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By
Joe Petshow
News Publisher
July 23, 2008
One of the
toughest quarterbacks of his time, an icon for all that is macho
about football, pulled a hamstring while running to take a
cross-country phone call from his wife.
Hall of
Fame quarterback Y.A. Tittle knows that both life and football
are often roller-coaster rides, requiring patience, hard work
and humor. That helps explain Tittle’s 60-year marriage to his
high school sweetheart, Minnette. It also explains how a small
mishap - his wife tearing the top off the hotshot, rookie
quarterback’s new red Cadillac convertible coupe - is no big
deal in the overall scheme of life.
Tittle,
who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, stayed at the Hood
River Inn this past weekend to attend a granddaughter’s wedding.
His 81 years, including 17 as a professional football player,
show in his walk. His knees don’t take kindly to hotel steps,
which also leave him out of breath. Those same knees once took
poundings from huge linemen like Deacon Jones and Art Donovan,
who were paid to chase Tittle down and punish him on Sunday
afternoons in the fall. The bright, morning sun, glittering off
the Columbia River, is hard on his eyes, but his minds’ eye
remains clear - especially when talk turns to his playing days.
Tittle
played pro football for three teams – and he played it well. He
was a two-time NFL most valuable player and was inducted into
the NFL Hall of Fame in 1971. He retired after the 1964 season
and coached a few years before leaving the game for good to
focus full-time on his insurance business – Y.A. Tittle
Insurance and Financial Services – in Silicon Valley,
California.
But
football remained in his blood. The Marshall, Texas native, who
played shortstop on his high school baseball team, is an avid
fan. He spends most Sunday’s near the lit fireplace in his den
watching NFL games on TV.
“You know,
I never have really talked about this much,” he said in between
bites of a jelly-covered biscuit. “But I played my first game as
a pro up here – in Portland.
“You know,
I probably took the train right over there,” he said, motioning
across the river toward Bingen, Wash.
Of course,
in 1948 things in Bingen and the rest of the world were a bit
different. Edwin Land had just invented the first instant camera
to develop photos on the spot - the Polaroid Land Camera.
Ireland was still part of Britain. The international economy was
recovering from World War II. And the sixth overall draft choice
in the National Football League, Alberton Abraham Tittle Jr. was
riding around in a new, red convertible with white sidewall
tires.
But any
such opulence was soon forgotten by the newlywed Tittle, who was
about to become a rookie again. In the summer of 1948, the
Baltimore Colts of the All-American Football Conference (the
rival league to the NFL) were holding training camp in the
then-developing ski resort area of Sun Valley, Idaho. In tow was
Tittle, a 21-year-old history major from Louisiana State
University, who a few days earlier had flown to Chicago and
hopped on the team’s “troop” train as it rambled west toward
Idaho.
Photo by Joe Petshow
Y.A Tittle today
“I think
the Colts’ owner was a part owner in the ski resort,” Tittle
said. “We practiced on the old rodeo field – just a bunch of
gravel and dirt. It was hot; it was at altitude, it was
miserable.”
It wasn’t
all bad, though.
“One thing
I liked about it was you could throw the ball a mile,” Tittle
said, with a chuckle. “I stood on the 20-yard-line and threw the
ball through the goal post at the other end.”
And then
there were the girls. “Remember the movie, “Sun Valley
Serenade” (starring the beautiful Sonja Henie and a young Milton
Berle)? Well after that had come out (in 1941) all these college
girls were coming to the resort trying to get jobs,” Tittle
said. He steals a quick glance over his left shoulder at
Minnette, who has slipped into a chair at the table behind him
in the Hood River Inn’s restaurant. “We had all these pretty
girls from all over the country as our waitresses.”
About the
only place one can catch “Sun Valley Serenade” nowadays in on
the resort’s guest-room televisions, but the film created quite
a buzz in the 1940s. Tittle caused a stir of his own shortly
after the Colts broke training camp and headed to Portland for
an exhibition game at the old Multnomah Stadium. Unfortunately
for the rookie, the first attention he received as a pro was
because of his “smart-ass mouth” rather than with his future
Hall of Fame right arm.
“I said it
to my roommate, but he blabbed it to the press,” Tittle
remembered, shaking his head.
Tittle and
roommate, Windell Williams from Rice University, were lamenting
to each other on the Multnomah Stadium sideline about not
playing in the Colts’ first exhibition game. Both had performed
well in training camp, but were down the team’s depth chart –
Tittle behind veteran quarterback Charlie O’Rourke, out of
Boston College. Through three quarters, O’Rourke was getting
most of the snaps in the game in Portland against the Los
Angeles Dons.
“I said
something about coach (Cecil Isbell) can’t be all that smart if
he’s not going to play us; those coaches were so dumb that they
didn’t know talent when they see it,” Tittle said. “I was
talking to my roommate; I was just making a joke. I would have
never said that to a coach.”
That
didn’t matter to Williams, who after the game served as “press
agent” and relayed the comment to a group of story-starved
newspaper reporters. In those days the sports reporters traveled
on the same trains with the teams they were covering; that gave
them access to inside information they might not get today.
Athletes were fond of telling reporters, “don’t print that,”
with a nudge, knowing full good and well it was a tip-off to
print whatever was said, front and center in bold letters.
A few days
after the game in Portland, Tittle said a headline like, “
‘Brash Young Rookie Challenges The Wisdom Of Head Coach’, or
something like that,” was splashed across the sports pages of
the Baltimore Evening Sun. Tittle’s pro career was off to a less
than auspicious start.
“By the
time we got back to Baltimore, I had a quite a following (of
reporters),” Tittle said.
The
comment did little to endear him to his teammates, who favored
the popular O’Rourke. However, Tittle did get into that first
game and he received more playing time as the preseason
progressed. In fact, Tittle played a key role in upsetting the
powerful Cleveland Browns in the Colt’s final exhibition game in
1948 in Toledo, Ohio.
“I knew
then that I could play,” Tittle said. “Until then I didn’t know
I was worth a flip.
“That was
their first loss in a while,” Tittle said of the mighty Browns.
Cleveland
was coached by the legendary Paul Brown and led by Hall of Fame
quarterback Otto Graham. The Browns were a powerhouse team and
in the midst of a five-year pro football championship run. The
Browns also, ironically, were the first team Tittle signed a pro
contract with - the day after his final college game.
“Cleveland
flew me to New York where I sat on the sidelines and watched the
Browns beat the (AAFC’s New York) Yankees,” Tittle said. “I had
no representation, no agent – which would be illegal today. I
signed my first pro contract for $10,000. They gave me a $2,000
signing bonus.
“When I
got back to Baton Rouge, I took that $2,000 and went out and
bought a red convertible and got married,” he said.
But Tittle
never played for the Browns. In those days, the football
commissioner had the discretion to balance the power of the
league. A week before training camp, Commissioner Admiral Jonas
H. Ingram notified Tittle that his contract had been transferred
to Baltimore.
“I might
not have signed (with Cleveland), but Paul Brown made me think
that Otto Graham was going to retire,” Tittle said.
Graham
went on to play seven more seasons, while Tittle slowly started
to make a name for himself. It began in that final preseason
game, which spring boarded Tittle into the starting lineup for
the Colts’ opener against Yankees. Tittle had a great game,
completing 11 of 21 passes for 346 yards and four touchdowns in
a 45-28 win. Baltimore, which had won one game the previous
year, finished the season 7-7, losing in the playoffs to the
Buffalo Bills. Tittle was selected as the AAFC rookie of the
year.
Two years
later, the Colts’ franchise folded and Tittle was traded to the
San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League. Tittle
spent 10 years with the 49ers and it was in San Francisco where
he started his second career selling insurance.
Photo courtesy San Francisco
49ers
Tittle during his playing days with the San Francisco 49ers.
These were
long before the days of million-dollar, no-cut contracts.
Tittle’s pro football salary topped out at $70,000 a year;
compared to star players today (like Peyton Manning of the 2008
Colts), who earn more than $1 million a game.
“All the
guys had jobs (in the off-season). I started out selling cars
and a friend of mine got me started selling life insurance,” he
said.
Tittle
later founded the insurance and investment company which still
bears his name; he ran the business for more than 40 years
before selling it to his son. Tittle says he still meanders down
to the office, but not to work.
“You
remember the movie, ‘Driving Miss Daisy’? Well that’s me,
driving Miss Daisy – my wife – unless I’m at the office,” he
said.
Tittle was
traded to the New York Giants in 1961. He started his career in
New York by sharing time at quarterback with veteran Charley
Conerly. By the end of the season, Tittle was not only the
starter, but also the NFL’s MVP. Tittle led the Giants to
divisional titles in 1962 and 1963 before retiring after a
disappointing 1964 season.
“I
probably stayed one more year than I should,” he admitted. “But
there were a lot of things that happened that year with injuries
and trades.”
Tittle
suffered his share of injuries during his playing days, but no
serious ones to his throwing shoulder. He attributed that to
wearing the same leather shoulder pads all 17 of his
professional seasons.
“Yeah, I
took them with me to San Francisco and then to New York,” he
said of the pads, which are now in the Marshall, Texas, Hall of
Fame. “I was superstitious. Later on they were pretty well taped
up. They’d fall apart and I’d tape ‘em together again.”
No amount
of tape, however, could fix the convertible top of the red
Cadillac. Minnette filled in the gaps of this story, as her
husband wandered off to find a restroom. Minnette and her sister
were driving the convertible, but couldn’t figure out how to
latch down the top when it started to rain. They continued
driving for a short distance before the wind whipped back and
ruined the top.
“I got
sick to my stomach knowing I had to call and tell him,” she
said.
So sick,
that when they pulled into a nearby town, Minnette was
hospitalized and her appendix was removed. When the call was
finally made to Y.A. 2,000 miles away at training camp in the
middle of Idaho, he injured his leg racing to answer the phone.
“She’s
kept me jumping for 60 years,” Y.A. said with a laugh.
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