I Ever Tell You About the '62 Pro Bowl? (Part 1)

Back in those days we played the All Star game in Los Angeles, not out in Hawaii, which is full of nothing but hippies and fags. We played it in the Coliseum, a man’s building if there ever was one. Even in ‘62 the Coliseum already looked beat to shit. The locker rooms were hotter than two rats fucking in a wool sock and the water oozed out of the taps as brown and slow as Cookie Gilchrist. The field was like one of them Jap grass mats rolled out over a concrete slab. Today’s pansy ballplayers wouldn’t have lasted one quarter playing in the Coliseum.

People don’t remember this, but our coach that game was Norm Van Brocklin. The Dutchman retired as a player in ’60, and after the Eagles ran him off he took the reins for the Vikings. So come the ’62 Pro Bowl he’s only been the boss for a few seasons. He didn’t do much actual coaching those two years either. Dutch spent most of that time locking horns with Tarkenton. The way those two went at it you’d have thought Fran was some old Methodist broad didn’t want to take it up the ass. Every first down, Dutch would call a run up the middle for Tommy Mason and come the snap, Tarkenton would run around like his hair was on fire and hurl another interception. Couple ‘a pussies, you ask me, squawking back and forth like old hens.

So anyway, the Dutchman could hardly be mistaken for Lombardi, in style or temperament. Which is to say curfew wasn’t exactly enforced, more like…suggested. On Friday after practice—the game was on Sunday—I’m one of the last guys showered and out. As I leave the stadium, I see Big Daddy Lipscomb standing outside looking like his dog just got run over by the Fuller Brush man. When I ask him what gives, he says he’s been waiting on a taxi for an hour. Now, forget for a second that Los Angeles ain’t exactly New York City, every street chock-a-block with yellow cabs. Big Daddy was black as Bert Bell’s soul, stood 6’6” and weighed 300 pounds before breakfast. Back then, before every goddamn punter injected unicorn piss and leprechaun sweat to bulk up, Daddy was big. And no matter what city you’re in, big and black ain’t exactly the siren’s call for cabbies.

I had a little ’57 Fairlane I’d borrowed from a sweet Braniff stewardess I was giving the business to. She lived out by Covina but left the car for me at the airport. Normally when I was playing in L.A., she’d roll up in it wearing nothing but the sable coat I took off Sonny Jurgensen in a drunken arm wrestling contest -- Sonny was a tough sonofabitch, but he couldn’t hold his booze worth a shit. After half a fifth of White Label he was about as strong as a wetnurse. Anyway, the stewardess was stuck in St. Louis for the week, so I got the car but not the aftermarket trim it usually came with.

I roll up to the curb and offer Big Daddy a lift. He gets this big, shit-eating grin and his eyes light up like a Christmas tree. I reach over and open the door. Instead of hopping in next to me, he folds up the shotgun seat and squeezes his giant ass into the back. When he catches the look of confusion on my face, he says the five words that haunt me still to this day: “We gotta make room for Night Train.”

END PART 1