TOM FEARS, TOM FLORES, TED HENDRICKS, JOE KAPP, JIM PLUNKETT, ANTHONY MUNOZ, TONY GONZALEZ, ROBERTO GARZA, ARIAN FOSTER, TONY ROMO AND…STEVE VAN BUREN???
The more things change the more they stay the same.
By eschewing change, the more things stay the same.
Stagnation tends to permeate, pervade and then prevail. It weedles its way into a space where it shouldn’t be and doesn’t belong. Swarms of termites feasting on rotting wood.
Change is good even though creatures of habit — or those stuck in the past, present or quaggy mud — may not care for it.
Minds must always strive to be open and remain so. It has been said again and again that a mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Or to poison.
People of color and Caucasians — white is a color too, right? — have suffered the ills of discrimination for aeons.
Insecurity and ignorance among many other brain-related toxins are to blame.
The more enlightened have figured out a way to tear through this suffocating web of injustice and its perpetration. Short of miracles there can be no greater gift from God than this revelation and achievement.
The real miracle would be defined in our unconditional and unyielding desire to get along and then of course to do it.
Each and every day.
And for the bushwackers, the frontiersmen and women, the colonizers — those with the courage to be the first to break barriers, the true pioneers — it is most difficult and oftentimes downright painful to effect change.
Ignacio Saturnino “Lou” Molinet was the first Hispanic player in the fledgling National Football League — formed in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association (APFA) before renaming itself the NFL in ’22 — a halfback with the 1927 Frankford Yellow Jackets.
Molinet, a Cuban, was thought to be of French lineage but was actually born in 1904 in Chaparra, a small town on the eastern part of the island. His trailblazing run in professional football went largely unrecognized for nearly 75 years because of the sound of his surname and the widely held belief that fullback/punter Jesse Rodriguez was the first Hispanic NFL player in 1929, a member of the Buffalo Bisons.
That is until the year 2000 when Heidi Cadwell produced her grandfather’s Frankford contract and presented it to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It was dated a full two years before Rodriguez’ cleats ever dug into a professional gridiron.
Molinet and Rodriguez opened the door for other Latinos who played similar positions in the ensuing decades.
In the modern era Latin American-born kickers and linemen began to achieve prominence but the first incursions, facilitated by these two men featured offensive playmakers, mainly fullbacks and halfbacks. Between 1927 and the early 1950s almost all Latinos who broke into the NFL played those positions.
Most notable surely was Steve Van Buren the man whose name had a haughty aristocratic ring to it.
Born in Honduras, Van Buren would become a 6-time All-Pro and two-time NFL champion with the Philadelphia Eagles and his three consecutive league rushing titles earned him a spot on the 1940s All-Decade team. Van Buren’s #15 Eagles jersey is retired and he was enshrined in Canton in 1965.
Tom Flores, a worker in the fields of the Central California valley as a youth and today just shy of 82 was the first-ever Hispanic starting quarterback in professional football and the first minority head coach in pro football history to win a Super Bowl.
In fact, he and Mike Ditka are the only two men in league annals to win a Super Bowl as a player, assistant coach and head coach (Super Bowl IV as a player for the Chiefs; Super Bowl XI as an assistant coach of the Raiders; and Super Bowls XV and XVIII as head coach of the Raiders).
A Mexican-American, it wasn’t easy for Flores upon his graduation from the University of the Pacific in 1958 to find a job. He was cut twice, by the CFL Calgary Stampeders in ’58 and the Washington Redskins in ’59 sandwiched around a season (1958) spent with the Salinas Packers of the Pacific Football Conference.
In 1960 he finally hit paydirt. He landed a spot on the Oakland Raiders roster, a franchise which began play that year as one of the American Football League’s charter members.
His most productive season came in 1966 when he passed for 2,638 yards and 24 touchdowns in 14 games. Flores went on to back up Jack Kemp in Buffalo and Len Dawson in Kansas City before retiring after the 1970 campaign.
Although his career statistics were pedestrian at best — 93 TDs; 92 INT; 11,959 passing yards; and a 67.6 passer rating — he was one of only twenty players who were in the AFL for its entire ten-year existence and finished as the fifth-leading passer in the league’s history.
His coaching record, particularly in the postseason (.727) speaks for itself and he had countryman Jim Plunkett to thank for a lot of that success.
Plunkett, the first Latino starting quarterback to win a championship, won two, each with Flores at the helm. Despite their winning pedigrees neither has gotten as much as a sniff of the Hall of Fame. Four Super Bowl rings for Flores and two for Plunkett — the only eligible quarterback with two Super Bowl titles not enshrined in Canton — isn’t compelling enough to make their cases.
But the pair will always be inextricably linked, sharing their Raiders accomplishments along with their Chicano heritage and winning Lombardi trophies for one franchise in two cities, Oakland and LA to boot.
Not to mention the powerful pride they still feel today as gold standard role models for all Hispanics, particularly those with ties to Mexico.
What of “The Mad Stork?”
Theodore Paul Hendricks (“Ted”) was born in Guatemala City, Guatemala in 1947.
No less an authority than Bill Curry the 2-time Pro Bowl center, 3-time NFL champion, decorated coach and world-class gentleman who played for the Baltimore Colts (1967–1972) and overlapped there with Hendricks said, “Running into Ted Hendricks was like running into a piece of angle iron. You’d get an elbow to the side of the head, bounce off, and wonder where he went.”
Curry was hardly the only one who felt that way.
Distinguished as the first Guatemalan-born player in the NFL, Hendricks had a remarkable resume.
A 3-time All-American at the University of Miami he played fifteen seasons in the NFL for the Colts, the Packers and the Raiders and was a member of four Super Bowl-winning teams. Selected as an 8-time Pro Bowler, Hendricks was also a 9-time All-Pro and earned a spot on the NFL’s 75th. Anniversary All-Time Team.
An enshrinee of both the College and Professional Football Halls of Fame the 6’7” Stork was a legend.
Few knew what to make of Joe Kapp. A Sports Illustrated cover boy in July of 1970 fresh off a berth in Super Bowl IV with the Minnesota Vikings the magazine dubbed him, “The Toughest Chicano.”
He was tough enough to cobble together a pretty fair career after leading Cal to the 1959 Rose Bowl, their last Rose Bowl appearance.
He was an All-American that season and the winner of the 1958 W.J. Voit Memorial Trophy awarded to the outstanding football player on the Pacific Coast, an honor also bestowed on Plunkett years afterward.
Alas the NFL talent scouts were not impressed. Kapp was drafted in ’59 in the eighteenth round by the Washington Redskins, the 209th. overall selection.
Opting for Canada he achieved success with the B.C. Lions as a two-time CFL All-Star and a 1984 inductee of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.
Kapp is the only player to quarterback in the Rose Bowl, the Grey Cup and the Super Bowl; he emerged a champion just once in 1964 leading the Lions to their first-ever Grey Cup title.
Joe Kapp was an enigma. He was a quarterback who loved to hit and didn’t mind being hit. In 1967 he ended up signing with the Vikings (who had acquired his rights from the Redskins) in a convoluted transaction between CFL and NFL teams, one of the very few to occur between the leagues.
A strong leader indisputably, Kapp was the same guy who compiled a record of 3–5–3 in his eleven starts in ’67 completing 47% of his passes with 8 TDs and 17 INT and later tied the all-time record for TD passes in a game with seven in 1969 against the Baltimore Colts.
(The others? Sid Luckman, Adrian Burk, George Blanda, Y.A. Tittle, Nick Foles, Peyton Manning and Drew Brees).
Ironically, Kapp finished his playing career in 1970 with the Boston Patriots, ultimately given the gate when the Pats selected Plunkett with the top pick in the 1971 NFL draft.
Munoz, Gonzalez, Garza, Foster, Romo; the beat goes on.
All beneficiaries of a trail blazed by their forebears.
Forebears no different than Marlin Briscoe, Eldridge Dickey and James (Shack) Harris who opened the door for African-American NFL starting quarterbacks.
It is shameful that even today there remains this residual sentiment stubbornly enshrouding all too many:
Depending on your ethnicity and the color of your skin not to mention your gender, sexuality and countless other hollow and shallow criteria, you may have to be twice as good just to get a chance.
[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in December 2018.]
