Tom Callahan - The GM: The Inside Story of a Dream Job and the Nightmares that Go with It

CONTENTS

For Ernie Accorsi

Setting no conditions,
asking nothing in return,
he let me in

The acknowledgment is also singular. Thank you, John Mara, president of the New York Football Giants, for tolerating such a conspicuous fly on the front office wall.

PREFACE:
THE ESSENCE OF SPORTS

T EN OR TWELVE GAMES into the New York Giants 2006 season, I turned to head coach Tom Coughlin during a players lunch and said, You probably havent heard this for a while, but I like your team. Its a nice-watching football team.

Youre right, Coughlin said with a smile. I havent heard that for a while.

Ernie Accorsi, the Giants general manager, had invited me inside for his farewell season. Accorsi and I go back more than forty years, to August 13, 1964, when we spent five hours in each others company but didnt know it at the time. He was a twenty-two-year-old sportswriter for the Baltimore Evening Sun, tramping after Joe Louis in a local golf tournament. I was an eighteen-year-old college student on the brink of sophomore year, caddying for the former heavyweight champion. Ernie and I formally met in the late 1960sor was it the early 70s?by which time I was at the Sun and he had moved into the football business. In 1987, when I was working for Time magazine and Ernie was serving the Browns, I went to Cleveland to write a piece on Accorsi, the fans Dog Pound, and quarterback Bernie Kosar. At old Municipal Stadium, Ernie and I talked and laughed away a long afternoon in his office overlooking the field. Ive known Ernie Accorsi forever, I used to say, and that was true enough. But now I really know him.

We had Johnny Unitas in common. You bull-crappers in the media was Unitas usual salutation to me, especially on the telephone, but he loved Accorsi and Ernie loved him. In 2005, reporting my book Johnny U, I spent a bit of time in the Giants front office talking with Ernie. Luckily, I met Wellington Mara there. He didnt hold 1958 and 1959 against Unitas. The Giants owner didnt hold very much against very many.

You should think of writing a book yourself, I told Accorsi in parting, and that was the beginning of this project. Months later, in a badminton game of e-mails, I said, If you want to write a book by Ernie Accorsi as told to somebody, I can find you somebody. But it cant be me. I can only write in my own voice. He responded, Id rather you do it your way.

First, we have to get John Maras permission, Ernie said, and Mara gave it cheerfully. Are you up to the seventies yet? hed kid me when wed bump in the hallways. Are you up to the sixties at least? I asked Ernie, Dont we need Coughlins blessing, too? Coughlin, he said, works for me. Ill tell him about it. Tom was gracious to me throughout. In fact, when it comes to graciousness, Coughlin is the most underrated football coach Ive ever been around.

I moved to Belmar, New Jersey, for the fall and winter to be nearer the ocean than the Meadowlands. I bought an E-ZPass and commuted to Giants Stadium on the Garden State Parkway and New Jersey Turnpike three or four days a week. Pat Hanlon, the Giants communications czar, found me a working space in the front office and made a place for me in the press box at all of the games, home and away. Curiously, my affiliation on the media badge and out-of-town seating charts read Random House. Thanks to the Giants director of public relations, Peter John-Baptiste, I was able to get one-on-one time with the ten or so players I wanted to know better than the others. None of them was exactly sure who I was, but they all knew I had some connection to Accorsi. Are you the guy who owns Callahan Auto Parts? Jeremy Shockey asked. Ill leave it to the reader to judge if Eli Manning, Plaxico Burress, LaVar Arrington, and others were more open with me on the side than they would have been with someone trawling the locker room for the Washington Post or Time.

I think of this as Ernies book more than mine. I tried to get out of the way as much as possible and let him talk. The 2006 Giants season is really just a scaffolding for the life in sports Ernie has led at a post that is suddenly in vogue. Todays magazine stands are crowded with titles like World Championship of Fantasy Football, Winning in Fantasy Football, Fantasy Football Draft Book, Fantasy Football Guide, Fantasy Football Cheat Sheet, Fantasy Sports, Fantasy Analysis, Fantasy Forecast In this era of make-believe football, not only fans but players and even sportswriters are thinking and acting like general managers, like Ernie Accorsi.

The GM isnt a biography of Ernie. If it were, it might contain a lot of embarrassing personal information, like the fact that he plays the accordion. (Lady of Spain, what else?) Its closer to a biography of a job, or maybe just a long look at an inner sanctum behind the door of the front office.

Three days after the Giants last regular-season game, Accorsi went to the Orange Bowl in Miami on his own hook, not as a scout, as an alumnus of Wake Forest University, as a fan. He didnt sit in the press box. He bought a ticket for a normal seat in the grandstand, where he fell in with Wake Forests famous stable of golfers: Curtis Strange, Lanny Wadkins, Jay Haas, Billy Andrade. They were all there, including Arnold Palmer. Palmer from Wake Forest and Muhammad Alisort of from the University of Louisvillewere the honorary captains, decked out in game jerseys. Ali wore Unitas number, 19, which pleased Ernie, although he knew that Johns Louisville number was 16. Arnie wore 66, six under par. I dont think thats for the 1966 U.S. Open, Ernie said, when he blew a seven-shot lead to Billy Casper in the last nine holes.

Though Wake lost the game in a downpour, 2413, its supporters couldnt stop smiling. Tens of thousands of them, half a stadium full, in gold! Where did they all come from? At one point Strange turned to Andrade and said excitedly, Billy, Billy, did you ever believe wed be here? Thats a two-time U.S. Open champion talking, Ernie said of Strange, standing like a student in the rain, so thrilled to be at a football game that he could hardly stay still. There, right there. Isnt that the essence of why we love sports?

I hope some of that essence is in here, too.

THE MEADOWS GAME

I F ITS TRUE THAT THE olfactory is the keenest of the senses, the most evocative, the best one at recalling the past, then it is little wonder that a man born and raised in Chocolate TownHershey, Pennsylvaniacan reach back for his childhood whenever he wants. Just a few days ago, on an unofficial and unremarkable playing field called the Meadows, retiring New York Giants general manager Ernie Accorsi returned to November 13, 1954, when he was thirteen. Smell that air, he said, breathing in. It smelled like fudge bubbling on a stove.

Standing just five foot eight, Accorsi might be described as unremarkable, too, except for one thing: he is the only man in the history of sports who ever set out to be a general manager. Even Branch Rickey, the ultimate GM, didnt set out to be one. He set out to be a major league catcher, as Ernie first read in the Sporting News and later confirmed at the Hershey library. George Weiss of the New York Yankees represented another Accorsi study, but Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers was his ideal. When Ernie grew old enough to smoke cigars, he smoked only Rickeys brand, and still does. From college age on, he wielded the cigar like a baton, using it to conduct conversations.