AN EVEN PLAYING FIELD, CRYSTAL’S CENTER STAGE

The Cowboys’ new Dallas home had Dan Daly scratching his head at the DC Times. “Why all the hullabaloo about a punt kerplunking off a giant TV screen in Dallas – in a preseason game, no less? Somehow, you figure, the NFL will survive this minor miscalculation by Jerry Jones in his attempt to build the Stadium To End All Stadiums. Somehow, you figure, the Cowboys’ boss will raise the screen, lower the field, untie the punters’ shoelaces or deflate the ball so it won’t reach such altitudes – and the issue will disappear.
It’s become a story, I suspect, mostly because the league prides itself on doing things just right, on planning for any eventuality, on anticipating every conceivable problem. And then Jones, in his bigger-is-better Texas way, goes a little overboard on the size of screens hanging above the field, and the Titans’ punter gets one blocked… by Mitsubishi.
Seriously, though, if something this inconsequential can become such a hot topic, well, it just shows how far the NFL has progressed. I mean, in pro football’s youth, stadium glitches were as common as broken noses. Well, almost.
Take Wrigley Field, where the Bears played until the ’70s. Behind one end zone – directly behind it – was an ivy-covered brick wall; behind the other end zone was a baseball dugout. Neither was a very soft landing place
One day in 1938, Chicago’s Dick Plasman, a husky receiver, dived for an overthrown pass and ran smack into the wall. This wouldn’t have been so bad if he weren’t the last NFL player to play without a helmet. The collision knocked him cuckoo and left him with an ugly cut stretching across the top of his head. But that was Wrigley for you. If the Bears didn’t get you, the wall behind the south end zone would.
As for the dugout end of the field, Colts wideout Jimmy Orr once described it thusly: “You didn’t have a full end zone. It was only 8 1/2 yards [deep]. If you
went down in the dugout and looked at the chalk line, you’d see it had a zigzag in it at the corner of the dugout.”
The Bears weren’t the only club in the early days with a shorter-than-regulation field. In Cleveland, one of the end zones at League Park was a mere six yards deep. If a team had to punt from deep in its own end and needed more room to get the kick off, the ball would be moved farther away from the goal line.
Then there was the Cycledrome, a stadium built for bicycle races that served as the home of the 1928 NFL champs, the Providence Steam Roller. Talk about cozy. A banked, four-lane track ran around the field and chopped five yards off the corners of one end zone. (In other words, if Dwight Clark had tried to make The Catch in Providence, he might have come down out of bounds.)
According to Pearce Johnson, Providence’s assistant general manager, “There was only one locker room, and it was very small. After all, it was built for bicycle people, and they only had four on the track at one time. The players took their turns going inside and changing. There were only two showers and a limited amount of hot water, so the first ones in were the lucky ones.
“There was no opponent’s locker room. They’d dress at their hotel, and then we’d bus them to the field.”
NFL lore is full of such tales – of having to play uphill for one half at Yankee Stadium and downhill for the other because the outfield was sloped for drainage; of San Francisco’s Kezar Stadium featuring two sets of goal posts, one on the goal line for pro games and one at the back of the end zone for college games; of unusual happenings on baseball infields – especially when the pitcher’s mound hadn’t been removed.
Joe Perry, the Hall of Fame running back, once told me of the time he was met by an opponent at the top of one of those mounds and how “my helmet went one way, I went another and the ball went another. I got jacked up.”
The point I’m trying to make is that pro football’s history, architectural and otherwise, is the history of imperfection – and of succeeding, gloriously, despite of it.
So what’s the big deal, really, about having to “do-over” a punt in an exhibition game?
Let’s face it, Jerry Jones, king of the Cowboys, was going to have his hanging TV screens just as surely as Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, was going to have his hanging gardens. Some things can’t be helped.

 

 

 

Thom Loverro told us that, “Billy Crystal may be America’s performer. He is the gold standard in this country for entertainment. He was so good for so long hosting the often-dreadful Academy Awards that they should have named it “The Billy Crystal Show,” co-starring the rest of Hollywood.
Crystal is back performing, this time his Tony Award-winning stage show, “700 Sundays,” about the time spent with his family growing up in Long Beach, N.Y.
The show is coming to the District’s National Theatre from Sept. 8 to Sept. 17.
But he is also, like so many of us, a baseball fan, and to those who say fans don’t care about the steroids controversy and the impact of performance-enhancing substances on the game, you should hear what Crystal said as a guest Wednesday on “The Sports Fix” on ESPN 980, co-hosted by Kevin Sheehan and me.
Crystal directed the HBO film “61” in 2001, the story of Roger Maris’ record-breaking 61-home run season in 1961 and the turmoil surrounding his breaking of the mark, then held by American icon Babe Ruth.
Ruth held the record of 60 home runs in a single season for 34 years until Maris broke it. Then, 37 years later, Mark McGwire broke Maris’ record by hitting 70 home runs. Three years later, Barry Bonds set the single-season mark with 73. And while Sammy Sosa never set a record, he did hit more than Maris’ 61 home runs three times from 1998 to 2001. McGwire, Sosa and Bonds were either proven or suspected steroid users.
And despite all the attention that McGwire brought to the Maris family during his record-setting season, Maris’ accomplishments were diminished with each passing year in the steroid era.
That’s the crime, Crystal said. That’s what is so wrong. The accomplishments of the men who played the game without the help of performance-enhancing
substances wind up being devalued. And in the case of Maris, who passed away in 1985 at age 51, there is no one to speak out for his accomplishments except family members and fans like Crystal.
“I was just in Fargo, North Dakota, Roger’s hometown,” Crystal said. “It was an amazing time. We showed the movie in the Fargo Theatre, where Roger and his wife, Pat, used to go on dates. All the Maris kids and grandkids were there It was powerful.
“This was right after Manny [Ramirez] came out and said he tried to get pregnant,” Crystal said about Ramirez, who tested positive earlier this year for human chorionic gonadotropin, a female fertility drug also used in conjunction with anabolic steroids. “I guess he felt the thing missing in his life was a child.
“Bob Costas and I did a town hall meeting in Fargo,” Crystal said. “I said to the audience, ‘These guys have ruined it. It’s a shame.’…”
Yes, it is a shame, but the ones who should be ashamed don’t seem to know the meaning of the word. Sosa should feel shame for passing Frank Robinson on the all-time home run list. Alex Rodriguez, an admitted steroid user, should feel shame for having recently passed Harmon Killebrew on the all-time home run list.
How will A-Rod, if he winds up in the Hall of Fame, look Killebrew and others in the eye on the stage in Cooperstown someday? And if those great players are gone by then, will there be others like Crystal who will give their accomplishments the perspective they deserve?
Four years ago, the North Dakota Senate urged Major League Baseball to re-establish Maris’ 61 home runs as the single-season record. That’s not likely to
happen, but Crystal believes there should be something in the record books to acknowledge the difference between the inflated numbers and Maris’ record.
“The asterisk for Roger [in 1961, commissioner Ford Frick declared that an asterisk be placed next to Maris’ record because he played in a 162-game season compared with Ruth’s 154-game season, though it was later removed] should be now for most home runs for someone not using performance-enhancing drugs,”
Crystal said. “It’s hard to take it away from Bonds or any of these guys. You can’t really do that, but I think there needs to be more recognition. You see now there is only one guy who has 40 home runs. – Everyone else is where they used to be.
“I think that is a testimony to what Roger did, especially with everything he went through,” Crystal said. “There should be a bigger spotlight on what Roger did, especially in light of what has been going on.”
Billy Crystal did his part with the making of “61.” There will be no films made celebrating the accomplishments of Barry Bonds – just the scandals, perhaps.”