The '63 Steelers (38 page)

On the day that picture of blissful family life was taken, Dial couldn't have predicted that after three more seasons, at age twenty-nine, his football career would be over, the result of debilitating injuries. And he couldn't have imagined that he would eventually undergo five operations on his back and become addicted to painkillers. Or that he would lose his wife and that she would win a court battle for half of his monthly disability checks.
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And surely not in his worst nightmares could Dial have imagined that the one-year-old boy on his wife's lap that December day would years later be diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and, two years after, wind up one of nine victims shot to death by a suicidal gunman.
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After being hospitalized for cancer and pneumonia, Dial would die in March 2008 in a Houston hospital at the age of seventy-one.

“He had his struggles, but never once did he express ill will or place blame on anybody other than himself for the choices he made,” said a third son, David. “He never regretted playing pro sports, even though it cost him personally, physically and financially.”
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Dial grew up in a devout Christian family, learning to play guitar and mandolin from his father, a laborer for an oil company. Coming out of Magnolia High School, Dial drew meager interest from recruiters. He wanted to attend Baylor and study for the ministry, but during a visit there he was told he was too small to play college football. “That broke my heart,” he said. That evening, Jess Neely, head coach at Rice, called and offered Dial a scholarship. “That's the only dadgum one I was ever offered,” Dial said.
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Years before he would embarrass the Giants for dumping him, Dial showed all the disinterested colleges they had made a mistake, and he made Baylor pay, too. As a junior, he caught a 10-yard touchdown pass from Ryan in a 20–0 win over Baylor, a victory that clinched the Southwest Conference title for the Owls and earned them the right to meet Navy in the Cotton Bowl. The next year against the intrastate rival, Dial caught a 6-yard TD pass, stopped a Baylor drive by recovering a fumble at the goal line, and thwarted another threat by intercepting a pass at the Rice 14 and returning it 46 yards. Rice won, 33–21. Dial didn't look too small to be playing for anyone.

As Dial went into that Cotton Bowl, he was already being compared to a great Rice pass-catcher, Billy Howton, who would enter the '63 NFL season primed to break Don Hutson's all-time records for passes caught and receiving yardage. Dial was blessed with “deception and glue-fingers.”
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Two days after his two-way starring role in the victory over Baylor, the NFL held its draft. The Giants had made ballyhooed Utah quarterback Lee
Grosscup their priority, and they pounced on him with their first pick, No. 10 overall. In round 2, twelve picks later, “they gasped in relief because Dial was still alive” and snatched him, too.
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Grosscup and Dial, along with two other Giant draft picks, couldn't report to training camp on time because they had been named to the College All-Star squad. The collegians annually played the reigning NFL champion, in this case the Baltimore Colts, who had beaten the Giants in sudden death in the 1958 title game. Dial quickly attracted “quite a coterie of admirers” and caught a 30-yard TD pass from Grosscup in a 7–6 decision over the Chicago Bears in a scrimmage. “Buddy makes wonderful moves to get free,” said Pete Pihos, coach of the All-Star ends, “and if the ball is anywhere near him, he'll find a way to catch it.”
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According to one account, the Giants' rejection of Dial was “blown all out of proportion.” His late arrival at Giants camp after the Colts spanked the collegians, 29–0, along with a groin pull and an intestinal virus, slowed the rookie, limiting the time the Giants had to evaluate him. Meanwhile, Biscaha was making an impression on the club. The Giants even tried shifting Dial to defensive back a week before they dumped him, despite his strong record of success as a receiver.
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“It was very insulting to me, dadgum it,” Dial said. “They had scouted me in college and they knew I could catch a pass and could run patterns. But the only thing the coaching staff could do was to holler at me. I know I didn't get a real chance with them.”
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The insult burned inside Dial, without any letup. As the Steelers looked toward a showdown with New York in the final week of the '63 season, Dial was reminded of his short stay with the Giants and commented, “I guess they didn't want a rinkydink like me.”
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Once the Giants cut Dial in '59, Parker grabbed him. The only problem was that Dial was as leery of going to Pittsburgh as Clendon Thomas had been, and the main reason was Bobby Layne. Dial, a teetotaler, had a memorable introduction to the Steeler quarterback at the 1959 All-Star Hula Bowl in Honolulu. “Bobby was drinking his breakfast,” Dial said. “Every morning when I came down for breakfast, I'd see Bobby at the bar. And he was always putting others up to pulling tricks on us college kids.”
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For Layne, music and singing were as natural an accompaniment to his nights on the town as ice in his Scotch. So, naturally, when the college players were invited to a luau and the quarterback accompanied them, Layne suggested that the native combo invite Dial to sing with them. “Well, I'd ask them if they knew a certain song and they'd shake their heads, no,” Dial
said, “and then they'd ask me if I knew a number and I'd shake my head, no. Finally, someone hollered out: ‘Let him do the hula.' It was probably Bobby. And I ended up doing the hula with one of those little Hawaiian girls. Anyway, from that association, I sure felt sorry for Steeler rookies.”
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At that point, Dial could hardly have imagined that he would wind up one of those rookies. While in Detroit, Layne used Alex Karras as a chauffeur and confederate as they made the rounds during nights on the town. Gary Ballman, in '62, became another first-year player indoctrinated by Layne in the quarterback's pursuit of good times and winning football. Dial led a lifestyle the opposite of Layne's, but they were both Texans, and Dial could sing as well as catch a football. “I didn't want to go to Pittsburgh, for I knew Bobby would run me ragged,” Dial said.
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Dial might not have realized that meant both on and off the field, right from the start. Weary one day from having taken a flight into Pittsburgh, Dial was watching Steeler practice from the sideline when Layne beckoned to him to run some patterns. Layne sent him long. “Dadgum if he didn't try to throw the ball clear out of the park,” Dial said with a chuckle, “and I just caught it with my fingertips. But I did catch it, and from that day on he threw to me.” It was a test Layne did routinely with his receivers, and Dial passed with ease. “I didn't worry about Buddy,” Layne said. “I had confidence in him when he first came over. The first day Buddy worked out he had all the moves of a pro.”
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It didn't take long for Dial to show the Giants what a mistake they had made. In the fifth game of the '59 season, against New York, he caught four passes for 146 yards, including a 35-yard touchdown pass from Layne, though the Steelers lost, 21–16. Over four years, going into '63, Dial had caught 159 passes for 3,428 yards—an average of 21.6 yards a catch—and thirty-three touchdowns. Biscaha, meanwhile, lasted one year with the Giants then spent the 1960 season with the Patriots of the AFL before retiring. The Giants could only fantasize about what their passing attack might have been like with Dial alongside Del Shofner, and Y. A. Tittle throwing to them.

Dial was destined to become a principal in a Parker deal that would go down as probably the worst in the coach's career. In a move that shocked Steeler fans, Parker traded Dial at the end of the '63 season to the Cowboys for the draft rights to Texas's All-America tackle Scott Appleton, winner of the Outland Trophy as the nation's outstanding interior lineman. Even by Parker standards, the deal was a risk because the Houston Oilers had picked Appleton sixth overall in the rival AFL's draft, held two days earlier, and
owner Kenneth “Bud” Adams, who had made a fortune in the oil business, had plenty to spend on a potential star. You could bet the ranch on that.

The Cowboys spent two hours and thirty-nine minutes in discussion before making their pick. “Buddy Parker was offering us a trade for Buddy Dial,” GM Tex Schramm explained, “and we were spending all that time trying to work out that deal.”
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Parker should have spent part of that time recalling the 1960 draft. On November 30, 1959, nearly a week after Adams's Oilers picked Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon No. 1 overall, the Los Angeles Rams made the LSU back the first pick of the NFL draft. Pete Rozelle, then the general manager of the Rams, signed Cannon to a series of contracts, but the Oilers signed him too. The case went to court, and half a year later a federal judge ruled that the Rams' contracts were invalid. Cannon became an Oiler, with a contract worth $110,000, about double the Rams' contract.
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On February 1, 1964, the Oilers signed Appleton to what was believed to be a four-year $104,000 contract, plus other bonuses worth nearly $50,000, including cattle for his father's ranch. All the Steelers wound up with was another ignominious saga in their history of personnel blunders.
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However, Appleton was headed for a star-crossed life with eerie similarities to Dial's. With a lucrative contract, a pretty wife, a Cadillac, and a fine home, “I was on top of the world,” Appleton said. “I felt totally invincible.” Traded to San Diego after three seasons with Houston, Appleton was making more money in the stock market than he had in football. But the pain from a back injury induced him to take drugs, and he became addicted to uppers and alcohol. After being cut by the Chargers, Appleton took on different jobs just to get by, including one stint as a cook at McDonald's. He also spent time in a sanitarium outside the Texas campus in Austin. “I was the most celebrated player on the national championship team, and here I was in this nuthouse a couple miles from school,” he recalled.
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Appleton made peace with himself. He stopped drinking and devoted his life to religious studies. “I have a fresh life, and I am feeling the joy,” he said in the spring of 1986.
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Six years later, Appleton died of heart failure. He was fifty years old.

Dial took a pounding as a receiver, but he kept practicing and playing. It was the code of players to do whatever was necessary to keep going even if they were hurt. “So to ensure your performance, it was standard—and totally accepted—to use painkillers,” Dial said.
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Preston Carpenter roomed with Dial in Pittsburgh, and he remembered the
pranks they would play on teammates—like unhinging a door to surprise Lou Michaels—and Carpenter also recalled his roommate's heavy use of painkillers. “He was fragile,” Carpenter said. “He was in pain most of the time.”
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In the penultimate game of the regular season in '63, in Dallas, Dial damaged his knee when he was tackled after catching a pass. But there was no way he was going to miss the finale against the team that had junked him four years earlier, not as long as he could dull the pain. As the week went on, the swelling subsided—“thanks to the enzyme the doctor prescribed,” he said.
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Dial returned to Pitt Stadium in '64, wearing a Cowboys uniform, to face his old teammates and looked like his old self. “There's nobody better,” said Willie Daniel, who covered Dial. He wound up being taken off the field on a stretcher in the fourth quarter after being drilled by Clendon Thomas. Dial was taken by ambulance to Presbyterian Hospital, where he shrugged off the injury as simply a bruise, but it was severe and it happened to the same leg he had injured in the preseason. Dial insisted on leaving the hospital to return home with his team.
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Defensive players like Ray Nitschke, Larry Wilson, and Ernie Stautner were renowned for being tough, but Buddy Dial could take a heap of punishment, too—until it overwhelmed him.

Dial's career ended in '66, with a disappointing three-season total of thirty-two catches in Dallas, two years before Appleton retired. Dial had injured his back in Pittsburgh, but his problems worsened in Dallas. He tore a hole in his thigh, which looked, according to one doctor, as if “a firecracker had been inserted” in it “and exploded.” He injured his back again but took pain medication and continued to work out even though he was on injured reserve. Looking back after his retirement from football, Dial admitted, “I abused pain medication in such excessive fashion it was unbelievable.”
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Dial took painkillers to play in a game and sometimes just to get through practice, and he took them so he could play with his kids on weekends because, he said in 1985, “I didn't want them to see their daddy as a cripple.” Darvon, Demerol, and Percodan had ravaged his kidneys, reducing their function to 10 percent by that time.
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In 1993, the NFL devised a new disability plan, increasing the monthly benefit for Dial, one of the league's first players to be declared permanently disabled. His wife, who had been collecting part of Dial's disability benefits in 1977 from their divorce settlement, petitioned to have half of the new benefit awarded to her. The NFL agreed with her claim, but in 1997 a federal judge ordered that the disability benefits be reinstated to Dial.
Two years later, however, in May 1999, a federal appellate court vacated the order. “It's a defeat for Buddy, but it's not the end of the world,” said Dial's attorney, Tom Alexander.
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No, the end of the world probably didn't come for Buddy Dial for another two months. On the night of July 28, 1999, Dial's son Kevin, who had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor two years earlier, forwarded an e-mail to a friend. The words were not his own, but the message conveyed his spiritual faith: “Every morning when I open my eyes, I tell myself that it is special. Every day, every minute, every breath truly is a gift from God.” The following afternoon, a securities day trader walked into the Atlanta office of the brokerage firm where Kevin Dial worked and shot four people, then walked across the street and shot five more workers in an office before killing himself hours later. Kevin Dial was one of the first four victims. He was thirty-eight years old.
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