Now, when I first became aware of this book a few months back, I thought that it would be yet another regurgitation of facts and stories of the Super Bowl Seventies Steelers. You know, kind of like the endless stories we've all heard a million times over the years. However, as I read the reviews of this book in recent months, it prompted me to put this book on my Christmas wish list, and Santa Marilyn came through.
Some reviewers have likened this book to a football version of Roger Kahn's classic baseball book, "The Boys of Summer", and it is an apt analogy. Like Kahn did with the 1950's Brooklyn Dodgers, Pomerantz tells the story of the Steelers in their glory days, and then revisits many of the players in the current day. Pomerantz is a national writer and author. He cut his teeth as a sports writer with the Washington Post and later as a general assignment reported with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I think what makes this book special, besides the fact that he is a gifted writer, is the fact that Pomerantz is not a local guy who covered the team in its heyday. This makes the point that the Steelers of those years were indeed special on a national and league-wide level to the point that they are an historic team. And he gives a perspective on such people as Art Rooney, Chuck Noll, Joe Greene, Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris and others that were new to me. Sometimes, I think that we in Pittsburgh are so close to the Steelers of that era that we can't appreciate just what they mean on a national level.
Pomerantz does not give a game-by-game summary of all the events of those six magical seasons. In fact, he goes into detail on only three specific games: the Immaculate Reception game in 1972, the 1974 AFC title game with the Raiders, and the first Super Bowl win against the Vikings. Each game is covered in about half dozen pages or so, but written in a such a way that those games that are so familiar to Steelers fans will seem new and fresh to the reader.
The book concentrates on the present day lives of four Steelers: Greene, Bradshaw, Harris, and John Stallworth, but in those chapters, you will also learn about the lives of all of the other big names from those teams. Pomerantz also does not sugarcoat the down side of life that these players experienced, specifically the trauma and tragedy that was the life and death of Mike Webster.
Lots stand out to me from reading this book, but I will just highlight two of them. One, that Chuck Noll was and remains a towering presence in the lives of all of these players, and two, the absolute heart and soul of those Steelers was Joe Greene. No one else was even a close second.
You don't have to be a Steelers fan to like this book. It is that good. And if you are a Steelers fan, it is an absolute must read.
I will close with just one passage, among many, in the book that stood out to me. It describes Joe Greene on December 20, 1981, the day he decided to retire:
In the Astrodome that day, with both teams out of the playoffs, the thirty-five year old Greene played his 181st regular season game. He became wistful as he took in the scene one last time. He realized that the game carried no real meaning other than it being his last. Greene thought, Can you imagine playing games like this your whole career? What a sad statement that would be.
Terrific book.
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