by Andrew Hedglin
Once upon a time, I used to be a history teacher. I tried to impress upon my students that when we talked about giants of history–Martin Luther, Napoleon, Isaac Newton, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, etc.–that we were using them as shorthand for even bigger ideas. Genius is fine as far as it goes, but the most important human developments are products of collaboration. Few people will ever be giants, and to endlessly study biography for hints on whatever separates these titans from men–we have dozens of volumes on Winston Churchill alone here at Lemuria–might be missing the point.
What was going to talk about here? Oh, yes. Joe Namath. Joe Willie. Broadway Joe. And, specifically, his new memoir, All the Way: My Life in Four Quarters.
Joe Namath has some of the most baffling statistics of any quarterback elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. For his career, he threw more interceptions than touchdowns. Although he was, for the most part, a very good quarterback, especially by the standards of his era, what makes him a legend?
Joe Namath is shorthand for a bigger idea.
Namath smartly structures the book around a recounting of Super Bowl III, where his upstart AFL New York Jets defeated the powerhouse NFL Baltimore Colts, 16-7, beating no less than legends in Johnny Unitas and Don Shula in the process. The win legitimized the new league, proving that the teams of each league, which had been united in a recent merger, could be on equal footing on any given Sunday.
Joe Namath doesn’t talk about this game because it was his finest moment personally–he didn’t throw a touchdown in the game–but because he knows it is what people want to hear about from him. The actual game had its own heroes–runningback Matt Snell and cornerback Johnny Sample, but Joe Namath remains the enduring image–the guarantee, the index finger pointed skyward as he heads victoriously back into the tunnel.
Namath knows what the reader wants to hear about, but in return, he has his own things that he wants to talk about, including a plethora of adolescent tales set in his hometown of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. He throws in a fair amount of story from his playing days at Alabama under Bear Bryant. He reserves most of his privacy for his post-playing days, although his often dotes on his daughters and explains the drunken incident with Suzy Kolber at a 2003 Jets game.
Overall, Namath seems like a pretty good guy, and his co-writers Sean Mortimer and Don Yaeger help guide the story into a very readable format, even if does (charmingly, for my money) meander all over the place. Seeing a man become a legend is fun, sure, but stripping away the legend to see the humanity underneath is always the most fascinating part to me.
Signed first editions of Joe Namath’s All the Way: My Life in Four Quarters are currently available at Lemuria’s online store.
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