I just found out–belatedly–that one of my childhood heroes, Jack Tatum, died of a heart attack a few days ago. When Tatum played for the Oakland Raiders in the 1970s, he was the most intimidating football player of his time–not in a hammed-up telegenic way, but in a disturbing way that made people, including fans of the sport, nervous. Tatum was serious about his violence, and sadistic, and gratuitous–but not a loudmouth. After knocking countless opponents unconscious year after year, Tatum put his most famous hit on wide receiver Darryl Stingley, snapping two of his neck vertebrae and nearly severing his spinal cord. The hit left Stingley paralyzed for life from the neck down, and sealed the NFL’s squeamish loathing of Tatum and the old Oakland Raiders forever.
Tatum never apologized to Stingley for that hit–and why should he have? Instead, Tatum wrote just two years later, “My best hits always bordered on felonious assaults.” To this day, it’s hard to find a video of the Stingley hit–even in the recent ESPN tribute to Tatum, naming him the #6 Most Fearsome NFL Hitter of All-Time, they’re still too unnerved to even mention the notorious Stingley paralyzing:
August 1st, 2010 | Comments (62)
