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Cotton Bowl Days
John Eisenberg
其他書名
Growing Up with Dallas and the Cowboys in the 1960s
出版Simon and Schuster, 1997
主題Biography & Autobiography / GeneralSports & Recreation / GeneralSports & Recreation / Football
ISBN06848312019780684831206
URLhttp://books.google.com.hk/books?id=blf-zhDj-4EC&hl=&source=gbs_api
EBookSAMPLE
註釋For a young boy growing up in Dallas in the 1960s, the NFL's Cowboys loomed larger than life. It mattered little that these were not the perennial Super Bowl contenders of Roger Staubach and Randy White, nor the celebrity-driven assemblage of Aikman, Emmitt, and Irvin, nor even the late-'60s model with Bob Hayes, Dan Reeves, and Mel Renfro. John Eisenberg's heroes were men of humbler accomplishment, but they brought major-league pro sports to Texas to stay for the first time, and he lived for his family's Sunday excursions to Fair Park and its ancient concrete stadium, the Cotton Bowl. While wins were scarce in those early days, there was no lack of characters to capture a boy's imagination: Sonny Gibbs, a 6-foot 7-inch quarterback signed out of Texas Christian, was a giant on the sidelines but a Lilliputian on the field (he never threw a regular-season pass for the Cowboys); Colin "Boomer" Ridgway, an Australian-born high-jumper who was supposed to revolutionize punting, but whose most memorable effort went straight up in the air; and Don Meredith, Dallas's first true sports celebrity, who suffered unimaginable beatings behind the team's makeshift offensive line but never lost his knack for cracking up teammates and opponents with his offbeat sense of humor. Eisenberg brings back that simpler time in American life, when the only scandal to taint the sports page was the team's inability to find a good right cornerback. Eisenberg also visits with a number of his heroes today, finding as much to admire in them as men as he did as athletes; the quiet dignity and spiritual searching of Don Perkins, whose Albuquerque home is conspicuous only for its absence of any reference to his football career; Bob Lilly, back home in Texas after years in New Mexico, happy as a photographer and a grandfather in a small town west of Fort Worth; Sonny Gibbs, laughing and talking about having blown his football income on houses and lots ("meaning whore-houses and lots of whiskey"); and Jim Boeke, hardly haunted by his championship-game mistake of years ago, teaching school and acting in football-related roles in films including Heaven Can Wait, North Dallas Forty, and Forrest Gump.