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Home , Dale Hackbart, Joe Kapp, Lonnie Warwick, Roy Winston

Gentle, fun-loving says that fights just seem to come looking for him-but he admits he never backs down. That, adds the Viking in the first of three parts, is what Chicanos call 'machismo'

by JOE KAPP with JACK OLSEN A MAN OF MACHISMO ootball is a kids' game, invented to Of course, there are certain players Fgive a lot of people a lot of fun . who will tell you that [ never miss a The minute a player loses sight of that party, period, and if they want to spread fact, he's in trouble. Like the Minnesota that propaganda, it's all right with me­ Vikings in the . We forgot mostly because it's true. I even showed we were supposed to be enjoying our­ up at the annual banquet of the Fel­ selves out there. We forgot it was a kids' lowship of Christian Athletes this year, game, and we wound up playing in a red­ at their invitation. At first I thought some wood forest. Eve ry time I looked up I terrible mistake had been made. Cer­ could see those red tree trunks in front tainly I'm a Christian athlete, although of me and on top of me and all around I'm not exactly renowned for my piety. me. We didn't stay loose and have fun­ I was a little uneasy until I spotted Bob­ in the traditional Viking way- and we by Layne, the former quarterback, and played a poor game and they played a then I felt like I belonged. And when I great one. saw Dick Butkus, I really breathed eas­ By having fun I don't mean goosing ier. I went up to him and I said, "Whose each other and telling dirty jokes in the ticket did you steal to get in?" and he huddle-although a little male humor said, "Why don't you go over in the cor­ doesn't hurt either. I mean doing your ner and leave us humans alone?" Mu­ absolute best and enjoying it, because if tual respect, that's what we have. When you' re doing your best you will be en­ people ask me if Butkus is the best line­ joying it. And if you' re doing your best, backer I've faced, I won't answer. I hate then winning isn't so crucial. A football to single out individual opponents. In isn't round, and you don't always have the pro game, they're all good. I won' t control of whether you win or lose, but even vote for an all-opponent team. I you do have control of your own effort rip the ballots up. They' re all good. I'll and your own mind. 1f you can get bet you a ciga1· that you can't name one enough ballplayers on your own club bad football player in pro ball. You lose! thinking this way, you can win anything. I'm aware of my own reputation, and I haven't missed many football games I enjoy it. I've been called " one half of in my life, going all the way back to a collision looking for the other." The high school- like most pros, I've played adjectives you .usually read about me with cracked ribs and a punctured lung are "unstylish," "brutal," "unrelent­ and a torn knee and separated shoulder ing" and sometimes " dumb." (That's and half a dozen other injuries-and I've when we lose ; when we win, I'm a "great also never missed a postgame party. I've genius.") People take one look at the never missed the fun. I've known play­ scars on my face and they assume that ers who get a little injury and rush off I spend most of my off-hours prowling to the hospital and don't make the par­ around looking for fights, when the truth ty. Bull! Not me. I never missed one is that the fights are prowling around and I never intend to miss one. You looking for me, and sometimes they find play out there together and you win or me. I think of myself as a gentle, fun-lov­ lose together and you're all involved in ing, peaceful person, but you can be all this effort together and after the game these things and still get in fights- es­ you should party together. pecially if you don't back down, and I continued

KAPP, WIFE MARCIA AND SON J.J. HIT TH E BEACH AT WAIKIKI DURING OFF SEASON

27 MAN OF MACHISMO c.Jntinued ,

try not to.You won't see me running out moves I'd never imagined. In football Nothing rolled. I was the 13th pick of bounds to avoid a little physical con­ you had to play both ways in those days, of the Washington Redskins, but they tact with a linebacker, and you won't see and I started at quarterback on the fresh­ never contacted me, and I wound up sign­ me ducking out the window when some­ man footba11 team. The coaches didn't ing with the in the body wants to tangle. So I've been known know where to play me on defense, so I . The ink was to get in an occasional tete-a-tete. played corner. Against UCLA's frosh hardly dry on the contract before I got Maybe this goes back to my Chicano team I had to cover a pass catcher who into the battle that produced these scars childhood, and machismo. Machismo was a star hurdler. I played him about on my face. I've never told the whole means manliness, a willingness to act 18 yards deep and still he caught three story before because I didn't see what like a man, and if a kid didn't have ma­ passes over my head and purpose could be served by it, but now chismo in the polyglot neighborhoods of UCLA beat us 32-0. I was never so hu­ I'm telling it to nip off some of the sil­ the San Fernando and Salinas valleys miliated in my life. We didn't get a sin­ lier versions that have been circulating. in , where I grew up, he had gle point on offense and I let them have It was a hot, humid night during the it tough. When I was little 1 saw guys three over my head! I was training season, and most of the Stam­ lying in their own blood at the corner ready to quit football, but the coach peders were sitting around drinking beer. of Mission Boulevard and Hollister talked me out of it. He Jet me play out­ We'd had the annual rookie show ear­ Street in San Fernando. Sometimes the side linebacker in the last game against lier and nobody felt like going to bed, Mexicans would fight the Anglos; some­ Stanford, and my Jack of talent didn't and around 1 a.m. I walked into a room times it would be the Mexicans and the show up so conspicuously there. where the guys were talking. Without blacks from Pacoima. They had gang Cal was going through some tough warning, a big linebacker broke a quart fights going all the time and even an oc­ times back in those days. The Golden bottle of beer across my jaw and raked casional shoot-out or knifing. Bears hadn't won a Pacific Coast Con­ it across my throat. We started to tan­ When we moved to Salinas in the Cal­ ference title in years. In my sophomore gle, but there was so much blood spurt­ ifornia lettuce belt, we Jived in a hous- · year we won three football games, and ing around the room that the other guys ing project with pickers, Okies, Arkies, in my junior year we won two less than jumped in and broke it up. A couple of blacks and whites and browns and pur­ that. By the time my senior year came players took me to the trainer's room, ples. In the fifth grade a bigger kid called around we were classed as hurnpties, and and when the trainer answered the door me ''a dirty Mexican," and at first I we opened the season by losing to Col­ all sleepy and red-eyed he took one look didn't challenge him. But when I got lege of the Pacific, with Dick Bass, and at me and fainted. At the hospital they home I brooded on what he had said. then to Michigan State. Halfback Jack gave me 100 stitches, and the doctors My sense of justice was outraged. My Hart and I were co-captains and we sat said that the broken glass li.ad missed mother, Florence Garcia Kapp, is Mex­ down for a little talk after that second ican-American, but my father is of straight loss. "This is it, man," Jack German descent; therefore, at worst, I said. "We're either gonna turn it all BEAMING BUCKAROO is Joe Kapp, age 4, in could only be half of what that kid had around right now or we're gonna have his cowboy suit on a photographer's pony in called me. So I went back and found another year like the last two·." wildest Burbank. But young Kapp had no time him and really whaled him. I didn't win "We've got to do something wild," I the fight, but I got in some licks. That said. "We've got to shake the guys up was machismo, not backing dow1i, act­ somehow." ing like a man. I think I violated the We had a team meeting and Jack and code of machismo only once: in the sev­ I told everybody that time had run out enth grade, when two guys took my bas­ on the Cal team-either we start im­ ketball and roHed it down the hill. I proving right away or we forget it. The should have whaled them, too, but one next day in practice Jack spotted a line­ of them was :Bob Sartwell, the best ath­ man who wasn't putting out and he lete in Salinas, six feet tall and 180 grabbed that big guy by the back of the pounds, and I chickened out. I've never neck and the seat of the pants and ran backed down since. On that dry, dusty him halfway across the field into a con­ basketball court in Salinas, I would look crete abutment. "Goddamn it!" Jack around me and say to myself, "Well, if shouted. "If you don't want to play, I'm gonna win this game I'm gonna have get out of here!" Sometimes you need a to kick somebody's butt!" That was little dramatic thing like that to shake a valu:1ble training for NFL football. team up. We only lost one more game I went to the University of California that year, and we won the Pacific Coast on an athletic scholarship, mostly for championship and went to the Rose my basketball, but if you have never Bowl. Iowa beat us 38-12. I led the Pa­ heard of me in that connection, you may cific Coast Conference in be excused. I arrived at Cal under the rushing and was named to the Look All­ mistaken impression that I was the hot­ America team, and so, of course, all I test athlete in town, but I was quickly had to do was sit back and wait (or the disabused. Those big-city athletes had pro offers to roll in.

28 my jugular by about half an inch. At 7 minor league experience. Canadian foot­ you're involved with people, and you o'clock the next morning there was a ball is a wide-open, fluid game, with ac­ make it or don't make it in proportion knock at my door, and I opened it to tion and movement all over the place. to how you make it with the people. find the guy who had hit me. He apol­ There are five backs and no rules against Looking back on it, it's easy for me ogized and said, ''I don't know what motion and plenty for a quarterback to to pretend that I figured out a brilliant you should do to me, but go ahead and think about. But both leagues have one approach to the problem and then went do it." thing in common: a quarterback is paid out and applied my genius, but the truth I said I didn't want to do anything to to win. is that I just did something spontaneous, him; we were teammates, and we'd both I never missed a game in Canada. I without much thought. I wanted to get been drinking, and it was one of those played the exhibition game the week af­ involved with the Vikings, and so when things. ter my 100 stitches. I started and fin­ it came my turn to run the ball club in Three years later, after I'd been trad­ ished a game when my knee was twist­ the scrimmages I laid a $1 bet on the ed to the British Columbia Lions, the ed and torn.· Later on the doctors took whole defense. I would give them $1 linebacker showed up looking for a job, out bone chips and torn cartilage and for each if they would give but there was nobody in our office at everything else. One of them said that me $1 for each bomb I threw over them. the time. He went out and knocked on he couldn't believe so much matter could They accepted the challenge. The other the door of a rectory, and when a pi;iest come out of one man's knee and they pre­ two quarterbacks, Bob Berry and Ron answered the guy killed him with a shot­ dicted that I would never play again. VanderKelen, would run through their gun. Ever since then he's been in a men­ When the next season started, I was out plays and then I'd step in and the whole tal hospital in Vancouver. A paranoid there. Too dumb to know better, I guess! field would come alive. You'd hear Ear­ schizophrenic. A very sick boy. It was After the 1963 season I picked up the sell (Evil) Mackbee, one of the more out­ my bad luck to be around before his nickname "El Cid." Football players go going cornerbacks in the league, scream­ sickness was diagnosed. to the movies often, and I go more of­ ing, " Oh, oh, look who's here! It's easy­ ten than most, and we had all seen El money time. I got you, Kapp. I want a Some Americans look down their noses Cid and that great scene where they strap little bit of that! " A pro fo_otball player at the Canadian Football League, but Charlton Heston into the saddle so that would rather have $1 easy money than that only shows ignorance. I spent eight he can lead the Spanish into battle and $1,000 the hard way. years up there, on teams that wound up scare the hell out of the enemy, even For a while I was throwing in luck, losers and on one team that went on to though he's dead. Right after that I was and I collected a couple of dollar bills win the , Canada's Super Bowl dressing for a game and easing my uni­ and a lot of friendly gripes, but then I game, and I don't look back on it as form around all my injuries. One finger threw one a little short and Lonnie War­ was dislocated and taped to the next wick picked it off. I wouldn't have mind­ one. One knee and both ankles were ed, but he had to make an epic pro­ taped. I had bruised ribs and they were duction out of it, a big linebacker for horseplay. "Every time I turned around he had a ball in his hand," says his mother. taped, and my shoulder was taped up straight-arming and swivel-hipping his Here it's as a junior high forward in Salinas. because of a slight separation. I was haul­ way down the field as if he were Gale Say­ ing 10 pounds of adhesive around, and ers or something. Usually, in a situa­ our captain, Norm Fieldgate, looked at tion like that, the quarterback would me and said, "Hey, it's El Cid!" I took say, " Aw, --"and go to the end of the that as a compliment. I liked my rep­ line, but when I saw this 240-pound wood utation as a guy who finished the games nymph roaring down the field I took he started, and I still do. In fact, this after him and banged him. He was year's Super Bowl was the first time in shocked! Who ever heard of a third­ my career that I \-\tas knocked out of a string quarterback putting a shoulder game. shot on the · great in It was 1967 before I finally reached practice? He got up screaming, " Yah! the , and then Yah! Yah! Kapp, we'll get you! " You it was as a 29-year-old, third-string rook­ know how those big defensive players ie quarterback on the Vikings. Not are. But I liked it, and so did he. Now only did I reach the NFL late in life, we were all involved. but I had a small legal battle in ex­ In the second game of the 1967 sea­ tricating myself from the Canadian son the Rams were slaughtering us and Football League, and I wound up miss­ roughing up VanderKelen and Bob Ber­ ing training camp. By the time I showed ry, and Coach had no choice up, the team was playing its fourth ex­ but to send in our last surviving quar­ hibition game and I didn' t even know terback- me. I figured the best thing to the numbers yet. Furthermore, I bare­ do was challenge the Rams, so I went ly knew any of the Vikings, and this in shouting. I don't remember exactly was hard on my whole theory of quar­ what I shouted, but it was something terbacking, which is that you're not like, " All right, you sons of bitches, involved with a football out there, here I come! Let's see how good you co 11 ti11ued 29 MAN O F M ACHISMO continued are!" If you consider that the uJtimate inadvertently called a hand-off, and left on the clock and we lose 30-27. That's in machismo, you must also consider it Boom Boom had already disappeared as bad as I've felt after any loss of my the ultimate in stupido. I had Los An­ through the line. I also threw a couple life. A horrible way to lose! I mean, if geles Rams on top of me the rest of the of and a lot of incomple­ you're letting it all .hang out and taking night. One time Roger Brown, all 300 tions, but I wound up the afternoon com­ a chance on winning and then you make pounds of him, embraced me enthusi­ pleting eight passes for 157 yards and a mistake and lose, that's fine. But if astically nose to nose. It hurt like hell. running three times for 34 yards and you're playing ball control, perfectly con­ When he was a safe distance away, I hol­ proving to myself that these NFL guys tent to eke out a tie, and then you blow lered, "Hey,Brown, didn't you ever hear were only humans. Now I knew that it, why, that's as Mickey Mouse as you of Lavoris?" But I don't think he heard there was going to be a lot of fun and can get. I felt so bad I was almost sick. me-I hope. The game confirmed ev­ crunch waiting for me in this National So did the other guys. But I had this life­ erything I had suspected. First, that I Football League. long rule about never missing a post­ wasn't ready. Once we were on their four­ After that I began playing more, and game party, and I didn't intend to miss yard line and I called a draw play, and whet1 we met Green Bay at Milwaukee this one. I dressed and went home first when I turned to go back and hand the I was listed as a starting quarterback. and poured myself a tequila, the truth ball to Billy Brown he was gone. I had At the time -our record was 0-4, and drink, and for a chaser I had another. Green Bay was on the way to one of its For a few minutes I entertained the big Super Bowl years, slaughtering ev­ thought of skipping the big blowout that erybody en route. If ever there was a mis­ was being held for the team at a fan's match, this would be it. A week earlier house, but then and KarJ the Packers had held the Detroit Lions Kassulke called and reminded me to to a net of 59 yards passing, and the show up, and off I went in my 1939 La­ week before that they had thrown At­ Salle to see what was happening. You lanta passers eight times. So what hap­ can imagine the mirth and merriment pened? Bud Grant came up with a game at that party. When I saw the players plan that was different from anything standing around with hangdog faces, I I'd ever experienced. He instructed me said, "Hey, you guys, where's the body to play a double careful game of ball con­ laid out?" Nobody even cracked a smile. trol, entirely alien to my own style of The great quarterback and student of play. I wound up throwing a total of 11 humanity had failed again. passes and completing only two, but our I took my bottle of tequila and I went usual stout defense held and we beat downstairs to a gloomy corner of the the mighty Packers 10- 7. "That's a new basement to wallow in my despair. Some­ low for me, completing two out of 11 ," body was already there, wallowing in I told the press after the game, "but beat­ his despair. It was Lonnie Warwick, the ing Green Bay is a new high. I'll take mighty hillbilly from West Virginia and this anytime." Tennessee, the ex-fighter who had been Not long afterward, at Metropolitan working on a railroad section gang when Stadium in Minnesota, the Packers came the Vikings had signed him. Of all the back for revenge. I started at quarterback players on the club, Lonnie had become and the club jelled pretty well and with one of my favorites, and I think I had two minutes to play it's 27-27 and we're become one of his-ever since I had about to pull off another upset by hold­ put that shoulder into him on the prac­ ing the mighty Packers to a tie. It's tice field. We sat there together for an first and 10 on our seven and Bud Grant hour or so, sipping tequila and com­ has sent in a word of caution-he tells miserating. We told each other what a us not to play for a tie, but also not to great football team the Vikings had, and go crazy and start throwing the ball all how we're going to win the Super Bowl over the place, either. In other words, next year, and how we were the closest he tells us to play our regular ball-con­ bunch of athletes ever assembled togeth­ trol type of offense, and if we don't er in sports, and how we would die for score, settle for the tie with absolutely one another. Then I said: " It's too bad no complaints. I had to blow that game for us today." Well, you know about "the best-laid " You didn't blow the game," Lonnie plans of mice and men." I take the ball said. ''The defense Jost the game. " from center and bump into our pulling "No, no, Lonnie," I said. " Don't try guard and the ball gets away. Billy Brown to make me feel better. I blew it." accidentally puts his foot into it · and He climbed to his feet, looked down kicks it B yards down the field and at me and said, "Listen, you crazy Mex­ AT CALIFORNIA Co-captain Kapp posed the~ into Green Bay's hands. Don Chandler ican, I told you we lost the game, not atrically and led the Golden Bears in rushing. kicks a field goal with a few seconds you. Stop feeling sorry for yourself."

30 waiting for Lonnie to explain and he kept waiting for me. "Why don't you fellows take off your dark glasses?" Grant said. " Oh, that's O.K." I blurted out. "We prefer not to," Lonnie said. But after a while we confessed, and Bud administered a lecture and that was the end of the matter. By the time our final game came around against the Lions, I was itching to have a great day, to put the clamp on the starting quarterback job for next season. Instead, I had one of the worst games of my career. Alex Karras was very much on my mind, and I figured I'd better not go through his tackle any more than absolutely necessary. So on the first play I called a sweep to the left side, away from Alex. Then I called a bootleg to the left, again away from Kar­ ras. On the fifth play of ·the game I called a roll-out to the left, but before I could get started, who do you think jumps me and whomps me to the ground and starts roaring in my ear like a wild animal? He hollers, "Yah! Yah! Yah! Kapp. Don't ever go my way!" At that point he could have broken any one of_ . my arms or legs, so I'm lying quietly and trying not to antagonize him. "Don't you ever go my way!" he hollers again, while I'm saying to myself, "Damn, I've WITH BRITISH COLUMBIA in 1964, Kapp drains Grey Cup after quarterbacking the Lions to a run away from him three times and here 34-24 win over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in Toronto for the Canadian Football League title. he is on top of me telling me not to go his way. Which way isn't his way?" But as he got up and walked off, I "Knock off all that bull, Lonnie," I The next morning Lonnie called and couldn't resist saying, "-- you, Kar­ said, standing up myself. "I'm the one he said, "Jeez, Joe, I don't know what ras!" and after that his teammates that dropped the ball, not the defense." got into us." were all over me. That was the day This went on for about five minutes, "I know what got into us," I said. "Te­ Lem Barney intercepted three of my with neither of us giving an inch, and quila. L-S-T-T for tequila, T for truth." passes in one quarter (all by myself I finally Lonnie informs me that if I will "Yeah," he said, "and T for trouble. made him All-Pro that year), and we not admit that the defense ble .v the game I don't know about you, but I got to lost the game 14- 3, :finishing the year we will have to settle it outside in the gar­ go to the dentist." with a glorious record of three wins, den. So now we're walking side by side I said, "Well, I'm on my way to the eight losses and three ties. It came as out the back door and I'm saying that eye doctor. One of my eyes won't open." no surprise to me that the Vikings trad­ this is crazy and he's saying that iS may "I got a bad eye, too," he said. "Let's ed for Quarterback in• be crazy but what's going to happen go to the eye doctor together." the off season, and in a way I even wel­ next is we're going to fight, and I say The doctor informed us that we would comed the competition, although it that's perfectly O.K. with me. The noise both live to play another day, and then never really developed. Off the field, attracted some of the other guys, but we decided that we'd better tell our sto­ Gary and I became roommates and by the time they were able to stop us ry to Bud Grant before somebody else good friends, and in training he ran into we'd been :flailing away at each other told him first. Bud is no holy terror, snarl­ some injury problems that kept him from for about five minutes by the light of ing and screaming and leveling fines at taking the starting job away from me. the moon. When it was over, with him the players, but he is no nasturtium ei­ on top, Jim Marshall and ther, and we knew he would really tee made us get up and shake hands. "Good off on us when he found out how stu­ NEXT WEEK night, Lonnie," I said, and Lonnie said, pidly we had acted. So we walked into A /though he led the Vikes to the NFL title "Good night, Joe," just as if we were his office like a couple of scared kids in 1969°, Kapp says he threw only two spi­ both normal in the head. and hemmed and hawed around. I kept rals.: one incomplete, the other intercepted.

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