It is one of the greatest comebacks in sports history told by a man who, seriously wounded in Vietnam, was described by the U.S. Army as 40 percent disabled. However, against tremendous odds he fought his way back and became a four-time Super Bowl champion.
This special edition includes a new content including a forward written by Army Ranger and Pittsburgh Steelers offensive lineman Alejandro Villanueva.
CHAPTER 1
SUPER SUNDAY
It’s January 12, 1975. The Steelers and Vikings are playing the Super Bowl today. I mean, I’m playing the Super Bowl today. I can’t get used to the idea.
I’m prowling a small, dingy locker room in Tulane Stadium. Adrenaline is gushing through me in jet streams. I can’t remember ever being so charged for a football game.
It’s 11:30 A.M. Kickoff is 2:00. None of the other players has arrived yet. I came early by taxicab. I always like to take my time—dress slowly, have my ankles taped, get a rubdown, organize my thoughts. Besides, I’ve waited years for this day. I’m going to savor it as long as I can.
An equipment attendant walks by and says, “How you feelin’, Rock?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer. He’s only making conversation. He doesn’t realize what he’s just asked. How am I feeling? I can’t tell him. I’m feeling everything—scared, happy, anxious, fulfilled, tentative, exhilarated, wary, eager. I say, “Fine,” and he nods over his shoulder.
Clothes hooks are tacked to the wall, all around this drab room. Above one of them is a piece of adhesive tape, marked with a black felt-tip pen, “20 Bleier.” I sit in front of it on a long wooden bench and run through our plays one more time.
On counter-fifteen trap, my key is to influence Marshall, the right end. If he closes hard, I block him. But if he plays it normally, I fake like I’m going to hit him, then slip past and get the linebacker, Hilgenberg. That leaves Marshall for Mullins, the backside guard. If Hilgenberg blitzes and gets penetration …
I do that for all our plays—about 30 runs and 30 passes. I know them, of course. I rehearsed them this morning before the team meal. And last night while I lay in bed. And four days last week, and four days the week before … Still, it reassures me to think through them one more time.
For any situation that arises on the field, I want to have an experience to draw on, even if it’s only a mental experience. Unfortunately, most of my experience as a pro running back is mental. This is my first season as a starter. In the four seasons prior to ’74, 1 carried the ball exactly four times.
I call this thought process “Zen Football.” I guess it’s rather incongruous that an Irish Catholic should be using the meditation aspect of Buddhism. But I find it soothes my nerves to imagine every contingency, and program myself with the proper reaction.
My concentration is broken when the other players arrive. They seem tenser than ever before. Some are pensively smoking cigarettes, some reading the game program, others talking quietly. All week, we’ve been loose and relaxed at practice. Now the room falls nearly silent for long periods … until Glen Edwards, at the top of his voice, lets out a hideous shriek.
“What the hell is this?” he screams. We all laugh at our anxiety, but we do not escape it.
As we take the field for pregame warm-ups, our tension suddenly seems an asset. We burn off the nervous energy with a few quick drills. That excess gone, we’re left enthusiastic, explosive, tightly wound. It feels good.
By contrast, the Vikings seem almost listless. I notice Wally Hilgenberg, my former roommate with the Steelers, and Ed Marinaro, another friend. They shuffle onto the field, waving to me, and go through their calisthenics aimlessly. This is Minnesota’s third Super Bowl. They haven’t won yet. They’ve heard whispers about being “losers.” They’re an old team. They know this could be their last chance. You’d think they might seem desperate. But no. Perhaps they’ve lost the zest for this game that we’re discovering in our first trip. We’re young, and too impetuous to wait for the next time. I think we’ve got an emotional edge on the Vikings.
Certainly, the crowd is with us. As I pan the stadium, I’m amazed to see so many black-and-gold-tassel caps with our Steelers logo on the front. It looks and sounds like a home game for us. The collective effort of 80,997 voices washes over me like 20’ surf. I can recall playing only one game at such volume—Notre Dame versus Michigan State in 1966.
New Orleans is cold and raw this day. The temperature is 46 degrees, but the wind is whipping and swirling at 17 miles an hour. The artificial turf is wet in several spots from three days of rain during the week. It’s cloudy and threatening again today.
After testing the field, some players change to a new shoe made in Canada—one with pliable rubber “brush spikes” covering the sole. The normal turf shoe has blunt, quarter-inch spikes fixed stationary around the perimeter of the sole. Uncertain footing is a terror, especially in the defensive secondary where one slip often equates to six points. Cornerbacks and safeties live in fear of that “big mistake.”
Tony Parisi, our equipment manager, says to me, “Rock, if you want them, we have the Canadian shoe in your sizes.” I decline, sticking with the turf shoe. But I catch Tony’s careful emphasis on the word “sizes.” I’ll be the only guy on the field today wearing a 10½ left and a 10 right. Several years ago, a hand grenade blew one-half shoe size out of my right foot.
It was August 20, 1969. I was an infantryman in the U.S. Army, 13,000 miles from home, stationed in Southeast Asia. Crossing a rice paddy, my platoon ran into a North Vietnamese ambush. Small-arms fire pierced my left thigh. A couple hours later, after the enemy chased us into the woods, I saw a live grenade come rolling toward me. I started to jump … it exploded. I had shrapnel blown up both legs, and several shattered bones in my right foot.
We were near to being overrun, or burned in a forest fire, when reinforcements finally came. All 25 of us were either killed or wounded. Another platoon half-dragged, half-carried me out of that hell. One guy, God bless him, carried me over his shoulder, fireman-style, for 500 yards. In the confusion and darkness, I never found out his name. But the strength and courage in his marvelous face will always be with me.
In a hospital several days later, I told the doctor I was a professional football player. I told him to give it to me straight. What did he think were my chances of playing again?
He didn’t even want to talk about football. He wanted to talk about walking normally again.
For seven months, there were crutches, and canes, and operations, and leg casts, and physical therapy. When the medical people had done all they could, I put on sweat clothes and went out to see if I was still an athlete. I ran only a quarter of a mile before collapsing onto the grass. I lay there panting and crying, thinking the doctor might have been right. But I would not concede.
I stood up, wiped away the tears with my sleeve, and ran some more. Then I went to the gym to lift weights. And I did not stop running and lifting, running and lifting, running and lifting … until … well, I still haven’t stopped.
For two years, while I was something less than a football player, I stuck around through an incredible combination of circumstances and the benevolence of Arthur J. Rooney Sr., the Steelers’ owner. By 1972, I was capable again. Slowly, agonizingly, I progressed. And now, today, I’m ready to strap on my hat for the biggest football game in the world.
This is the game that will make my odyssey complete. Seventy-five million people will be watching—more people than have seen any sporting event, moon shot, assassination, impeachment, or coronation. The largest audience in American television history will see whether I’ve really come all the way back. A check for $15,000 and a world championship ring are waiting, if I win.
And yet, I already have more than the Super Bowl can give me. I have an experience. A singular, highly personal experience.
I have the memory of those first horrifying weeks, when nothing seemed to work. Not physical manipulation. Not electric-shock treatment. I braced on the examination table, holding back tears. Shots of pain launched up through my leg … but the toes held fast, immovable. The therapists nearly gave up.
I have the memory of an alarm clock stirring me up at 5:30 A.M. It was dark and cold outside. My body was still sore from yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. Something inside me said, “Later. You can do that workout later. This afternoon or tonight. Go back to bed.”
I have the memory of resisting those temptations on a thousand painful mornings; of seeing a thousand different sunrises while I ran myself to the brink of exhaustion; of finishing a workout, my skin tingly with perspiration, my legs wobbling unsteadily, my head feeling light and faint, my lungs gulping and gasping. I have the memory of endless afternoons in colorless weight rooms, lifting a million tons of iron; of sprinting workouts at night, sometimes under a streetlight after darkness.
Ultimately, I did it all for myself. I did it so I couldn’t ask myself, 10 years later, “What if I’d rehabilitated? What if I’d gotten into super condition? Could I have made the team?”
Through the whole ordeal, I was at peace with myself. My fulfillment—strangely almost masochistically—was in the workouts, in the sweat, in the ache, in conquering the 5:30 A.M. temptations. I was content merely to try, even if I never played another minute, of professional football.
This is not to say I never dreamed. As any little boy knows, goals are the stuff of dreams. And I did not deny myself that pleasure. Through all the agony, I allowed myself a picture, a moment of epiphany.
A moment something like this one. Chuck Noll, our head coach, is writing on a blackboard. The first play he writes is “92 tackle-trap.” That’s one of my plays. I’m going to carry the ball on the first scrimmage play of Super Bowl IX. A shiver runs through me.
“These are our first two running plays, our first possession pass, and our first short-yardage play,” Noll says, pointing to the board. “All right, you know what we’re here for. We’ve worked hard all year. This is our opportunity. We can beat these guys. Now let’s go out and do a job. A burst of excitement fills the room. There is slapping and patting, exhortations to “have a good game.” We file out of the locker room.
Our runway to the field is blocked by the crowd. As we stand waiting, I am pressed in tightly, dwarfed by my teammates. Differing shoe sizes are not my only distinction among these men. I will be the smallest player on the field today. The official roster lists me as 5’11”. But don’t believe it.
I’ll probably be one of the blindest guys on the field, too. I’m nearsighted, 20/100, but I can’t wear glasses when I play. And contact lenses bother me too much. I just have to concentrate extra hard while those long passes come into focus.
I’m also the only guy who knows how big his check is going to be this week. My government check, that is. Whether we win this game or not, I’m going to get my regular $123 because the Army and the Veterans Administration rate me 40% disabled. I’ll be the only guy on the field with a hole in his left thigh and three toes on his right foot that have no feeling and very little movement. Tonight, when I’m really tired, I’ll probably be the only guy who limps a little bit.
As the crowd clears and we move to the head of the runway, I feel a stark, unmistakable contrast with the athletes on either side of me. To my left is Terry Bradshaw, quarterback, 6’3”, 230 pounds. He was the number one player chosen in the NFL draft of 1970. To my right is Franco Harris, fullback, 6’2”, 235 pounds. He was the 13th player chosen in the NFL draft of 1972. I’m standing between them—5’9½”, 210 pounds. In 1968, I was the 417th college player to be drafted.
But the introduction of starting lineups makes us equal. “And finally, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ backfield,” the public-address announcer says, triggering a roar. “At quarterback, number 12 from Louisiana Tech, Terry Bradshaw. At fullback, number 32 from Penn State, Franco Harris. And at halfback, number 20 from Notre Dame, Rocky Bleier.” We jog across the field together. Terry and Franco seem composed. I’m effervescing. At the sideline, the other 44 players assemble to greet us. I jump into the air, screaming and clenching my fists. I’m ready to play … except for one more thing. In college, I made final preparation for each game at the Grotto of Our Lady on the Notre Dame campus. In the pros, I do it just before kickoff, during the playing of the National Anthem. So,
I begin the Super Bowl like any other game:
Well, Lord, here we are again. Another Sunday with the breeze blowing, the flags flying, and all these people ready to enjoy themselves. Thanks for giving me another opportunity to be here.You know what I’m going to ask for. Please give us the strength to play the kind of ball we’re capable of playing … good, hard-nosed, heads-up football with no mistakes. Help our guys to realize the importance of this game, and give it 110%. Don’t allow us to let down. Make sure we suck up our guts when we need a big effort.Also, please give the Vikings this same ability to play. I’m not asking for us to win this game, or lose it. Just give us the fortitude to get through. Help us to know our assignments, so we don’t screw up. Give us a game without too many fumbles or interceptions or mental errors. Let both teams play their best, and we’ll take our chances.One more thing, Lord. Please allow me to play the way I’m capable of playing. Let me have a good game, so I don’t embarrass what I stand for—my religion, my school, my family, or myself. You’ve given me the grace to be out here. Now give me a little more so I can do a good job. Thanks, Lord.
Have you ever heard so many clichés in one 60-second prayer? It’s a wonder He still listens to me.
CHAPTER 2
APPLETON
In the long ago, before there were Super Bowls and other modern inventions, there was Appleton, Wisconsin. Let me take you back. I think you might like it.
In 1673, Joliet and Marquette explored the Fox River of eastern Wisconsin on their way to discover the Mississippi. At the southern end of the Fox Valley, they noted a wide, fertile clearing in the woods.
One hundred sixty years later, an Englishman, Samuel Appleton, came upon that same clearing, and gave it his name. At the time, there was only one other settlement in the area—Green Bay at the northern end of the valley. Then, as now, the Fox provided industry for those two, and several other cities that grew up along its banks … Neenah, Menasha, Little Chute, Kaukauna, Wrightstown, and De Pere.
My history teachers used to say it all began with huge logs bobbing at the surface of the blue water. They were floated downstream to simple sawmills and gristmills along the river bank. In 1854, Appleton had its first paper mill, a three-man operation. Today, the immediate area has 12 paper mills, including Kimberly-Clark’s world headquarters in Neenah.
There are about 60,000 neighbors in Appleton these days. They are largely German and Dutch, perhaps fourth-generation Americans whose immigrant forefathers wore similar blue-collared shirts and carried similar lunch pails to similar mills in 19th century Appleton. They are likely to be Roman Catholic; if not, probably Lutheran. Few feel the need for a college education. They might belong to the Elks or the American Legion. They’re accustomed to an average January temperature of 15 degrees, and a windchill factor of plus-two. They have strong backs from shoveling the 47 inches of snow that fall each winter.
My hometown is mostly quiet and friendly. It’s a workingman’s town, watered by workingman’s bars. Bars where a guy can get a shot and a beer at 8:00 in the morning, before work, and several more shots and beers after work. Bars where he can take his family for Friday or Saturday night dinner at reasonable prices. Bars like Bob Bleier’s.
That’s my father. He’d worked during the war as a printer for Kimberly-Clark. But on the day before his wedding, he decided to get into a “people business” and be his own boss. So, he quit his job.
As you can imagine, the news of his unemployment, coming as it did on the eve of their marriage, was something of a surprise to the young and beautiful Ellen Grandpre. That’s my mother.
But she took it with equanimity, as she would take every other surprise in the next 30 years. Thus, it was that on July 1, 1945, a young man of 25 named Bob Bleier took his bride of two-and-a-half months into a bar on the corner of Lawrence and Walnut Streets and announced, “Well, honey, this is it.”
My mother really must have loved him, because a woman of her intelligence would normally have turned and walked out. The place was so old, it actually had a stable attached. And on the side, it still had hitching posts and troughs for horses to drink water and eat oats, while their riders were drinking whiskey and eating grubsteak inside. For this, he had borrowed $1,000 and agreed to the outrageous rent of $100 a month.
But my parents were steeped in that old Puritan ethic of thriftiness and hard work. They took in roomers on the second floor, and I’m told they always had a full house at $3 a week. That money and their 50% share of the jukebox (nickel a tune, six for a quarter) paid the rent. They saved all profits from the bar, which, in the first three years, came to $12,000. So, in 1948, they borrowed another $4,000 and bought the place. Bob Bleier’s Bar was finally Bob Bleier’s bar.
You can’t imagine how hard they worked. My dad would be up as early as 6:30 A.M. to open at 8:00. He’d spend the day bartending, greeting the patrons, and bringing up stock from the storeroom … until he closed the place at 1:00 A.M., or 2:00 during daylight saving time. My mother, meanwhile, was the accountant-bookkeeper-roomkeeper. She paid all the bills and ordered all the supplies. She also cleaned and changed the linen in those seven rooms upstairs. And as an added bonus, they both were required to carry roomers up the steps, late at night, when they’d had too much to drink at the bar. Which was all too frequently.
This was before my time, but they say the worst one was a fellow named John Rizzi, an immigrant from Eastern Europe. He ate a lot of fresh garlic and onions, his self-prescribed cure for high blood pressure, and he kept them in his room. When my parents had to carry him to bed, it was real penance, because the vapors emanating from his room would knock you down.
We had some other interesting roomers. There was Butch Hansen, who had only one tooth in his mouth out of the 32 he was issued. There was “Mousy” Krause, who every day, winter or summer, wore the same outfit—a dirty undershirt, a dirty plaid shirt, a dirty red kerchief around his neck, dirty work pants, and a pair of old, scuffed boots. There was “Hammerhead,” nobody knew his real name. He worked for the city. And there was one other roomer, who shall be nameless for the sake of his family. He was our honest-to-goodness, living, breathing, belching alcoholic. I guess every inn should have one.
That was the cast of characters until I arrived onstage. And if it hadn’t been for those roomers, I might not have gotten my nickname.
Our living quarters were in the back section of the ground floor, just off the dining room. We had a very small living room, minikitchen, and even smaller bedroom for Mom, Dad, and me when I was first born. In my first few weeks, Dad would bring some of his customers back to the bedroom to take a peek at his son. This might be 8:00 in the morning and I’d still be asleep, lying there kind of robust, kind of roly-poly, as my dad describes it now.
“Son of a bitch looks like a little rock,” my dad would whisper proudly.
Then, about 5:00 in the afternoon, these same people would return to the bar for another couple boilermakers, and they’d ask my dad, “Hey, Bob, how was your kid today? You know, that little rock.”
So, I was “Rocky” before I ever departed the crib. And it stuck like epoxy. I’ve had friends—close friends—at Notre Dame, in the Army, and with the Steelers, who never knew I was baptized Robert Patrick Bleier.
“Rocky” is a helluva nickname for a guy who tries to play football for a living. And I owe it all to those roomers. If not for them, I might have been stuck upstairs in a second-floor bedroom like most babies. Then nobody would have peeked in and been inspired to such a graphic description of my chubby little body.
As the family grew, we phased out the roomers and took over the second floor for living quarters. After me came Patty. She was the fastidious one, always well-scrubbed, properly mannered, and very demanding that things be just so. She once spent an entire day sitting on the back steps, refusing to go to school, because the bow on the back of her dress didn’t feel right. That attitude persisted until high school, when she discovered sculpture. She’s been messy and dirty, up to her elbows in clay, ever since.
Patty met her husband, Paul Rechner, in the sixth grade. People who hear that story usually sigh and say how romantic it is. But for me, Paul had a different dimension. As a third grader, he helped a group of us fifth graders to win our first recreation league championship. A mere third grader, mind you, Paul was always a good athlete, and our careers traveled parallel tracks. He played running back and captained the football team at Lawrence University in Appleton. Now, he and Patty live in Elgin, Illinois, with their two sons. Paul teaches high school social science there.
Next in the family is Dan. He’s our artist. He graduated in fine arts from Dayton University and the Dayton Institute. Last spring, he got his master’s degree from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. In many ways, Dan and I are opposites. He’s about 5’7”, 135 pounds … small enough, in fact, that I thought New York might devour him when he moved there. But he loved the city and found lots of artists who shared his passion. His specialties are pottery and graphics. Soon, he’ll accept one of several job offers to teach ceramics. Yet Dan is a true artist. If there were no worldly considerations to contend with, he’d pursue art for art’s sake.
The youngest is Pam. She’s in San Francisco now, working as a nurse’s aide and going to the City College of San Francisco. In typical form, two years ago, she packed her Volkswagen one day and announced that, at the advanced age of 20, it was about time she saw California. She drove the whole route in two days and arrived in the Bay Area not knowing a soul.
Pam was the achiever in school—always the best student in her dance and acrobatics classes, the best cheerleader, the best cornet player in the band. She learned to play the guitar without lessons. She’s the only one in the family who can sing on key. She’s always had an angelic face, an alluring figure, and more boyfriends than any five girls I know.
If I was the straight arrow, this lady was the free spirit. I remember the day of her high school graduation. She was wearing a low-cut dress without a bra, which was the new fashion rage. Now Pam is very well endowed, and she looked sensational in that dress. But the Bleier grandparents were coming, and my parents asked her to wear a different outfit. Pam refused, and there was no argument. She wore the dress without a bra. That little episode tells you something about everybody involved.
The Bleier grandparents: staunch, conservative, Irish-German, Roman Catholic, Midwestern, unalterably opposed to the new fashion rage. Pam: not given to changing her mind, especially for an excuse she considered more flimsy than her dress. Our parents: two understanding people who respect both the grandparents’ traditional views and the children’s rights as individuals.
As far as I can remember, my father had only one rule in the house: Each child had to take lessons on a musical instrument long enough to see if he or she enjoyed it. Most of us did, except for Dan. He came stomping into the house one day, hurled his saxophone into the closet, and screamed, “I’m never going to play that thing again.”
That was it. There was no scene with Mom and Dad. Nobody even responded to his tantrum. And I think the message was not lost on Dan. Several years later, on our parents’ silver wedding anniversary, Dan gave the simplest and most eloquent toast: “I want to thank Mom and Dad for letting us be whoever we wanted to be.”
In 1957, Bob Bleier’s Bar began serving dinners—rib eye, tenderloin, and New York strip steak on Wednesday; perch, lobster, shrimp, and haddock on Friday; roast and fried chicken and barbecued spare-ribs on Saturday; combination plates on Sunday, family night. In addition, there was a fish luncheon on Friday afternoon.
Serving that sort of menu demanded extensive preparation. My mother, for instance, would spend an entire afternoon breading fish or cleaning chicken and cutting it into portions. My father spent all day Thursday barbecuing 120 pounds of ribs. He’d spend another day, each week, changing the grease and cleaning exhaust fans. Another day, he’d wash all the windows. Another day, he’d go to the produce market.
With Dad working so many hours, Mom came to rely on me for a soft shoulder. We’d have a long talk every evening while we washed dishes, and she’d tell me about the rising cost of everything from bourbon to beer nuts.
The results of all their hard work were in plain view, though, standing out there at the door … 20 or 30 people some nights, waiting for a table. At Bob Bleier’s Bar, you took a number—just like at the bakery—and hoped it wouldn’t be more than a half hour.
The food was great, and the prices were better. When they sold the place in 1973, they were still offering an eight-ounce tenderloin steak for $2.95, a New York strip for $3.95, a rib eye for $3.25, roast or fried chicken for $1.95, rib dinner for $3.25, and their Friday fish luncheon for $1.60. A 12-ounce draft beer was only 20 cents, a highball 50 cents, a boilermaker (shot and beer) 60 cents, and a cocktail 75 cents.
In the 28 years my parents operated their bar, it was closed for precisely two weeks and two days. And every day, my father either opened or closed the place, sometimes both.
The two-day closing came in 1957, when they knocked out a wall to begin remodeling. But they reopened before the job was complete. For the next several weeks, the workmen did their business around the patrons. And vice versa.
The two-week closing came in 1970 for a trip to Florida, the first vacation Mom and Dad ever had together. Except for that excursion, they stayed open and worked hard, just like their customers. Even after my parents got over the hump, their bar didn’t lose the earthy appeal that had made it a success.
They kept the 10’ windows, the old wooden bar with etched-in scrollwork, the foot railing, the brass spittoons, and the huge overhead fans. I often think about my father’s place as I visit these big-city bars that try so desperately for a little nostalgia, or a century-old feeling in their contrived decor. If Bob Bleier’s Bar had been moved intact to New York, it would have been considered an antique, or maybe a museum. And Dad might have needed the riot squad to control his crowd.
Eventually what he needed was a little peace and quiet. After working seven days a week for 28 years, he and Mom took a rest. They traveled the West for several months, and when it was over, they were ready to start again … Mom at a seafood wholesaler in town, Dad at a men’s clothing store.
They have lots of fond memories of the bar business, but they’re happier and more relaxed now, living on the other side of town in an apartment, which has nothing under it but another apartment. It took some courage to leave a successful livelihood and change lifestyles as they did. But I imagine they did it one night after reading their own place mats. Dad had them emblazoned with the Bleier coat of arms, under which he added the inscription: “Prayer-Work-Thought-Decisions.” That was their creed for living and for raising their children.
They did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself. Now that we’ve all moved away, I especially enjoy visiting them in Appleton … and observing them. Mom still has a lot of the mannerisms of the young lady who came from the farm in Marshall, Minnesota. Her voice and conversation have a charming quality that is almost little-girlish. She explodes with laughter at everybody’s jokes, no matter how bad they may be. And when she’s laughing, which is nearly always, it seems to enhance those Irish-French good looks. Her face seems designed to have the lips curled up and the dimples showing. She’s just one of those “sunshine people.”
Dad is very masculine-looking. He’s also rather quiet, which might ordinarily make for a forbidding appearance. But Dad has this warm, gentle, knowing smile. He comes in the door and stands there a second, saying nothing, looking very much like the family breadwinner, home from another tough day. Then he smiles down at you, and the smile says, “Hi, son.”
My dad still has all his hair—more than I have, in fact—which is now a mixture of russet and gray. His eyes are still a crisp brown behind wire-rimmed glasses. He dresses nattily, as a clothing salesman should. And his frame is still trim and athletic-looking, the better to model his product.
Several of his friends have told me what a fine athlete Dad was. He never told me, himself. That’s not his style. But when it came time for me to play—as long ago as I can remember—he was supportive and encouraging. Which brings us to tales of triumph and tragedy on the athletic fields of Appleton.
It all began at that very interesting corner of Lawrence and Walnut Streets. On one corner was our bar-apartment. Across the street was the Adler Brau Brewery, where our own local Appleton beer was made. Another corner was the site of the St. Francis Catholic Bookstore. The fourth corner was the home of the Weisgerbers, who owned Adler Brau and had a son named Dickie, my first important playmate.
Dickie was important because I could score a lot of touchdowns on him. His father was a big, strapping guy who wanted Dickie to be an athlete, so he bought him all the equipment—helmet, shoulder pads, jersey.
I had none of the gear, but I was fairly big for a first or second grader, and how I loved to score. Some days I’d have as many as 50 touchdowns before Dickie gave up. My greatest games were played right there on Weisgerbers’ lawn. After that, it was all downhill.
Quickly, in fact. In fifth grade at St. Joseph School (half a block from our apartment), we played just one game, my first experience with organized football. The seventh and eighth graders killed us, 19–0. I caught one pass as a wide receiver, played linebacker like a sieve, and twisted my ankle.
Sixth grade was a disaster. St. Joe’s cut out the football program. Then, as I was turning to basketball, I was diagnosed to have Osgood-Schlatter’s disease, commonly known as the “growing disease.” I was already 5’6”, 140 pounds, and my bones were growing much more rapidly than the muscles, ligaments, and cartilage. Our family physician, Dr. Arthur Taylor, told me I couldn’t play any sports for three years. He warned me that exertion might tear cartilage and ligaments completely away from the bone, leaving me crippled for life.
I didn’t know if that would be better or worse than having my heart ripped out. No football, no basketball, no baseball in the summer, no running of any kind. Worst of all for my ego, the doctor said even one-on-one games with Dickie Weisgerber were too much of a strain. That’s how I knew it was serious.
But it only lasted one year. In seventh grade, I began playing basketball again without telling my parents. I was getting away with it quite craftily until one afternoon when a teammate’s father walked into the bar.
“Hey, Bob, you going to watch Rock play basketball tonight?” he asked. My dad just laughed.
“Well, are you going, Bob?”
“Rocky can’t play basketball,” Dad said. “He’s got Osgood-Schlatter’s disease.”
“Well, if he does,” the man said, “then all those kids should have it.”
We were pretty fair that year, with Paul Rechner, Paul Schreiter, Joe Bowers, John Besh, and some other talent. But the next season, eighth grade, was our year. We beat everybody—St. Mary’s, our archrival about four blocks away, St. Margaret-Mary of Neenah, Sacred Heart, and St. Therese. We won the Fox Valley Conference and all the tournaments with yours truly at center, scoring about 12 points a game with his one and only shot, a very unimaginative layup-hook.
Football returned to St. Joe’s in eighth grade, and we had a good season, highlighted by a big victory over Wilson Junior High, the public school. Joe Bowers played halfback, Jim Pagle was the fullback, and I played quarterback in our first year after converting from the single-wing to T-formation. I threw the option pass quite adeptly … it traveled end over end, giving my wide receiver, Paul Schreiter, the option to catch it at either point. He actually made me look very good with his receiving, and I felt it was about time. Paul grew up two doors away from me. By coincidence, he also lived over a bar, owned and operated by his father. Paul was bigger than me in our growing years, and he possessed a proclivity for beating me up. Now that he was catching my passes, however, I wasn’t so mad about it.
After St. Joe’s, I enrolled at Xavier High School, which had been built on the outskirts of town just two years previous. It was co-institutional, which, for those of you who never suffered through it, means the boys’ classes were taught in one wing of the building by Christian Brothers, and the girls’ classes in the other wing by the Franciscan Sisters. We saw each other only at lunch. And even then, you had to be awfully quick, or awfully discreet, to talk to a girl. The good Sisters were always watching.
I say, without reservation, Xavier was probably one of the five best high schools in the country. The staff was young, energetic, and mostly brilliant. Brother Peter, our principal, was a super administrator. Father Al Lison, our counselor and good family friend, was sympathetic and contemporary. “Dutch” Schultz directed a band that won the “Best High School Band in America” award for three consecutive years in spite of a mediocre trumpet player named Rocky Bleier. But nothing at Xavier was as good as the athletic department, for two reasons. First, we had a marvelous pool of talent, coming from eight Catholic grade schools and from some of the public schools. (We could be very ecumenical about a good non-Catholic ballplayer.) Second, we had Gene “Torchy” Clark.
“Torchy” … as in red-haired fiery-tempered. He was our football coach, basketball coach, and athletic director. How good was he? Well, let me put it this way: Torchy coached eight years at Xavier. His combined basketball-football record was 241–22–1. He won 15 out of a possible 16 Fox Valley Catholic Conference titles.
More important for me, he brought out and developed the competitiveness I would need later in college and the pros. Torchy likes to say I always had that intensity. He says he noticed it the first time he saw me, in a seventh-grade basketball game. We were leading by seven points with four seconds remaining, but I was still flailing my arms and jumping around like the game was up for grabs. That’s the way I always played.
But I recall Torchy’s boys playing even more fanatically. When I was at St. Joe’s, he coached St. Mary’s into a frenzy. They were the first grade-school team I ever saw that pressed—zone press, man-to-man press, half-court press—nonstop pressure the whole game. After the shock of playing St. Mary’s had worn off, I thought, “Gee, I’d like to play for Torchy.”
Freshman year, I got my chance. He had been hired by Xavier and brought his pressure defense along. I pressed like a madman for him. In return, Torchy started me with the varsity.
That year, we had only three grades at Xavier—the original class was now in its junior year—so we weren’t yet eligible for the conference championship and playoffs. In my sophomore year, though, we got it going and finished third in the state.
Junior year, we tore through everybody, went 25–0, and won the state title. Senior year, we got to the state championship game again by winning 24 in a row. So, we’d won 49 straight, the longest winning streak in Wisconsin scholastic history. The guys in my class who had played freshman ball, then jayvees, then two years of varsity had never lost a game. They were 82–0 for their high school careers. They needed only one more victory for a perfect record. Our cry rang through Milwaukee Arena: “A-P-P again … L-E-T-O-N.” We were playing in front of 8,000 people against Marinette Central Catholic, a team we’d beaten twice before that season. A second consecutive state title was waiting for us.
Except we lost—by six points. Marinette played a slowdown game, and we couldn’t seem to make them run with us.
More than any other emotion, I felt relief that the season was over and the pressure of the streak had ended. As captain of the team, I accepted the second-place trophy, carried it back to the bench, and handed it to Torchy. He wouldn’t take it. He said to me, “No, you guys keep it. You won it.”
How he hungered for victory. If we played badly, he’d kick the bleachers with his heel, and make the Brothers cringe with a “Goddamn it.” He’d actually swear in front of girls and parents! One night during the streak, we fell behind by 10 points at halftime. He came into the locker room to find us deathly silent. “I have only one thing to say to you guys,” he raged. “You’re a bunch of chicken-shit motherfuckers.” And he stormed out. Needless to say, that got our attention, and we came back in the second half, led by Bill Timmers, for a great victory.
Torchy was also a great tactician. Against Marquette High of Milwaukee, our press had them rattled. He noticed they were substituting their best dribbler and called time-out. He told me to press this boy especially hard, because if we forced turnovers from him, we could break their whole team. Sure enough, Marquette inbounded to their star dribbler. As I hounded him, I could see the panic in his eyes. It was the first time I’d seen that sort of fear in an opponent. He bounced the ball off his knee, I stole it for an easy hoop, and we crushed them … just as Torchy said.
In football, we never saw his true ire, because we never lost a game. We had three 9–0 seasons and one state championship (junior year), which was decided by a poll of sportswriters and broadcasters around Wisconsin.
In my sophomore season, the big game, as usual, was against Premontre High of Green Bay. They had been the perennial conference champions. But now, in our first year, we were a threat.
We played in Green Bay, and they held a slim lead in the fourth quarter when Tom Timmers, Bill’s brother, intercepted a pass at the Premontre 35-yard line. A few plays later, I took a quick pitch at right halfback and started circling the end. One tackler missed. Another shoved me almost out of bounds. My left foot was just inside the sideline; my right foot was dangling precariously in the air across the sideline. But I regained my balance, and took it in for a 23-yard touchdown, the winning score. Incidentally, a classic picture of that tightrope act currently rests in the Xavier trophy case, along with—how’s this for pretentious?—the left shoe I wore that night, now bronzed.
That first Premontre game was a capstone for the newfound confidence of a young football program. On that basis, it was probably the most important game I played in high school. It was not, however, a better game than our senior-year battle with Premontre, also in Green Bay. I carried the ball 30 times and was hit by everybody in town, except Ray Nitschke. But, eventually, I punched over the only touchdown in a 7–3 win. After that game, Ted Fritsch, the Premontre coach, told Torchy, “Coach, you’re lucky you have Bleier. My linebacker hit him so hard on the play before his touchdown, he knocked himself out.”
Ted was always a nice man and a very good coach. He was an All-Pro center for the Packers, and his son, Ted Jr., is now a center for the Atlanta Falcons. Every time I see Ted Sr. at a banquet, he points at me and says, “There’s the reason I had to quit coaching.”
Those 30 carries were my all-time high for a single game. Usually, it was more like 12 or 14. One game, I recall carrying six times and scoring four touchdowns. (It was kind of like playing Dickie Weisgerber again.) That’s how well our line performed. Most games, I was on the sidelines by halftime, watching the reserves finish the job. A Wisconsin high school publication, in fact, questioned my stamina because I rarely played a full game.
I did play enough, though, to realize the goals I’d set as a sophomore. In my first game, I scored two touchdowns and intercepted two passes. So I figured I should do that in every game … and, averaged out, I did. I scored at least one touchdown in every game I played. I gained more than 1,000 yards in each of my last two seasons, which came out to the obscene average of 12.4 yards per carry. I made allconference as a defensive back and linebacker. On offense, I was an allstate running back for three years, and I even made a few All-America teams, one of which got my picture onto a national magazine cover. Under the other pictures were printed things like: “Fred Carr, Phoenix Union HS, Phoenix, Ariz.” “Warren McVea, Brackenridge HS San Antonio, Tex.” “Gary Beban, Sequoia HS, Redwood City, Cal.”
I didn’t know it then, but I was in some pretty fast company.
Release Date: December 7, 1980
Release Time: 95 minutes
Director: Robert Lieberman
Cast:
Robert Urich as Rocky Bleier
Art Carney as Art Rooney
Bonnie Bedelia as Aleta
John Chappell as Buff Boston
Howard Cosell as Himself
Steve Tannen as Terry Hanratty
Simone Griffeth as Marcy
Richard Herd as Chuck Noll
Barton Heyman as Assistant Coach
Jerry Lacy as Dr. Jenson
Peggy McCay as Ellen Blier
Sandy McPeak as Bob Blier
Bubba Smith as Jacobs
Joe Spano as Captain Murphy
From the Pittsburgh Steelers' website:
Football often is compared to war by the overly-dramatic. Rocky Bleier knows the difference. A 16th-round draft choice by the Steelers in 1968 as a halfback out of Notre Dame, Bleier also was drafted by the U.S. Army in 1969. Eventually shipped overseas, Bleier was wounded in combat during the Vietnam War. Awarded the Bronze Star and a Purple Heart for his military service, Bleier then began the arduous rehabilitation process on his foot that would enable him to return to professional football. Known primarily as a blocker, Bleier finished with 3,855 yards rushing, including 1,036 in 1976 when both he and Franco Harris finished the seson with over 1,000 yards rushing. Still ranked ninth of the team's all-time rushing list, Bleier also finished his career with two touchdown receptions in the playoffs, including an acrobatic one in Super Bowl XIII.
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