I was surprised to learn in his obit that the late Trippi remained a [football] Cardinals assistant coach even well into the franchise's St. Louis relocation, through the 1965 season.

That means Trippi was all but certainly on the sidelines backing up head coach Charley Winner when the Cardinals hosted the Browns played their final regular season game at [old] Busch Stadium aka Sportman's Park on Sunday, December 19, 1965, defeating the Big Red 27-24 --and which just happens to have been the first NFL game I attended in person.

I didn't know then who that Number 32 out there for the Browns was, but my dad sitting to my left (seats pretty close to the field, on the 3rd-base [westerm] sideline), explained to me that he was their star--and two weeks later, sure enough he led them in their NFL Championship loss to the Packers at Lambeau.

Though I didn't know who Brown was, by his very overpowering might he stuck out amongst the Browns players like Lincoln in his stovepipe hat would stand out in a POTUS lineup. But not because of Brown's
distinctive high-top cleats or even scoring a lot that afternoon, but rather due to the manner in which he had buffaloed his way through the Cardinals defensive line. On one play heading toward the north end zone at about the Cardinal 35 yard line, his high-tops high-stepping up and over a pile of four and maybe five linemen entangled under him.

But even that isn't my clearest memory of that seriously-overcast Sunday on the tough north side of St. Louis. What I've never seen since was anyone who walked back so achingly to the huddle after a punishing tackle, evan looking like he might have to be sidelined for exhaustion, his trudge back to the huddle was so strained. But instead of taking a breather, he came back on the very next play and seemed just as powerful and swift a force when punching another hole in the Big Red line, albeit without repeating his mountain-of-men climbing expedition.

Then, better than two decades later out in Hollywood, I was startled to see Brown pull up in front of The Laugh Factory one Tuesday night in 1988 while on a break from my open-mike-night MC duties there. Brown was alone in a light-brown business suit, emerging from a chocolate-brown Bentley convertible with the top down; guess I shouldn't have been surprised that brown is a fave color for Browns legend Brown.

After admiring his wheels from the sidewalk in front of Greenblatt's Deli (next door to The Factory to the west), I then introduced myself and made small talk with the big man. He was clearly delighted at how thrilled I was to have witnessed him play in the first game I attended (which was also his last regular season game ever, as he soon shocked the League by retiring (after only nine seasons) following the championship game loss, in order to try his hand at acting in the movies).

Brown is arguably the greatest back in NFL history--though I would contend that distinction belongs to the late Walter Payton* on the basis of his versitility. And the Chicago Bears hero completed many, many passes, hurled them on half-back option plays. (Oh, as it turned out, Brown is far from the inept actor that former star jocks usually prove to be onscreen.)

But the takeaway from the encounter was that Brown not only remembered my specific regular-season, inconsequential game 23 years later, but in detail, describing three or four plays he recalled from that day, none of which, alas, stuck in my memory. And journalist error: I forgot to inquire if also he remembered that human-climbing run; meanwhile, I didn't have the heart to tell Brown how strugglingly he appeared to walk---like bad-hip limping, actually--back to his huddling teammates on that day.

As for Trippi himself, it's just as well I didn't notice the star-player-turned-coach on the Cardinals sideline that wonderful Sunday, as I'd never seen him play back in the '50s; virtually no TV coverage back then, and after all, I wasn't born until 1954, long after Trippi's heyday. But I sure knew Trippi's NAME, simply because of the surname's' unusual nature AND as his career was so frequently cited for this or that by Cardinal broadcasters during their St. Louis era.

As it happened, that same 1965 Browns-at-Cards game was ALSO a once-in-a-career contest for the late Larry Wilson in his Number 8 red jersey. The Hall of Famer safety made THREE interceptions of Frank Ryan** passes that day, making Ryan''s #13 Browns jersey indeed unlucky that afternoon.

I normally don't rely on stats when evaluating ANY athlete; instead, I always imagine how they played over time--as opposed to aping those jock-mentality hosts on all-sports radio who routinely and ever-mindlessly declare that some guy with, say, 1550 total yards in a given season is ipso facto better than some other player with only 1400--someone who may indeed be a far superior player, but just not one as successful.

But when you look at Charley Trippi's stats, he clearly was the most accomplished Cardinal ever, with the defensive star Wilson*** ranking a distant second. Wilson was a small man by NFL standards yet so tough he once played a game with BOTH broken hands in casts, and still that day somehow managed to hold onto an interception--sadly only reached 82, expiring in suburban Phoenix on Thursday, September 17, 2020.

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
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* Whose Bears-organized memorial service at Soldier Field I proudly attended on Saturday, November 6, 1999.
** Ryan is now retired in Vermont'; quite notably while at Rice University, Ryan was one of the few NFL players ever to major in advanced mathematics in college--and perhaps the only pro jock yet to earn a Ph.D. in that arcane-but-fascinating realm. (And I was delighted to read that Ryan has worked with distribution of primes, a positively mesmerizing nook of so-called number theory, something which also happens to be the basis of much if not most encryption software.)
*** Whom I'd met after his address to a thousand fellow 8th Graders in 1968....and whose future step-son, by utter happenstance, I ended up sharing an Albuquerque condo with during the first two years of this century.