Craig Morton

Craig Morton spent a decade sometimes playing quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys stuck, as he was, between the careers of Texas folk hero Don Meredith and national legend Roger Staubach.

In 1974, the New York Giants traded a 1975 first choice and a 1976 second choice for Morton, hoping his rocket launcher arm and Cowboy background could right a Giants ship that was listing at 1-5 and about to go under.

Craig Morton: Bad team, ugly helmet logo

For a moment, it looked like a brilliant move. In his first full week as a Giant, Morton led the team to an upset win over the Kansas City Chiefs, a glimmer of daylight in a gloomy year that saw the Giants lose the rest of their games that season.

But with a roster of guys either on the wrong side of 30 or rookies, the Giants’ issues went further than quarterback, compounded by three years spent wandering the wilderness with home games played at the Yale Bowl in New Haven and at Shea Stadium while Yankee Stadium was under renovation and Giants Stadium was under construction.

Over the next two years the Giants finished 8-25 with Morton. He was traded to Denver and took them to Super Bowl. The Cowboys used the first-round choice from the Giants to select defensive tackle Randy White, who’d end up in the Hall of Fame.

The Giants only dug themselves an even deeper hole, turning to Paterson Plank Joe Pisarcik at quarterback.

“We needed Morton, we had to have a competent quarterback. Maybe we paid too much for him. We probably did. But there was no choice, not really, and I’d do it again,” Giants general manager Andy Robustelli said later. “I think Morton was the right guy but on the wrong team.

“Craig often needed a kick in the ass to get his attention and let him know he couldn’t call his own tune. Instead of being the positive influence I had sought, the opposite occurred. I take nothing away from Craig’s football abilities, but he was not the kind of leader we sought.”

Craig Morton died earlier this month, age 83. His time with the Giants was short but it felt like an eternity at the time, Morton forever running for his life, playing for a team that was forever on the road.

Postscript:

Had they existed back then, the internet, ESPN, sports talk radio and every barroom and office baseball and football fantasy league would have blown up on October 22, 1974.

It was a Tuesday, the NFL’s last call for trading. The Giants followed the Morton deal by sending incumbent quarterback Norm (Losing Pitcher) Snead to San Francisco for two draft choices. The Green Bay Packers in desperation traded five choices, including two first rounders, to Los Angeles for 35-year-old quarterback John Hadl. Kansas City sent John Matuszak to Houston for Curley Culp.

And if all that wasn’t enough, in a mind-blowing deal, the New York Yankees and San Francisco Giants announced they had swapped Bobby Murcer “the next Mickey Mantle,” for Bobby Bonds, “the next Willie Mays.”

Nowadays, trades are rare and if they happen at all they’re based on data or salary cap implications. In 1974 it was all driven by gut instincts and angry team owners.

Ted Turner

Ted Turner died on May 6 at the age of 87.

Major league baseball owners today seem like a mostly faceless, bloodless lot, incorporated and data driven. There was a time, however, when an MLB owner meeting resembled field day at Arkham Asylum, a miserable crew including bullies (George Steinbrenner, Yankees), racists both obvious (Clark Griffith, Twins, and Marge Schott, Reds), and closeted (Tom Yawkey, Red Sox), the mercurial nouveau riche (Charlie Finley, A’s) and clueless traditionalists (Philip Wrigley, Cubs).

In 1976 they made room for Turner, who’d purchased the Atlanta Braves to a) keep them in Atlanta and b) provide content for his WTBS cable superstation, eventually giving them a nationwide audience and allowing them to be marketed as “The Atlanta Braves: America’s Team.”

Turner may at first have come off like a vulgar frat boy; sportswriters were quick to name him “The Mouth of the South,” but he brought a sense of humor and clever marketing. Braves players had their nicknames stitched on the backs of their uniforms. All except pitcher Andy Messersmith, who agreed to have the word CHANNEL over his number 17, a walking promotion for Turner’s UHF station on channel 17. The commissioner’s office put a quick end to that. In 1977, he took over as temporary manager of the Braves, complete with tobacco chaw, for one game (they were on an epic 16-game losing streak). The commissioner ended that move just as quickly.

Media magnate as manager

But even if you weren’t a fan of the Braves or baseball it was hard not to like Turner. He built a media empire that included for better or for worse CNN (thus creating the 24/7 news cycle we can no longer escape), WTBS (with its Saturday and Sunday afternoon marathons of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and The Wild, Wild West), the Cartoon Network (reviving the old Hanna Barbera cartoons) and, best of all, Turner Classic Movies.

He was also an ex-Republican who saw the light and went blue, publicly feuded with Rupert Murdoch, challenged the World Wrestling Federation (owned by Trump suck-ups the McMahons) with a rival league World Championship Wrestling, married Jane Fonda, championed healthcare reform, nature conservation and alternative energy resources.

Wait, you mean there was a time when you could actually admire a billionaire?