Glenn Stout - The Pats: An Illustrated History of the New England Patriots

Copyright 2018 by Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-328-91740-9

Cover design by Brian Moore

Cover photographs: FRONT : AP Photo/Winslow Townson (top left); AP Photo/Amy Sancetta (top right); Brian Bahr/Getty Images (bottom left); Michael Zagaris/Getty Images (bottom right); BACK : Focus on Sport/Getty Images (top left); Jamie Squire/Getty Images (top right); Boston Globe via Getty Images (bottom left); Jim Rogash/Getty Images

Author photographs Saorla Stout (Glenn Stout); Sandra Sweeney Gallo (Richard A. Johnson)

eISBN 978-1-328-91515-3
v1.1018

RICHARD A. JOHNSON:

To my uncle Red McDonough, who played football at Brown in the leather helmet days; Patriot QB/punter Tom Yewcic, a great sportsman and friend; Al Coulthard, loyal friend and Phillips Academy trainer in the days of two prodigies named Bill Belichick and Ernie Adams; my dear friend Jack Grinold, who worked for the first Patriots team; cartoonist Phil Bissell, the father of Pat and one of the all-time great sports cartoonists; our beloved Patriot and NFL warrior and Hall of Famer Junior Seau; Ron Marshall; Kathryn Maynes; and my home team of Mary, Lizzy, Bobby, and Brenna.

GLENN STOUT:

To all those who give so much of themselves to play a game for the enjoyment and entertainment of others; to all those who play in backyard Thanksgiving Day games everywhere; to my family; and to every member of the Patriots, past, present, and future.

THANKS TO editor Susan Canavan and Jenny Xu of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Peter Oyegun and Sarah Johnson of Getty Images; cartoonist Phil Bissell; artist-archivist Walter Pingree; historian Bob Hyldburg; Patriots publications director Fred Kirsch; Patriots vice president of media relations Stacey James; Hall at Patriots Place executive director Bryan Morry; Sports Museum executive director Rusty Sullivan; Boston Globe sports editor Joe Sullivan; Boston Globe librarian Rosemarie McDonald; and to Pam Schuyler Cowens, Eric Adler, the New England Patriots, Eddie Andelman, Alfred Coulthard, Bob Walsh, Jack Grinold, Billy Sullivan, Mark Waitkus, Dan Kraft, Ed Moose Savage, Leigh Montville, George Plimpton, Lesley Visser, Lisa Olsen, Mike Raphael, Upton Bell, Ron Borges, Robert Flynn Johnson, Robert Hamilton Johnson, Mary Hamilton Johnson, and Elizabeth Hamilton Johnson.

RAJ

IN ADDITION to many of those cited above, I also would like to thank the men and women of the Boston press, both print and broadcast, and those other reporters around the country who reported so well and for so long on the Boston Patriots, the American Football League, the New England Patriots, and the National Football League. Their reporting forms the spine and flesh of this book, and such an undertaking would have been impossible without them. The authors of the many previous books on the Patriotsand in particular Larry Foxs The New England Patriots: Triumph and Tragedy and Jeff Millers history of the AFL, Going Longwere extraordinarily helpful. Thanks also to my colleague in this project and so many others, Richard Johnson and the Sports Museum of New England; to book designer Alison Lew and copy editor Cynthia Buck; to agent John Taylor Ike Williams and to Katherine Flynn and Hope Denekamp of Kneerim & Williams; to Howard Bryant for his informative and illuminating insights; to journalist Stephanie Kuzydym for her studious fact-checking; and to my circle of writing friends around the country who put up with late-night phone calls and early morning emailsyou know who you are and how much you mean to meand my many friends who are Patriots fans who shared their stories, in particular Paul and Linda Valiquette and Scott Bortzfield. The Patriots and NFL websites and ProFootballReference.com were also invaluable, as were the Boston Public Library and the many YouTube videos uploaded by fans and other parties that make it possible to see the Patriots on the field across nearly six decades. My early work with Boston magazine also helped inform this projectlittle did I know that thirty years after writing about the Patriots for the first time I would find myself still telling their story. And thanks also to my family, Siobhan, Saorla, and my brother Gary, for allowing me the time and space that writing a book requires.

GS

All across New England from Bangor to Hartford, Alburgh to Block Island, Manchester to Uxbridge, Amherst, Concord, Worcester, Providence, and Burlington, to Boston and Lowell and everywhere in between, it seemed as if everyone, everyone, in numbers never before imagined, was glued to the TV: watching, hoping, and some even praying. One team, a dynasty. The other an upstart. And now, in the season finale, a ball tumbling through the air... three, two, one... and sudden death. Empty beer bottles were abandoned for full ones, fingers scratched at the bottom of bowls of chips, betting slips were fondled and blessed, favored chairs fought over, bars filled to the breaking point, waitresses stuck in the crush.

First the coin toss... YES!

A kickoff and a failed third down, a punt, and then, the slow shredding of hopes and dreams, the excitement deflating with each tough yard, the air slowly leaking from the ball. And then it was over.

Bottles broke, men cursed, dogs hid behind the davenport, and women and children screamed and cried. New Englands team had lost.

The New York Daily News back-page headline of December 29, 1958, is the perfect showcase to announce the result of the most significant game in pro football history and the game that helped inspire the founding of the American Football League: C OLTS W IN T ITLE , Giants Beaten in SuddenDeath Game, 2317.

It did not seem possible. When the Baltimore Colts defeated the New York Giants 2317 in sudden-death overtime for the NFL championship on December 28, 1958, a game that would be described for decades as the greatest football game ever played, no place in the country mourned more than New England.

Sure, the Giants played in New York, in a chilled Yankee Stadium where most of the 65,000 fans that day now slumped back in their seats, exhausted and spent after sixty-eight minutes and fifteen seconds of grind-it-out, hard-nosed football. But elsewhere in New York the game had not been seen, blacked out by a league that did not understand exactly what it hador more important in the long run, what had just happened.

This early photograph of football at Braves Field in Boston captures the gritty nature of the sputtering fortunes of the pro game in the Hub, which saw the failure of five franchises prior to the founding of the Patriots in 1960.

Earlier that morning and the previous night, thousands of Giant fans had headed north and east in caravans of cars winding down unfamiliar two-lane roads into New England, stopping at roadside taverns or motels that toutedfree tvto fight locals over bar stools or to find a place to stand in a cramped room with a twin bed. Everyone jockeyed to watch the dancing shadows in shades of gray and hear a tinny voice over a too-small loudspeaker call out the names: Kyle Rote, Big Daddy Lipscomb, Sam Huff, Raymond Berry, Pat Summerall... and Frank Gifford, the California Golden Boy, who fumbled and stumbled and, on that day, fell short. And Johnny Unitas, the name cut from Americana, who carved the air in overtime with pass after pass, calling plays like a chess master until Alan Ameche barreled through the exhausted New York defense from one yard out, ending a game still talked about almost sixty years later, when another team gave New England a chance at retribution.