June 17, 2010
By Bob Socci
All these years later, it's as if Joe Bellino just left his feet. He is suspended in mid-air, arms extended, hands outstretched. Like a superhero without the cape, swooping in to rescue any fading hope of a Navy comeback.
It's the fourth quarter of the 1961 Orange Bowl Classic and his Midshipmen trail Missouri, 21-6. Unable to get where he wants to go on the ground, Bellino hovers above the earth, beneath quarterback Hal Spooner's 27-yard pass.
A few weeks earlier, he was summoned from an engineering class to the Naval Academy superintendent's office, where Rear Admiral John F. Davidson broke the news. Thanks to national voters, the Midshipman 1st Class was given a suffix to go with the prefix of his rank.
Here on out, he'd be known as, "Joe Bellino, Heisman Trophy winner."
Now, before 71,218 pairs of eyes looking down from the South Florida stands, including the greenish grays belonging to President elect John F. Kennedy, Bellino was diving for a ball he later guesstimated to be "20 feet over (my) head." From where Navy head coach Wayne Hardin was watching, Spooner's throw was "simply beyond Joe Bellino's reach."
But in this moment, on the second day of a New Year, nothing seemed impossible. Not for a first-generation American who transformed his hometown of Winchester, Mass. into "Bellinoville." And certainly not, while the man who would make Washington our Camelot was there to cheer him on.
Twenty feet or not, Bellino closed the distance, reaching and latching onto Spooner's pass. Though Bellino's grab may not be the most famous ever witnessed inside the Orange Bowl - feel free to Google the "Hook and Lateral" and "Hail Flutie!" - it may be the most spectacular.
Decades later, Edwin Pope, a 45-year veteran of the Miami Herald, wrote of his 10 fondest memories from the now-extinct Orange Bowl, a stadium that stood for 70 years. Bellino's acrobatics made the list.
Unfortunately, the Tigers also held on that afternoon, beating the Mids, 21-14. Nonetheless, Bellino's flash of brilliance is frozen in time. Nearly a half-century later, it remains the stuff of his legend, particularly because he and his teammates shared it with their First Fan.
Of course, those who compete along the Severn, beneath the Rockies or above the Hudson are all the president's men. Playing for Navy, Air Force and Army, they literally march to his orders.
We were reminded of such just last month, when the Mids were guests of the White House, invited as 2009 Commander-In-Chief's Champions.
"I know there are many other fabulous teams that come here - other collegians, national championship teams, professional world champions - but this team is different," head coach Ken Niumatalolo said before President Barrack Obama. "This is your team. And behind you, you have 32 great young men that in a couple months will serve you as our commander in chief."
The president concurred.
"In the end, it's the willingness to put others above yourselves that sets this team - and all the service academies - apart," said President Obama. "Your days are packed with morning inspections and a full load of classes, football practice and military duties. And oftentimes you're lucky if you can get a few minutes to yourselves before studying into the night.
"But you do it because each of you has a higher calling - to serve your country in a time of war."
Jack Kennedy had done that as well, during World War II; as a Navy man, no less. What's more, the four-year period in which he ascended to and occupied our highest office coincided with the most glorious quadrennial in Navy football history.
Three years after Bellino earned the game's greatest individual honor, Roger Staubach was deemed Heisman worthy in 1963. They were the brightest stars, but their teams shined too. While the '60 Mids played in the Orange Bowl, their '63 successors were invited to the Cotton Bowl.
Framing their success of the early 60s was a unique relationship that formed the inspiration of the book "The President's Team," authored by Boston-based writer Michael Connelly.
Published last fall, if you haven't finished it already, it's recommended to help you fill the voids between Stephen Strasburg starts and World Cup soccer goals. Or, for sanity's sake, escape the current chaos created by college football's peripatetic powers and the conferences who court them.
Mostly, it's a great way to add to the anticipation of Navy's next kickoff, by enriching an appreciation for a season past. Particularly, for the remarkable midshipmen who came of age, as their country was taken on the turbulent ride from what many believed unfettered national promise to a nation in mourning.
As you can tell from its subtitle, "The 1963 Army-Navy Game and The Assassination of JFK," Connelly's book delves into the events leading up to and following that fateful afternoon of Nov. 22, 1963.
Its foreword was written by the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, while battling the cancer that would claim his life last August. But less as the "last lion" of the senate, than the ex-Harvard end whose family's love of football nearly matched their belief in public service.
The grip the sport held on the Kennedys - whose touch football games on Cape Cod were legendary - and the president's Navy pride helped to engender what '63 team captain Tom Lynch and Staubach described in the book's afterword as "a special relationship...a kinship" with JFK.
Much of "The President's Team" explores the origins of that association, starting with a December 1960 visit by Bellino and five teammates - all from Massachusetts - to the president-elect's Georgetown residence. Weeks later, Bellino marched as battalion sub-commander when the Naval Academy Brigade led Mr. Kennedy's inauguration parade.
Throughout the next few years, the president repeatedly interacted with Midshipmen.
In full public view, attending Army-Navy games or speaking at the Academy, like in August 1963. And in the relative privacy of a tarmac on the Rhode Island peninsula of Quonset Point, where the Navy team temporarily broke training in 1962 to greet Air Force One.
Connelly explains the fondness Kennedy held for the highly successful Mids, as well as the president's concern over Army's recent struggles. On the same pages, he chronicles Navy's '63 season - beginning in training camp and ending in Dallas, little more than a month after the president was assassinated.
Connelly recounts the events surrounding Kennedy's death, including the decision to proceed with the Army-Navy game - at the request of the president's widow and his family - and their affect on the Midshipmen.
In fact, the effect of that experience on the most famous of those Mids is what caused Connelly to re-think the project he originally envisioned. He intended to travel the country and write about college football's most famous venues.
Among his interview subjects was Roger Staubach, presumably to discuss the Cotton Bowl.
"He talked so profoundly about what the '63 Army-Navy Game meant to him personally, to the Naval Academy and to the country following the president's death," Connelly says. "He talked about running out on the field that day, with 102,000 people in the stands who didn't really know how to act following the president's death, because the country was still in mourning.
"(That) game gave the country, the 102,000 people in the stands and the players the chance to release the emotion of November 22, 1963. He talked about the emotion being palpable."
Connelly's plans changed.
The son of a former Boston College football player, he was a lifelong fan of the Army-Navy game. And when Staubach's words penetrated as deeply as they did, his heart was set on trying to tell the story of that game, that team.
Though his third sports-related book, "The President's Team" was a departure for Connelly. A native New Englander - with the accent to prove it - his other two were more parochial.
A banker in Boston, Connelly made his living crunching numbers. But life's passion was in the written word. When he set out to write his first book seven years ago, Connelly literally hit the keyboard running.
"Banking has a way of making people find other passions," he jokes. "In '96 I ran the 100th (Boston) Marathon. I was surprised that so many people wondered what it was like to run the Boston Marathon. I though I'd chronicle that experience."
So, he wrote "26 Miles to Boston," now in its fourth printing. Five years later, he produced "Rebound," in which he explored the Larry Bird-led Celtics' return to basketball glory, as well as its impact during a tumultuous time in Boston history.
"(Navy) is a national team, and a team that we can all connect with, and relate to," Connelly says. "We all have friends and relatives who were in the Navy."
In the case of the Kennedys, their two oldest sons were Navy heroes. Joe Jr. died during a combat mission he volunteered for in World War II. John Fitzgerald survived a Japanese torpedo attack on PT 109.
"I think the fact that Kennedy was a Navy hero superseded any kind of political direction that (he) might have held," Connelly says. "He spoke at the Naval Academy on two separate occasions, and cheered them wildly at Army-Navy games. They understood that John Kennedy, Navy hero, was someone they could connect with.
"He loved that Army-Navy Game, he was honored to be there. He flipped the coin in '61 and '62, and made plans to leave Hyannis Port to be there in '63. He actually had a bet with (President Dwight) Eisenhower on the '63 game."
As we know, JFK never lived to see it.
"There was a spirit of sadness that overwhelmed that team, they struggled through the Army game (winning 21-15)," Connelly says of the Midshipmen. "They go down to Dallas to play the Cotton Bowl (against Texas). One of the excursions they take, when not practicing, was to go to Dealey Plaza, where Kennedy was killed.
"They fell back into a funk. It was so tangible for them. They took a knee on the sidewalk where Kennedy was killed, and said a prayer as a team."
But Kennedy isn't the only figure central to the story Connelly tells. Another is the coach of those Mids, a flamboyant innovator named Wayne Hardin.
Hardin was a link in a chain of coaching geniuses. He played under Amos Alonzo Stagg at Stanford, worked alongside Steve Belichick at Navy and influenced a young Bill Belichick, the three-time Super Bowl champion as coach of the New England Patriots.
As portrayed in "The President's Team," Hardin's style is as unorthodox as it is ingenious. Particularly amusing is the psychology he employed to get inside the head of his West Point counterpart Paul Dietzel.
Often, Hardin's mind games were spelled out in the slogans or phrases that were included on Navy's uniforms. Making his own sideline fashion statement each Saturday, with his trademark green fedora, Hardin was both bold and brilliant.
"He had his finger on the pulse of the team all the time," Connelly says. "He knew when they were tired, he knew when there might be a let down. He had been around enough programs to understand when the players needed some kind of levity in their week."
Like when Navy prepared for powerhouse Michigan. Perhaps detecting pressure among his players, Hardin ordered a release from typical game-week work. Instead of practicing against the scout team one day, he organized a touch football challenge between the Navy coaches and their players.
The Mids wound up beating the Wolverines. They also beat Pittsburgh, repeatedly foiling the Panthers defense with the same play - over and over, time and again. Hardin knew enough not to fix what wasn't broke.
"(Hardin) said, `I've never done anything that didn't do anything but put us in position to win football games,'" says Connelly. "He didn't answer to anyone, except the cause of winning."
And, it seems, his butcher.
"Coach Hardin goes to his butcher in March, and the butcher tells him, `This is your year, you're a team of destiny,'" Connelly explains. "And that was his motto for the entire year, `A Team of Destiny.'
"He gathered players at the (Academy) boathouse in March. He said to them, `I believe it. I want you players to believe it.' He kept pushing them to recognize that they had greatness in them."
They just might have been the greatest team in Navy history. If not for two losses on the same grounds, beneath different clouds of suspicion, there would be no dispute.
Both were in Dallas, at the Cotton Bowl. The first, in the regular season, was to SMU. The last, in the postseason, was to Texas. There were strange circumstances surrounding each, which Connelly addresses.
But, in the end, his book is a tribute to a group of Mids who neither made nor settled for excuses as players or military leaders. Five of them rose to the rank of admiral and three died in service, including Silver Star recipient Thomas Holden.
No wonder they were the president's team.
They were the exact embodiment of the most famous line from Kennedy's inaugural address. They asked - and answered - what they could do for their country.
"They were not only a great football team of overachievers, but they went on to be war heroes," Connelly says. "From there, they went on to be everything the country looks for, people who challenge themselves to be the best they can be."
