Post by prossman on Dec 20, 2008 7:39:09 GMT -7
Farewell: Spagnola's First Memory & Perceived Last
IRVING, Texas - For 25 years now I've heard the stories, how Cowboys fans have used Texas Stadium to celebrate important occasions - some even life-altering occasions - in their lives.
Who spent their birthday at the stadium christened during the 1971 season, be it just any birthday, or a monumental one?
Who spent any number of anniversaries at the 65,000-seat capacity structure that has been standing now for 38 seasons?
Who spent their honeymoon there, at least for a day, or bachelor and maybe even bachelorette parties at one of the most recognizable stadiums in NFL history?
Who received a trip to the game for Christmas?
And who just might have made a yearly pilgrimage to the famed stadium with the hole in the roof just to continue a bond with friends or maybe to finally fulfill one of those lifetime bucket ambitions?
Heard 'em all, but never seemed to take the time to examine how Texas Stadium has marked milestones in my own life, like come to think of it, spending Christmas Day 2006 there or covering a game or Christmas Eve 1989, putting the final touch on a 1-15 season, or celebrating my 53rd birthday there or, to the best of my recollection, celebrating 24 Thanksgiving Days in the press boxes, first the original lower level one on the Cowboys side of the field and now in the existing one above the second deck on the visitors' side of the field since 1993.
Funny how retrospective you become at times like this, more than likely - pending a playoff miracle - walking into Texas Stadium Saturday night for the final time to actually cover a game, Cowboys-Ravens, before the Cowboys move into their new $1.1 billion digs rising out of the Arlington, Texas, ground and this house of memories likely meets the same fate of those obsolete stadiums before it.
And the more I thought, the more clearly the focus came one very meaningful game, maybe not the most meaningful in Cowboys lore, but certainly to my career and really, without getting too heavy on you, my life.
That would be the first time I walked into Texas Stadium to cover a game for the now defunct Dallas Times Herald. The date was Oct. 21, 1984, a robust 25 seasons ago, Cowboys vs. Saints, a team I had been covering occasionally for the past three seasons. Geesh, I had a full head of hair then, a mustache and had not quite turned 32 yet.
This was supposed to be the rare 8 p.m. Sunday kickoff in Dallas for a nationally-televised game on ABC, remember the original network of Monday Night Football. I vividly remember the spectacle, arriving at Texas Stadium early, the shiny blue seats for some reason, taking my seat in the press box with the other members of the staff - a seat I would sit in, unbeknownst to me at the time, for eight seasons.
There was this, too: the anxiety of knowing this would be my first story covering a Cowboys game, only a sidebar, for the Times Herald, unfortunately right on deadline.
Worse, though, and this will give you a little historical perspective, the game started 45 minutes late because of the second of two presidential debates that year - Reagan vs. Mondale, carried live on all the networks. Certainly ABC was not going to cut away from the debates for a football game.
For those who might not remember, those debates were a little less civilized than they are today when one candidate answers a question and then the other, and then there is rebuttal time. On this night, the two candidates, President Ronald Reagan and former vice president Walter Mondale verbally sparred at times.
And there was this unforgettable exchange during the debate in Kansas City, Mo., when Reagan, trying to win a second term at age 73, was questioned about his advancing age, the point being that presidents need a lot of energy for some of those long days in the Oval Office and Mondale was 17 years younger (56).
Reagan, summoning all of his acting skills with a straight face, cleverly said, "I want you to know I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience."
Even Mondale broke out laughing.
But there was little laughter that day at Texas Stadium with only 50,966 showing up for the late-night Sunday game. The Cowboys were 4-3, and had just lost consecutive games to St. Louis and Washington. And in Sunday's papers in the Metroplex, this game was being billed as one of those win-or-else games, and most were siding with the "else" factor after the Cowboys were beaten by the dreaded Redskins the previous week, 34-14.
Some suggested that the Cowboys basically were "dead" in the water.
More so than watching the likes of Tony Dorsett, Randy White, Ed "Too Tall" Jones, Everson Walls and John Dutton play that night - along with guys I had covered during their college careers, Ron Fellows, Kurt Peterson and Howard Richards - making maybe the biggest impression on me was the odd sight, to me at least, of Cowboys president and general manager Tex Schramm sitting in the press box for the game.
Really? I mean, the perception with which you come to town, without knowing better, is that these are the high-browed Cowboys, thinking they are better than all the rest us. Surely this mighty Schramm guy would be sitting in some swanky suite, not here with us peon writers.
But no, not Tex. He was a former sports writer before getting involved in the NFL, and as he would say, he wanted to watch the game with "his" guys. This sure was no social event for him.
Well, the game finally kicked off at 8:45 p.m., fairly late for a bunch of fans figuring they would not get out of the stadium before midnight yet had to go to work the next day. And things did not go well for the Cowboys, falling behind 27-6, with starting quarterback Gary Hogeboom suffering an injured wrist after being intercepted in the third quarter and replaced by Danny White - the Cowboys' four-year starter Hogeboom actually replaced as the season-opening starter that year.
There was only 13:21 remaining, and as I remember, everyone in the press box, on a serious deadline, basically was pounding out 1984 eulogies for the Cowboys. They indeed looked "dead" at that point.
Then it began to happen. The Cowboys would block a Saints punt, setting up a three-yard Dorsett touchdown run. White followed with a 12-yard touchdown pass to Mike Renfro, cutting the Saints lead to 27-20. Still, I remember everyone pounding away on their little Texas Instruments computers, trying to beat deadline.
And of all things, with the aging Kenny Stabler having to take over for starter Richard Todd, who sprained his knee early in the fourth quarter, here were the Saints facing a third-and-18 from their own nine. Stabler, going on 39, goes back to pass, is hit by White, the ball comes loose and, of all things, Cowboys second-year defensive end Jim Jeffcoat pounces on the ball in the end zone for the game-tying touchdown with 2:53 left to play.
You got to be kidding me?
What fans were left at Texas Stadium went into a frenzy. The grumbling and table pounding in the press box was deafening. All those stories ready to be filed - or had been filed, only waiting back on the editor's desk for the final score - had to be trashed. Delete. Start over. Because even though the Cowboys would intercept Stabler twice in the final 1:20, this game that started late was going into overtime.
And there was Tex, sitting in the second row of seats in the press box, just behind me and to the left, leaning forward just so he could be seen and heard clearly, looking down to his right where The Dallas Morning News columnist Randy Galloway was sitting, the guy leading the charge on burying the Cowboys that Sunday. And in that gruff, unmistakable loud, deep voice of Tex, a man who was not opposed to gloating when he could, comes this silence-breaking "Gallowaaaaay, you look deadddddd!"
Schramm laughed with great satisfaction.
He had broken the tension, and the rest of the writers couldn't help from laughing along with him at the irony.
Well, the Cowboys would go on to win the game in overtime, 30-27, on a Rafael Septien 41-yard field goal 3:42 into overtime, the game finishing at 12:30 a.m.
Monday, and helping to prolong the Cowboys playoff hopes until the final game of the season, when a loss to the Dolphins in the finale on Monday Night Football at the Orange Bowl ended their season 9-7 and out of the playoffs for the first time in 10 years.
Little did I know that would be the first game of what now has turned out to be 25 seasons of games covering the Cowboys. That's a long time to be doing any one thing in a lifetime, and no way would I have thought at that time here I would be in 2008, still covering the Cowboys, with Texas Stadium on it's last leg.
Especially not after Dec. 8, 1991, that fateful day when I was sitting in the morning calm of the Texas Stadium press box, at least 2½ hours before kickoff against, ironically, the same New Orleans Saints, when the phone rang at the P.R. station and whoever answered the phone said the office wanted to speak to me.
The office? At that time in the morning? For what?
DTH sports editor Gary Hardy called to give me this grim news: This would be the last day of operation for the Dallas Times Herald, which was being bought out by rival The Dallas Morning News and shut down, and Gary asked since I was the beat writer at the time, if I would please tell all the other people on our staff covering the game that day the news to save him all those phone calls.
In other words, this would be your last day of work.
Would this be my last Cowboys game to cover?
Would this be my last trip into Texas Stadium?
Would I ever write again?
So there I was, waiting in the hallway of the press box over by the elevator to one by one inform the writers on our staff this was it.
Suddenly, those of us who covered the news became the news, never an enviable spot in which to be. I can remember being interviewed before and at halftime of the game, and not exactly demonstrating the greatest amount of emotional composure, I might add.
I can remember watching the game without really seeing it, if you know what I mean, hearing what was going on without really listening. Numb is what I mostly remember about that day.
Oh, the Cowboys won, beating the Saints, 23-14, and their former quarterback Steve Walsh, who had been traded to New Orleans earlier in the season. They continued on the third of what would be a five-game winning-streak march into the playoffs that year, their first postseason appearance since the 1985 season.
Remember these scenes, too, before the game Schramm coming into the press box he loved so much for the first time since he and Jerry Jones parted company after the sale of the team was complete in the spring of 1989. As uncomfortable as that might have been, Tex thought it was the right thing to do after he heard the news.
And I distinctly remember being in the locker room after the game, our contingent of writers the last to leave, probably procrastinating the inevitable - the last story we would write for the Dallas Times Herald, and who knows, maybe in our careers - when head coach Jimmy Johnson came out of the coaches locker room to a near empty locker room.
He looked at us somewhat sympathetically, although sympathy was not one of Jimmy's better traits, shook hands since he had been told what had transpired during the day, and said, "Well, whatever . . . now you know what coaches go through," Jimmy's way of saying he was sorry to hear the news, but you know what? That's life.
The Cowboys would go on the next week to beat Philadelphia in Philly and then finish off the season against the Falcons, heading into the playoffs without us, which didn't seem fair after covering five consecutive losing seasons, including the 1-15 disaster in '89, my first year of being solely responsible for their coverage.
Strange the twists and turns of life. Never knew if I'd cover another Cowboys game or ever enter Texas Stadium again when I left the stadium that night, and yes, we all wrote one last story even though we no longer had jobs. Just seemed like the right thing to do for those faithful readers who would spend a quarter the next day. Not one of us even considered the alternative.
Toughest story I ever wrote, and on those days I reminisce, going back to read the events of that day, it wasn't very.
But I'll be, here it is, 17 seasons later, and somehow, someway, I'm still at it, still enjoying the opportunity to cover the Cowboys, uninterrupted from what seemed a very dark day that Dec. 8 at Texas Stadium. And now I'll have the privilege of outlasting the stadium, once thinking I had covered my last Cowboys game at Texas Stadium but now knowing I actually will come Saturday night.
Comiskey Park in Chicago was the only other stadium during my lifetime with which I developed an emotional attachment, watching the White Sox play there throughout my entire childhood and adolescence, which has perished. And I don't mind telling you, I shed a tear when I saw the remains on the corner of 35th and Shields that next spring.
But I learned a lesson that day, just as I'm sure we all will at some point realize following Saturday's final regular-season game at Texas Stadium:
No matter where the Cowboys go play, no matter what happens to this really not-so-old stadium, whether it meets up with a wrecking ball some day or not, these sometimes life-altering memories never perish.
View Other Articles | Return to Home
IRVING, Texas - For 25 years now I've heard the stories, how Cowboys fans have used Texas Stadium to celebrate important occasions - some even life-altering occasions - in their lives.
Who spent their birthday at the stadium christened during the 1971 season, be it just any birthday, or a monumental one?
Who spent any number of anniversaries at the 65,000-seat capacity structure that has been standing now for 38 seasons?
Who spent their honeymoon there, at least for a day, or bachelor and maybe even bachelorette parties at one of the most recognizable stadiums in NFL history?
Who received a trip to the game for Christmas?
And who just might have made a yearly pilgrimage to the famed stadium with the hole in the roof just to continue a bond with friends or maybe to finally fulfill one of those lifetime bucket ambitions?
Heard 'em all, but never seemed to take the time to examine how Texas Stadium has marked milestones in my own life, like come to think of it, spending Christmas Day 2006 there or covering a game or Christmas Eve 1989, putting the final touch on a 1-15 season, or celebrating my 53rd birthday there or, to the best of my recollection, celebrating 24 Thanksgiving Days in the press boxes, first the original lower level one on the Cowboys side of the field and now in the existing one above the second deck on the visitors' side of the field since 1993.
Funny how retrospective you become at times like this, more than likely - pending a playoff miracle - walking into Texas Stadium Saturday night for the final time to actually cover a game, Cowboys-Ravens, before the Cowboys move into their new $1.1 billion digs rising out of the Arlington, Texas, ground and this house of memories likely meets the same fate of those obsolete stadiums before it.
And the more I thought, the more clearly the focus came one very meaningful game, maybe not the most meaningful in Cowboys lore, but certainly to my career and really, without getting too heavy on you, my life.
That would be the first time I walked into Texas Stadium to cover a game for the now defunct Dallas Times Herald. The date was Oct. 21, 1984, a robust 25 seasons ago, Cowboys vs. Saints, a team I had been covering occasionally for the past three seasons. Geesh, I had a full head of hair then, a mustache and had not quite turned 32 yet.
This was supposed to be the rare 8 p.m. Sunday kickoff in Dallas for a nationally-televised game on ABC, remember the original network of Monday Night Football. I vividly remember the spectacle, arriving at Texas Stadium early, the shiny blue seats for some reason, taking my seat in the press box with the other members of the staff - a seat I would sit in, unbeknownst to me at the time, for eight seasons.
There was this, too: the anxiety of knowing this would be my first story covering a Cowboys game, only a sidebar, for the Times Herald, unfortunately right on deadline.
Worse, though, and this will give you a little historical perspective, the game started 45 minutes late because of the second of two presidential debates that year - Reagan vs. Mondale, carried live on all the networks. Certainly ABC was not going to cut away from the debates for a football game.
For those who might not remember, those debates were a little less civilized than they are today when one candidate answers a question and then the other, and then there is rebuttal time. On this night, the two candidates, President Ronald Reagan and former vice president Walter Mondale verbally sparred at times.
And there was this unforgettable exchange during the debate in Kansas City, Mo., when Reagan, trying to win a second term at age 73, was questioned about his advancing age, the point being that presidents need a lot of energy for some of those long days in the Oval Office and Mondale was 17 years younger (56).
Reagan, summoning all of his acting skills with a straight face, cleverly said, "I want you to know I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience."
Even Mondale broke out laughing.
But there was little laughter that day at Texas Stadium with only 50,966 showing up for the late-night Sunday game. The Cowboys were 4-3, and had just lost consecutive games to St. Louis and Washington. And in Sunday's papers in the Metroplex, this game was being billed as one of those win-or-else games, and most were siding with the "else" factor after the Cowboys were beaten by the dreaded Redskins the previous week, 34-14.
Some suggested that the Cowboys basically were "dead" in the water.
More so than watching the likes of Tony Dorsett, Randy White, Ed "Too Tall" Jones, Everson Walls and John Dutton play that night - along with guys I had covered during their college careers, Ron Fellows, Kurt Peterson and Howard Richards - making maybe the biggest impression on me was the odd sight, to me at least, of Cowboys president and general manager Tex Schramm sitting in the press box for the game.
Really? I mean, the perception with which you come to town, without knowing better, is that these are the high-browed Cowboys, thinking they are better than all the rest us. Surely this mighty Schramm guy would be sitting in some swanky suite, not here with us peon writers.
But no, not Tex. He was a former sports writer before getting involved in the NFL, and as he would say, he wanted to watch the game with "his" guys. This sure was no social event for him.
Well, the game finally kicked off at 8:45 p.m., fairly late for a bunch of fans figuring they would not get out of the stadium before midnight yet had to go to work the next day. And things did not go well for the Cowboys, falling behind 27-6, with starting quarterback Gary Hogeboom suffering an injured wrist after being intercepted in the third quarter and replaced by Danny White - the Cowboys' four-year starter Hogeboom actually replaced as the season-opening starter that year.
There was only 13:21 remaining, and as I remember, everyone in the press box, on a serious deadline, basically was pounding out 1984 eulogies for the Cowboys. They indeed looked "dead" at that point.
Then it began to happen. The Cowboys would block a Saints punt, setting up a three-yard Dorsett touchdown run. White followed with a 12-yard touchdown pass to Mike Renfro, cutting the Saints lead to 27-20. Still, I remember everyone pounding away on their little Texas Instruments computers, trying to beat deadline.
And of all things, with the aging Kenny Stabler having to take over for starter Richard Todd, who sprained his knee early in the fourth quarter, here were the Saints facing a third-and-18 from their own nine. Stabler, going on 39, goes back to pass, is hit by White, the ball comes loose and, of all things, Cowboys second-year defensive end Jim Jeffcoat pounces on the ball in the end zone for the game-tying touchdown with 2:53 left to play.
You got to be kidding me?
What fans were left at Texas Stadium went into a frenzy. The grumbling and table pounding in the press box was deafening. All those stories ready to be filed - or had been filed, only waiting back on the editor's desk for the final score - had to be trashed. Delete. Start over. Because even though the Cowboys would intercept Stabler twice in the final 1:20, this game that started late was going into overtime.
And there was Tex, sitting in the second row of seats in the press box, just behind me and to the left, leaning forward just so he could be seen and heard clearly, looking down to his right where The Dallas Morning News columnist Randy Galloway was sitting, the guy leading the charge on burying the Cowboys that Sunday. And in that gruff, unmistakable loud, deep voice of Tex, a man who was not opposed to gloating when he could, comes this silence-breaking "Gallowaaaaay, you look deadddddd!"
Schramm laughed with great satisfaction.
He had broken the tension, and the rest of the writers couldn't help from laughing along with him at the irony.
Well, the Cowboys would go on to win the game in overtime, 30-27, on a Rafael Septien 41-yard field goal 3:42 into overtime, the game finishing at 12:30 a.m.
Monday, and helping to prolong the Cowboys playoff hopes until the final game of the season, when a loss to the Dolphins in the finale on Monday Night Football at the Orange Bowl ended their season 9-7 and out of the playoffs for the first time in 10 years.
Little did I know that would be the first game of what now has turned out to be 25 seasons of games covering the Cowboys. That's a long time to be doing any one thing in a lifetime, and no way would I have thought at that time here I would be in 2008, still covering the Cowboys, with Texas Stadium on it's last leg.
Especially not after Dec. 8, 1991, that fateful day when I was sitting in the morning calm of the Texas Stadium press box, at least 2½ hours before kickoff against, ironically, the same New Orleans Saints, when the phone rang at the P.R. station and whoever answered the phone said the office wanted to speak to me.
The office? At that time in the morning? For what?
DTH sports editor Gary Hardy called to give me this grim news: This would be the last day of operation for the Dallas Times Herald, which was being bought out by rival The Dallas Morning News and shut down, and Gary asked since I was the beat writer at the time, if I would please tell all the other people on our staff covering the game that day the news to save him all those phone calls.
In other words, this would be your last day of work.
Would this be my last Cowboys game to cover?
Would this be my last trip into Texas Stadium?
Would I ever write again?
So there I was, waiting in the hallway of the press box over by the elevator to one by one inform the writers on our staff this was it.
Suddenly, those of us who covered the news became the news, never an enviable spot in which to be. I can remember being interviewed before and at halftime of the game, and not exactly demonstrating the greatest amount of emotional composure, I might add.
I can remember watching the game without really seeing it, if you know what I mean, hearing what was going on without really listening. Numb is what I mostly remember about that day.
Oh, the Cowboys won, beating the Saints, 23-14, and their former quarterback Steve Walsh, who had been traded to New Orleans earlier in the season. They continued on the third of what would be a five-game winning-streak march into the playoffs that year, their first postseason appearance since the 1985 season.
Remember these scenes, too, before the game Schramm coming into the press box he loved so much for the first time since he and Jerry Jones parted company after the sale of the team was complete in the spring of 1989. As uncomfortable as that might have been, Tex thought it was the right thing to do after he heard the news.
And I distinctly remember being in the locker room after the game, our contingent of writers the last to leave, probably procrastinating the inevitable - the last story we would write for the Dallas Times Herald, and who knows, maybe in our careers - when head coach Jimmy Johnson came out of the coaches locker room to a near empty locker room.
He looked at us somewhat sympathetically, although sympathy was not one of Jimmy's better traits, shook hands since he had been told what had transpired during the day, and said, "Well, whatever . . . now you know what coaches go through," Jimmy's way of saying he was sorry to hear the news, but you know what? That's life.
The Cowboys would go on the next week to beat Philadelphia in Philly and then finish off the season against the Falcons, heading into the playoffs without us, which didn't seem fair after covering five consecutive losing seasons, including the 1-15 disaster in '89, my first year of being solely responsible for their coverage.
Strange the twists and turns of life. Never knew if I'd cover another Cowboys game or ever enter Texas Stadium again when I left the stadium that night, and yes, we all wrote one last story even though we no longer had jobs. Just seemed like the right thing to do for those faithful readers who would spend a quarter the next day. Not one of us even considered the alternative.
Toughest story I ever wrote, and on those days I reminisce, going back to read the events of that day, it wasn't very.
But I'll be, here it is, 17 seasons later, and somehow, someway, I'm still at it, still enjoying the opportunity to cover the Cowboys, uninterrupted from what seemed a very dark day that Dec. 8 at Texas Stadium. And now I'll have the privilege of outlasting the stadium, once thinking I had covered my last Cowboys game at Texas Stadium but now knowing I actually will come Saturday night.
Comiskey Park in Chicago was the only other stadium during my lifetime with which I developed an emotional attachment, watching the White Sox play there throughout my entire childhood and adolescence, which has perished. And I don't mind telling you, I shed a tear when I saw the remains on the corner of 35th and Shields that next spring.
But I learned a lesson that day, just as I'm sure we all will at some point realize following Saturday's final regular-season game at Texas Stadium:
No matter where the Cowboys go play, no matter what happens to this really not-so-old stadium, whether it meets up with a wrecking ball some day or not, these sometimes life-altering memories never perish.
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