Sammy Didn t Catch That Try Again Later

History Of The Forward Pass

Searching For Slingin' Sammy Baugh 09:13

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Sammy Baugh became one of the first not bad quarterbacks. Simply he wanted to be remembered for something else. (AP)

This is Function iv in our episode on the origin of the forwards pass.

For more than, meet: Part one| Part ii|Role three

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Twenty-two years ago, sports writer Dan Daly flew to Dallas and started driving west on Highway 20 toward a function of Texas called the Big Empty.

He was searching for 81-twelvemonth-old Sammy Baugh.

It had been decades since Baugh retired from the NFL as the all-time leader in passing yards and touchdowns — and he hadn't been seen outside of Texas in years.

"I've got my directions scribbled downwards on a sheet of paper," Daly recalls. "And I'm praying to god they're right. Because some of them sound actually, really bizarre, similar, 'Take a left at State Route 580,' and I'm thinking, 'What if there'southward no sign? What if I just drive forever and cease upwardly in Nebraska or something?' "

Eventually, Daly turned down a dirt driveway. All effectually him, it was flat every bit far as the eye could meet. The driveway led to a little white firm.

"I was surprised how modest a place it was," Daly says. "I knocked on the door. No one came to the door. And then I go effectually to the other side of the firm to see if there's a window I could look in to meet if there's everyone there. And I meet this glow behind the drapes. It's clear that somebody'due south watching goggle box. So I knock on the window, and the drapes spread, and there's this big guy."

It was Sammy Baugh. He came to the door.

And for the side by side five hours, the ii men talked.

Until Daly shared his mini cassettes with me last calendar week, no one else had ever heard the recording of their 1995 conversation.

For most of the five hours, Baugh laughs and tells stories about his time in the NFL — occasionally pausing to comment on the college football game on the TV, and more than than occasionally pausing to spit.

"He had this gigantic plastic cup with a handle on information technology — the kind that you become if you lot're buying, like, a Double Gulp," Daly recalls. "And he used information technology every bit a spittoon considering he was a tobacco chewer. And every minute or and so he'd lean over and grab the handle and spit into the cup."

And then there was Baugh's language — profane, simply not unfriendly.

"He didn't take that social filter that many of us have," Daly says. "It tells you that he probably wasn't used to existence interviewed all that much. That was office of what was going through my mind — merely how isolated he was."

Sammy Baugh — the greatest quarterback of his generation; the guy who helped make the NFL the forrad pass-obsessed league that information technology is today — had go a reclusive cowboy.

From Third Baseman To NFL Prospect

Baugh grew upwards in a small Texas town. He was far more interested in playing sports than riding horses. He didn't have anything to exercise with ranching.

Baugh was a decent high school football thespian, but his No. one sport was baseball game. He played third base and had a great arm.

In 1933, Baugh joined the baseball and football teams at Texas Christian University. He expected to play third base and punt for the football game team. He'd always been good at that.

Most college teams from the Due east and Midwest were even so fugitive the forrad pass, but Dutch Meyer – the football and baseball game bus at TCU – loved it.

"Hell, we could throw the ball any time nosotros wanted to," Baugh told Daly. "And Dutch told us, 'If you've got a reason for doing it, I'll never 2nd guess you lot.' "

Soon Meyer figured out that his third baseman with the strong arm would actually make a darn practiced passer.

"Sammy was a sensation. No one had ever seen anybody throw the brawl as authentic as he threw it."

Dan Daly

During his junior and senior seasons, Baugh led the state in both punting and passing.

And that caught the attention of the owner of the NFL franchise in Washington D.C.

Creating A Cowboy Epitome

George Preston Marshall had a program for the skinny kid from Texas who the fans and writers were already calling Slingin' Sammy.

Washington drafted Baugh No. half dozen overall. And before Baugh boarded the plane for D.C., Marshall instructed him to habiliment a cowboy hat and boots.

"Marshall was such a showman and he wanted to create this image of the Texan and the cowboy in the minds of the Washington market," Daly explains.

Baugh wasn't used to wearing cowboy boots. He said they hurt his anxiety.

But he recovered in time to play Game 1.

"Sammy was a sensation," Daly says. "No one had ever seen anybody throw the ball every bit accurate every bit he threw it."

Sammy Baugh during college football do, in Ft. Worth, Texas, November. 29, 1936. (AP)

That year Baugh led the NFL with 1,127 passing yards and eight touchdowns. Washington won the championship.

Soon Baugh was being asked to fly off to Hollywood.

In 1941, Baugh starred in a serial Western called "King of the Texas Rangers." (Information technology'south your bones Cowboys vs. Nazis story. Nazis endeavour to demolition the oil fields; cowboys try to stop them.)

Baugh kept a depression profile in LA. Co-ordinate to Joe Holley'due south biography "Slingin' Sam," Baugh ate lunch on ready with the technicians. They had the best stories.

At night he stayed in. Baugh told a magazine author, "It didn't brand sense to be showboating all over Hollywood and spending a lot of coin for a steak when I could take that coin dorsum to Texas and buy a whole cow."

And that'south what he did. In fact, he bought an entire ranch 250 miles west of Dallas. He was starting to go a real cowboy.

'We Don't Give A F--- What You lot Practice On Weekends'

Once Earth War II began, Baugh's ranch provided beef for the war effort. That meant he wasn't drafted. He kept playing – and during the 1943 flavour, confronting lower-class competition, he led the NFL in passing, punting and interceptions. (Baugh played safe, also.)

In '44, the draft board told Baugh he had to work at his ranch total time. That was OK with him – he liked the ranch. Merely he asked the typhoon board if he could yet wing to games on weekends.

Baugh says the typhoon board told him, "'Nosotros don't give a f--- what you lot exercise on weekends. If you wanna go somewhere on weekends, go.' I said, 'Well, I'll exist back Monday forenoon.' They said, 'Hell, we don't care. You tin get back Monday afternoon.' "

Sammy Baugh retired in 1952 after 16 seasons in Washington.

Joe Holley wrote of Baugh, "What Babe Ruth'southward home runs did for Major League Baseball during the 1920s, Sam Baugh'due south passing did for the National Football League a decade or then later."

Afterwards retiring, Baugh coached for about a decade. Only a funny affair happened: the guy who'd once complained about the cowboy boots hurting his feet realized he liked ranching better than football.

He started spending all his time raising cattle and roping.

In 1963, he was one of 2 unanimous selections for the Pro Football game Hall of Fame's inaugural class. He'd often get asked to nourish events at the Hall of Fame or in Washington, but he'd decline.

Baugh told Dan Daly he hated wearing suits.

"It merely irks the hell out of me to have get anywhere where I take to put a tie and adapt on," Baugh said.

And subsequently all those trips from Texas to D.C. he particularly hated flight.

So if anyone wanted to meet Sammy Baugh, the quarterback who'd inverse football, they'd have to go to him.

And that's why Dan Daly prepare out on that journey to the Big Empty 22 years agone to hear Sammy Baugh tell stories.

Somewhen, Daly realized it was time to get — non just because five hours had passed, merely because Baugh had filled his plastic loving cup with tobacco spit.

So Daly started the 250 mile drive back to Dallas.

In 2008, Sammy Baugh died at the age of 94.

'A Pretty Good Cowman'

Baugh'south ranch is still in operation.

His son David is in accuse now. I chosen him up the other day.

"Could you describe what information technology looks like out your window right now?" I asked.

"Well, the wind'due south bravado, and it's well-nigh 35 degrees. It'south kinda common cold," David Baugh told me. "We've been feeding cattle, and the sun is shining brightly. And it'southward a pretty morning."

David said his male parent didn't talk much about his function in developing the forward pass. He was prouder of his ranch.

"Oh, he was a real cowboy," David said. "On his tombstone, it says, 'A pretty good cowman,' and that'southward how he wanted to be remembered."

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Source: https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2017/12/15/sammy-baugh-forward-pass

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