Post by TheShadow on Aug 18, 2009 15:08:20 GMT -5
www.usatoday.com
By Erik Brady, USA TODAY
Ninth in a series exploring the histories of all 10 AFL franchises as the NFL celebrates the league's 50th anniversary.
The "Shot Heard 'Round the World" means different things in different contexts.
In history, it is the gunshot that began the American Revolution.
In baseball, it is Bobby Thomson's epic 1951 home run that propelled the New York Giants into the World Series.
And in Buffalo, it is Mike Stratton's hit on Keith Lincoln, springboard to the 1964 and '65 AFL championships, still the only titles in the Bills' star-crossed history.
The line comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson's Concord Hymn. Stratton's tackle was poetry of a different sort — "one of the most beautiful tackles I have ever seen in my life," as Chargers coach Sid Gillman put it afterward.
San Diego pummeled the Boston Patriots 51-10 in the 1963 AFL title game, and many believed Gillman's high-flying offense would buffalo the Bills in 1964. Sure enough, Lincoln slashed 38 yards on the first play from scrimmage, and the Chargers jumped to a 7-0 lead on an 80-yard opening drive.
They were moving again on the next possession when Lincoln flared out of the backfield for a Tobin Rote swing pass. Stratton remembers it in frame-by-frame slow motion.
"I was running scared," Stratton recalled recently from his mountain home in Tennessee. "I knew if Keith caught it before I got there, he could juke me out of my pants."
Running back, linebacker and ball arrived in one terrible moment: Stratton lowered his shoulder, and Lincoln crumpled to the grass, ribs broken.
"They tell me you could hear it in the stands," Stratton says. "I thought he just had the wind knocked out of him; then he didn't get up."
Lincoln was done for the day, and so were the Chargers. They did not score again in the 1964 title game (Bills 20-7) or at all in the 1965 rematch (Bills 23-0).
The Chargers exemplified the pinball passing offenses on which the AFL staked its name. The Bills won their titles with bruising defense of the traditional NFL style.
"When you look back, everything gets rosier," says Stratton, 68, a retired insurance agent. "But I know we had an excellent, just excellent defense."
Paul Maguire, one of 20 originals who played in all 10 AFL seasons, played his first four seasons for the Chargers, largely at linebacker, and six more in Buffalo as a punter.
"The Bills had Harry Jacobs, John Tracey and Mike Stratton at linebacker," Maguire says. "I couldn't beat out any of them. They were so good, and they were never hurt."
They played behind a talented line anchored by tackle Tom Sestak and in front of an active secondary led by safety George Saimes.
"Booker Edgerson and Butch Byrd were lock-down corners," Maguire says. "That left George free to roam."
Saimes and Sestak were named to the all-time AFL team, as was guard Billy Shaw. Quarterback Jack Kemp was not, though he personified "The Other League" on many levels. Kemp is another of the AFL originals who played in all of its seasons. He also played in five of its 10 championships, was an AFL All-Star seven times and the MVP in 1965.
Kemp presaged his political career, and his belief in supply-side economics, when he said of his $5,189 player share for the 1965 title game, "You can't play football forever, so I'm putting my money in securities."
The Bills' kicker in 1964 and '65 was Hungarian-born Pete Gogolak, pro football's first soccer-style kicker. The New York Giants signed him away in May 1966, an escalation of the leagues' signing wars that had previously involved college players. The merger with the NFL took shape quickly in the weeks after as the leagues opted not to drain their coffers while trying to outbid each other for established stars.
Cookie Gilchrist was the AFL's version of Jim Brown. In 1963, he ran for 243 yards against the New York Jets, then a pro football single-game record. But the Bills traded him to the Denver Broncos after the 1964 campaign because coach Lou Saban tired of Gilchrist's headstrong nature.
Saban died in March, Kemp in May. Maguire says he has done a lot of thinking about his old friends in the weeks since. Maguire remembers especially Saban's hurried pregame speech before the 1964 title game. The referees were telling the Bills to get on the field. Gilchrist shouted at Saban to get going lest the Bills be penalized.
"So Saban jumped up on a table," Maguire says, "and, I swear to God, this is exactly what he said: 'I only have one thing to say to you: Heads down, toes up!'
"And Cookie started to open the door, then closed it and looked at Lou and said, 'What the (blank) does that mean?' And Lou said, 'I don't know, I'm as nervous as you are.' And we all just started laughing."
Maguire says the Bills hurried out, still laughing as they passed by the Chargers, his former teammates, in a narrow hallway outside the locker rooms.
"Dave Kocourek — we used to be in the bar business together in San Diego — he looks at me, and we're all laughing, and he says, 'You think it's going to be that easy?' And I said, 'David, I don't have enough time to explain it to you.' And then we went out and kicked their (rears).
"I never found out if Lou did it on purpose to get us loose. I don't think so, but knowing him, maybe he did. Every time I asked, he just got that grin on his face."
The 1964 and '65 titles were the last two AFL championships before the Super Bowl era. The Bills reached a third consecutive AFL championship game after the 1966 season, but the Kansas City Chiefs beat them 31-7 for the right to play in the first NFL-AFL championship game, now retroactively known as Super Bowl I. The Bills' glory years faded from there.
Still, Stratton thinks if the Super Bowl era had begun one or two years earlier, the Bills just might have won against the Cleveland Browns after the 1964 season or against the Green Bay Packers in '65.
"I would have relished the opportunity," Stratton says. "And I would have picked us."