Most Redskins fans have taken a trip or two to FedEx Field, have seen highlights of a young Art Monk, and know the story of Super Bowl XXVI. But only real fans know their way around the team’s training camp facilities, the words to “Hail to the Redskins,” or in which famous baseball stadium the Redskins played in the team’s early years. 100 Things Redskins Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die is the ultimate resource guide for true fans of the Washington Redskins. Whether you’re a die-hard booster from the days of Joe Kuharich or a new supporter of RGIII, these are the 100 things all fans needs to know and do in their lifetime. Author Rick Snider has collected every essential piece of Redskins knowledge and trivia, as well as must-do activities, and ranks them all, providing an entertaining and easy-to-follow checklist as you progress on your way to fan superstardom.
Most Redskins fans have taken a trip or two to FedEx Field, have seen highlights of a young Art Monk, and know the story of Super Bowl XXVI. But only real fans know their way around the team’s training camp facilities, the words to “Hail to the Redskins,” or in which famous baseball stadium the Redskins played in the team’s early years. 100 Things Redskins Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die is the ultimate resource guide for true fans of the Washington Redskins. Whether you’re a die-hard booster from the days of Joe Kuharich or a new supporter of RGIII, these are the 100 things all fans needs to know and do in their lifetime. Author Rick Snider has collected every essential piece of Redskins knowledge and trivia, as well as must-do activities, and ranks them all, providing an entertaining and easy-to-follow checklist as you progress on your way to fan superstardom.
Playing Possum
Narrated by Kitty Hendrix
Dane McCaslinUnabridged — 7 hours, 20 minutes
Playing Possum
Narrated by Kitty Hendrix
Dane McCaslinUnabridged — 7 hours, 20 minutes
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Overview
Most Redskins fans have taken a trip or two to FedEx Field, have seen highlights of a young Art Monk, and know the story of Super Bowl XXVI. But only real fans know their way around the team’s training camp facilities, the words to “Hail to the Redskins,” or in which famous baseball stadium the Redskins played in the team’s early years. 100 Things Redskins Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die is the ultimate resource guide for true fans of the Washington Redskins. Whether you’re a die-hard booster from the days of Joe Kuharich or a new supporter of RGIII, these are the 100 things all fans needs to know and do in their lifetime. Author Rick Snider has collected every essential piece of Redskins knowledge and trivia, as well as must-do activities, and ranks them all, providing an entertaining and easy-to-follow checklist as you progress on your way to fan superstardom.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940172971211 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tantor Audio |
| Publication date: | 10/05/2021 |
| Series: | 2 Sisters Pet Valet Mystery , #3 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
100 Things Redskins Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die
By Rick Snider
Triumph Books
Copyright © 2014 Rick SniderAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62368-973-5
CHAPTER 1
From Braves to Redskins
Let's end the myth right away — the Redskins were not named to honor Native American Indians.
The legend has some truths and certain common sense, but a story in the Boston Herald on July 6, 1933, explains the name change from Boston Braves to Boston Redskins before later moving to Washington in 1937.
Under the headline, "Braves Pro Gridmen To Be Called Redskins," the story stated, "Along with the change in coaching, the Boston professional football team has undergone another change, this time in name. Hereafter, the erstwhile Braves of pro football will be known as the Boston Redskins. The explanation is that the change was made to avoid confusion with the Braves baseball team and that the team is to be coached by an Indian, Lone Star Dietz, with several Indian players."
Let's go back over that paragraph one point at a time.
No. 1: Owner George Preston Marshall, who started the team in 1932, changed coaches after one year. The team played one year using the same name as the town's baseball team. Football was the new sport, and many football owners deliberately named their teams after baseball teams to piggyback on the latter's name recognition. Eventually, they changed their team's name when they developed their own following.
Marshall was trying to mesh the new name with two other teams. Using Redskins was a reworking of Braves. But it was also an alliteration of the crosstown Red Sox. Red Skins — Red Sox. Get it?
No. 2: Marshall hired Dietz on March 8, so he was in place when the name was changed. Was Marshall really changing the team name to honor his new coach? It's doubtful. But Marshall was a marketing wizard and knew a good opportunity. In one move, he got away from the Braves name, loosely aligned his team with the Red Sox, and found a new marketing niche with Indians, which in those days was common. Marshall even positioned a cigar-store Indian outside his Washington office in later years.
The Redskins name worked several ways for Marshall, so he went with it. But it wasn't designed to honor Native American Indians, nor was it designed to denigrate them. It was just something that worked well.
Marshall was worried more about the color of money than the color of skin. He was the last NFL owner to sign a black player in 1962, and he did so only after being forced by Congress, which owned the new D.C. Stadium where the Redskins were relocating. But part of the reason behind the delay was that Marshall saw black players as bad for business because the Redskins were the NFL's southernmost team with an extensive radio network throughout the South. Marshall thought he would lose business if he had black players.
But Marshall played Native American Indians in 1933, largely as a carryover from Dietz who came from coaching at the Haskell Institute (now the Haskell Indian Nations University) in Kansas. Dietz brought players he personally knew, which wasn't unusual then. Even now, coaches such as Steve Spurrier signed a few of his former Florida players when he came to Washington in 2002.
Marshall made his Indian players pose in full native garb for photographers before the 1933 home opener against the New York Giants. In later years, there were photos of new players being tossed in the air by teammates while wearing headdresses. The team's cheerleaders were dressed as squaws.
The team's fight song included the following lines:
Braves on the warpath!
Fight for Old D.C.!
Scalp 'em, swamp 'um
We will take 'um big score
Read 'um, Weep 'um, touchdown
We want heap more.
One by one, the team stopped using Indian references until they were left solely with the name, which critics now want changed because they say the name is politically incorrect. Marshall died in 1969, but he surely would have loved the publicity about the name.
Marshall would say he was being a pragmatist. Redskins was a good marketing tool in 1933, and that's all that Marshall cared about when he named the team. He made millions as a laundry chain owner, and whitewashing facts was his specialty.
But was the team's name a conscious slur on the Native American Indian? Maybe 81 years later it feels that way, but Marshall was simply a businessman of his time trying to gain spillover recognition from the Braves and Red Sox.
CHAPTER 2Team's First Black Player
Bobby Mitchell is generally regarded as the first black player on the Redskins. But that distinction plays on the type of semantics that lawyers live on.
Was Ernie Davis the first black player when he was drafted by Washington in December 1961? He was soon traded to Cleveland for LeRoy Jackson and Mitchell, so Davis never donned a Redskins uniform. Indeed, Davis never played for Cleveland either, dying of leukemia in 1963.
Still, Davis was technically a Redskin. Then again, playing in the regular season is what truly counts for someone to say they were on a team. Even preseason games don't matter.
Maybe eighth-round fullback Ron Hatcher was the first black player since he was the first to sign.
Mitchell was a star player and future Pro Football Hall of Famer, so many fans remember him as the team's first black player. But Jackson returned the opening kickoff in the season opener, so he was on the field before Mitchell and guard John Nisby, who was acquired by off-season trade.
So is Jackson the first? A good lawyer would argue yes.
Surely Mitchell's greatness and Jackson's short career make who played first a technicality best used for bar bets.
The trio came to the Redskins after a showdown with federal officials over the team ending its whites-only policy. If the team did not accept black players, the Redskins would be barred from using the new D.C. Stadium.
Owner George Preston Marshall was the last NFL owner to sign blacks for fear of harming business. The Redskins were then the southernmost team, and its radio network covered the South. Indeed, there are still many Redskins fans in the South despite franchises now in Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, Jacksonville, Tampa Bay, and Miami.
Marshall finally yielded to the constant pressure, which extended all the way from the White House. But the owner called the legendary Jackie Robinson a race-baiter for urging desegregation, and Marshall left his money to the Redskins Foundation to help underprivileged children ... with the stipulation that funds never be used for social integration.
"We'll start signing Negroes when the Harlem Globetrotters start signing whites," Marshall once said. "Why Negroes particularly? Why not make us hire a player from any other race? Why not a woman? Of course, we have had players who played like girls, but never an actual girl player."
Mitchell was already an established star in Cleveland after four seasons of hitting 1,000 yards each year in combined receiving and rushing yards over 12 or 14 games. The seventh-round pick in 1958 was paired with legendary running back Jim Brown to form one of the greatest backfields of all time.
In Washington, Mitchell became a flanker with only six rushes in the first four seasons. He caught a career-best 72 passes and 11 touchdowns in 1962 with 1,384 yards — all NFL highs that sent him to the Pro Bowl. The next season, Mitchell caught 69 passes for a career-best 1,436 yards.
With Sonny Jurgensen arriving in 1964, Mitchell was amazingly consistent, catching 60 passes in three of four years (with 58 the other season) and totaling 866 to 905 yards each year. Mitchell caught only 14 passes in 1968 before retiring with 14,078 all-purpose yards, second most in NFL history at the time.
Mitchell remained with the team in front-office roles until retiring in 2003. Rising from a scout under Vince Lombardi in 1969 to assistant general manager, Mitchell was upset about being passed over for general manager three times.
Jackson was a first-round pick by Cleveland, chosen 11 overall out of Western Illinois. He played only 15 games for the Redskins with one touchdown then was cut in 1963. Jackson opted to retire after working out for two Canadian Football teams.
Was racism behind Jackson's release? In a 2013 Yahoo.com story, Jackson said fumbling or barely averaging two yards per carry weren't the only causes — his release was also caused by his affair with a white woman.
"Interracial things and not being able to hold onto the ball," he told Yahoo.com Sports' Les Carpenter.
Nisby was an interesting choice by Marshall given that Nisby was well known in Pittsburgh for working with companies to ensure equal employment opportunities. He also got a beer company that worked with the Steelers to desegregate.
Nisby was a Pro Bowl selection in 1962, his third honor after earlier playing for Pittsburgh from 1957 to 1961. The guard played three seasons for Washington before he was released at age 28. He became a city councilman in Stockton, California, and was later elected to the Stockton Black Sports Hall of Fame.
Hatcher only played three games for Washington in 1962, but he was the first black player under contract with the Redskins. Gee, maybe Hatcher was the pioneer after all.
CHAPTER 3RFK Over LBJ Stadium — A Political Game
Political games can be so much more intriguing than football games.
In January 1969, seven years after forcing the Redskins to sign black players in order to use D.C. Stadium, Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall pulled the ultimate end-run around President Lyndon B. Johnson.
And before LBJ could pound his famous fist in defiance, the stadium he hoped would bear his name instead honored RFK.
Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium wasn't meant to honor the assassinated U.S. Senator and brother of slain President John F. Kennedy as much as it was to kick the family's chief rival in the rear on his way out of the Oval Office.
Just hours before Johnson exited the presidency inherited upon JFK's 1963 assassination, Udall used his power to rename the stadium, built on federal parkland, after a Kennedy. By the time Johnson learned of the cabinet member's conspiracy, Richard Nixon was hours from becoming the next president.
And there was nothing Johnson could do about the stadium's name.
The double-cross was eight years in the making and went beyond the grave. Johnson was an uncomfortable but political necessity for John Kennedy to choose as his vice presidential running mate to win the 1960 election over Nixon. The two lived on opposite spectrums of the Democratic Party, and Robert Kennedy tried to prevent the partnership at the Democratic National Convention.
Johnson never forgave Robert Kennedy for that, and the two became intense, embittered, and paranoid rivals. When Kennedy was murdered June 6, 1968, Johnson quietly and spitefully tried to prevent RFK from being buried near his brother at Arlington National Cemetery.
"Johnson had been trying to keep Bobby's body out of Arlington," author Jeff Shesol told C-SPAN's Booknotes in 1997 as part of his Mutual Contempt book on the feud between the two men. "Bobby was neither a president nor a war hero, Johnson reasoned, and there was no reason to give him a hero's burial. But, of course, the country and the family wanted him to be buried there by his brother's side, and there was nothing Johnson could really do politically to stop it."
Instead, Johnson didn't allocate the funds needed to maintain RFK's grave, which Kennedy supporters considered insulting. But Johnson didn't care because it was those former Kennedy aides and appointees that conspired to have the stadium named for RFK, even though it was well known around Washington that LBJ expected it to be named for him following his presidency.
"And so they conspired to do this, and they also conspired to do it on the very last day of the Johnson presidency so that the president could not countermand the order," Shesol said. "So Udall went ahead and did this, and Johnson was, of course, outraged, but there was nothing he could do. It had already been announced and leaked to the press."
Like so many plans in Washington, the idea was formulated not in political chambers but at a dinner party, Shesol wrote. Attorney Bill Geoghegan, who worked under Kennedy at the Justice Department, asked Undersecretary of the Interior David Black to name the stadium after RFK.
Black took the idea to Udall, a JFK appointee who was never a Johnson favorite, and Interior lawyers. The group decided they were empowered to do so but would wait until two days before the January 20, 1969, inauguration to present the idea to the D.C. Armory Board that operated the stadium. The board approved the plan in 10 minutes, and Udall signed it into law within hours.
"Like his brother, Robert Kennedy left a mark on the nation's capital," Udall said. "Bob was Spartan in his adherence to physical fitness, he loved the out-of-doors, he loved people, and he gloried in the competition of sports."
Udall announced the move at a press conference, and Johnson didn't learn of the name change until he was reading a press account.
As in all political stories, there was a payback for the betrayal. Udall wanted Johnson to sign land grants for national parks in the final hours of his presidency. The president signed some, but a request for one million acres in Udall's home state of Arizona was ignored.
Game over.
CHAPTER 4"I Like Big Hairy Men"
Childish pranks are commonplace around sports teams young and old. What else would you expect from oversized men playing a child's game?
There are the classics of putting hot balm in jocks or talcum powder in helmets, raining down buckets of water, stealing gear, hoisting training-camp bikes up the flag pole, jamming dorm doors, and filling cars with popcorn.
But the best was a counterpunch to a prank that turned into a three-pronged attack.
Kicker Brett Conway wondered why the airline attendant was laughing at him when he awakened on a red eye from San Francisco. The Redskins just clinched the 1999 NFC East championship and it was a celebratory flight back, but Conway, who planned to drive to Pittsburgh after landing for a quick post-Christmas trip to see his girlfriend, had taken a sleeping pill.
Bad move. There is a players' rule — no sleeping on team flights — for exactly what happened to Conway.
It seems offensive tackle Jon Jansen, center Cory Raymer, and fullback Mike Sellers drew on Conway's face. They drew a full beard, scars, and even earrings on his lobes ... in black Sharpie. It took days of scrubbing to get it off.
"Kickers have a lot of time for retaliation strategies," Conway said.
And teammates soon learned not to mess with Conway. Back then, kickers finished practice earlier than their teammates, heading back to the locker room with plenty of time for mischief.
Jansen lived about 40 minutes from Redskins Park and, like most offensive linemen, drove a Ford F-150 truck. There are at least a dozen of them in the Redskins Park lot every year, making it the most popular vehicle among players.
Jansen gave Raymer a ride home a few days after face-painting Conway. Players in the same unit often hang out together, and Jansen and Raymer had a lot in common, including weighing 300 lbs. They required a truck for comfort.
The two wondered why nearby cars were honking at them regularly. Being Redskins brings attention, but not like that.
Jansen dropped off Raymer and headed home when another driver pulled alongside and said, "Hey, you have a sign on the back of your truck."
The sign said, "I like big hairy men."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from 100 Things Redskins Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die by Rick Snider. Copyright © 2014 Rick Snider. Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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