Retra San Diego uniforms brings back memories
Retro football uniforms, let's face it, help teams sell more merchandise in the team store and on the internet.
Still, the sight of the San Diego Chargers Sunday wearing throwback light blue jerseys and white helmets rekiddled memories for this old timer.
Back in late 1966, I took buses on weekends from Camp Pendleton down to San Diego.
One two occasions, I'd walked to Balboa Stadium, which was part of a municipal recreational complex known as Balboa Park. Seating only 25,000, Balboa was the home of the San Diego Chargers of the American Football League, four years away from merging with the NFL.
The team wore light blue jerseys, gold pants and white helmets with a lightning bolt across the sides. The Chargers were young. They were born as the Los Angeles Chargers in the new AFL in 1960. In L.A., the chargers tried to snare fan support from the more established NFL Los Angeles Rams (who had moved from Cleveland in the 1940s). Small turnout forced the team to move to San Diego in 1961.
The Chargers charged military people only a $1.25 for games. I saw the Chargers versus the Kansas City Chiefs and the New York Jets. New York and Kansas City, the same age as the Chargers, had undergone change, too. Kansas City started in Dallas but moved to Kansas City to get away from the NFL's Dallas Cowboys.
The Jets started as the New York Titans. They became the Jets in 1963 fter an ownership change that moved the team from the old Polo Grounds to Shea Stadium, near the airport were jets constantly took off and landed.
I don't remember the outcomes of the 1966 games, although an internet search says the Chargers beat the Jets 42-27 and lost to the Chiefs 17-27.
I recall the Chargers great end Lance Alworth making a catch in a horizontal position high in the air between two defenders. The quarterback who threw the pass was John Hadl, who went on to many great years in the AFL and NFL, as did Alworth.
Kansas City had a running Mike Garrett, who made several long runs.
The game against the Jets sticks out because I was seated next to a passage leading under the stadium. Two players, a Jet and a Charger, emerged from the passage before the game and stood chit-chatting. One was the Jets' quarterback Joe Namath. I don't remember the Charger player. They talked like old friends, not enemies. It was as if they were about to begin another day at the office.
The start of the unkept hippie era approached in 1966, but for the most part young men still kept their hair short and faces shaved. Namath, the trend setter, deliberately looked dirty and menacing. His hair was long and unwashed. He hadn't shaved in several days. He went against the image of the clean-cut football player of that day.
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Years later, the Chargers changed their uniforms to dark blue jerseys and dark helments. The lightning bolt remained, although it was changed to gold.
The Jets, however, look almost exactly as they did 40 years ago in their green jerseys with a large patch of white below the shoulder and white helmets with an oval logo saying Jets.
By to sticking to uniform tradition, Jets quaterbacks today look on TV like Namath, at least in the huddle and under center. The resemblance ends when they drop back and throw.
They don't get the same results as Broadway Joe, one of the best to ever play the position. Namath's uniform has changed. As approaches old age, his face is clean-shaven, his hair of moderate length.