Instant Repaly the Unedited Edition

Coach Lombardi was surprisingly political. He didn't advertise it because he didn't to alienate the fans who might be Democrats. There were some in Green Bay after all and some of them were owners of the team. In fact there was this slutty nurse named Inga who used to service some of the players after the game who was a big liberal. He didn't want to piss her off because they might give them the clap or bite their dick off or something. Luckily she stuck to the Negroes so there weren't many players at risk.

Coach did make a big deal about his friendship with Richard Nixon. Everybody knew that Coach Lombardi liked Dick so it was no secret. They were photographed at games and at dinner and hanging out all the time. Vice President Nixon always supported Coach and offered his advice. He even diagrammed plays and offered to find out the play books of the other teams. Coach never took him up on that. He felt you just made your five or six plays and executed them. You did what you did and made the other team stop you. If you had the right players you could make the play.

Vice President Nixon decided to follow the Coaches advice when he ran for Governor of California. But it didn't work out for him. I hope he has a better team now that he is running for President. I know Coach Lombardi is behind him all the way.

Because you know that Politics and Football go together like Ham and Eggs.

 (Instant Replay- The Unedited Edition, Jerry Kramer & Dick Schaap Random House 1968)

Instant Replay-The Unedited Edition

I will never forget our first Super Bowl. We were in the first two representing the NFL who were the established traditional league. But you always remember your first.

We were playing the upstart AFL which was full of losers and guys who couldn't make it in our league. The Chiefs were led by that constipated midget Hank Stram and featured losers like Lenny Dawson who is the second most retarded Lenny after that guy who squeezed the rabbits. You see Lenny squeezed the football just as hard which is why he couldn't win a game against us if his life depended on it.

We had to take it easy on them in the first half. Not run up the score or anything like that. Pete Rozelle sent down word not to run up the score so Coach Lombardi made sure we held it down. Bart went crazy in the second half when Coach took his leash off.

It all started to change when good old Willie Wood made an interception and made a great run back to get us all fired up. Willie had a tough year that season. You see during the off season his wife had stuck an axe in his head in their off season home of Brownsville, Brooklyn. So he was kind of off all year round. He didn't even want to rob a liquor store in Milwaukee with the other Negroes on the team. That interception made all the difference and let us all forget about what a mope he had been all season.

Max Magee managed to sober up enough to catch a couple of touchdowns. Coach was pissed at him all year. Max had been boozing it up all week before the game. He only got to play because Boyd Dowler was hurt so he had no idea what was up.  Of course he had spent the whole season drunk so it was no real problem for him.

Paul Hornung was even worse if that was possible. He didn’t even get into the game. He had an injury. I think it was a distended anus that he got the week before when he went out drinking with Dandy Don and Lance Rentzel before the NFL championship game. He didn’t even seem to care much about the game. He didn’t even come into the locker room during halftime as he stood listening to Al Hirt and admiring how his cheeks would puff out when he was blowing on that horn. That and chatting with those young boys who played the piccolo in the marching band. Coach didn't seem to care. It seems his friends back in New York had let him know that the Golden Boy had bet the game heavy and that he took the Chiefs.

You see the Coach always had a good idea of how the game was going to come out based on what the boys back in New York had to say. He would call one of his old buddies like Frankie Carbo and get the word. The Packers were the favorites so he knew we were going to win. It was just a matter of by how much. Frankie and Socks Lanza said it was in the bag.

So the Super Bowl was sort of an anti-climax. I hope that it not always be that way. I just know that the Packers will be in one most every year. Coach says its a lock.

(Instant Replay- The Unedited Edition, Jerry Kramer & Dick Schaap Random House 1968)

Instant Replay The Unedited Edition

We won so much as the Green Bay Packers that it got boring. I mean they started calling Green Bay by the nickname “Title Town.” We were the first in so many things.

We were among the first to have so many Negro Players. We were among the first to have a player suspended for gambling. The first to have players wife’s sitting in their own section in the stadium. The first to really interact with the fans who were our twelfth man on the field. But most of all we were among the first to really celebrate wins by carrying our coach off the field. 

Coach Lombardi was tough. He drove us day and night. But we love him because he did everything with the sole goal of winning. He would always say “Winning isn't everything it is the only thing.” Coach put an enormous amount of pressure on the team to win. Extra practices. Repetition. Memorizing the play book.  Whatever it took.

When we won a game it took just a little pressure off for a time. We would go crazy. Coach would scold us and tell us that when we got to the end zone we should look like we had been there before. So we were always careful when we are on the field but once the game was over we would go crazy and pick up Coach and carry him off the field. Coach was alright with that because the focus was where it belonged. On him.

Instant Replay- The Unedited Version

Leon Crenshaw went back to work today, back to grass drills and wind sprints. They kept him in the hospital for only four or five hours, gave him some intravenous injections and sent him back to training camp. Leon's one of a half a dozen Negro rookies trying out for the team, and I was thinking today that when I joined the Packers in 1958, there was only one Negro on the whole team. Now we eight Negros in the starting lineup, and four of them made the All-Pro team.

We have the Negros because of Lombardi. Don't get me wrong he doesn't like them very much. He calls them "moolies" and is much harder on them than anyone else. But he would use anyone to win. He would even use a Chinaman if he had too! 

It is the people of Wisconsin that really hate the Negros. They are all upset with the civil rights situation in the South and will protest and raise money and all of that. But they don't want to live next to them. Green Bay is about the whitest place in the world. The Negro players are very uncomfortable about living there. They tell me they have to live in the "Toe" in Milwaukee. I asked them "What is the Toe?" They said "The Get-toe!" I guess that is where you can catch them.
(Instant Replay- The Unedited Edition, Jerry Kramer & Dick Schaap Random House 1968

Instant Replay- The Unedited Edition

Everyone always assumed that Coach Lombardi was Catholic. He went along with this because when he was with the New York Giants he had to fit in. Wellington Mara was a devout Catholic and he tried to curry favor with the Mara's so he could get the head coaching job of the Giants which was the one thing he most coveted in his life. But it was not to be so he had to settle for a rinky dink town like Green Bay.

One of the advantages was that he could finally be himself. You see he actually was a Mormon and had twenty two wives who all looked pretty much the same and all insisted that he buy them a mink stole every year. He had a hell of a time getting them tickets for the Super Bowl.  Especially leaving the ducats at the will-call window. Strangely enough they were all named Marie except for the youngest who was named Margene.

They lived happily ever after in Wisconsin which has long been home to many unusual lifestyle choices.
(Instant Replay- The Unedited Edition, Jerry Kramer & Dick Schaap Random House 1968)

Instant Replay: The Unedited Version

We lost Willie Davis for two games this week. To a concussion. All because of domestic violence.

Not Willie of course. He is a pussycat who wouldn't hurt a fly. He wouldn't lift a finger to his wife. It seems his wife Bertha beat the crap out of him. She brained her with the frying pan that she was making pancakes with yesterday morning. You see Big Bertha only knows how to cook pancakes because that is what she learned from her Auntie. Plus rice which she learned how to cook from her Uncle. I think she called it perverted rice or something but it is pretty good.

Anyway Willie causally asked if they could have something other than rice because he was starting to feel like a Chinaman and that is when Big Bertha brained him with the skillet. So we don't have a defensive end this weekend for the game against the Eagles.

Coach Lombardi has a strict no tolerance policy against domestic violence. He once cut Jerry Norton for beating up his maid. Now Jerry claimed it was an accident because he was practicing his punting and she walked right into his kick. She sort of got kicked in the punt so to speak.

But Coach didn't stand for that. He cut him then and there.
(Instant Replay- The Unedited Edition, Jerry Kramer & Dick Schaap Random House 1968)

Instant Replay- The Unedited Version

Coach Lombardi was insistent that we pay attention to every detail. He worried about the lights in the film room and the food at the training table. The paper used to print up the play books. The size and type of towels in the locker room.

But most of all he was concerned about the balls.

Not his balls of course. The balls we used to play the game with on the field. You see depending on how the ball was inflated it could do different things. If it was inflated to the max when you kicked it would go really far. If it was deflated then it was easier for Bart Starr to grip and for the receivers to catch in the freezing cold tundra of Lambeau field. Of course you couldn't deflate them too much because of Hornung. You see he like to put them in his mouth. He loved to have balls in his mouth. He was funny that way.

Coach Lombardi was super strict about all of the equipment. The tackling sleds. The whirlpool. And of course the tackling dummies. He always tested them every training camp. He wanted to make sure they were big enough and hard enough. That is why he would sit on them and feel them between his cheeks.

At least that is what he said. Hey. He's the Coach.

(Instant Replay- The Unedited Edition, Jerry Kramer & Dick Schaap Random House 1968)