The biggest snap of Y.A. Tittle's career
CROWE'S NEST
The Hall of Fame quarterback may be best remembered for a bloody, agony-of-defeat image in an iconic photograph from his final NFL season.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- The photograph is iconic, among the most enduring images in sports history. But to see it hanging here, in the offices of Y.A. Tittle Insurance & Financial Services, is a bit of a surprise.
It depicts the company's founder, Pro Football Hall of Famer Y.A. Tittle, at perhaps the lowest point in his career, battered, bruised and bloodied.
Moments before the indelible shot was snapped by Morris Berman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the New York Giants quarterback had been pounded to the turf by 270-pound defensive end John Baker of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Tittle's fluttering pass had landed in the arms of a surprised Steelers tackle, Chuck Hinton, who returned the interception eight yards into the end zone for a touchdown.
Alone and helmet-less in the end zone, shoulders drooped and arms rested on his thighs, Tittle is shown seated on his haunches, a dazed look in his eyes and blood trickling from his famously bald head. Two games into the last of his 17 professional seasons, the fallen warrior had suffered a concussion and cracked sternum.
"Heck of a way to get famous," Tittle, now 81, says of the photo.
Actually, Yelberton Abraham Tittle already was quite well known long before that September afternoon at Pitt Stadium in 1964.
In the three seasons after his trade from the San Francisco 49ers in 1961, the former Louisiana State standout was the NFL's most celebrated quarterback. Twice the league's most valuable player, he led the Giants to three consecutive championship-game appearances and passed for a record 36 touchdowns in 1963, a mark that stood until Dan Marino of the Miami Dolphins passed for 48 in 1984.
Tittle's star had long faded, however, before his name was thrust back into the news last April, when Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Halberstam was killed in an auto accident while en route to an interview with Tittle.
"I could have been with him," says Tittle, seated at a tidy desk in his office across the street from Google's sprawling headquarters. "I had offered to pick him up."
Halberstam, Tittle notes, was researching a book about the 1958 NFL championship game between the Giants and the Baltimore Colts, often called football's greatest game. Tittle did not play in that game, but several of his Giants teammates did, and Halberstam wanted to ask about them.
"He wasn't going to write about me," Tittle notes.
