JOHN UNITAS glanced at a TV monitor high on a distant wall, like a quarterback spotting a secondary receiver downfield. The guy always had such great peripheral vision. Spread before him were sculptures and trophies and a crowd packed into the Babe Ruth Museum. But Unitas kept looking deep to the monitor, where it showed a grainy black-and-white game film he hadn't seen in half a century.
It was the old Baltimore Colts quarterback in his youth, at St. Justin's High School in Pittsburgh, where Unitas was ducking a linebacker while a coach named Max Carey hollered from the sidelines and kids named Tom Boyle and Rich Keeling tried to throw protective blocks.
He still remembers their names. It's a lifetime since he scrambled out of that tough Pittsburgh adolescence, and 46 years since that famous 65-cent telephone call that brought Unitas to Baltimore. And, quicker than a two-minute drill, three decades have slipped past since Unitas retired from pro football.
Now he was assuring that the traces of his story will remain here -- appropriately, at the Babe Ruth Museum. Early in the last century, it was Ruth more than anyone who made baseball part of the American psyche. At mid-century, it was Unitas more than anyone who made pro football part of that same athletic devotional. Now the museum will contain the primary artifacts of the two greatest sports figures of two of our greatest national passions.
"What are you thinking?" Unitas was asked now by a guy who saw him watching his old high school video.
"Boy, I was slow," Unitas laughed.
"You were never a sentimental type," the guy said. "Does this stuff ... ?
"No, I'm not," Unitas said. "I'm just not that kind of guy."
He will leave sentiment to others. On Tuesday, Unitas donated his personal collection of football memorabilia to the museum, noting, "It belongs to Baltimore." A generation of those who watched Unitas fading into the pocket, who remembered the old "Unitas We Stand" banner at Memorial Stadium and 17 seasons of Sunday afternoons, will feel a collective lump in the throat. But not Unitas.
It was always one of his great strengths. Others felt the emotions of the moment flooding over them, but he kept his cool, did his job, hung tough. When it was over, he was appreciative, but never gushy.
Emotions, he always said, he saved for "kids and animals."
