Super Bowl 21 Hero Leonard Marshall Reflects on the Giants’ Disastrous 1987 Season

This Sunday the San Francisco 49ers will meet the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl 58 in Las Vegas This will be the Chiefs’ fourth Super Bowl appearance in five years. But big success one year doesn’t necessarily mean the next year will be just as great.

The New York Giants dominated the NFC in 1986, and they won Super Bowl 21 over the Denver Broncos in January 1987.

But the Giants began the 1987 season 0-5, and finished with a 6-9 record, missing the playoffs for the first time in four years.

A key player for the Giants at that time was defensive lineman Leonard Marshall. He had written a book in the offseason, called The End of the Line. I had the chance to talk with him about the book In early December just two days after the Giants lost an embarrassing game to the Washington Redskins. New York had a 16-0 lead at halftime, and lost.

but Marshall was in a surprisingly pleasant mood that day as we talked. So here now,
from 1987, Leonard Marshall.

Leonard Marshall retired at the end of the 1994 season. He’s 62 now and is involved in various business ventures.


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Willie Mays

It’s September 29th. And on September 29th, 1954, a young baseball player made a name for himself with a defensive play that to this day remains one of the greatest ever.

It was the first game of the 1954 world series, between the New York Giants and the Cleveland Indians. Playing center field for the Giants that day at the Polo Grounds was the young Willie Mays.

In the eighth inning of a tie game, Vic Wertz of the Indians came to the plate. He lofted a Fly ball to deep center field, and maze made a heroic run for it. With his back to home plate, Mays reached up and caught the ball over his shoulder.

The play was so amazing that to this day, it is usually simply referred to as The Catch.

In the years that followed, maze quickly established himself as a superstar, not only for his ability to smash home run after home run, but his speed on the bases, he was so fast, he was actually run out from under his cap. More on that in the interview you’re about to hear…

In 1988 Willie Mays finally wrote his autobiography, and that’s when I had the chance to meet him.

First, a little context. You’ll hear a reference here to Willie Mays being banned from baseball. What? Yes, in 1980, the commissioner banned Willie Mays because he had signed a deal with and Atlantic City casino, to be a greeter and autographed signed her. He was eventually reinstated.

Also, this interview took place at a time when the Baltimore Orioles, under the managerial leadership of Frank Robinson, we’re having a horrible year.

And we did this interview just a few weeks before the historic first ever night game at Chicago’s Wrigley Field.

So here now, from 1988, Willie Mays.

Willie Mays is 90 now. He’s been in the Hall of Fame since 1979.

Joe Theismann

Very few professional athletes are best remembered for the game, or the play, that ended their career. But Joe Theismann maybe one of them.

It was on this date, November 18th, 1985 — 35 years ago — that Joe Theismann sustained a gruesome, career-ending injury before a national TV audience.

It was the second quarter of the Monday night game between the Washington Redskins and the New York Giants, at Washington’s RFK Stadium. Theismann, the Redskin quarterback, called a a “flea flicker” play, and seconds later was tackled by Lawrence Taylor of the Giants.

The impact snapped Theismann’s lower right leg in half.

He never played football again.I met him two years later, after he had written a book about his football career an d the play that ended it..

So here now, from 1987, Joe Theismann:

Joe Theismann is 71 now. You can still see him as an analyst on the NFL Network, and he’s a popular motivational speaker.

Sam Huff

Sam Huff was such a force in the National Football League in the 1950s and ’60s that CBS television produced a special called “The Violent World of Sam Huff.”

One of the first middle linebackers in the NFL, Huff was one of the game’s toughest competitors, first for the New York Giants, later for the Washington Redskins.

Huff played in six NFL Championship Games and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1982.

And for more than 20 years Sam Huff was a color commentator on Redskins radio broadcasts.
.
I met him in 2011, when he wrote a very frank memoir.

So here now, from 2011, Sam Huff.

Sam Huff is 85 now,