a social function and took vacations only when
Sarah convinced him that his health demanded it.
“At forty-nine, the youngest president was operating in a world
he knew well, surrounded by veteran power brokers of his own
party: Calhoun, Benton, Cass, Woodbury, and Buchanan. They
were men with enormous egos and matching ambitions. Not one
of them had lost the fire in the belly, nor surrendered his own
dream that one day he would occupy the exalted position that had
come to Polk. The new president had made no promises or
deals. In his mind, his only real debt was to Andrew Jackson –
and he owed him everything. With all of this mind, he told Cave
Johnson: ‘I intend to be myself president.’”
From “The Presidents,” edited by Henry F. Graff (in a segment
by David M. Pletcher):
“As a good Jacksonian, Polk brought to the White House a
conviction that the president, the only true representative of
national interests, must dominate the government and be the very
symbol of the common man. More than any other Jacksonian,
Polk understood and accepted the hard, grinding work that this
responsibility entailed and almost literally drove himself to an
early grave. American politicians commonly took long vacations
from the summer heat and the year-round strains of the capital,
but for one period of thirteen months Polk never traveled more
than three or four miles from Washington. He mastered the
routine and details of every executive department, delegated
power with great reluctance, and called for frequent and full
accountings.
“While Polk’s contemporaries and biographers have given him
full credit for determination and scrupulous honesty in personal
affairs, they have also recognized a certain indirection or
deviousness in his political methods….From his earliest days in
the House, Polk was a ‘good hater.’…[And] beginning in August
1845, he kept a diary of his discussions and reactions. One
cannot be sure that he was completely frank, even with himself,
but Polk’s record brings the historian closer to the Arcanum of
presidential policymaking that is his usual lot.”
John Seigenthaler:
“Had he lived a century later, it is not unlikely that Polk, like
Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, would have tape-
recorded his White House conversations to make certain that
there was preserved an accurate record by which history could
fairly judge him….
“For all the color and excitement the daily log brings to an
understanding of his presidency, Polk, paradoxically, must be
read as a brooding and humorless man. He wrote with effortless
clarity and opinionated candor that revealed the shadowed side of
a conflicted personality. Sometimes he presents himself as
demanding to the point of unreasonableness…self-righteous to
the point of paranoia. There are moments as he vents his anger
or frustration, when the emotional release almost seems
therapeutic.”
From historian Douglas G. Brinkley and the book “Presidential
Leadership,” edited by James Taranto and Leonard Leo:
“As a biographical figure, Polk is not that appealing. A
straitlaced Methodist who never had children, Polk forbade
drinking and dancing in the White House. His advocacy of
temperance, in fact, caused Sam Houston to quip that the only
thing wrong with Polk was that he drank too much water.
“But as anyone who has read the massive ‘Diaries of James K.
Polk’ can attest, he was not a man to be taken lightly…Short in
stature, Polk early on garnered a political reputation for relentless
courage, forthrightness, and toughness, winning the nickname
‘Napoleon of the Stump’ for his slightly arrogant, no-nonsense
demeanor. He was also called ‘Young Hickory’ for carrying on
principles laid out by ‘Old Hickory,’ Andrew Jackson.
“As president, Polk outshone even his own impressive resume,
becoming one of our strongest and most independent-minded
chief executives ever. Although he won the election of 1844 by
a narrow margin, Polk never doubted his roaring mandate to
govern. President Polk faced a divided Democratic Party and
might therefore have chosen the more pragmatic strategy of
political compromise. Instead, however, the eleventh president
entered office with a clearly defined agenda that focused on
restructuring the country’s financial system and expanding the
western reaches of the nation.”
So let’s start out by examining the Oregon issue. Douglas
Brinkley:
“During the campaign of 1844, Polk ran on a nationalistic
platform that stressed the procurement of Oregon Territory as far
north as latitude 54 degrees 40 minutes. [ed. the Alaskan
panhandle then currently owned by Russia.] One of Polk’s
campaign slogans was ‘Fifty-four Forty or Fight!’
John Seigenthaler:
“On his first day as president, Polk laid a stated claim on the vast
and boundless territory of the great Northwest. ‘Our title to the
country of Oregon is clear and unquestionable,’ he declared at
his inaugural. His subsequent message to Congress called for the
federal government to provide protection for the stream of
settlers threading their way toward the northern Pacific coast.
They had heard the call of ‘Manifest Destiny’ – and clearly the
spirit of western expansion moved Polk to action. The Oregon
land, by treaty, was all under the joint control of the United
States and Great Britain (since 1818).”
Polk wanted a lion’s share of it. London heard war drums in the
distance. Polk then sent his secretary of state James Buchanan to
suggest the forty-ninth parallel as a final border between the U.S.
and Canada. England wanted everything north of the Columbia
River, which would have excluded present-day Washington
State. Polk was ready for a fight.
“The only way to treat John Bull was to look him straight in the
eye,” he said. “[If] Congress faltered or hesitated in their course,
John Bull would immediately become arrogant and more
grasping in his demands.”
Congress authorized termination of the treaty on April 23, 1846.
Britain, however, wasn’t spoiling for a fight and with a growing
crisis with Mexico, Polk accepted the forty-ninth parallel and the
United States picked up all of Oregon, Washington and parts of
Wyoming and Idaho as the Senate ratified the agreement with the
British, June 15, 1846.
Now Polk’s feud with his secretary of state Buchanan escalated.
Buchanan wanted to tell France and Britain that the U.S. had no
desire to seize California. Polk, of course, had spelled out in the
beginning of his administration that he wanted to do so.
The United States had annexed Texas in June 1845 and it was
admitted to the Union as the 28th state on December 29 of that
year, but Mexico began to prepare to retake it. Polk preferred
diplomacy to war, though, and in November of ’45, diplomat
John Slidell [ed. a New Orleans native…if you were wondering]
was sent to Mexico to offer forty million dollars for Upper
California, New Mexico , and the Rio Grande as a boundary for
Texas, but the Mexican government refused to see him.
Polk, somewhat reluctantly, then assigned generals Winfield
Scott and Zachary Taylor to Texas. Both were Whigs and
harbored presidential aspirations.
By April 1846, Polk and his generals were expecting an attack.
On April 24, mounted Mexican soldiers ambushed one of
Taylor’s scout parties on the “Texas side” of the Rio Grande,
killing eleven. [Another source I read said 16. And then a third
said three. Geezuz, historians, get your freakin’ facts straight.]
Well, it was as if Polk almost wanted this to happen. Zachary
“Old Rough and Ready” Taylor sprang into action. Now
remember, communication wasn’t that great back then and by the
time President Polk learned of the April 24 incident, it was May
9 and Congress declared war four days later. But by this time
Taylor had not only crossed the Rio Grande with 2,000 men, he
had seized Mattamoras and, outnumbered two to one, had won
bloody battles at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. Taylor lost
170 men. The Mexicans 800. [Killed and wounded.]
By September, Taylor had taken Monterrey, and then, ignoring
Polk’s order to stay there, Taylor routed the Mexicans at Buena
Vista, even though he was outnumbered here four to one. The
U.S. suffered 650 casualties and the Mexicans over 1,600 (plus
another 1,800 missing). Taylor had become a huge war hero.
But despite Taylor’s victories, Polk still wanted diplomacy to
play a role in acquiring New Mexico and California. From
Michael Beschloss’ “The Presidents”:
“To increase his chances of diplomatic success, Polk agreed to
enlist the services of the defeated former Mexican dictator Santa
Anna, who was in exile in Cuba. A man of astonishing duplicity
[ed. Santa Anna would have been a Bar Chat “Dirtball of the
Year”], Santa Anna was anxious to regain power in Mexico. By
Polk’s order the Mexican general was to be afforded safe
conduct through the American blockade and, having resecured
his place in the Mexican government, was expected to cooperate
with the United States in negotiating a settlement. In the
meantime, he would supply the Americans with military advice.
On August 16, 1846, Santa Anna arrived in Veracruz and, in a
classic double-cross, immediately condemned any attempt to
negotiate with the United States. Within a month he was back in
uniform, and before the end of the year, he was elected president
of Mexico and had pledged to drive the Americans back on all
fronts.”
Polk now opted to invade Mexico from the sea and by March
1847, General Winfield Scott took Veracruz and headed inland,
reaching Mexico City by mid-September. Santa Anna fled,
renounced his presidency, and two months later the Mexican
interim government launched negotiations. The United States
ended up paying Mexico $15 million for New Mexico and Upper
California, plus the assumption of $3 million in American
citizens’ claims against Mexico. On March 10, 1848, the Senate
ratified the treaty by a vote of 38 to 14.
But you may be surprised to learn that there was quite an anti-
war sentiment in the United States in those days, and it’s why
Polk would leave office an unpopular figure.
John Seigenthaler:
“Abraham Lincoln, the young congressman from Illinois, argued
on the House floor that the blood was spilled on ‘disputed’
territory. Certainly the territory was disputed. Texas claimed it;
Mexico did as well. In fact, the Mexican government had never
recognized the Republic of Texas.”
Whig opposition in 1846 was grounded “in growing public
disenchantment with the costs and casualties of conflict…. After
twenty months, Congressman Lincoln said of Polk, ‘As to the
end, he himself has [not] even an imaginary conception.’”
Almost 13,000 Americans died in the Mexican War, 11,000 from
disease, accidents, and noncombat causes, and more than 1,700
from battle wounds.
For Whig John Quincy Adams, “Pain over the loss of life and
treasure added to a building sentiment of moral outrage as more
people came to the view of those early dissenters: war fought
solely for expansionist aims was ethically indefensible.”
Adams collapsed and died on the House floor on February 23,
1848, and never saw ratification of the treaty ending the war.
And there were other famous words of protest resulting from the
conflict, such as Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience”
and James Russell Lowell’s “Bigelow Papers.” Ralph Waldo
Emerson said, “The United States will conquer Mexico, but it
will be as the man swallows arsenic…Mexico will poison us.”
John Seigenthaler:
“In the angry heat that followed the first American bloodshed,
the declaration of war passed the House by an overpowering
margin of 174 to 14. In January 1848, however, the House, by a
vote of 82 to 81, denounced the conflict as ‘a war unnecessarily
and unconstitutionally begun by the President of the United
States.’
Seigenthaler also has this interesting take on Lincoln’s anti-war
rhetoric.
“The irony is that some of what Lincoln said also came to cause
‘him’ discomfort when he was in the White House. ‘Any people
anywhere,’ he declared in defense of Texas’s (prior) armed
revolution, ‘have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing
government, and form one that suits them better.’ It was a right
he later would deny existed for the Confederate States of
America. In fact, his pacific views on Polk’s war also would put
him at sharp odds with the theory of anticipatory self-defense
espoused by America’s forty-third president, George W. Bush, as
a justification of his plans to invade Iraq. Polk had no right to
send Taylor into Mexico, Lincoln declared. ‘Allow the President
to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it
necessary to repel an invasion…and you allow him to make war
at pleasure.’”
Historian Paul Johnson weighs in with his “A History of the
American People.”
“(It) is difficult to conjure up the contempt felt by most
Americans in the 1840s for the way Mexico was governed, or
misgoverned, the endless coups and pronunciamentos, the
intermittent and exceedingly cruel and often bloody civil
conflicts, and the general insecurity of life and property. It made
moral as well as economic and political sense for the civilized
United States to wrest as much territory as possible from the
hands of Mexico’s greedy and irresponsible rulers.”
And so in the end, Polk had achieved all he set out to, yet he had
one more triumph as his term in office wound down. On
December 5, 1848, he gave his last annual message to Congress,
at which time he announced that gold had been discovered in
California. “The revelation gave impetus to westward
movement, and within months the gold rush was on.”
[Beschloss]
But there remained the issue of slavery, and on this Polk said, “In
the eyes of the world and of posterity how trivial and
insignificant will be all our internal divisions and struggles
compared with the preservation of this Union of the States in all
its vigor and with all its countless blessings! No patriot would
foment and excite geographical and sectional divisions. No lover
of his country would deliberately calculate the value of the
Union.”
But when Congress adjourned in 1848, the territorial issue was
left unanswered, to be put off for another day.
Polk was anxious to get out of town, but his final days were
tiring as he met with countless well-wishers. By the time he
started his journey home to Tennessee, by way of Mobile and
New Orleans, he appeared far older than his fifty-three years. He
was ill the entire month-long trip to Nashville. On June 15,
1849, James Polk was dead.
John Seigenthaler:
“Polk left office with no iconic image, no host of hero-
worshippers, no hordes of admirers sated with his charisma. If
his administration approached ‘greatness,’ it was on the basis of
performance alone.
“Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., has compared Polk’s standing among
presidents with that of Harry Truman: ‘Neither Polk nor Truman
was one of those creative presidents who make the nation look at
things in a new way…But both had the intelligence and courage
to accept the challenge of history. History might have broken
them, as it broke Buchanan and Hoover. Instead it forced them,
not into personal greatness, but into the performance of great
things.’
“He did great things. That is a powerful epitaph.”
And so we wrap up our look at one of our truly underrated
presidents. Maybe in a few weeks, we’ll take a look at one of the
worst. Yeah, how about we look at the very worst…James
Buchanan…and just rip him to pieces. We’ll pencil this in for
the first week in October.
Stuff
–You gotta love NASCAR. All kinds of action this past
weekend in Loudon, N.H., including an incident between
Michael Waltrip and Robby Gordon. Gordon was fined $35,000
and docked 50 points for throwing his helmet at Waltrip’s car,
while Waltrip was fined $10,000 for what NASCAR called an
inappropriate gesture that was caught by his on-board television
camera as he passed Gordon on the track.
Of course the size of Gordon’s fine also had something to do
with what he said on television.
“You know, everybody thinks Michael’s a good guy. He’s not a
good guy. He’s a piece of s—.”
Yup, that’ll get you every time.
–So I was watching the local NBC affiliate Tuesday morning
and they had a clip of a 3 ½-year-old boy in India who is a
distance runner. As in this kid has already run 36 miles straight
in one effort. He was remarkable looking…and he was shown
running barefoot. In other words, he could have left Washington,
D.C. the day Katrina hit and still gotten to New Orleans ahead of
FEMA.
–Not for nothing, but I haven’t heard anyone say anything about
the fact there are two bowl games slated for New Orleans…the
Wyndham Bowl, Dec. 20, and the Sugar Bowl, Jan. 2.
–Did you see one of the new commercials for eHarmony.com?
The one where the couple talks of their first phone conversation
being 4 ½ hours? Goodness gracious. Or did I just get in trouble
for bringing something like this up? LT?
–From my spy in Nebraska, Ken. S., comes word that following
the Nebraska – Pitt game on Saturday, broadcaster Brent
Musberger was stopped by Lincoln police and given a ticket for
having an open container of alcohol in a vehicle. “Apparently,
someone picked him up right after the game to take him to the
airport and as a cop had stopped their car to let pedestrians cross
the street by the stadium, the cop saw him drinking a can of beer
while waiting to go. Brent was not driving, but if he doesn’t
contest it or show up in court, the fine is $144. Dumb!”
–Revolutionary War hero Maj. Gen. Benedict Arnold turned
over drawings of the strategic stronghold at West Point to British
spy Maj. John Andre in exchange for 20,000 pounds. The plot
was discovered on Sept. 23, 1780, when Andre was caught with
the plans in his boot. Andre was hanged and Arnold fled to
England, where he died at the age of 60, “ignominious and
untrusted.” [Smithsonian Magazine]
–Sept. 20, 1964…National League standings
Philadelphia…90-60
Cincinnati..….83-66…6 ½ games back
St. Louis…….83-66…6 ½
Yeah, it’s not exactly a magical anniversary, it being 41 years
ago, but I’m going to be pressed for time next chat so we’re
going to review what happens in ‘64 since I have a good source
at my disposal. Philadelphia fans may want to look the other
way.
–Have you ever heard of Jorge Cantu? Did you know this
second baseman / third sacker for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays has
27 HR and 109 RBI this season?
Top 3 songs for the week of 9/24/66: #1 “Cherish” (The
Association) #2 “You Can’t Hurry Love” (The Supremes) #3
“Sunshine Superman” (Donovan)
NFL Quiz Answers: 1) After the first two games of the season,
Jimmy Smith of Jacksonville now has 802 career receptions.
Rod Smith of Denver has 727. Jimmy played his college ball at
Jackson State. Rod at that powerhouse, Missouri Southern State.
2) Brett Favre entered the season with 120 fumbles. The career
leader is Warren Moon with 161. Chad Pennington, who
fumbled six times on opening day, now has 21 for his career.
And while we’re at it, the record for most fumbles in a game is 7
by Lenny Dawson, 1964. 3) Cecil Turner had 4 kickoff returns
for touchdowns in 1970 for the Chicago Bears…the only ones he
took all the way back in his career, 1968-73. Turner is the pride of
Cal-Poly – SLO. In 1967, when Travis Williams had his 4, he
averaged a record 41.1 yards on his 18 returns. My man, a k a
“Roadrunner”. Ray Scott was doing games for CBS back then, if
memory serves me right. 4) Eric Metcalf holds the record for
most punt returns for a score in a career, 10. Metcalf played for
seven different teams, 1989-2002.
*And speaking of Travis Williams, as a 9-year-old in ‘67 I was
just really getting into the sport and I got my first electric
football game. The teams were the Packers and the Jets. [And
for some reason I also had the Rams…Roman Gabriel and Dick
Bass.] Boy, I mean to tell you those kickoffs were exciting, as
#23 (?) Williams plowed his way through the wedge. Rrrrrrrrrr
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
[I must say; any parent who put up with this sound reverberating
through the house was pretty cool.]
Next Bar Chat, Tuesday.
*This one may be posted closer to Tuesday than is normal….if
you’re one who has caught on to my routine.
