I am Third: Postscript — Ring of Truth: A Social Studies Website

Lesson Launch Blog

By Dr. Paul E. Binford

Past President, Mississippi Council for the Social Studies

This blog post is being jointly posted on Dr. Steve Bickmore’s YA Wednesday blog. Dr. Bickmore, a former colleague at LSU and a close friend, is an associate professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. He has a passion for and scholarly expertise in Young Adult literature.

This past September I was jarred by the passing of Gale Eugene Sayers, an NFL football player, who played for the Chicago Bears during my youth. His sparkling, but brief 68-game professional career culminated in his induction into the NFL Hall of Fame—at age 34 the youngest man to be so honored. In college, he was known as the Kansas Comet and his career highlights illustrate the accuracy of that nickname. His combination of speed, quickness, and elusiveness as a running back and kick returner remain unmatched.

I was not a Gale Sayers’ fan then for a simple reason—he played for the archrival of my favorite team, the Green Bay Packers. Nevertheless, after watching a film about Sayers in my junior high school social studies class, I was inspired to read his autobiography, I Am Third.

The Credo

The book title was based on Gale Sayers’ personal credo:

My God is First;

My friends are Second;

I am Third.

Sayers first encountered these words as a college student. It appealed to him because he recognized his often egocentric behavior. His unwavering drive to be the best, to win every competition, and defeat every opponent often contributed to his own social isolation.

The Injury

Part one of I am Third describes the waning weeks of Sayers’ fourth professional gridiron campaign. A middling Bears team was playing the San Francisco 49ers. In the second quarter, Sayers took a handoff and was running behind one of his blockers when a 49er defender submarined the block and made the tackle. The full force of the defender hit squarely on Sayers’ right knee joint with the running back’s right foot firmly planted in the sod. Sayers knew instantly, “It’s gone.” He had played football for four years in high school, and four years at the University of Kansas without a major injury. In his fourth year of professional football, the law of averages, as his doctor explained it, had finally rendered him an injurious blow. All the medial (inner side) ligaments of the knee were gone. His season and, perhaps, his career was over.

Later that same Sunday, Dr. Theodore Fox operated on Sayer’s knee for three hours. For the next six weeks, he wore a fifteen pound cast from toe to hip. The remaining pages of part one provide an account of Sayer’s daunting but determined effort to strengthen his knee, so that he would be fully healthy by the start of the next season. The running back soon came to loathe questions about his injury. His single-minded rehabilitation stressed his marriage and his friendships.

The Friendship

“It was a way, I guess, of easing into each man’s world.”

Chapter six entitled, “Pick,” is dedicated to one of his closest friends. In 1968, they were roommates at the Bear’s training camp and on away games. They were opposites in many respects. Sayers grew up in subsidized housing in North Omaha, Nebraska and attended a public high school. Pick attended a Catholic school in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Sayers was quiet and reserved while Pick was gregarious with an endearing sense of humor. Sayers was a first team all-American his senior year in college; he was a first round draft pick of the Chicago Bears in 1965. That same year Pick was an Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) player of the year, but he went undrafted. In his first professional season, Sayers was the NFL Rookie of the Year; Pick spent that same season on the Bear’s practice squad never playing a single down.

Sayers and Pick, both running backs, began rooming together in 1967. The Bear’s coaching staff asked Sayers, an African American, if he had any objection to rooming with a White player. The All-Pro player did not object, so they roomed together—the first two players in NFL history to have an integrated assignment. (This was not the first time Pick helped bridged the racial divide; another incident in college speaks to his character as you can read here.) “The best thing about our relationship …” Sayers recalled, “was that we could kid each other all the time about race, do our thing in perfect ease. It was a way, I guess, of easing into each man’s world.”

By this point in their careers, Sayers was the franchise player and Pick served as his backup. When Sayer’s suffered his season ending injury in 1968, Pick started in his place for the remainder of the season. Throughout his knee rehab, Pick encouraged Sayers to regain his All-Pro form. “He was really a comfort to me during the 1969 exhibition season and into the regular season … He was one of the few guys … who built up my morale.”

Growth

Unfortunately for the Chicago Bears, the 1969 season was memorable for its futility and tragedy. Sayers did play a full season, but he was not as explosive or as elusive. When another player was injured that season, Brian Piccolo (or Pick) played alongside Sayers as the starting fullback. However, the Bears struggled mightily with a league worst record of 1-13. More poignantly, Pick, who suffered most of the season with a chronic cough, was diagnosed with embryonal cell carcinoma. A week later a grapefruit size malignant tumor was removed from his chest. Following his surgery, Piccolo reflected, “At one time, football was the most important thing. But when you're lying on your back and you wonder whether you're going to live or die and you're thinking about your three little girls, you come to discover there are more important things than football.”

In May of 1970, Sayers went to New York to receive the Professional Writers Association most courageous award. In his acceptance speech, Sayers offered these modest words:

You flatter me by giving me this award but I tell you here and now that I accept it for Brian Piccolo. Brian Piccolo is the man of courage who should receive the … award. It is mine tonight, it is Brian Piccolo’s tomorrow … I love Brian Piccolo and I’d like all of you to love him, too. Tonight, when you hit your knees, please ask God to love him.

Postscript

Gale Sayers signing autographs at a USO show in 2005.

Brian Piccolo died on June 16, 1970 at the age of 26 leaving behind a wife and three children. Following his death, the ACC established a courage award in his honor. A cancer research fund was founded in Piccolo’s name and has raised over $10 million. In Brian’s day, an embryonal cell carcinoma diagnosis was a virtual death sentence, but now it has a 95% cure rate. Gale Sayers never fully recovered from that devastating knee injury. Other nagging injuries limited his effectiveness during his final two seasons in the NFL leading to his retirement at the age of 29. Sayers returned to Kansas to complete his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. He became the athletic director of Southern Illinois University, the first African American to serve in that role at a major university. Then, he founded a highly successful technology consulting firm. For most of his adult life, Sayers supported the Cradle, a Chicago-area adoption agency. In 1999, that agency launched the Ardythe and Gale Sayers Center for African American Adoption.

As time passed, more people asked Gale Sayers about “Brian’s Song” than his Hall of Fame career. That was fine with Sayers, “I’ll never, ever forget Brian. That part of my life will be with me forever.”

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