Last month I posted about a Baltimore Sun article reminiscing about the 1959 NFL championship game, in which the Baltimore Colts, playing on their home turf at Memorial Stadium, bested the New York Giants 31-16, one year after the Colts’s spectacular defeat of the Giants in New York in overtime. The article noted the presence of Vice President Nixon at the game and a spectator’s suggestion that a ticket comprising Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas and RN would be a great bet for 1960.
Here’s a column that appeared a week or so after the game in the San Francisco Chronicle by the late Charles McCabe, in which he remarks:
I knew the Veep when he was an inconspicuous Congressman from Whittier, and I was an inconspicuous Washington correspondent. In those days, before he hitched his wagon to the pumpkin in the Alger Hiss case, the Veep was an earnest, humorless freshman Congressman. He was known in the House Press Gallery as “The Boy Scout.”
He was a great talker, even then. I recall him talking on many subjects, but never sports. The last time I saw him was last summer, when he visited San Francisco. He was a changed man. His first question on getting off his plane, was: “Are the Senators still in the cellar?” And the funny thing is, he really knows sports. Funnier yet, he is one of those rare birds who is equally nuts and equally informed about baseball and football.
It is remarkable, is it not, the way public life enlarges a man’s horizons?