Chunkin' Charlie: The most humble hero ever
Posted on: December 01,2013
Rick Cleveland
Charlie Conerly, who died 20 years ago, would have turned 95 today.
Permit me to borrow from Mike Lupica, the famous New York sports writer, who wrote about Conerly shortly after his death in 1996.
“Charlie Conerly was the quarterback of the ’50s. Maybe you had to be around for all that. . . . But the reason the Giants still matter the way they do around here is because of Conerly and the glamorous Giant teams on which he played, first at the Polo Grounds, then at Yankee Stadium. They are remembered with the same sort of romance as the Brooklyn Dodgers of the ’50s are remembered. The Giants were the football version of all that.”
The one and only Charlie Conerly.
Charlie Conerly was the most modest hero I ever met or tried to interview. We played a round of golf a couple years before his death. The idea was to mix business and pleasure, for me to interview him while we enjoyed a gorgeous spring afternoon. The golf was fine. The interview was like pulling teeth.
We were on about hole No. 10 when Charlie finally said, “I guess you’ve probably noticed that I am not comfortable talking about myself. Never have been.”
Conerly was a most reluctant hero. I wanted to talk to him about the time, when he was a U.S. Marine. leading a platoon and had his rifle shot out of his hands. His fellow Marines told me he reached down, picked it up and continued on as if he had brushed away a fly. When I asked about it, Charlie shrugged, hesitated and finally said, “I was scared. We all were scared, but we had a job to do. I was lucky. I came back alive.”
I wanted to talk to him about that most famous game in NFL history, the one that put pro football on the map. I write of course of the 1958 NFL Championship Game when he dueled the great Johnny Unitas into overtime. Charlie was voted MVP, then Unitas led the comeback and they revoted. Unitas won the award and the Colts won the championship. The big winner was the NFL, which had captured a nation. Conerly didn’t want to talk much about it, even though he played sensationally in the game.
Conerly was an All American at Ole Miss. He was the NFL Rookie of the Year, an NFL MVP, a three-time All-Pro selection. His jersey number, 42, was retired by the Giants.
But to learn all that you’d have to talk to somebody else about him or read it in the history books. He would have never brought it up himself.
Greatest quote I ever got was from somebody else about Charlie. It was from Barney Poole, the Hall of Fame end, who caught so many of Conerly’s passes. We were standing, graveside, on a raw, windy, Delta afternoon at Charlie’s funeral. And I asked good ol’ Barney about catching all those passes from Chunkin’ Charlie.
Said the great Barney Poole, “Charlie’s passes were so easy to catch. Charlie threw passes that melted in your hands like butter.”
Great article on Charlie Conerly. I interviewed Mr Conerly back in 1993 and just recently found the mini tape with his voice on it! I was going to edit it together with footage of his playing days with the Giants. Good to know that people still remember him… lets hope that he will get his NFL HOF induction someday