Johnny Unitas and Raymond Berry

Going One-On-One With Baltimore
Colts’ Legend Raymond Berry

By Bob Vickrey

January 12, 2016

Many years ago, I found out the hard way that sports legends can be just as intimidating while wearing their street clothes as they are in full uniform.
 
Former Baltimore Colts receiving great Raymond Berry charged toward me as he made an inside move, and then suddenly turned toward the sideline, leaving me stumbling awkwardly in embarrassment. He headed up-field and effortlessly gathered in a perfectly thrown over-the-shoulder spiral and jogged casually toward the end zone.
 
Before you assume that I have just awakened from a football fan’s ultimate fantasy, let me back up for a moment and describe the circumstances of our spontaneous encounter.
 
The long pass that Berry caught that day was unfortunately not from the golden arm of Johnny Unitas, his longtime teammate and NFL Hall of Fame quarterback, but instead, was thrown by a student trainer from the Baylor University team in an eerily quiet—and completely empty—college football stadium.
 
As the newly appointed sports editor of the school newspaper, I had been given access to the coaches’ offices at Baylor Stadium while covering the team that year. Berry had been asked to work with the receivers during spring training by his former Colts’ offensive co-coordinator, John Bridgers, who had since become Baylor’s head coach.
 
I met Berry in Coach Bridgers’ office on one of my visits to the stadium and asked if I could do a story about his celebrated football career. He graciously invited me to join him the following day.
 
Raymond Berry grew up in Paris, Texas and played high school football for his father who coached the team. He eventually played for SMU, but caught only 33 passes in his three-year career, in an era that heavily emphasized the running game. He was taken in the 20th round of the 1954 draft by the Baltimore Colts.
 
During his illustrious professional career, he led the NFL in receptions three times, went to six Pro Bowls, and was a member of two NFL Championship teams. In the 1958 Championship game, Berry effectively dominated the New York Giants defense, catching a championship-record 12 passes for 178 yards, a record that stood for 55 years. He was elected to the NFL Hall of Fame in 1973. Not bad for a 20th round pick in the draft.
 
He later became head coach of the New England Patriots and took his team to Super Bowl XX, before losing to the Chicago Bears. He coached the Pats for five years and guided them into the playoffs one more time before ending his football career.
 
During my interview with Berry, who had been one of my boyhood heroes, he began to notice how I kept peppering him with questions about how he and Unitas had become one of the greatest passing-receiving duos in National Football League history. Without mentioning the well-worn cliché that he lacked the speed of many top-flight receivers, I was simply trying to understand how he always seemed to distance himself from his defenders and be so wide-open during his long career.
 
He began to scribble something on a note pad he found on an assistant coach’s desk in the room where I was conducting the interview. He began making small dots on the page, and then drawing a line through each series of dots. Before he finished drawing half-dozen diagrams, I realized he was illustrating various pass routes he ran, using the dots to indicate his footsteps, so I could better understand how many ways there were in running the same “out” pattern.

 

Raymond Berry's pass pattern sketches

Berry pointed out that he had many options in running a 12-yard “out” that would effectively keep a defensive back guessing as to his destination. He said, “Johnny had no idea how I’d get there; he just knew where I’d be at the end of the pattern.” The ball was always thrown to a spot, and Berry would somehow find his way there.
 
He chuckled and said, “Receivers that are a lot faster than I am are not forced to make route-running a science. But in my case, I have to outsmart the defender.”
 
After we concluded our improvised “receiving seminar” on the field, we relieved the student trainer of his cameo role as “Johnny U,” but continued tossing the ball to one another during the course of the interview. 
 
A couple of days later, I arrived at my desk at the Baylor Lariat offices and found a note tucked into the carriage of my Royal typewriter. It read, “Please call Raymond Berry at the stadium office—ASAP!” My first panicked thought was that he had hated my story and wanted an apology and retraction.
 
When I finally connected with him that afternoon, he said very calmly, “I just wanted to tell you that I’m announcing my retirement from professional football in a press conference this Friday, and I wanted you to be the first to know.” He told me how much he enjoyed our little one-on-one game earlier in the week.
 
In those days, the phrase “Unitas-to-Berry” became as familiar a refrain in the sports lexicon as “Mantle and Maris,” or “Frazier and Ali.” Their legacy made them an inseparable pair in the chronicles of professional football history.
 
I still have that notepad sketch of his pass routes that he drew for me. Maybe one day I’ll call him for a rematch of our one-on-one game after I’ve memorized all his pass patterns. He would, no doubt, be left trembling at the thought of facing me once again.
 

Bob Vickrey is a writer whose columns appear in several Southwester newspapers including the Houston Chronicle. He is a member of the Board of Contributors for the Waco Tribune-Herald and regular contributor to the Boryana Books website. He lives in Pacific Palisades, California.

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