the little general

Jimbo was a football fan, once.

While baseball has historically been the barometer, foretelling where America is going, for a brief time football took over. In the late 1960s football led America into a new era and no team better epitomized the change than the Kansas City Chiefs and no one person in that game opened our minds to a new way of thinking and playing football than Hank Stram.

Last week The Little General died at the age of 82.

Jimbo has never been a natty dresser, and I was never all that impressed with Stram’s attire, but other people who probably know better than me believe Stram dressed well.

“Sartorially resplendent,” was Howard Cosell’s comment on Stram’s clothing. Translated into English that means he dressed well. Cosell also referred to him as “the diminutive one,” meaning he wasn’t the tallest man you’ll ever meet.

You may recall that Stram was mic’ed-up in the 1970 super bowl (played January 11, 1970, following the 1969 season). The Chiefs won that game. You probably also recall some of the memorable things he said, like “Just keep matriculating that ball down the field, gentlemen.”

When he had called the play he knew would score the first touchdown of the game he shouted to everyone on the sideline so they would know what to look for:

“65 toss power trap.”

And Mike Garrett went in for six.

“They can’t cover that in a million years. It’s like stealing. We ought to do more of it.”

One of his innovations was the moving pocket, which took the quarterback out of the area where the defensive linemen expected him to be. Prior to Stram, the game of football was to put your big man against my big man to see who was strongest. Stram made it a finesse game, where brains won out over brawn. Years before the west coast offense, Stram was exploiting the short passing game and putting the ball in the hands of his athletic receivers, creating a need for the statistic of yards after catch. The Chiefs’ final touchdown in the super bowl came when Lenny “The Cool” Dawson hit Otis Taylor on a short sideline pattern. With one defender between Taylor and the end zone, Taylor showed him a leg, then took it away and went 46 yards for the score.

For those old enough to remember, during the late sixties the old days gave way to modern times. There were a number of pioneers, who pulled the world over the threshold, and I don’t want to imply that Hank Stram was the man who carried the load. He did translate modern thought into the game of football and he and his game were a proxy for the whole of society.

Hank Stram, 1923-2005.

Here in Jimbo’s world we’ll miss the little feller.