Bruce Adams: The last Eagles' NFL championship was 1960, and you were at the title game on Monday, Dec. 26 - what do you remember about it?

Ray Didinger: I remember everything about it. It's funny when you look at film of the game and you see the snow around the field, it looks like it was a bitterly cold day, but in fact, it wasn't.
The sun was out, and it was beautiful - the temperature was [around] 40. My parents and I were sitting in Section EE behind the end zone in Franklin Field - we had been season ticket holders for years.
There was a real finality to the game, because Van Brocklin had already said he was retiring after that season, so there was no sense with that team, "Well, if we lose, we'll wait until next year."
That season had been a magic carpet ride in so many ways [12 out of their 22 starters had been released by other teams] - they caught lightning in a bottle, and won a lot of improbable games, got on a roll and had great momentum.
At the end of the game, the Packers were driving toward the end zone on our side of the field, so I saw Bednarik's final tackle on Jim Taylor. I was sitting directly behind Bednarik on that last play. The Eagles had the end zone blanketed.
Bart Starr figured his best shot was to lay it off to Taylor, who was wide open. Taylor's a great fullback - you just hope he can break a couple of tackles and get it in there, and nearly did. If he breaks the Bednarik tackle, he's in.
You've got this great running back coming with a 10, 15-yard head of steam, and standing in his path is No. 60, and this is it - the whole game is going to be decided right here.
The game wasn't televised in Philadelphia - it was blacked out, and they taped it and replayed the game that night at 11 p.m. on the local stations.
They put temporary stands in for the game - six or seven rows of bleachers on the track in front of the brick wall [attendance for the game was 67,325, Franklin Field's capacity was 60,671].

BA: A lot of people knew that the 1960 team would get together at O'Donoghue's [a local tavern] the Monday after each game, but your book mentions that not everyone came. The black players were not particularly welcome there, Chuck Bednarik didn't go, and Pete Retzlaff, a non-drinker, didn't go. Over the years, have you learned anything new and surprising about this team?

RD: What surprised me a little bit when I talked to the [1960 team players] over the years was the internal dynamic of the team. There were only three black players on the team [Ted Dean, Clarence Peaks, Timmy Brown], and even though everyone's recollection was this team had great chemistry and they talked about how they all felt like family, that Dean and Peaks and Brown didn't really feel like they were part of the whole.
There really weren't many black players in the NFL in the 1960s. It wasn't that the white players made them feel uncomfortable, it wasn't that they were treated badly. I don't think the white players even realized it. But, I think Ted and Timmy and Clarence talked about that.
The life of the players on that team was so different from what we associate with professional football players today. They were living like real working-class people.
Ted Dean, who scored the winning touchdown in the championship game, still lived with his parents out in Radnor. Timmy Brown lived with a family in West Philadelphia for $15 a week. Between the two of them, they only had one car. Ted would leave his parents' house in Radnor, and pick Timmy up on the way to practice.
The day after the NFL championship game, Tom Brookshier went into one of the department stores opposite City Hall and they had the 'Eagles win NFL Championship' glasses for sale. Tom said he walked up to the guy behind the counter to buy a set, and the guy said, "Oh hi, nice game, Tom," and Tom said, "Thanks," bought the glasses and just walked out. In 1960, there was no big parade after the championship game, it was just, "Nice game, Tom."

BA: Ted Dean, a Radnor High School graduate, was a key player on that 1960 team, but was injured several times in the next few years and retired in the mid-1960s. Even though he taught school on the Main Line for many years after that, he kept a pretty low profile in the Philadelphia area. Why is that?

RD: A few times when I did retrospectives on the 1960 team, I went to Ted's house and interviewed him a couple of times. He never said, "no" but it wasn't something he welcomed, either. He was a real gentleman so it wasn't like he would say, "I'm not going to talk to you," but it was clear that there was some pain there. His football career wasn't something he particularly wanted to relive.
This is just my take on it, but I think there was some pain about the way his career ended - the way he started his career, so many people though that he was going to have this great, great career, he scores the winning touchdown as a rookie in the 1960 championship game, and people were saying he was going to become one of the all-time greats - George Halas said he was going to become the best ever - I think there was this sense of tremendous possibilities, and that after that first year, it never came close to living up to that.
In 1961, he got hurt, in 1962 he got hurt again, then they traded him to the Vikings and he was in that car accident that ended his career. So I think when Ted thinks of his career, he thinks more of what might have been then what it was. When he would talk about 1960, it was obvious that there was a lot that he felt good about, but talking about the seasons that followed, you could see in his voice and his eyes there was some real pain and regret over the way his career ended.

BA: Your book talks about the quarterback of that team, Norm Van Brocklin, who was a complex personality. Can you describe him a little?

RD: Norm Van Brocklin was like two people, and everyone who knew him said that. He had this one side of him that was ferociously competitive, intolerant of mistakes, demanding in the extreme, someone who was driven to win at all costs, blunt, coarse, profane. And yet, there was the other side of him that was incredibly warm and compassionate and caring.
It's funny, some of the players' wives couldn't understand when their husbands would come home angry and say, "I hate that S.O.B." And the wife would say, "Oh, he's the nicest person."
One time, Norm was over at [Eagles announcer] Bill Campbell's house, and Bill's daughter said, "I'd love to get a puppy," and Van Brocklin offhandedly said, "When's your birthday?" On the day of her birthday, six months later, the doorbell rings and there's Van Brocklin at the door, holding a puppy with a bow around its neck. Near the end of his life, he and his wife adopted three kids whose parents were killed in an auto accident.
A lot of really average players [on that 1960 team] raised their level of play because they knew how much Van Brocklin wanted this championship, and they didn't want to be the guy who let him down.

BA: Another player from that 1960 team, Tom Brookshier, had his number retired (No. 40) although he was not considered a superstar player. Why was his number retired?

RD: I think the Eagles retired Tom Brookshier's number because of what he meant to the team more than anything else. He wasn't the fastest guy in the world, but he was mean and tough and he played hard every time out. I think the way Tom's career ended was pretty dramatic and sad - the broken leg against the Bears in 1961 - if you look at what happened to that [1961] team after he got injured, that was sort of the end of them."

BA: Your book states that President John F. Kennedy's family was interested in buying the Eagles in late 1962, but that the Cuban Missile Crisis put the plan to buy the Eagles on hold. The crisis lasted only a few weeks, so why didn't the Kennedy family pick up their inquiry after the crisis was over?

RD: I guess it was one of those impulsive decisions - it was like, "Hey, why don't we do this," and then when the Cuban Missile Crisis comes in, the meeting [between the Kennedys and the Eagles remaining owners] was cancelled, everything stops for two or three weeks, then when it's over, they have so much on their plate they said, "Buying a football team, we'll worry about that later."

BA: You had mentioned that there's a lot of interest among teenagers in the 1948-49 Eagles section of the book. Why do you think that is?

RD: I think there are a lot of young Eagles fans who had a sense that the Eagles have never really won anything - when the History of the Eagles DVD came out [last year], they saw the footage about the Eagles of 1948-49, and said, "Gee, the Eagles were that good at one time?" The fact that the 1948-49 Eagles were one of the greatest NFL teams of all time comes as a bit of a surprise to them.
I always felt that 1948-49 team was a mirror of America at that time - about half the guys on the team had come back from World War II, and to hear the stories of these guys, to have been away from home and to have seen the awful things they've seen for three or four years, wondering if they were ever going to come back - and then to come back and be able to resume playing football - just the joy they felt to be able to do that was tremendous.
While every player can appreciate winning a championship, I think it was greater for these guys, to come back from fighting in the Battle of the Bulge to win an NFL championship, makes it a unique emotional experience - and when these guys talked about it, you could really feel it. That whole 'Greatest Generation' feeling that existed in the country was reflected in that team.
Their coach, Greasy Neale, understood that these guys were mature beyond their years and deserved a certain kind of respect, based on what they had been through. So he didn't nitpick them, he didn't browbeat them, he didn't have a lot of petty rules like bed checks and curfews. His feeling was, "These guys who spent four years in a foxhole don't need me to tell them what time to go to bed."

BA: Your book talks about how, after being away from the Eagles for a few years, Chuck Bednarik was brought back into the fold by Dick Vermeil as an associate coach. Yet Bednarik left after Vermeil resigned - why?

RD: Dick Vermeil and Chuck Bednarik had a really close relationship because Dick had reached out and brought Chuck back into the fold as an associate coach - Chuck had not been with the team for a few years. Dick said to him, "Look, you're a symbol of what this team was and what we feel it can be again."
Bill Bergey used to say, "Coming out of the tunnel for a game, you just felt good knowing that Chuck Bednarik was there with you."
I think Chuck came back [to the Eagles] because of Dick, and then, at the end, when he knew Dick wasn't going to be there any more, he figured, "There's really no reason to stay on."

BA: What NFL coach does Andy Reid remind you of?

RD: Probably Mike Holmgren. I think they're similar personality-wise and philosophically. When we ask Andy who has influenced his coaching style, the first two people he mentions are Holmgren and his college coach, LaVelle Edwards at BYU. And he says, "If I copy anybody [for coaching in the NFL], I copy Mike, because I can't imagine anybody doing the job any better."

BA: What NFL quarterback does Donovan McNabb remind you of?

RD: John Elway. Originally, Andy had coached Brett Favre and saw McNabb as Favre, but I think Donovan's much more Elway-like. I felt this way more a couple of years ago, when McNabb was running more - a big, strong, physical guy who was capable of shaking people off, getting outside the pocket, run the ball and make big plays, with the great arm - and a guy who was not a pinpoint passer. Elway skipped a lot of balls in the dirt, threw a lot of balls over guy's heads. But he made the throws he had to make, and he won games.

BA: You said that [former Eagle receiver] Tommy McDonald "made me a fan." Why?

RD: The first year I started going to every Eagle game was 1957, and that was McDonald's first year. As an 11-year-old, you identify with the smallest guy on the field, and watching him play, you'd see the high energy, wearing short sleeves in the cold weather, no face mask, getting hit by the big guys and bouncing right back up and flipping the ball [to the referee] - as a kid, you'd project, and say, "That's how I'd play."
[Former All-Pro defensive back] Johnny Sample, who was one of the first trash-talkers, said Tommy McDonald was the only guy he couldn't intimidate - that you could talk to him all day long, you could hit him late, you could hit him dirty, you could do whatever you wanted to, but he was just going to keep coming at you - he was so mentally tough and competitive.
To think that, years later, Tommy and I would become friends, and that he would ask me to be his presenter at the [NFL] Hall of Fame was one of the biggest thrills of my life. Here I am on the steps of the Hall of Fame delivering the speech to the guy who was my boyhood idol.

BA: If you could sum up an image of the Eagles over the years in one phrase, what would it be?

RD: Blue-collar toughness. I think in a lot of ways, the team has reflected the city.

BA: Who do you think was the toughest Eagle?

RD: I would have to say Bednarik. To do what he did in 1960 at the age of 35, to play as brilliantly as he did both ways. The Bednarik story is one of the few stories in sports where the reality of what he accomplished is greater than the legend that now surrounds him.
A lot of people remember the hit on Frank Gifford in 1960 that wrapped up their 17-10 win, but what people never talk about in that game is that five minutes before that hit, it's a 10-10 game and Chuck punches the ball out of [Giant running back] Mel Triplett's arm, and Jimmy Carr goes in to score the winning touchdown.
And then you get to the championship game against the Packers, he's the oldest guy on the field, has played the entire game on both sides, and it comes down to the last play of the game and he tackles Hall of Fame fullback Jim Taylor on the eight yard-line.

BA: In your research, did you learn anything new about Ron Jaworski?

RD: I've known Jaws for a lot of years, so I didn't learn anything new, but working with Ron at NFL Films, I see the real key to his success was his incredible work ethic. He comes in and looks at film for hours and hours and hours with his clicker. A lot of ex-players go on TV as analysts and just sort of throw stuff out there.
He got abused and battered by the fans probably as bad as any athlete in this town, and he never ripped the fans. And when the team began to go downhill in the 1980s, and he was getting beaten to death on Sundays, he never pointed a finger at a teammate.

BA: In your research, did you learn anything new about [former Eagles GM and Main Line resident] Jim Murray?

RD: Jim Murray is a special person with a wonderful, huge heart. He didn't just live in a world that was 100 yards long, he saw the bigger picture.
He understood that the team, especially this team, had to be a part of the community - people in this town hold this team dear and want to feel like it's part of their family. Jim, being a guy from a West Philadelphia rowhouse, understood that perfectly.
There was no more open door in the NFL than the door to Jim Murray's office at Veterans Stadium - he made the Eagles of the 1970s the most socially aware, heart-on-the-sleeve organization that I've ever seen in professional sports.

BA: In your research for your book, did you learn anything new about former Eagles owner Leonard Tose?

RD: I don't think I learned anything knew about Leonard, but in the course of my writing I guess I did a lot of re-thinking about what I already knew about Leonard.
In writing his profile, I guess I took a step back and viewed him as a total entity and put him in context for the first time, so I didn't just focus on his gambling losses and how he almost lost the team. There was a part of him that was very charitable and tremendously generous. He really wanted to help people.