Books: Psyching the Bulls

INSTANT REPLAY: THE GREEN BAY DIARY OF JERRY KRAMER. Edited by Dick Schaap. 286 pages. World. $5.95.

“We’ve got to be whipped. We’ve got to be cussed. … He whipped us, but we needed whipping.” This is no simple disciple of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch talking, but a professional football player trying to attain the mystical condition of “upness” or “winning attitude,” which, according to American tradition, has to be artificially induced by alternate whippings and strokings from an older man.

Jerry Kramer slaves for the Green Bay Packers—the football equivalent of the Radio City Rockettes—a group that habitually barters personal freedom for perfection. His tamer has been an emotional virtuoso named Vince Lombardi, a cross between the late General Patton and a good Italian mama: a raging, weeping computer who can get his players down on Tuesday, up on Wednesday, buried on Thursday and winning on Sunday, virtually at will.

Scared of Daddy. Kramer taped a diary last season, and Instant Replay is more or less the result. He shows that all was not beating and moaning in Lombardi’s bedlam. “Tomorrow, I imagine, Coach Lombardi’ll pat him on the head, rub his back, scratch his ears, and everybody’ll feel a little better,” he writes of one player. At other times, Coach leads his bulls in song. All very sincere, all very calculated. What makes the diary interesting is that the author knows exactly what is being done to him, chooses it, and even in some twisted way enjoys it. He describes Lombardi as primarily a child psychologist; but perhaps athletes have to become as little children to win championships. For instance, one of the Packers, age 33, finds himself concealing an ice-cream cone behind his back. Excellent attitude. The emotional regression will stand him in good stead on Sunday. Scared of Daddy, he is all the more likely to terrorize the rest of the block.

Kramer has mixed feelings about the value of this perverse group therapy. Professionals talk a lot about the money, as if that were motive enough. But Kramer knows better. What justifies it for him finally is the comradeship and sense of celebration when the pounding stops—the feeling Victorian families must have had at Christmastime. The charade ends with Daddy happy for the moment, and a new trophy on the shelf: an unprecedented third world championship mounted on a field of broken collarbones. This psychic manipulation complements the military planning of the Packer High Command. Kramer starts on Tuesday—by Thursday it is too late—working up “an anger, then a hatred,” to the point where on one occasion he considers kicking a fallen opponent in the spine. What kind of victory, what kind of money, justifies this corrupt make-believe is a problem he confesses is beyond him.

Dreams of Broadies. Yet the Packers come through as genial a bunch of sadomasochists as one could hope to meet. “Dr.” Willie Davis, so named because he “made the women feel so good”; Max McGee, the eternal bachelor, dreaming of “a herd of broadies grazing on martinis”; Bart Starr, the resident nice guy. The types, allowing weight for age, can be found in all the best schoolboy fiction.

Kramer, with his alert deference, makes a good Boswell to Lombardi (Lombardi’s own book, Run to Daylight, was more like Caesar’s Gallic Wars in its nit-picking dullness). The coach seems to be a Method actor lost in his part. He psychs himself that he may psych others. His tears are real because he wills them so. “He’s really gotten himself ready for a game,” writes Kramer. “I wish we could suit him up.”

In this case, the Boswell is the more interesting of the two. Kramer knows that football is a ridiculous way of life—but then, what isn’t? He discusses his business ventures (archery supplies, a TV syndicated talk show) and they sound a lot more pointless than his football. At least when he is playing right guard, he is defending his territorial imperative against the other warrior apes. Between times, Kramer likes to hunt with a bow and arrow. He can be a grownup when he has to, but doesn’t see much fun in it. Which is presumably what sports are all about. Kramer may be the first of the philosopher-football players. Along with Dick Schaap, who edited the tapes, he has produced the best book yet written on the subject.