SUPER BOWL XXI : DENVER vs. NEW YORK : LONG BEACH MEMOIRS : In Less Hectic Time, Super Bowl Autographs and Souvenirs Went to the Quick and the Daring

With my parents’ permission I skipped junior high school that Friday in January of 1967, two days before the first Super Bowl, on the chance that I might get a few autographs from my heroes on the Kansas City Chiefs.

I was a nut about the old American Football League. I knew everything about every player in the league. The National Football League belonged to my dad’s generation. I was not yet 14. The AFL was young, and mine.

At 7 a.m. my father dropped me off near the old city bus garage in Long Beach. Tom Massey, a young bus driver who hung out at my father’s gas station, had offered to take me with him on the charter bus that shuttled the Chiefs from their Eastside hotel to Veterans Stadium, where they practiced.

Massey warned me that he might not be able to get me onto the practice field, since there were rumors that the Green Bay Packers had sent spies there. But this was my only chance to see any of the action. The game had failed to sell out at the Coliseum and was being blacked out on local television.

On the bus to the hotel, we joked about what we would say if someone asked who I was. The natural thing to say was that I was his son. But Massey was black, tall and lanky. I was white, short and stocky.

It turned out not to matter. There was no security at the hotel. In fact, just three Chief reserves and an assistant coach got on the bus. Most of the others had rented cars.

As Massey pulled the bus into the gated parking lot at Veterans Stadium, there was a hush around the field. Green tarps had been erected along the fences to prevent spectators from viewing practice.

A guard met the bus outside the gate. Massey, in his company uniform, and the others, passed through without a problem and went up a ramp to one of the two locker rooms. The guard stopped me.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“He’s with us,” Massey said. “Stram’s kid.”

The guard let me in, believing I was the son of Hank Stram, then the Chiefs’ coach.

The atmosphere outside the locker room was peaceful. The pungent aroma of liniment drifted from behind the door. Massey told me to stay put until he returned, then went into the locker room. I stood alone, pad and pencil in hand, in a corridor between the locker room and training room, hoping for my first autograph.

Out strolled running back Mike Garrett in his underwear. Pretty shocking, but I asked Garrett for an autograph anyway.

Next came Buck Buchanan. The burly defensive end signed without a word. Later it took me three days to place the signature with his name. It looked like Boola Boola.

Next came quarterback Len Dawson, Then Stram. As he signed I kept checking over my shoulder for the security guard.

Massey, the bus driver, reappeared later on the practice field. The Chiefs seemed to like Tom and invited him to listen in on their huddles.

Practice ended, in fact, with Stram stepping in for Dawson at quarterback and inviting Massey to join the fun. He split Massey wide right and for the next half hour sent him out on pass patterns.

On the final play, with most of the team already in the showers, Stram took a new AFL football from a bag.

“This one’s for the ball, Tom,” he said to Massey from about the 50 yard line. “Run a post.”

In his drivers’ uniform and black leather shoes, Massey sprinted toward the goal post and Stram let go with a pass. Massey looked back into the noonday sun. The pass was in front of him and he stretched his lanky frame. He caught the ball and ran under the crossbar with a souvenir.

Back at the 50, the players that had remained cheered.

Stram signed the ball under the bleachers. So did many of the other Chiefs.

Outside the locker room again, a breathless Massey showed me his new trophy. “I’m hanging onto this,” he said.

And I guess Massey still has that ball, on a trophy shelf somewhere in the city. Dad closed his gas station a year later and we lost track of him.

Four years ago, I met Garrett again and introduced myself as the kid who had asked for his autograph while he was in the hall in his underwear.

“Oh, was that you?” he said. “I wondered what happened to that kid.”

I don’t think he really remembered.

But I do.