Like most kids who
went to their first Red Sox game and walked up the tunnel to
see the emerald green grass and the players warming up at Fenway Park, I was in
awe. My first Red Sox game was in 1957 when I was seven years old and I was
hooked on baseball and the Sox from that day on.
Of course, I started collecting baseball cards and later I bought those "Wilson"
baseball scorebooks and started scoring the Sox games that were on
TV, listening to Curt Gowdy and Ned Martin, or hearing them on my
transistor radio, under the covers in my bedroom late at night.
In the fall the Boston Patriots took over Fenway Park when I was in high school.
Now I was able to walk behind the stands constructed in left field and gaze into
the scoreboard. How small the rows of numbers looked inside, and there must have
been a million dents on that wall from the batted balls of Yaz and Tony C.
And then, in 1967, I was a freshman at Boston University. It was
easy to experience many games of the "Impossible Dream" season in the bleachers
with my friends. After all, we lived just down the street in the West Campus
dorms overlooking Nickerson Field and it was an easy walk down to Kenmore
Square.
And Nickerson Field? Was that really the home of the Boston
Braves? Were the stands that were there really a part of the old ballpark? I
wondered where home plate was located and where was the mound that Warren Spahn
pitched from?
My first memory of Nickerson Field came in 1960. I was ten years old and my summer camp counselor took me and a bunch of kids to
the very first Boston Patriots game ever played there. I'm pretty sure it was just a pre-season exhibition
game. I remember that
the area where the West Campus dorms would be later located was just a paved
over mound.
When I applied to colleges,
my two choices were B.U. and Syracuse. I
chose B.U. because of the engineering program plus the financial aid I was able
to get. So off to college, I went. I kicked extra points in high school and had every intention of going out for the
football team and trying out to be the kicker for Boston University.
The football field
was regular turf back then and our practice field was
behind the visitor’s stands and ran perpendicular to Babcock Street, where the Case
Center now sits. It was just dirt and no
grass. The head coach was Warren
Schmakel and his offensive coach was Larry Naviaux. Back then the freshmen had their own team and
our coach was Foge Fazio. So on the day
I had my tryout, the three of them stood at the base of the goalpost on the
far end of the practice field and told me just to kick field goals off a
kicking tee. All I remember is the three
of them turning, watching the ball zoom over their heads, and telling me to
move further back. After a while, Coach
Fazio walked out to me and told me to come and play for the freshman team. B.U. had many players in the past, who also
kicked extra points and an occasional field goal, but on that night I became
B.U.’s first kicking specialist.
As I said, we had a
freshman team, because freshmen could not play on the varsity in the late 1960s. We lost only one game and I even kicked an
extra point to win a game against Maine. But the funniest moment came against Northeastern in our final game of the
season (I think we only played five games).
We were at Nickerson Field, ahead something like 25-0 late in the fourth
quarter and it was snowing. It was the
kind of snow that only sticks to the grass and makes everything else
muddy. We scored another touchdown and I
went in for the extra point. Pete
Yetten, our quarterback, was also my holder. Unknown to me, he told our center to snap the ball directly to me and
told the lineman not to block. So I
lined up the kick (I was a straight-on kicker, not soccer style) and the ball
was snapped. Pete never made an attempt
to catch the ball and I saw it in my peripheral vision and caught it. A second later I had the whole Northeastern
defensive line, who were pissed off anyway, jumping on me and slamming me into
the mud. All I remember is getting up
and seeing all my teammates jogging off the field and laughing. Then I got to the sideline and got hollered
at by Al Sikoian (our crusty old equipment manager) for getting my uniform
dirty for the first time that year.
In the spring of 1968, the varsity
football team held a week-long "spring practice" for the upcoming season. At the
end was a full-contact intrasquad game between the Red Team and the White Team.
During that game, I kicked a 52-yard field goal, unofficially my longest.
Sophomore year (1968) I had
another memorable event that made the newspapers. I was the field goal kicker only. Fred McNeilly, who was a year ahead of me,
had been the PAT kicker and Dick Devore was our defensive end and could boom
kickoffs into the end zone. Obviously,
Coach Schmakel would rather have a big defensive end, running downfield on a
kick-off to make a tackle, rather than me (I was 5’10” and 165 lbs … wish I
weighed that now … LOL). So I was
delegated to just kicking field goals that year. Being B.U.’s first kicker, almost every
kicking record was mine by the time I graduated, simply because many had not
existed before. One record I broke that
year was for the longest field goal ever kicked. The record was (now wait!!!) 36 yards and it was set by
Fred McNeilly in 1966. Well in a game
against U.Conn, I kicked one 41 yards to break the record
(impressive, huh???). Unfortunately for
me and my newly established record, U.Conn was offside, and taking the penalty
would give us a first down. Yup, Coach
Schmakel took the penalty and wiped out my record.
My junior year (1969) was a
bowl year. We lost only one game and
played in the Pasadena Bowl against San Diego State at the Rose Bowl. The only game we lost was to UMass in the
final minute of the game, when we fumbled on our own 20 or 30-yard line and
they ended up scoring the winning TD, a play or two after. We had Bruce Taylor (who would become the
1970 NFL "Rookie of the Year") and Pat Hughes (our captain, who would go on to a
long NFL career). We were just good …
very good. I got very few chances to
kick field goals that year because we seemed to always score
During practices, all I did
was practice kicking footballs, day after day, week after week, on my own. They didn’t know what else to do with me, and
after a while, it got so boring, that I asked Coach Naviaux if I could get more
involved and actually play. After all, I
did play center in high school (sorta). And so, he made me the center for the “Fuck-awee” Squad (that was a play
on the name of the lost Indian tribe … the Heck-awees on the popular TV comedy
of the time, “F-Troop”). The Fuck-awees
were the offensive team's second and third-stringers who would run the upcoming
opposing team’s offensive plays against our first-string defense. Being the center, I therefore got pounded by
our captain and middle linebacker, Pat Hughes, over and over again. The lesson is … watch out what you wish for
!!!!
During my senior year
(1970), the kicking job was all mine and I think I led the team in scoring and
got recognized as the second best kicker in New England behind Richie Szaro from
Harvard. My highlight happened against
UMass in Amherst. We wanted that game
badly because of what happened the year before. I kicked a last-minute field goal (36 yards) to tie the game and after a fumble or
an interception or something, kicked a last-second field goal (29 yards) to win it, 13-10. Many of my high school buddies, who were
students at UMass were at the game and after, were at the bus, as we were
getting on board, to slap me on the back. I remember two of those knuckleheads, who
obviously had had a few beers, fighting over my chin strap (LOL). And yes, the drinks at the Dugout tasted
sweet that night, when we got home.
I did establish a painful
record for extra points in a game (6) against Vermont. It remained a school record until 1993. It was a game in which I played with a groin
pull in my kicking leg. Don’t ask me how
I did it, but of all the days to rack up all those points, and of course, I
kicked (or maybe chipped the ball would be more accurate) all seven of the PATs. I could barely get the ball over the cross-bar, but I gutted it out like the rough tough kicker that I was (LOL).
Against Rutgers on
November 7, 1970, I scored the only points in a 6-3 loss. The three points came
via a 39-yard field goal. I finally had that school record for the longest field goal.
The record was broken the next year by successor, Aiden Moore, who kicked a 45-yard field goal.
I did have a shot at
playing on the Patriots after I graduated and I remember the day I was
scouted. We were playing against Temple
and there was a scout for the Atlanta Falcons and one for the Patriots,
standing on the sideline, watching Temple’s kicker and me warm up before the
game. (I’m sure they were watching him
and I just happened to be there also !!!) I was kicking field goals going
toward the dorms and he was kicking down the other end. We both were moving back towards the center
of the field as we practiced and we both were looking over our shoulders
watching each other. Anyway, his name
was Nick Mike-Mayer and he ended up playing for the Falcons for ten years. But I got an invite to try out for the
Patriots. I missed going to it the next summer
because when the day of the tryout camp came along, I had badly
sprained my ankle after graduation, probably doing something stupid. So I was still on crutches and had to miss my
big Patriots’ invitation.
I went to play with the New
England Colonials the next fall, who I guess was kind of a Patriots farm team
or something. On the team was the same Richie
Szaro, the kicker from Harvard. It was
fun to meet him and kick against him. He
was a good guy who left camp to play in the World Football League with the
Atlanta Generals. I soon left also,
because traveling to Foxboro was a pain in the butt and I had a good
engineering job that was more important to me than minor league football. The kicker for the Colonials that year ended
up being John Smith, who went on to be the legendary Patriots kicker, the one who
the snowplow cleared a spot for in the snow game against the Dolphins at
Schaffer Stadium.
My story ends in the spring
of 1979. I was 29 years old and got a
letter from the Patriots asking me to try out. John Smith was injured at the end of the previous season and they needed
an insurance replacement. Why me after
almost 10 years??? I guess I was still
in their database and they were calling everyone. I was still in great shape and was at the gym
every day, so to pick up a ball and start kicking again, was no big deal. Well, of the 63 kickers they tried out in the
morning that day (most of whom had just graduated college), I made it to the
last five that were invited back for the afternoon. I was 3 for 3 from 35 yards, 3 for 3 from 40 yards,
and 2 of 3 from 45 yards. Not really long by
today’s standards, but pretty good for back then. So, I finally got my shot and didn’t make it. No regrets. That was the end of my football
career.
There is an interesting anecdote
about my Patriots tryout. I was a straight-on kicker (not a soccer-style
kicker). Gino Cappelletti was the special teams coach that year and when he
played, he had a special kicking shoe made for him, with a flat surface on the
front that was extra wide. Somehow, one of his shoes made it into Boston
University's equipment and it was passed on to me. During my tryout, I saw Gino
staring at my kicking shoe and I told him that I had been led to believe it once
was one of his. He asked me what my shoe size was and he nodded when I told him,
saying that he believed it indeed was. Years later, when the Boston Sports
Museum came into existence, I wanted to donate it, not because I wore it, but
because Gino had. I looked everywhere but never found it.
 |
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SOMEHOW I INHERITED ONE OF GINO
CAPPELLETTI'S KICKING SHOES |
Any of the kicking
records I established or broke at B.U. were broken by my successors very
quickly … guys like like Mike Morello, Steve Shapiro, and Jeff Pelin were much better than I,
and they deserve the praise. The B.U.
kickers are now a select fraternity. There were not many of us who were just kickers. We were only in the spotlight for less than twenty years, before John
Silber brought an end to it all. I know
I wasn’t the best one, but I’m proud to have been the first.
While playing at B.U. I became interested in Braves Field. I collected old
photographs of the Boston Braves and located where home plate was many times. It
was so weird to have called the home of Warren Spahn, Johnny Sain, and Tommy Holmes, my home field also. Their ghosts have always haunted me.
In 2015, I took part in the 100th anniversary celebration of Braves /
Nickerson Field. Our 1969 Pasadena Bowl team was awarded the best Boston
University team ever to play there in any sport, by the Athletic Department.
We weren't at the same level as the 1948 Boston Braves, who played a
World Series on the field, but we were the only B.U. football team ever to play
in a bowl game.
BOSTON UNIVERSITY KICKER STATS