These Are a Few of My Favorite (Kansas City Chiefs) Things (1969-2022)

By Moshe Parelman

Dedicated to War Paint, the horse who rode up and down the sideline during Chiefs games, carrying a man dressed as an Indian warrior. If he could have talked, he would have pointed out how insensitive this ritual was.

1.         Hank Stram

     Hank Stram coached the Chiefs from the inception of the American Football League in 1960 until 1974. In that time he produced three championships and one Super Bowl victory. Stram never fit the profile of the NFL coach. He didn’t have a southern accent; he didn’t wear a hat; he wasn’t a tough guy. He was more the genius, the football visionary, or as he called himself in a famous mic’d up performance while coaching the Chiefs in Super Bowl IV, “The Mentor.”

     In seventh grade I was in the same Unified Studies class as Hank Stram’s son, Gary. (Unified Studies was a 1970s liberal approach to education involving the merger of social studies and English in a two-hour block with the same teacher in the same classroom.) Gary was smitten with Marn Jensen, who I knew from grade school.

Marn’s family came to town when we were in the fifth grade. All the guys went gaga over her. She was cute, but more crucially she was a tomboy, which meant she would play basketball and kickball with us boys. I’ve never forgotten the compliment she gave me on my 1^st-place essay in the “Why I Love America” contest: “Danny, it sounds just like the encyclopedia.”

In that class Gary Stram very publicly gave Marn Jensen a package of Star Burst candy. I could see giving someone you like one or two Star Bursts, but a whole package was extreme. “His family must be very rich,” I thought. “Man, he really likes her.” I could imagine Gary at home with his celebrity father:

“Gary, I saw you got a B in Unified Studies. What is that, anyway? The main thing is that you’re doing better. Here, take a bag of Star Burst.”

 2.     Chiefs-Raiders Rivalry

     Two things were true about the Oakland Raiders: they were very good; and they played dirty. The whole league knew this, not just the Chiefs. The difference is we had to face them at least twice every year. We just hated each other. 

They always seemed to be beating us in the last second on a 53-yard field goal by 70-year-old George Blanda. We couldn’t stand Blanda. Fred Biletnikoff with his sticky, gooey hands, was a real pain in the ass, too. But the guy we really hated, the epitome of evil, was Ben Davidson.

Davidson was a big dude, 6-feet-8-inches, 275-pounds. And he sported a really hokey handlebar mustache. You would think a player of his proportions would get by on physical strength and intimidation. Certainly, cheating wouldn’t be part of his arsenal. But it was.

Davidson’s dirty play came to a head on a Sunday afternoon in November 1970. I was listening to the game on the radio with Tim Donohoo at his house up the street. The Chiefs quarterback, Len Dawson, was running with the football. To avoid getting his bell rung by one of the Raiders animals, Dawson plopped to the ground, officially ending the play.

But Davidson couldn’t pass up the chance to hurt Dawson even after play had been whistled dead. Running from behind, he dove down and speared the Kansas City quarterback in the back with his helmet. But Otis Taylor, the Chiefs star wide receiver, wouldn’t let this misdeed go unpunished. Suddenly, he grabbed Davidson around the neck and drove him to the ground. Then all hell broke loose: a traditional, KC-Oakland fight ensued.

Tim and I were ecstatic. We were proud of Otis Taylor, standing up for his quarterback, the teammate he made beautiful music with.

The Chiefs-Raiders rivalry outlived the Hank Stram Chiefs. That’s because the battle between Good and Evil is eternal. May the Horse be with you.

3.     Jan Stenerud

My father, a”h, usually the model of discretion, not only told me one day that he did Jan Stenerud’s taxes but also divulged that Stenerud made $40,000 a year, a princely salary in the early 1970s. But knowledge of Stenerud’s riches did little to change my opinion of the Chiefs veteran placekicker.

      Stenerud was one of the first soccer style kickers in pro football and the most prodigious. The Norwegian-born Stenerud became the dean of the foreign-born field goal kickers, who were drafted by team after team following the Chiefs kicker’s success.

      A foreign kicker stood out from his fellow gladiators, standing on the sideline waiting patiently for the call, built more like the owner of a health food store than like the typical NFL warrior. They were Mercedes Benzes amid Ford pickup trucks. But when their services were needed, they transformed into Supermen.

    When Jan was sent in with the game on the line, he routinely seized victory with the side of his foot from some distant corner of the gridiron. He’s still the Chiefs second highest scorer of all time.

    Then came the fateful match against the Miami Dolphins in the 1971 playoffs, the longest football game ever played. Twice Stenerud was given the chance to win the game for the Chiefs. He missed both field goals. Instead, Garo Yepremian, one of the new-model kickers, snagged victory away from the Chiefs with a 37-yard field goal in the second overtime.

    A few years ago I watched a video of that game with interviews of some of the players who played it interspersed. Forty years later, Jan, a polite, respectful man, was mournful. He described “letting down” the team, coaches and fans as something that was still “painful.”

    Well, Mr. Jan Stenerud, let me reassure you that you have nothing to feel bad about, at least not in the eyes of this fan. You, who made field goal kicking sexy, who put the soccer-style kick on the map, who swung that right leg of yours on so many occasions, splitting the uprights, in good weather and bad, winter ice and snow and the mud of the Oakland Coliseum (He kicked three in Super Bowl IV.), you, Mr. Hall of Famer, deserve nothing less than the warmest praise and thanks: Number 3 on the roster; Number 1 in our hearts.

 4.     The Radio

     Back in the day, we were plagued with something called the “blackout.” Whenever a game was played in your city, the game was televised to everyone in the universe except you. That meant to experience the game, you had to turn to a medium your father used to listen to Jack Benny when he was a child. It turned out that I liked listening to football on the radio.

     1969 was the year I began following sports. With the blackout then, radio, in part, served as my introduction to professional football. I could see the game and the stadium in my mind. It was exciting: the public address announcer’s amplified voice in the background announcing substitutions and the like; the brassy pep band; the swell of the fans’ reactions; and, of course, Bill Grigsby calling the game. Until I saw a game on TV, I thought Otis Taylor was white. The only other “Otis” I’d heard of was Otis the Drunk on Mayberry RFD (on television).

 5.     Television

     NBC covered the AFC, which meant Curt Gowdy spouted the play-by-play when the Chiefs and the Raiders were having one of their slugfests. In my black-and-white, us-against-them child’s mind I was convinced Gowdy was pro-Raiders, while color commentator Al DeRogatis (whose name I thought was “Aldi Rogatis”) was pulling for Kansas City. (This was a few years before Gowdy called Kansas guard Darnell Valentine “Darrell” in an NCAA tournament game.)

     I similarly perceived ABC’s coverage of the Palestinian terrorist attack on the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. It seemed that Lou Cioffi favored the Israelis, while Peter Jennings sympathized with the Arabs. (I might not have been too far off on that one, though.)

     One time the Dawson Chiefs played on Monday Night Football. ABC’s chiddush, broadcasting football on Monday night, rivaled such delightful inventions as the gumball machine and the onion ring. And it provided another showcase for Kansas City’s studly team. The Chiefs ran over the Pittsburgh Steelers that night, 38-16. As Howard Cosell might have put it, “A con-vincing performance by Lenny Dawson and the Chiefs.”

 6.     Buck Buchanan

     Many good defensive linemen have stood at the line of scrimmage blowing steam (well, at least on really cold days in NFL Films films). Few, however, are so good that they’ve produced a tackle so ferocious and so ingenious that you’ll never forget it.

Buck’s signature play came in a game against – who else – Oakland. The detested Blanda was playing quarterback. The 6-foot-7-inch, 270-pound Buchanan grabbed the 90-year-old Blanda’s body, and, while holding onto him, flipped him over in the air and slammed him to the turf. It was like a professional wrestling move. With this piece of performance art, Buck winked to all the KC fans, who had hated Blanda with a passion for so many years.

     I went to junior high and high school with Buchanan’s son, Eric. Eric Buchanan was a good athlete both in football and basketball. (He played tailback at Nebraska.) And he was one of the popular kids. We took the same speech class once. I remember he nailed a Firesign Theatre “Nick Danger” detective parody.

     A friend of mine, Scott McLain, lived next door to Eric. (His famous father was divorced from his mother and lived elsewhere.) Scott would apprise me of the new interests and activities Eric would take on when his cousins, who lived, I believe, in Washington, DC, would visit him. That’s when I first heard of Parliament Funkadelic, a funk band (duh) that many years later became one of my favorites. (“Make my funk the P-Funk …”)

 7.     Super Bowl IV

     I remember four things about the Chiefs first (no longer only) victory in the Big Game.

     The first is the trumpet blow-off before the game. (The game was played in New Orleans.) Al Hirt faced off against Doc Severinsen, although I’ve always remembered local KC bandleader Tony DiPardo being Hirt’s opponent. I guess in my 8-year-old mind the trumpet competition had to reflect the day’s main contest.

     Of course, I remember Otis Taylor’s stroll-along-the-sideline, third quarter touchdown. Although he averted two tacklers to score, that play never struck me as anything special. Taylor could make a play like that blindfolded holding Ben Davidson’s head in one hand. The catch typified that Super Bowl. You could almost see Otis turning his head around before stepping into the endzone, shouting, “Can’t anyone find us somebody good to play!?”

     In the fourth quarter, defensive end Aaron Brown hit Vikings quarterback Joe Kapp extremely hard. Kapp rolled on his back clutching his stomach. What made the play so joyous for young, girl-disliking me was when the camera cut to the Vikings cheerleaders, who were crying.

     Chiefs safety Johnny Robinson was going to play hurt. They said on the radio he would play in the Super Bowl with three broken, taped up ribs. If anybody touched him during the game he would blow up or something. It’s fitting that Robinson intercepted the ball at the end of the game. He was tackled and then he just sat there cradling the football in his left arm and raising his right arm, his index finger pointing to heaven: WE’RE NUMBER ONE!!

8.    A Super Bowl Every 50 Years

We didn’t know it then, but the Longest Game, against Miami, was the last hurrah of the Stram Chiefs. At the start of each year, after that soul-crushing blow, we would think maybe this would be the year the team returned to its former majesty. But each year we would be disappointed. I took to rooting for other teams in the playoffs, like Miami and Pittsburgh. Eventually I tired of football altogether.

Then one day my friend, Gavriel Greenberg, tapped me on the shoulder and whispered in my ear, “Mosh, the Chiefs should be good this year. They have this new quarterback, Patrick Mahomes.” I realized then that I had been asleep for 50 years.

At first, feeling like Rip Van Winkle, I had trouble adjusting to the new world of football. Defense was sacrificed for offense. Roughing the passer was called at the drop of a shoulder pad. Grounding was never called. Then again, I understood that these new rules were introduced to avoid brain concussions and other serious injuries. I understood, because those were the reasons why my mother wouldn’t let me play tackle football in the first place.

I became a Chiefs fan once again. Watching Mahomes was like watching one of the new magicians (David Blaine, et al.); you never knew what he was going to do next.

They won their first Super Bowl on the first try, ending the 50-year Chiefs diaspora. Now we want more; we expect more. And they will return. Until then, I will leave you with this song based (tightly) on Bob Dylan’s Song to Woody:

 

Hey, hey Bobby Bell, I wrote you a song

Bout a reincarnation of a team’s that’s long gone

It’s playin’ in Super Bowls as yours surely done

It’s the pride of Kansas City, and it is lots of fun

 

Here’s to Willie and Buck and Emmitt Thomas too

And to all the good teammates who tackled with you

Here’s to the grit and the taped ribs of the men of the past

Who arrive out of college and leave to do the TV broadcast