E-GIANTS
Dave Klein was the Giants' beat writer
for The Star-Ledger from 1961 to 1995.
He is the author of 26 books and he is one of
only four sportswriters to have covered all the Super Bowls.
Dave has allowed TEAM GIANTS to reprint some of his articles.

THE FINAL FOUR, SOMEWHAT MORE FEEBLE, RIDES AGAIN INTO THE LATEST SUPER BOWL

By Dave Klein
DALLAS - By now, most of you have seen the television commercial featuring four older guys who have been to every Super Bowl.

Big deal.

These old codgers did it as a lark. They went for fun, spent two or three days in the various venues, and went home with menus and a burgeoning record of sorts dancing through their heads.

There are four other guys who you don't get to see on commercials, who are not turned into glamorous and lifelong football fans.

They are the four veteran sportswriters - some retired - who have covered all the Super Bowls, and who on Sunday will be in attendance at their 45th. It is with some sense of pride that your correspondent can say he is one of the four, and apparently the only one still working fulltime.

We started in January of 1967, and at the time everybody who staffed the game (not nearly as many as today's roster) were "veterans" since it was the first. It was also the only Super Bowl not sold out, even when tickets for the event in the Los Angeles Coliseum were priced at $10 and $12 - and few of the so-called "ticket brokers" were slithering around the hotel lobbies.

Green Bay won that game, probably because head coach Vince Lombardi decreed that would be the way it went down, and also because his Packers were light years better than the opponents from the old American Football League, the Kansas City Chiefs.

They weren't called Super Bowls then (that didn't happen until the fourth), but the AFL-NFL World Championship Game. It is likely that the event would never have reached the zenith of popularity it has reached if somebody didn't come up with a catchy name. In this case, it was the late Lamar Hunt, owner of the Chiefs, who watched his kid play with something called a Super Ball and the light bulb became incandescent. Super Ball, Super Bowl - eureka, it works!

Speaking of Hunt, his widow is another of those who have attended all the Super Bowls, and there are probably hundreds more, so don't pay too much attention to what you see on the endless and unrelenting television commercials.

In any case, the Final Foursome has assembled again. The Four Horsemen are Edwin Pope (Miami Herald), Jerry Green (Detroit News), Jerry Izenberg (Newark Star-Ledger) and your faithful correspondent (formerly of the Star-Ledger for 35 years and for the last 14 years with E-GIANTS). Of the four, Pope is semi-retired, Green is almost fully retired, Izenberg is semi-retired and the efforts of yours truly can be found almost daily on the internet).

It is somewhat bittersweet to realize that all those sportswriters and all those years have turned into this Final Foursome, a collection of older guys, creaky and aching, whose telephone books are filled more than ever with numbers of doctors and whose medicine cabinets contain more prescription vials than hair cream.

For the last several years, you have had the chance to read about the Tontine created by four veterans of World War II, who were trapped in a broken-down church in the French countryside, under siege and under armed, and they took an oath that if they ever got out of that mess they would meet once a year in some destination determined to be within equal travel time for all four.

They got out, and they picked a hotel in Chicago, and the first year they made an agreement with management that they would have the same room each year, that it would be the same date, and that a very expensive bottle of wine would be stored in the room until only one of the survivors showed up. The absence of the others would tell him that he was, indeed, the last survivor, at which point he would open the bottle of wine and offer a toast to his departed friends.

Well, years later the fateful moment arrived. One man was the only one to report for "duty" and he waited an extra 24 hours to be sure. He was the last, and he signaled to the hotel staff to bring in the bottle, with a corkscrew and one glass.

He opened it. He poured it. He raised the glass high and spoke the words - "to my departed comrades." And then he found he couldn't drink the wine. Instead, he dashed the glass, and then the bottle, into the stone fireplace. It was, indeed, done.

Several years ago, when there were five of us, a newspaper in Jacksonville, Fla., offered a feature article on the survivors. We all participated in a question-and-answer session, and one of the questions struck a harsh nerve for Green. The interviewer asked which one of us the others felt would be the Last Man Standing, and Green responded: "You are asking me to predict the deaths of my friends. I won't do it, and shame on you."

And I won't do it now, either. We have come through 20-hour days and bad meals and we have missed events at home (mostly involving the growing-up of children) and suddenly they will play the 45th Super Bowl and it just isn't the same any more. Not nearly the same.

Yes, I miss all the others who crossed this threshold and fell short on the road to the 45th. It doesn't seem to be something we should keep counting, an hourglass with the sand running down to a few precious grains.

And rather than honor the other remaining friends (which I do, of course) I would rather honor those who are no longer riding the buses and doing the interviews and sharing meals and jokes.

It was my pleasure, fellas. And it still is.

Check out Dave's website at E-GIANTS where you can subscribe to his newsletters which run much more frequently than what is available here.
- Team Giants

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