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Title: Mudbaths and Bloodbaths: The Inside Story of the Bears-Packers Rivalry by Gary D'Amato, Cliff Christl ISBN: 1-879483-44-0 Publisher: Prairie Oak Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.14 (7 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Who retired and ran a gas station in International Falls, Mn
Comment: I bought this book for my Dad for Christmas - & I just had to read it before passing it on! I approached it with some trepidation, though, as it is written by "Award-winning Wisconsin sportswriters," and published in Madison, Wisconsin. But the foreward is written by a nice man from the Chicago Tribune and I found the book to be fairly evenly balanced. The style is easily readable - not in chronological order but arranged by interesting topics. For the chronically chronologically-oriented, there is an appended game-by-game synopsis from the first meeting of the Staleys (who soon became Da Bears) and the Packers on November 27, 1921 to the 152nd meeting at the end of the 1996 season. There are many clever turns of phrase - for instance, the rivalry as "uncivil war," or "Once again, Ditka had added insult on top of victory."
These meetings are not just games, they are "events." As the authors tell us, "The Catholic churches in Green Bay recognized in short time what kind of impact the rivalry had on people's lives. By 1928, St. Mary's parish had scheduled a special mass at 5:15 Sunday morning, so fans could catch the early train to Chicago."
Chapter 5 is entitled "Hard-Edged Names in Hard-Nosed Games" and begins: "The seven men to which this chapter is devoted had two things in common. One was that their names didn't roll off the tongue, but rattled around in the mouth and forced their way through the teeth. Hard-edged names, full of consonants and resonance." Names that were uttered in hushed reverential or loud cursing tones at family gatherings. (My family straddles both sides of the Illinois-Wisconsin line so it depends on which part of the family was talking ;-). Names like Nagurski, Nitschke, Butkus and Ditka. The chapter tells inquiring minds "what ever happened to" these guys too.
Bear/Packer "games" are not genteel affairs. Here's a recap of the November 4, 1945 encounter (before mouthgaurds and sturdy helmets.) "Packers halfback Roy McKay suffered a broken nose and had several teeth knocked lose. Halfback Irv Comp suffered a knee injury, and tackle Baby Ray sustained a one-inch cut on his upper lip. Guard Pete Tinsley was thrown out of the game for punching Bears quarterback Sid Luckman, and Goodnight also was sent to the showers for punching Hoptowit. The Bears casualty list included rookie halfback John Morton, who visited the Illinois Masonic Hospital to have a cut under his eye stitched, and, of course, Artoe. With one well-placed elbow, in the final two minutes of the game, Keuper broke Artoe's upper and lower jaws, along with his nose, and knocked out 11 teeth." (p. 68) Now, THAT'S smash-mouth football!
The chapter "Twenty Memorable Games" includes "Prelude to a [Bears] Title" - November 17, 1963; Wrigley Field (yes, we played there for a long time before moving over to Soldier Field - there's a whole other chapter on the playing fields: " Sacred Fields Forever.") "No professional football game in Chicago, before or since, has been more eagerly awaited than was the dramatic 1963 showdown between the two-time defending NFL champion Packers and the grimly determined Bears. Both teams entered the game with 8-1 records, and the winner clearly would have the inside track to the Western Conference championship. Green Bay had won eight straight games since the season-opening, 10-3 defeat to the Bears. Chicago had lost only to San Francisco. The Monday before the game, the Bears placed fifteen hundred standing room tickets on sale. The tickets, priced at $2.50 [no - that's not a typo- that's two dollars and fifty cents!] sold out in forty minutes." (pages 133-134)
And stuff you probably never knew: "As Bears running back Brian Piccolo [remember Brian Piccolo? If not, stop reading this review and rush over to Video/DVD to get a copy of "Brian's Song" - not the recent re-make, but the excellent 1970 version with James Caan & Billy Dee Williams. It puts the lie to the myth "real men don't cry."] "As ... Brian Piccolo lay on his deathbed in June, 1970, his body ravaged by cancer, he asked to see Ed McCaskey, the son-in-law of George Halas and a close family friend. McCaskey had been assigned by Halas to take care of Piccolo's every need. He had been there to support the player and his wife, Joy, many times in those terrible final months. So McCaskey caught the first train from Chicago to New York and went straight to the Sloan-Ketterling Cancer Center. He had steeled himself for the inevitable, but the sight of Piccolo, in horrific pain and gasping for breath, was more than he could bear. "I looked at him and tears burst from my eyes, involuntarily," McCaskey said. "Brian saw that and said, 'Don't worry, Big Ed, I'm not afraid of anything - only Nitschke.'" He died that day." (p. 114)
The pictures in this book alone are well worth the price of the book. Sure, more would be better, but they are great just the same. My favorite, the final one, is Coach Ditka wearing his SuperBowl XX championship leather jacket as he "watches from the sidelines during a Bears-Packers game. The Bears won fifteen of twenty games against the Packers during Ditka's stint as head coach from 1982 - 1992."
I could gush on and on about this great book on a great rivalry. But I have to go wrap my Dad's present. So why don't you just buy it and read it all yourself! You betcha I will!
Rating: 3
Summary: Great idea. . .falters in places
Comment: Bears fans beware: this book takes a somewhat pro-Packer perspective on the greatest rivalry in professional sports. While there are a number of great stories in this book, it struck me as largely the stringing together of a number of interviews, without a lot else contributed by the authors. It that sense, it's primarily an oral history of the rivalry. I also would have liked more photos. Those flaws aside, it is still worthwhile reading for fans of either team. Especially those most interested in the earliest years of the rivarly.
Rating: 3
Summary: Excellent in places.......
Comment: I have two major problems with this book. One, its poor structure. What starts off as a thoughtful examination of sports rivalries and some truly informative and exciting writing on the early Bears and Packers later degenerates into a mish-mash of anecdotes and facts which range from fascinating to utterly pointless. It seems as though the authors somehow ran out of things to say even though there is clearly masses of material in the intertwined history of these teams. Surely a more chronological approach would have given a better idea of the series' ebbs and flows. Also the section concentrating on certain players 'representative' of the hardnosed nature of the rivalry like Trafton, Nagurski, Butkus was overdone. Only a brief mention of Jim Taylor? I'm a Bears fan but surely he deserved FAR more attention in such a history. Walter Payton was also criminally underrepresented. Secondly, the concentration on old-timers, unbalanced the book. The stories of George Halas' techniques are excellent but even after having it rammed down my throat for much of the book I still don't believe Bronko Nagurski or Clarke Hinkle are the toughest men who ever lived. Yes these guys played with very little padding or protection but if that was the nature of the game now so would today's players. Such casual mythologizing of the past should be handled with much more care. However there are some fantastic stories in here, its just a pity the book's undoubted brilliance is only displayed in patches.
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Title: What Bears They Were: Chicago Bears Greats Talk About Their Teams, Their Coaches, and the Times of Their Lives by Richard Whittingham, Mike Singletary ISBN: 1572434821 Publisher: Triumph Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Cold Wars: 40 Years of Packer-Viking Rivalry by Todd Mishler ISBN: 1931599165 Publisher: Prairie Oak Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Tales from the Chicago Bears Sidelines by John Mullin ISBN: 1582616485 Publisher: Sports Publishing Pub. Date: 08 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Downfield!: Untold Stories of the Green Bay Packers by Jerry Poling ISBN: 1879483335 Publisher: Prairie Oak Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1996 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Green Bay Packers Titletown Trivia Teasers (Revised Edition) by Don Davenport ISBN: 1879483874 Publisher: Prairie Oak Press Pub. Date: July, 2002 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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