I suppose it is the passing of the icons in a life that marks the path we all travel, eventually. I have difficulty in thinking that the blazing blue eyes of Paul Newman grew rheumy, and are stilled by the ravages of lung cancer.
He will be forever young in my mind, though I know he is not. Have you seen the face of Robert Redford these days?
The list of those cultural icons who defined the lives of the Boomers is legion, and many have gone just this year.
The one that sent chills through me was the departure of one of the great ones yesterday, My Favorite Lion, the guy George Plimpton termed “The Mad Duck,” Mr. Alex Karras. Plimpton saw the flailing arms and churning legs, and that is the image that occurred to him. It stuck.
Funny it happened now. This is a magical sort of moment in the rhythms of the season. Major League Baseball is entering the exciting post-season and the run to the World Series. The stupid Nationals bobbled the first home post-season game yesterday afternoon since 1933, and somewhere, the ghosts of all those awful Washington Senators teams or yore are shaking their heads.
The National Football League is headed for Week Six. The colleges are shooting it out as they get to League play. I could happily pull the rock vodka dispenser into the living room and camp there, images flickering on the Big Screen, 24 x 7.
With Alex Karras gone, though, the golden light of years past is dimmer. Al Kaline, the Hall-of-Fame right fielder who played 22 years for the Detroit Tigers is still alive at 77, the same as Alex. Baseballs players do not take the same sort of punishment that interior linemen do, and I hope for many further returns for Al.
We had some giants in the Motor City, back in the day. Mr. Hockey, Gordie Howe, is still with us at 84. His endurance will never be equaled on the ice, all apologies to Mr. Gretsky notwithstanding.
But Alex represented something special to those of us who played the interior line, lighter than the guy across from you, and the manifestation that at the highest level of play, it was intensity and intelligence that mattered, not bulk.
The Mad Duck is famous because of literary dilettante George Plimpton, who went on to his reward shortly after a Paper Lion Reunion in 2003.
Plimpton brought their world alive in his book about the experience of an patrician amateur attempting to play a sport populated by blue-collar guys. Don’t remind me that The Mad Duck was the son of a physician. To us he could have been a guy from the UAW local down the street. He was us, a rebel.
He was unrepentant about gambling on the game along with Golden Boy Paul Hornung. Even the suspension for the 1964 season was just part of his persona.
Hornung kissed the ring of league Commissioner Pete Rozelle. He is in the Hall of Fame. Alex continued to hang our at the Lindell A.C., the legendary sports watering hole that closed in 2002. I still recall the “mortgage burning” party there, and some of the same undesirables of Detroit life were still around and highly visible.
The Lindell A.C. closed in 2002. Plimpton last saw The Mad Duck the next year and then he was gone. Joe is the last of the three alive- he is 80.
That the three of them were on the same field once was a poignant reunion. The Mad Duck, for a variety of perfectly good reasons, had been estranged from the Lion’s organization. Reportedly, he was energized by the recognition of the cultural DNA of the old NFL that Plimpton wrote about.
Oh, they were bad boys. My pal Bonds lived down the street from Joe Schmidt and once saw Dick “Night Train” Lane’s chanteuse spouse Dinah Washington waiting in a big car outside for him. The names flood back: rogue QB Bobby Layne, Doak Walker, Tobin Rote and Leon Hart. They were our heroes, and the fact that we went to school with the Rote girls and played against Leon’s son made their shadows long and personal.
Alex stayed a bad boy, but he had a subtle wit that belied his violent trade. Punching out that horse as the character “Mongo” in blazing saddles. Appearing in bed with Robert Preston in the gender comedy “Victor/Victoria.” Whatever that sitcom was- “Webster?” He never ceased to surprise, and until the dementia induced by way too many blows to the head stole his reality.
He was part of the suit against the NFL about the effects of repeated concussion when he died. When he was playing, Bobby Layne was the last QB not to wear a facemask.
For all the undersized but highly motivated interior linemen of the world, I salute the passing of The Mad Duck.
My world is a little smaller this morning, but it was made larger for all these years by his presence. Thanks, Alex.
(Alex and George at the Silverdome, 2003. Photo Detroit Free Press.)
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com