Dan Rooney Page 6

  Competition between the schools was intense—Monaca Indians vs. Rochester Rams, Aliquippa Quips vs. Ambridge Bridgers, Charleroi Cougars vs. Monessen Greyhounds, Westinghouse Bulldogs vs. Pea-body Highlanders, Clairton Bears vs. Duquesne Dukes, and, of course, Central Catholic Vikings vs. the North Catholic Trojans. Often separated by only a hill or valley, rivalry between these schools brought the quality of play to a level unknown in other American cities. While New York and Philadelphia may have had the tax base and population density of Pittsburgh, they never had the real estate necessary for stadiums and practice fields that teams in Western Pennsylvania enjoyed.

  Whatever the reasons, it seems to me, the stars aligned perfectly to make Western Pennsylvania the place for football to evolve into America’s passion. And every able-bodied boy of my generation dreamed of becoming a football player, not just to suit up and be on the field, but to excel—and win.

  All that summer of 1946 I lived and breathed football, working at the Steelers camp with Coach Jock Sutherland. It was hard labor but I enjoyed it, moving the team equipment on and off the field every day, lugging the heavy rag-stuffed tackling dummies, and dragging around canvas laundry bags. In addition, I exercised every day—pushups, sit-ups, pull-ups, running, and throwing footballs for accuracy and distance. And I continued to play sandlot games on Monument Hill against teams like the Mt. Lebanon Bulldogs, organized by Bob Prince, the future voice of baseball’s Pittsburgh Pirates. By summer’s end I was in top physical condition. I may not have been the biggest or the best player entering North Catholic that fall, but I was sure in better shape than any other boy.

  North Catholic was a huge school with an active athletic program where football came second only to God, though I suppose the Marianist brothers would argue that academics ranked pretty high, too. But if you asked any boy on campus, he’d set you straight: football was tops.

  The first day of tryouts, however, took me by surprise. For some reason I didn’t realize that I’d have to run against the other boys to qualify for the team. The coaches weren’t going to automatically place me on the squad just because of a headline. As I walked by the practice field with my new books, Coach Al Lesniak, who was supervising the 40-yard qualifying race, spotted me.

  “Rooney, why aren’t you running with the rest of the boys? Get out here!”

  “But Coach, I’m not dressed for it.”

  “Don’t give me that! You think you’re too good to try out for the team? Drop your books and line up!”

  I felt awkward and a little nervous being out there, since I hadn’t counted on running that day. I wanted to do my best, but I felt all the other boys would have an advantage dressed in their gym gear and football shoes. I lined up wearing my regular school clothes: leather-soled oxfords, slacks, dress shirt, and a tie.

  The whistle blew and I took off like a rocket, tie whipping back over my shoulder. When I crossed the finish line, I looked around and found myself all alone—I’d outrun the field.

  This success kind of went to my head, so much so that the other guys gave me a hard time, “You really think you’re a big shot, beating everybody, don’t you!”

  Their taunts bothered me, and that night I had a hard time sleeping. But the next day when I got to school everything was fine, especially when I discovered a complete uniform, from helmet to cleats, laid out for me in the locker room. Coach Lesniak had named me the starting halfback of the North Catholic Trojans’ freshman squad. I’ve never been so proud of a uniform—not since the Rooney 98s—white jersey with a black number 11 emblazoned on the back, and white pants with black, high-top shoes. The first time I saw myself in the mirror decked out in full pads and uniform, I thought I was something, a real football player.

  After just a few weeks, Joe Thomas, head coach of the junior varsity team, noticed me on the freshman squad. At our first practice, Thomas instructed the freshmen, talked about X’s and O’s, and shot questions at us. “Okay, who knows what the strong safety does?”

  I raised my hand and told him, “He protects deep against the pass and covers short passes over the middle as well.” I then proceeded to explain the assignments for every position on the board: safeties, linebackers, linemen, detailing their every move. Thomas was so impressed he moved me up to the JV team the next day. In no time I became the starting halfback on the JV squad, running sweeps out of the single-wing and Wing-T formations.

  With Coach Thomas’s guidance I developed as a player and a person. He taught me a disciplined work ethic, as well as the importance of integrity and character. Just as Mother and Dad had, Thomas cultivated my leadership skills. He made me responsible for team equipment and schedules, and showed me how to lead without being overbearing. He said you can be at the top of your game without being cocky or acting like a big shot. His own life was a lesson in humility.

  Everyone at North Catholic knew that Thomas was the most talented coach at the school, yet the administration withheld from him the honor of being head football coach. Instead of giving him the football job, they put him in charge of the basketball program. This was a bitter pill for Joe, but he handled it with dignity and grace. To his credit, he brought home three state titles in basketball, even though football was his real passion. There was some sort of power struggle within the administration that I was too young to comprehend. They didn’t want to pay Joe the salary a head football coach commanded and couldn’t agree on a contract.

  I remember the day he came to me and said he was leaving the school to accept a job at Chaminade, a Marianist brothers Catholic high school in New York. I was crushed and couldn’t understand how North Catholic could let such a great coach and teacher get away. It didn’t make any sense to quibble about a few dollars when you had a guy like Joe, who knew what it took to win and at the same time could inspire, build character, and change lives.

  Actually, Coach Thomas was not much older than the students he was teaching. Like my uncle Tom, he had served in the Pacific during World War II, and he loafed with the high school players like one of the boys. But he mentored us both on and off the field, and next to my own parents, had the most profound influence on me. On the field, he encouraged me to develop my throwing skills to complement my running game. He told me I had real potential as a quarterback and got me as much playing time as he could. When the freshman squad went up against Millvale, he suggested I play as halfback/quarterback. Even though I was technically on the JV, I was still a freshman and eligible to play on the freshman team. The game was a real mismatch, and I felt like we could run circles around the Millvale players. By the end of the game, I had scored six touchdowns.

  Standing in the end zone, Joe Thomas saw everything. As I scored the last touchdown, I saw him laughing. It was embarrassing for the Millvale team and the freshman coach should have pulled me from the game, but both he and Thomas wanted to see what I could do. That was the last game I ever played with the freshmen.

  In fact, about three weeks after the Millvale game, Thomas had my good friend Miles Bryan and me dress for the varsity game. We didn’t get much playing time but we learned a lot. At the end of the season we wondered if we’d get our varsity letters and were a little disappointed when we didn’t. But the coaches made the right decision. They knew we could wait and that our heads would swell if we got those letters too soon. We still had our whole high school careers ahead of us.

  During my freshman year I played halfback out of the single-wing. In my sophomore year I played quarterback in the Wing-T formation, because the coaches knew I could throw. In the Wing-T the quarterback, flanked by a fullback and wingback, takes the ball from the center, and can throw or run, but usually hands off. I really enjoyed running the ball—I was fast and had good moves. Though they made me quarterback, I would have preferred playing tailback, where I could both throw and run the ball.

  We had a good season my sophomore year, going 7-1, but just as school closed for the summer, I came down with rheumatic fever. The illness really laid me low
. I was confined in a hospital for two months and hated being there. I felt sorry for myself, and I know I made life miserable for my entire family, especially my mother. The only bright spot in my hospital stay was that a Steelers backup quarterback, Joe Gasparella, often visited me. We talked for hours about art and architecture. He’d been an excellent student at Notre Dame and an accomplished artist and architect, and taught me the fundamentals of drawing and design. I remember he brought sketchpads and I would refine my drawing skills, perfecting shading and perspective. I began to think that an architecture career might be in my future.

  When they took me to the hospital I was nearly five feet ten inches tall and weighed 147 pounds. When I finally got out, I found that though I had gained weight, I had stopped growing. In fact, I never grew another inch.

  It hurt having to sit out my junior year, but I came back strong as a senior, helping lead the team to a winning season. I played quarterback, but the coaches also used me on defense, either as corner or safety. By this time I had muscled up to 163 pounds, and had regained my speed and stamina.

  In the fall of 1949 we played one of our toughest games against the Aliquippa Quips on their field, a dark hole in the ground we called the “Pit.” Now, they were pretty smart and knew that the lights only worked on one side of the field—the Aliquippa grounds crew fixed it that way. Their coaches opted to wear dark brown uniforms, while we had to wear our white jerseys. They could see us, but we couldn’t see them. When the Quips pulled a reverse on the first kickoff, I honestly didn’t know who had the ball until their runner crossed the goal line. It was a seesaw battle. I had a pretty good game and our whole team played their hearts out, but we lost by a touchdown.

  Later we played Ambridge, a mill town just across the Ohio River from Aliquippa. These guys were tough, the sons of steel workers. They had scouted us and the word was they had to stop me to win the game. We played them to a standstill, but we were short-handed—my friend Richie McCabe, a great running back, was out sick. Our coach, John Karcis, emphasized the running game and wouldn’t let me pass the ball.

  With the score tied, I shouted to the coach on the sidelines, “Let me throw!”

  “All right, throw from the A formation!” he yelled back.

  Although we hardly ever practiced from the A formation, we moved steadily downfield. We got close enough to kick a field goal, but our kicker shanked it in the final seconds and we tied the game, one we should have won. It was a heartbreaker.

  The last game of the season we played Central Catholic, a match up that would determine the City Catholic championship. We pulled out all the stops for this game, trick plays we hadn’t tried all season. We scored the winning touchdown when I faked the handoff to Miles Bryan, driving up the middle, and flipped the ball to Ray Dilalla, the halfback. Ray ran up the left side for the winning score and the North Catholic crowd went wild. Winning the Catholic championship for us was better than winning all-city. There was a real rivalry between Catholic schools in those days.

  Central Catholic was our main competition. With 1,300 boys, they had a big talent pool to draw from. North Catholic had 1,000 boys, and we always gave Central a run for their money. But during my senior year, St. Justin’s, a little Catholic school perched atop Mt. Washington just across the Ohio River from the North Side, produced one of the best quarterbacks to ever play the game. About 250 boys attended St. Justin’s and they weren’t in the same league as the big schools. We never played them except in exhibition games. The kids at North Catholic considered St. Justin’s a “B-league team.”

  Their quarterback was a gangly six-foot junior named Johnny Unitas. The local sportswriters at first thought him awkward and his throwing style clumsy. But this kid could get the job done. Coaches marveled at his drive, and spectators thrilled to his impossibly long passes. His Lithuanian immigrant father, a coal truck driver, died when Johnny was only five, and his mother worked two jobs to keep her five children fed and clothed. Johnny wore the same hand-me-down shirt and pants to school every day. They were poor, but then so were many other people who lived in the blue-collar Brookline-Mt. Washington neighborhood where he grew up.

  Johnny was a year behind me in school. An indifferent student, he starred on the St. Justin’s football team from the start. Some people said he was too skinny to play and thought he’d get hurt. But he had these enormous hands that seemed to wrap around the ball, enabling him to do amazing things, like his patented jump pass over the middle.

  Just before the start of school in 1949, his junior year, Johnny accidentally shot himself through the middle finger of his right hand—his throwing hand—with a gun he had borrowed when he learned a burglar might be prowling the neighborhood. On the first game of the season, his bandaged and splinted finger stuck straight up from the ball like a baseball bat. Incredibly, on the first series of downs, he let loose with a pass that must have traveled fifty yards in the air, resulting in a touchdown. Little St. Justin’s triumphed that day and the Unitas legend began to grow.

  I regret to this day that I never got the chance to play against Johnny Unitas. North Catholic played St. Justin’s in an exhibition game during my junior year, when I was still convalescing. Johnny had dismantled our defense and embarrassed mighty North Catholic. Everybody at school talked about this upset and how well Unitas played. I realized what a talent he was when I watched the game film.

  When the Pittsburgh All-Catholic Team was named at the end of the 1949-50 season, many of my friends expected to see my name as the first team quarterback. I’ll admit I expected it, too. I got razzed pretty good by my buddies for only making the second team. But looking back on it, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone that Johnny Unitas, this phenomenal young athlete from St. Justin’s, was voted first team quarterback instead of me.

  Actually, I didn’t take it too hard. I had other things on my mind. At the Arch Pharmacy, working behind the counter dispensing ice cream cones, I noticed a girl I’d known at St. Peter’s in seventh grade. I thought she was pretty cute, with her red hair and green eyes. My heart skipped a beat every time I saw her, and I looked for excuses to go to the drugstore. This was the only place I saw her, because after St. Peter’s she attended St. Mary’s Catholic Girls School, while I went on to North Catholic, an all-boys school.

  One day Richie McCabe’s older brother, Jumbo, asked me, “Don’t you have a girlfriend?”

  “Well,” I said, “there’s a girl who works at the corner drugstore—Patricia Regan—and I wouldn’t mind going out with her.”

  Jumbo didn’t waste any time fixing me up. Soon, I got a call from Patricia. She asked me if I’d escort her to the St. Mary’s junior prom.

  “I don’t know how to dance,” I said.

  “I’ll teach you.”

  “Okay, I’ll try. We’ll see how it goes.”

  After that I’d walk her home from work, and sometimes we’d sit on the porch of her house, just across the street from Allegheny High School, and talk for hours. We never did practice our dancing, but it didn’t matter. When I picked her up on the night of the prom she looked like a million bucks. She wore a long, yellow dress and a white orchid, and I came dressed in a formal white jacket. I can’t say whether we looked good on the dance floor, but a number of friends commented that we made a nice-looking couple. My good friend Joseph “Bud” Rieland and his girl accompanied us. Bud couldn’t drive a lick, so I drove Mom’s Buick.

  And so we started dating. Aunt Alice, who watched over us kids like a sergeant, wasn’t happy about this. She didn’t think the Rooney boys should have anything to do with girls. She delighted in enforcing the midnight curfew and would tell Dad if I didn’t make it. The twins stuck up for me and always swore that I’d gotten in a minute before the big grandfather clock chimed twelve.

  Everyone in the family knew I was getting serious about Patricia, maybe a little too serious. My mother told me I should date other girls, and I dutifully went on some double dates. One time I went on a dat
e with Miles Bryan’s sister Mary. Miles and his girl were in the front seat, while we sat in the back. Mary squeezed my hand, but I wouldn’t squeeze back. The next day, Miles said to me, “Mary tells me you’re the worst date she’s ever had—you must really like that redhead.”

  On summer nights, I’d borrow the keys to Mother’s Buick (my parents always bought Buicks from McNulty’s North Side Buick), pick up Patricia, and drive out to North Park. We told our parents we were going to see the stars, but in those days, the sky was totally obscured by dense clouds of smoke from the steel mills. We took it on faith there were stars up there, but we never actually saw them. It didn’t matter. The real show was the city lights and the red glow of the mills reflecting off the clouds. And the sounds—blast furnaces, heavy equipment, and the banging of coupling freight trains—echoing against Pittsburgh’s hillsides, a constant reminder that this was the city of steel, the industrial strength of the nation.

  By the time of our senior proms, Patricia and I were definitely an item and everyone knew it. The question was which prom to attend, the one at St. Mary’s or North Catholic? Both schools had scheduled their events on the same night, so we decided we’d just have to go to both. Bud Rieland kidded me in front of our homeroom class, “Rooney can go to two proms—but he can only get one girl!”

  This excited a lot of comment. Remember, Father Campbell had been counseling me on becoming a priest, and I had been attending morning mass quite often. I took my faith very seriously, but the more I saw Patricia, the less appealing the priesthood seemed. My faith wasn’t diminished, but my career choice was in serious doubt. This change of heart was not lost on the priests at school.

  In my religion class, the priest announced, “There’s a guy in this class who’s losing his vocation, just because some little girl smiled at him.” All the boys turned in their seats and looked at me with big grins. I guess it was obvious who he was talking about. Needless to say, I did not pursue a religious calling.