Unitas Had Statistics, but Throw Them Out
Even though he holds the most unbreakable passing record in football, Johnny Unitas’ career wasn’t about records or statistics. It was a Cinderella story about a great leader who couldn’t be kept down. It was a story about a man who stayed loyal to his supporters in Baltimore, even when his old team wouldn’t. It was a story about a man’s integrity being rewarded 30 years later, when the Vince Lombardi Trophy returned to Baltimore.
His death on a day as historically important as Sept. 11 serves as a reminder that it’s more important to be a great man than a great star. Fortunately, in Johnny Unitas, we had both.
Arno Keks
El Monte
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With all due respect to the late John Steadman, his 1999 comparison of Johnny Unitas’ 47-game touchdown pass streak to Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, which appeared in The Times on Thursday, is flawed. Steadman stated that “had DiMaggio missed a game because of illness or injury, his streak would have stopped.”
Absolutely wrong. Per Baseball Rule 10.24, a consecutive-games hitting streak counts games actually played by the batter, not team games.
Andrew M. Weiss
Studio City
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