A lot of my attention as a youngster in the late fifties and early sixties was on idolizing sports stars in the world of professional football and basketball. Their on-field accolades, such as dazzling runs, acrobatic interceptions and tackles, and circus catches made for very exciting watching. While Pat Summerall of Chicago Cardinals and the New York Giants fame was not one of my favourite gridiron players, I was more aware of his prowess off the field as a game broadcaster for CBS. His very candid autobiography "Summerall On and Off the Air" lays out his life for all to see. The reader is treated to an easy-to-read, very compelling memoir encompassing over seventy-six years of great achievements, promising opportunities, and abysmal failures and disappointments. From his early days growing up in Lakeland, Florida, Summerall, somewhat of an abandoned child, developed a love for competitive sports. This need to achieve on the field or court was obviously a way for him to compensate for poor grades in school. The first part of the book lays out his career path to becoming a gutsy, hard-working, irrepressible man who made it to the pros as a second-string defensive player for a second-rate team. His fortunes begun to change when he was later traded to the very successful Giants and learned to become a successful field-goal kicker. Summerall shares a lot of locker-room stories about the company he kept and the trouble he got into. When that chapter of his life was over, he lucked out with a job in TV broadcasting that put him on the cutting edge of a new era in professional sports. Associations with other broadcasters like Madden, Gifford, Schinkel, Cosell, and Brookshier brought him fame as a very knowledgeable announcer and effective interviewer. As he rose to the top, there were both spiritual and mental forces conspiring in his life to wreck the dream. In the second part of the story, Summerall enlarges on what these problems were, how he attempted to overcome them, and how he got victory in the end. This account is full of fascinating little anecdotes that help to describe what the world of professional sports looked like back then through the eyes of Summerall as he rubbed shoulders with the greats such as Nicklaus, Mantle, and Landry. In his later life, as others stepped in to rescue him from self-destruction, he was able to reach out to others with similar plights. Here is a humble man who overcame physical disabilities, alcohol addiction, and an inferiority complex to become an inspiring stalwart in the field of modern sports.
