Joe Namath: The Foxes And The Hound

Joe Namath: The Foxes And The Hound

Not before him, nor has there been anybody like him since. A one-of-a-kind bon vivant who has played the game of life as fast and as brazen as he played the game of football. If CBS can be fined $500,000 for showing a little nipple at half-time, imagine how the outspoken Joe Namath would be handled in the constructs of today's NFL. Joe Namath as we knew him then, during the NFL's renaissance years in the 60's, couldn't exist within the boundaries of the business and marketing machine that is the National Football League today. Not a chance. That is what makes this book so compelling. You not only get an uncut and voyeuristic view of Namath's copious escapades as a person and player but it takes you back to an era that is forever compartmentalized by history, never to return again in the wake of the big-business, more politically correct NFL we now have.

(book excerpt)...As garish dusk gave way to another moist night, the old sportswriter had to be wondering: What was it like to be a prince of this new city? What was it like to be Broadway Joe of Second Avenue?

Booze and broads were similar opiates, administered differently. They eased the pain. They eased the nerves. Where there had been an arthritic vise or a knot in the gut, they left a spray of endorphins. Booze and broads were to be taken liberally and casually, for medication and recreation. "I drink for the same reason I keep company with girls,'' Namath once said. "It makes me feel good. It takes away the tension." Tad Dowd, who didn't drink, came up with a name for Namath's girls: "tension easers."

"I'm not going to let having a good time affect my physical status," he said. "The way some people put it, they got me an alcoholic."

...a man who thought nothing of ordering beer for breakfast, just to get his bearings after a rough night. "A Miller, right away, no coffee," recalls Spiros Dellartas, a waiter at the Green Kitchen who became a friend.

"I'm no hypocrite," said Namath. "I don't hide anything."

"I was a healthy young American boy,"

"All the girls wanted to get laid by Joe. Everybody got leftovers." Being around Joe meant your cup runneth over with yum-yum. he said.

"I was taught that sex is a mortal sin," says David Kennedy, for whom confession was a weekly event...Namath, for his part, suffered no such guilt. He said a prayer of thanks most nights, but would not ask to be forgiven for fornication. "So I stopped going to church," he said. "I wasn't going to go to confession and lie." - Namath: A Biography

Pre-emptive answer to a question we know some of you are going to email to us:

Question: Is Footblog going 'Opera's Book Club' on us?
Answer: No. But if we read, hear about, or get an advanced release of a good book we think our readers are interested in, we'll post about it. Not every day, but maybe once a week. If you have to, think of us as the Opera's Book Club: For People Who Drink Beer, Fart And Watch Lots Of Football

For Joe Namath, New York's nightlife was a man's world [MercuryNews.com] Photo: [Viking Penguin a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.]

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