Regardless of the sport, every kid had a favorite team or player that they looked forward to watching every time they could. In basketball, it was the pre-Larry Bird Celtics that included Paul Silas and John Havlicek. It seems that I got my early love for team ball from watching these teams play so well together.
One of my favorite baseball players growing up was Hall-of-Famer Carl Yastrzemski of the Boston Red Sox. This stemmed from a baseball game that my father took me to as a kid. We didn't have a baseball team of our own and it was a exhibition game between the Sox and the Mets. I was one of those kids that was in a large crowd that he was signing autographs for. I would almost say under oath that he made it a point to pluck my scorecard out of the crowd, sign it and make sure it got right back to me. While I'm sure it's worth a pretty penny, there's no amount high enough.
When it came to football, my favorite player from the Washington franchise growing up was running back Larry Brown. In fact, he is still my favorite hometown player to this day. Not Art Monk (who I really like), not Darryl Green (who I also really like) but Larry Brown. When we used to play games of throw-up tackle, everybody wanted to be Larry Brown.
To me, Larry Brown was the classic running back of his day. Hard working and hard to bring down. Ironically, it was probably that style of running that shortened his career to eight years.
He's hoping to get recommended by the Seniors Committee of the NFL for another shot at induction. This committee considers players that were not selected during the 25 years after they retired.
As for his resume, as Tom Hagen would say, take this into consideration. In his eight year career, he was a four time Pro Bowler, including winning the league MVP award in 1972, the year they went to the Super Bowl. In fact, he rushed for more yards during his career then current Hall-of-Famer Gale Sayers and scored more TD's than Frank Gifford.
Here's hoping that Mr. Brown gets another look. It would mean something to a kid back in the day when hero's like him weren't zeros.
