Jim O'Donnell: 60 years after - Mike Ditka's greatest play and the death of President John F. Kennedy
THE AUTUMN LEAVES are blowing out for Mike Ditka.
It's been more than 30 years since he coached the Bears. Almost twice that since he played for them.
If living legends are a dying breed, Ditka - now 84 - is near the head of that honored herd.
He and wife, Diana, have been battening down the hatches in Florida. They caused a People blip a few weeks ago when they sold their stylish condo in a Near North high-rise. Those Ditka digs had a commanding view of both the lakefront and North Michigan Avenue's Magnificent Mile.
Some took it as a further sign that Da Coach is bidding a final farewell to Chicago.
How will Chicago handle its final farewell to him?
SIXTY YEARS AGO THIS WEEKEND, in the most calamitous hours ever dropped on modern America, he generated one of the greatest plays in the history of the National Football League.
On a stark, surreal Sunday afternoon at Pittsburgh's Forbes Field - Nov. 24, 1963 - Ditka took a short curl from Bill Wade on a third-and-22 deep in Bears territory.
Through forces of will and grief, he hammered through waves of Steelers for a theatrical 63-yard gain that helped save the team's route to the 1963 NFL championship.
(For anyone who has never seen the catch-and-run, immediately bookmark this column and YouTube "Ditka run.")
THE IRON-HELMETED HEROICS enabled the Bears to salvage a 17-17 tie on a day when football was not prominent in the national psyche.
The save would prove critical three weeks later when George Halas and den closed the Western Conference season at 11-1-2. That was one-half game better than Vince Lombardi's dynastic Green Bay (11-2-1).
The only missteps of the Packers were a pair of losses to the Bears and a Thanksgiving Day tie at Detroit.
The Bears ended their December with the tense 14-10 victory over Y.A. Tittle and the New York Giants at Wrigley Field for the title.
Since that frigid day, only Ditka's Super Bowl XX Bears have matched that feat.
BUT THE FLEETING WISP OF GLORY at Forbes Field was vastly overshadowed by America's sudden trauma, events that still haunt and devalue the established order to this day.
On Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a wretchedly unsecured open-car motorcade on the western edge of downtown Dallas.
Sunday - less than two hours before the football game - alleged assassin Lee Oswald was quite suspiciously gunned down in the basement of the Dallas Police Department.
("While being guarded by 75 Dallas policemen," satirist Mort Sahl later observed. "76 if you count Jack Ruby.")
ACCORDING TO DITKA, the Bears learned of the President's shooting while concluding a Friday practice at Wrigley Field.
He and Joe Marconi - a fullback who lived across the street from Ditka in Lombard - heard of the President's death on their car radio while traveling toward their homes.
"Joe pulled the car over on the shoulder and we just looked at each other and cried for a few minutes," Ditka said in a 1998 interview. "I noticed we were not the only car pulled over at that moment. It suddenly was a very strange, somber day."
FEW EXPECTED THE NFL to play its games that Sunday. The upstart American Football League canceled its four. Almost all college football games were postponed.
Pete Rozelle, then in his third year as NFL commissioner, took full blame for the stunning decision. He later called it, "the biggest mistake of my career."
Some deeper historians still doubt that the decision was Rozelle's. Even at age 37, he was already a master consensus builder and a genius at image enhancement.
Silently trumping him higher up the league's cloaked vertical, the historians maintain, were people who were not heartbroken over the death of the President.
SO THE BEARS GAME WENT ON but Chicago didn't see or hear it.
CBS - the primary NFL TV rights holder at the time - joined with NBC and ABC in preempting all regularly scheduled programming until Tuesday morning.
The tie with Pittsburgh remains the last regular-season Bears road game not available on some form of TV in Chicago.
WGN-AM (720), the Bears' local carrier in 1963, elected to focus on the Kennedy aftershock and funeral. Jack Brickhouse, Irv Kupcinet and managing editor Jack Rosenberg stayed home.
THE FIRST WIDESPREAD TV VIEWING of Ditka's amazing run came in the winter of 1966-67, shortly before he was traded to the Eagles. A national television spot for Rise - a brand of shaving cream - featured No. 89 and the mythic curl route-plus from black-and-white game film.
"That's when the legend and lore about the whole thing started," Ditka once said. "But all I was doing was my job. That's all any of us were doing that day. That sad, sad day. Just our job."
Somehow, life in America went on.
And now the autumn leaves are gently blowing out for Mike Ditka.
With a grateful, celebratory final farewell somewhere around the bend.
• Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Thursday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.