I Never Played the Game

\"Everything s<br >Coming Up Roses\"<br >Man marks the earth with ruin--his control<br >Stops with the shore.<br >--Lord Byron， Childe Harold s Pilgrimage<br > On Labor Day weekend， 1970， funeral services for Vincent<br >T. Lombardi were held， appropriately enough， in St. Patrick s<br >Cathedral in New York. It was a High Mass， dignified and ma-<br >jestic， conducted by the late Terence Cardinal Cooke， and no<br >one who was there will ever forget the somber farewell to the<br >legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers and the Washington<br >Redskins.<br > I sat with my wife， thinking of all the years I had known<br >Lombardi， all the way back to Brooklyn， where we had each<br >grown up. And then he went on to Fordham， and I ended up at<br >his school s archrival， New York University. I thought， too，<br >about his devotion to his God， his family， his craft， and the men<br >who played for him， and how his simple and singular virtues<br >were often fw/sted and misrepresented by the media.<br > In the hush of the great cathedral， you could hear people<br >weeping， people from all walks of life--statesmen and soldiers，<br >priests and politicians， athletes and owners. And it seemed that<br >the bigger they were， the harder they cried， especially the men<br >who knew him best， the men with names such as Robustelli<br >and Gifford and Rote， Homung and Kramer and Starr and<br >Jurgensen. ..<br ><br >