Gale Sayers, Brian Piccolo and the enduring bonds of friendship
The devotion of two NFL teammates during equally contentious times resonates today
(If you’d like to view the web version and you’re not, click the main headline above. If you’re not a subscriber, click here to sign up.)
The Sports Biblio Reader, 9.27.20
The Imagination of Sports in Books, History, the Arts and Culture
Also In This Issue: When New York Ruled the Sports World; The No-Fun Red Sox, Then and Now; Charley Steiner; Slovenia’s Sports Supremacy; 50 Years of Monday Night Football; From the Ivy League Sidelines to FBI Notoriety; Oscar Pistorius; The New York Black Yankees; Horse Racing in Old Shanghai; Remembering Dean Jones
The only television show that made me cry when I was a kid was when Lassie went missing at the end of the first part of a two-part episode. (She happily returned during the second episode, and a major childhood crisis was averted in my household.)
The only made-for-television movie that had the same effect on me was “Brian’s Song.”
I was a grade school-age student when both of those programs aired, a very impressionable time for anyone, much less a pet-adoring girl who also was in the major throes of a new-found sports obsession.
“Brian’s Song” aired in 1971, following a fractured decade that left deep social fizzures we’re still painfully trying to figure out, and not often very well.
A year before, Brian Piccolo, a running back for the Chicago Bears, died of cancer. His teammate and best friend, Gale Sayers, was one of the best-known players in the NFL and would become the youngest player inducted in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
As Piccolo lay dying, the heartbroken, but poignant Sayers remained steadfast by his side. After Piccolo’s death, and as Sayers’ career was coming to a close due to injuries, he wrote a memoir, “I Am Third,” that became the basis for “Brian’s Song,” first as William Blinn’s book, then the film starring Billy Dee Williams and James Caan.
In his final months, Piccolo wrote a bracing memoir, “A Short Season,” which this summer was republished to observe the 50th anniversary of his death.
Sayers died earlier this week at the age of 77, after battling dementia, and after many years out of the spotlight.
His decline came as the NFL is at the forefront of an overt social justice campaign that is being panned for varying reasons.
Sayers and Piccolo were brought together at the request of Bears’ management to have an integrated set of roommates, the first in the NFL.
As it turned out, their deep and abiding friendship—Sayers later spoke of his “love” for Piccolo—was powerful because of its authenticity.
Today’s talk about “allyship” and “interventions” with players like Drew Brees who say the “wrong” things about race and sports and society smack of contrivance and coercion, because that’s what they are. They claim to want to to bridge gaps of racial and social understanding.
But they strip people of their dignity and prevent genuine understanding because they don’t take into account the deeply human dynamics of how individuals get along with one another, regardless of race or background.
The Sayers-Piccolo bond resonated so deeply at the time because there weren’t many instances of prominent interracial friendships being displayed in many areas of American life, including sports.
Late in life, Bob Cousy expressed deep regrets about not reaching out to Bill Russell as he endured racial indignities during their days as Boston Celtics teammates.
The Sayers-Piccolo example is especially meaningful today, writes Vahe Gregorian of The Kansas City Star:
“Because it gave us all a chance to consider how much more unites us than divides us and served as a powerful testimonial to how sports can bridge the divide in race relationships.
“As we are again, or still, embroiled in matters of racial injustice in this country, that relationship speaks anew to an ideal we’ve yet to realize but serves again now as a reminder of what could and should be in a common cause.”
I cried at the end of “Brian’s Song” because one part of a beautiful friendship was about to slip into eternal rest.
That one of these men was white and another was black certainly left an in impression on me. But for a lot of men during those times, '“Brian’s Song” evoked such an emotional response because of what it revealed about the tenderness of male friendships. Especially two men in a rough-and-tumble line of work.
Sayers lived a half-century longer than his beloved friend. For The Athletic, Dan Pompei, a longtime NFL writer, assesses Sayers on the field, the “Kansas Comet” whose seven years with the Bears were as unforgettable as what he did after his playing days were done.
Reaction to Sayers’ death from Williams and Caan is here, along with the former’s famous portrayal of Sayers speech in “Brian’s Song.”
Proceeds from the new edition of “A Short Season” will go to the Brian Piccolo Cancer Research Fund.
A Few Good Reads
It’s been 50-plus years since sports superiority was enjoyed by New York fans who basked in astounding championships by the Mets, Jets and Knicks;
A new ESPN “30 for 30” documentary airs starting Sunday, examining the career of Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius and the saga of his shooting and killing his girlfriend. The director is Daniel Gordon, whose previous “30 for 30” credits include films about George Best and the Hillsborough soccer tragedy;
Former University of Pennsylvania men’s basketball coach Jerome Allen is now an assistant with the Boston Celtics, and has published a memoir about his fall from grace after taking $300,000 in bribes to get a wealthy man’s son admitted to the Ivy League school. “When the Alphabet Comes” also details Allen’s years going from a tough Philadelphia neighborhood to earning an MBA from Penn’s famed Wharton school, and his admission that while it’s been painful for him to confront his mistakes, “I found power to be able to just tell the truth;”
Slovenia is a country of just under 2 million people in what was the northernmost area of the former Yugoslavia. But its rich sporting heritage is bearing abundant fruit these days in sports where it hadn’t stood out before. Newly crowned Tour de France champion Tadej Pogacar beat out his countryman Primoz Roglic and basketball players Luka Doncic and Goran Dragic were starring for the Dallas Mavericks and the Miami Heat, respectively, in the NBA playoffs. They teamed up to lead Slovenia to the 2017 EuroBasket title over their rivals from Serbia, the country’s biggest team sport accomplishment since it gained national independence in 1991;
It took some getting used to, but longtime Dodgers radio announcer Charley Steiner is calling games from home during this truncated season;
Phillies outfielder Andrew McCutchen has spent off-time during this season producing videos and teaching fans about aspects of Negro Leagues history during its Centenary, including the New York Black Yankees;
The success of a memorabilia store owner who started his own shop six years ago is proof that sports cards are once again big business;
Jason Whitlock is taking his contrarian views on sports and culture onto the lecture circuit. In August he gave a speech, “Are American Sports Letting America Down?” in which he argues that the transformative power of sports is being undermined by “black victimization and left-wing radicalism” that “threatens to do permanent damage to American culture as a whole;”
Monday Night Football first went on the air on Sept. 21, 1970, showing the then-defending Super Bowl champion New York Jets losing to the Cleveland Browns. But more than just a weeknight, prime-time sporting event had been born; a television and pop cultural transformation was launched that evening;
The Boston Red Sox are 23-36 heading into their regular season finale Sunday at Atlanta, good for 5th (last) place in American League East, the culmination of a miserable few months. The sign-stealing-related firing of manager Alex Cora, Tommy John surgery for pitcher Chris Sale and the trade of Mookie Betts to the Dodgers have drawn parallels to the 1980 Red Sox. That Don Zimmer-managed team was barely above .500 in the aftermath of the departure of Luis Tiant and others. A team that openly admitted it wasn’t having any fun prompted this observation from then-beat writer Peter Gammons of The Boston Globe:
“The Red Sox remind me of the Eagles’ lyric: ‘You don’t care about winning, you just don’t want to lose.’ ”
Sports Book Reviews
A couple of books we included in the Sports Biblio Fall Sports Book Preview have new reviews: Tony Collins’ history of rugby league at The Critic, a new politics and culture site in Britain; and a biography of late 1800s British tennis player and all-around athlete Lottie Dod is examined at U.S. Sport History;
The New York Review of Books doesn’t delve into sports books that much, but a recent sports-and-politics book by ESPN writer Scoop Jackson is explored by Jay Caspian Kang, a novelist and writer-at-large at The New York Times whose propensity to overwrite is fully on display here. The NBA figures to be the crucible for a new generation of writers that boxing was to the likes of Norman Mailer, and Kang’s reference to him and others of that ilk is hardly surprising.
Now Hear This
The latest Baseball By The Book podcast features Mark Armour, who discusses baseball writers and authors in the new “SABR 50 at 50” collection;
At the New Books in Sports podcast, James Carter, author of “Champions Day: The End of Old Shanghai,” discusses life in the Chinese city in 1941. His story focuses on the colorful lives of citizens who spent much of their time at the Shanghai Race Club, where the Champions Day horse racing events revealed a society that would soon become swept away by war and Communism;
ESPN’s new podcast series on the horse deaths at Santa Anita was reported by Wright Thompson, who’s also the host of “Bloodlines,” and the tale goes beyond the 49 deceased horses to explore historical themes of the “sport of kings.”
Passings
Dean Jones, 59, was an Australian cricket batsman who played on the 1987 World Cup championship team and excelled in the one-day format. He also shined as a commentator and inspired a generation of fans and players with his charisma and personality. The man affectionately dubbed “Deano” was calling India league matches in Mumbai when he suffered a massive heart attack this week and never recovered. Perspectives from Gideon Haigh for the BBC, Jon Pierik of The Age, Shannon Gill at Footyology and Russell Jackson at ABC:
“Deeper was his cultural resonance among the last of Australia's pre-internet sports stars. A generation of kids adopted Jones's Kookaburra Bubble bat as their own, slathered their bottom lips in zinc, took guard with Jones's exaggerated spread of the legs, then charged down the wicket with abandon. Never taking a backward step, Jones made them believe the ball was always there to be hit.”
The Sports Biblio Reader e-mail newsletter is delivered on Sunday. You can subscribe here and search recent archives. The full archives for Sports Biblio Digest can be found here. This is issue No. 219, published Sept. 27, 2020.
I’d love to hear what you think about Sports Biblio. Send feedback, suggestions, book recommendations, review copies, newsletter items and interview requests to Wendy Parker at sportsbiblio@gmail.com.
Sports Biblio is an affiliate of Bookshop, an online book retailer, and receives a small commission for books sold via this newsletter. Bookshop donates some its proceeds to independent bookstores across the U.S., so when you shop here you’re supporting a small business in your community.
Great installment. As per usual Wendy.