1963 AMERICAN FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION RECAP
IT'S BEEN A LONG TIME COMING FOR RAMBLERS
St Louis Joined AFA in 1933, 30 Years Little Win 1st League Title
The city of St Louis and Pioneer Field in particular has had its share of celebrations in recent years but never one after the arrival of winter. The baseball Pioneers have become a Federal Association power, winning the last two World Championship Series. The football Ramblers, on the other hand, have been an afterthought for decades, taking 24 years to make the playoffs for the first time and not winning a playoff game until this season. The 30-year-old franchise won not one, but two playoff games in 1963 and joined the baseball Pioneers as the class of their sport.
The Ramblers have not been an easy team to be a fan of. Born in 1933 they did not have winning season until 1949 and that year was one of bitter disappointment despite a franchise best 8-3-1 record. You see, the Ramblers started the '49 campaign with eight straight victories and fans were certain this would be the year they finally win a division title. Instead, the Ramblers '49 campaign was marred by a colossal collapse as the team went 0-3-1 in their final four games and finished a half game back of the Chicago Wildcats. A year later it was another 8-3-1 season, but the Ramblers were forced to settle for second place once again as it was the year that the Continental Football Conference folded and the Pat Chappell led Kansas City Cowboys moved to the AFA. Of course, the new rivals from across the state were the ones to nose out the Ramblers from their first trip to the postseason.
In 1951 the AFA added a semi-final to their playoff structure but it would be 1954 before the Ramblers were able to take advantage of that change. A 7-5 finish in '54 earned them second place but they were blanked 15-0 by another former CFC club - the San Francisco Wings. The next playoff opportunity came in 1957 but once more the first place Wings were too much for the Ramblers in the semi-finals. A year ago the Ramblers won a franchise record 9 games but it was not good enough as they were forced to settle for third place in the West Division and once again missed the playoffs. But everything changed in 1963.
*** Tight Battles in Both Divisions for '63 Playoff Berths ***
The 1963 season proved to be a dogfight with ties for playoff berths in both divisions. The Detroit Maroons, St Louis Ramblers and Houston Drillers duked it out all season for supremacy in the West. The Maroons had some struggles with a 3-game losing skid in the middle of the season but got untracked and finished with 7 wins in their final eight games including a season ending 44-17 triumph at Thompson Field over the Ramblers. That gave Detroit top spot and homefield for the West playoff with a 10-4 record.
The Ramblers loss to Detroit was their second to the Maroons in four weeks and they limped home with four losses in their final six games but still managed to tie the Houston Drillers for second place at 8-6 after the Drillers dropped three of their final four outings. St. Louis and Houston had split their two regular season matchups and had identical 7-5 records within the division but the Ramblers earned the playoff spot on the next tiebreaker. It was a disappointing result for a team that has really set the standard for expansion squads. The Drillers, coached by Eustis Warren and led by All-Star halfback Phil Patton and Chicago castoff Miller Bogert at quarterback, have made a quick transition from league punching bag to powerhouse. The third year club went 3-11 in its expansion year of 1961 but followed that up with a 10-4 season a year ago that saw them reach the AFA championship game. 8-6 this time around is a bit of a step back but hard to argue with a team that becomes a playoff contender that quickly.
There was not a lot to cheer about in the rest of the West Division. The Chicago Wildcats went from an 11-3 season a year ago to a dreadful 6-8 campaign. Quarterback Chip Fitch, a 1961 first round pick out of Pittsburgh State that became the reason Bogert was allowed to leave for Houston, has been decent in his three seasons under legendary coach Carl Boon and joined Los Angeles Tigers' Morton Swenson as the only signal callers to throw for over 2,000 yards this season but the Wildcats defense was the worst in the league in total yardage and points surrendered. Los Angeles liked what they saw from Swenson as the 25-year-old who was drafted in the sixth round out of Henry Hudson in 1959 finally got a chance to start. Like the Wildcats, the Achilles heel for the Tigers was their defense which rivalled that of Chicago for ineptitude. The San Francisco Wings and Kansas City Cowboys - the two surviving members from the old Continental Football Conference- both finished in the cellar at 4-10 and each has its work cut out for it if a turnaround is to be quick.
*** East Division Ends in 3-Way Tie ***
The East Division ended in a three-way deadlock for the two playoff spots as the New York Stars, Boston Americans and Cleveland Finches all finished with identical 9-5 records after each won on the final weekend. The Stars had the best defense in the division and a healthy Orlin Youngs at quarterback - Youngs was the 1961 AFA MVP and led the Stars to back to back league titles before missing much of the 1962 season. New York also had an 8-4 record in the division, one game better than both the Yanks and the Finches, which gave the Stars first place and homefield advantage for the East playoff game. Like in the West it went to the third tiebreaker to determine second place with the Americans, who had split with the Finches during the regular season and both went 7-5 in division, getting the nod.
Boston was looking to defend the title it won a year ago with a 27-20 victory over the surprising Houston Drillers in the championship game. It was the first AFA title for the Americans since beating Detroit in 1945. The Americans had perhaps the most feared offense in the league led by a pair of halfbacks in Kevin Sova and Bob Callender. Sova was the 1961 league MVP and the 28-year-old rushed for 1,421 yards while Callender, the 11-year veteran out of St. Blane, chipped in with a career best 1,355 of his own. Add in a dependable young quarterback in third year pro Bob McKoon, who plied his trade at Cumberland before turning pro, and the Americans are a team to reckon with. Cleveland had a former Cumberland star of its on in 4th year halfback Rebel Johnstone, who led the AFA in rushing with 1,508 yards and made his second straight trip to the All-Star game.
Washington bounced back from a down season a year ago when the Wasps struggled to a 4-10 record but their 7-6-1 showing was not quite good enough this time around. Two losses to Pittsburgh and one to Philadelphia in the final four weeks sealed the Wasps fate. Pittsburgh's struggles continued as the Paladins missed the playoffs for the 11th consecutive season after finishing 7-7. Four straight losses to finish the season doomed the Buffalo Red Jackets to sixth place but their 5-8-1 record was a small step forward for the third year franchise which must contend with very unfavorable comparisons to expansion partner Houston. Bringing up the rear was the Philadelphia Frigates, who failed to win as many as seven games for the third consecutive season.
PLAYOFFS
The playoffs, at least on paper, looked to greatly favour the two home teams. The New York Stars had beaten the second place Boston Americans twice already this season, winning 17-13 on the road four weeks earlier after claiming an easy 31-10 victory over the Yanks early in the season. Meanwhile the Detroit Maroons had much more recent success against the St Louis Ramblers. The Maroons won 44-17 a week ago on the same field where the semi-final would be contested following a 16-0 shutout victory in St Louis earlier in the season. The Ramblers also had never won a playoff game entering the contest, despite the fact the franchise can trace its history all the way back to 1932.
Detroit had a monkey of its own to contend with. The Maroons had not won a playoff game since beating Pittsburgh in the 1936 title game. Unlike the Ramblers, who only had two previous playoff games under their belt, Detroit had been to the postseason many times since that win over the Paladins nearly three decades ago. The problem is the Maroons lost every time, seven straight playoff defeats and two of the last three defeats had come at Thompson Field. Someone had to finally get a playoff win and it was not the hometown Maroons, who were badly outplayed and fell 38-21 to the Ramblers, giving St. Louis its first-ever playoff win. Dean Turgeon ran for a pair of touchdowns and 67 yards while Pete Hylton added another 98 and a major to the St Louis ground attack.
Meanwhile, the Americans followed up their league title from a year ago with another trip to the championship game as Boston, behind a pair of Kevin Sova scoring runs built a 21-3 lead and held on to beat the New York Stars 24-10. Boston and St Louis did not meet this season prior to the title game; in fact they have only played five times in the last 12 years with the Americans winning four of the five meetings.
On this day in a meeting between two strong running games, neither disappointed but the surprise was the display put on by journeyman quarterback Brian Boss. A first round pick out of CCLA in 1955, Boss started 9 games as a rookie but did not start again until he was called on early in this season to replace the injured Jim Driver. Driver had been the Ramblers number one quarterback the previous five years and was a two-time all-star but first a back injury and later wrist problems derailed his season. He had a decent outing against Detroit, but the Ramblers had focused heavily on their running game. That running game had success against Detroit and again against Boston as Turgeon rushed for 114 yards and a touchdown on 15 carries and Hylton also counted a scoring run as part of his 21 carries for 75 yards but with the Americans focused on stopping the run, Boss had his best game as a pro since his rookie season. The veteran backup threw for 193 yards, completing 9 of his 18 heaves with the highlight being a second quarter 32 yard toss to William Robertson that put the Ramblers ahead 14-0. They went into the break blanking the defending champs 17-0 and only a pair of late Boston touchdowns made the score a respectable one, with St Louis winning its first title by a 24-17 margin.
KING REGAINS MIDDLEWEIGHT BELT
It was a fairly quiet autumn to close out the boxing scene for 1963 but we did see a title change hands. That would be the middleweight crown as Lyman King returned to the ring after a nine month absence and regained the title he lost to George Quisenberry back in February. Quisenberry, the Canadian who has held the belt on three different occasions over the past four years, had a very short stint at the top of his weight class this time around. The 28-year-old scored an unanimous decision over King at New York's Bigsby Garden in February, besting the Oakland-born fighter for the first time in three meetings between the pair (King won once by knockout and the other battle was a majority draw). However, in his first defense Quisenberry was knocked out in the first round by Marc Maisonneuve in a surprising upset that made the Frenchman the third man from his country to own the middleweight title, following in the footsteps of Edouard Desmarais and Yohan Revel.
Like Revel, Maisonneuve's stay at the top was short-lived as the 36-year-old suffered a TKO loss to King in November. It was, as previously mentioned, King's first fight after the Quisenberry title loss, a bout which resulted in a broken hand that sidelined the Oakland, Ca., battler for much of the year. He looked back in peak form as he regained the title that he had held for most of 1962 but to be fair Maisonneuve was not a great test and many were left shaking their heads at how the Frenchman could have possibly defeated Quisenberry just four months earlier.
So with King back on top in the middleweight division that meant that two of three men who held titles at the start of 1963 reigned supreme as the year came to a close. Matt Leach made three successful defenses of his welterweight crown during 1963.
The lone change came in the heavyweight division as former champ Steve Leivers, now 34 years of age, knocked out George Galleshaw in May to claim the title. Leivers returned with the belt to his native in England and made a successful defense in early November, knocking out Auguste Vignal in the fifth round to run his career record to 53-3-1.
ST LOUIS IS NOT UNIQUE IN HOLDING TITLES IN TWO SPORTS
Two champions at one time may be uncharted territory for the city of St. Louis but it has been a fairly common occurrence elsewhere over the past couple of decades. Just a year ago the Boston Americans were crowned champions of the American Football Association and five months later the city's hoops outfit -the Boston Centurions- won their first Federal Basketball League crown. Boston also enjoyed a double a couple of years earlier when the baseball Minutemen who back to back World Championship Series in 1959 and 1960 sandwiched around a Boston Bees Challenge Cup win.
The city of Detroit had similar experiences in 1958 when the Dynamos and Motors both were crowned champions, a repeat of the same feat accomplished by that duo in 1954. It was quite a decade for the Motor City as the baseball Dynamos won 4 World Championship Series and six Federal Association flags. During that time the ice Motors claimed three Challenge Cups and even Rollie Barrell's basketball squad got in on the act as the cage Mustangs were a precursor to the Dynamos first WCS six months later by winning their first basketball loop title in the spring of 1952.
The 1940s also gave us multiple titles within a year for both New York and Chicago. Windy City sports fans enjoyed a Chiefs WCS win in October of 1949 and three months later could celebrate a Chicago Wildcats grid crown. Same for the Big Apple in 1946 when the Stars shined brightly as the baseball version won the World Championship Series a couple of months before the football Stars claimed the AFA title for the second time in franchise history.
But right now it is St. Louis' time to shine. Here is an image of the champions in each sport, pro and college, since 1946. Next up we turn the calendar to 1964 and check in on the winter sports completing their 63-64 campaigns.