Pittsburgh Steelers "Franchise Four"

The recent promotion by Major League Baseball to name the "Franchise Four" for each team (and a word on that at the end of this post) prompted Joe Aro, a Facebook Friend of mine from the Washington DC area to name his "Franchise Four" for the Washington Redskins.  Fair enough, and it prompted me to try to list a Franchise Four for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

After putting much thought and analysis into it - maybe fifteen or twenty minutes of thinking about it - I came up with these four:

Joe Greene

I mean, really, do I have to justify this choice?  Simply put, the Greatest Steeler Ever.

Ernie Stautner

A Hall of Famer, he is here for the simple reason that people need to be aware that the Steelers existed and had great players before the 1972 season.

Jack Ham

Tough and smart, he may have been the best and most consistent defensive player of a team that was filled with Hall of Fame (and HOF caliber) defensive players.

The fourth guy has to be a quarterback, and I went back and forth between these two guys. Both were (and are) great.  One has greater stats than the other, but an argument can be made that the stats for each of them are a function of the era in which that played, but each of them, I contend, would have excelled and been great, no matter the era. In the end, only one stat separates the two - four Super Bowl rings vs. two Super Bowl rings, so here is the fourth guy.

Terry Bradshaw

It is a very narrow margin, and on any given day I could still be talked into including this guy:

Ben Roethlisberger

I ran this whole idea around at breakfast yesterday with Dan Bonk, Len Martin, Jim Haller, and Dave Finoli, and, of course, there was no unanimity.  The two names most mentioned who should be on the list were Franco Harris and Mel Blount, and I would have no argument if either of those guys, especially Harris, were in the Steelers' Franchise Four, so let's a salute them here:

Franco Harris

Mel Blount

Oh, and I mentioned that I would have a word on MLB's Franchise Four selections.  The name of Walter Johnson does not surface anywhere.  Not on the Minnesota Twins list, not on the Texas Rangers list, nor, even, and this is really stretching it, the Washington Nationals list.  That perhaps the greatest pitcher of all time cannot find his way on any of these lists calls the whole process into question, but I guess no one said that this would be anything more than a popularity contest decided by people raised in the era that says "if it wasn't on ESPN, it didn't happen."

Catching Up.....

After a week's vacation in the Outer Banks, followed by a week at home catching up with daily life, it's time to clean out the Mental In-Box....

• The Pirates continue to hold their own (nine games over .500, 1.5 games out of first in the NL Central, and in the first wild card spot as of this morning) despite injuries that are depriving them of Andrew McCutchen and Neil Walker, the head-scratching performance of Pedro Alvarez, and playing guys like Jayson Nix, Michael Martinez, Brent Morel, and whoever they use at first base on any given day.
• SABRmetric devotees who place great store in WAR, say that an extended loss of McCutchen won't mean all that much in the grand scheme of things.  sorry, but I'm not buying into that one.
• Among the interesting items that you will be able to put in my obituary, add the following:  I was at PNC Park the night Ernesto Frieri recorded his only win as a Pirate.
• As I type this, it is 10:45 AM and prior to the start if the third round of the PGA Championship.  I am calling that Ricky Fowler will be the winner when the final putt drops and all scorecards are signed tomorrow evening.
• While we were in the Outer Banks, the Steelers announced that they were retiring Joe Greene's number 75.  The Steelers have retired only one number in their history (Ernie Stautner's number 70, and that was way back in the early 1960's), and they then made a decision that it was not something that they would do because, As Dan Rooney said, "where would you stop?"  However, I am glad that they decided to make an exception in the case of Joe Greene.  He is THE greatest Steeler of them all, truly the cornerstone and the symbol of the great Steelers teams of the 1970's.
• In point of fact, no Steeler has worn the numbers 12, 32, 58, 59, and 75 since those players have retired (and I don't really have to tell you who those guys are, do I?), but the symbolism in making Greene's number "officially" retired is perfect.
• Speaking of the Steelers, the play their first exhibition game tonight, and I am actually looking forward to watching it, at least for the first half, anyway.  
• The current issue of Sports Illustrated commemorates the magazines 60th Anniversary.  I cannot recommend to you highly enough an article in that issue called "There and Back" by Steve Rushin which discusses how both the sports and the societal landscape has changed in the last sixty years.  Terrific, terrific article.
• Also in that SI issue is an article called "Regrets..." in which the magazine takes a good natured poke  at itself over some things that they have written about over the last sixty years.  Among them is an apology to "Womankind" for such things as gratuitous photos in 1955 of upward-blowing tennis skirts, a buttocks focused story from 1958 called "Miss Cheesecake Joins the Dodgers", a 1975 headline "There is Nothing Like a Dame", and a 1964 story on a women's track team which put way too much focus on what a good looking bunch of "gals" these were.  
• It certainly is a good thing that Sports Illustrated no longer depicts and focuses on women as sex objects anymore, isn't it?
• Let me close with this....

Book Review: "Their Life's Work"

Got my reading for 2014 off with a bang with "Their Life's Work" by Gary M. Pomerantz.  The subtitle of this book says it all: "The Brotherhood of the 1970's Pittsburgh Steelers, Then and Now."

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.

Joe Greene

Joe Greene announced yesterday that he was retiring from his front office/scouting/personnel position with the Steelers that he has held for the past nine years.  Greene also served as an assistant coach under Chuck Noll for five seasons, but, of course, Greene was a defensive tackle for the Steelers for 13 seasons, from 1969 through 1981.  A four time super Bowl champion and a ten time All-Pro, Greene was, simply put, and this deserves the capital letters and bolding, The Greatest Steeler of Them All.

No arguments on that point, please.

Much like historical time is distinguished as "BC" and "AD", Steelers history can be defined as  BJG (Before Joe Greene) and AJG (After Joe Greene).  BJG, the Steelers were league doormats for almost forty years.  That all changed when Chuck Noll was named head coach after the 1968 season.  Noll's first act as Head Coach?  Drafting Joe Greene with the Steelers  #1 pick (#4 overall).  Everything, and I mean everything, was different for the Steelers after that point.

I hope that Mean Joe has a long, happy, and healthy retirement.  The Steelers have not, and never will, see his like again.