Book Review: Lamar Hunt & AFL

Lamar Hunt and the Founding of the American Football League, written by Tom Richey. Forward by Jack Steadman. Published by Richey; printed by Mercury Print Productions. 210 pages. $24.95. Available through the website www.lamarhuntafl.com, or 800-3346-3354. Some copies available on amazon.com.

In this 50th anniversary season of the American Football League we are without the man who made it all happen. Unfortunately, Lamar Hunt passed away without ever having done a book that would have provided depth and insight on his remarkable life as a sportsman.

But we have Tom Richey and thankfully he’s decided to put to the printed page some of the most revealing and fascinating stories of Lamar Hunt’s life. Lamar Hunt and the Founding of the American Football League has some familiar stories that have been written before, but it is filled with some real gems that have never before left the presence of Hunt and Richey.

They were together sitting on a park bench in New York’s Central Park when Hunt decided that the idea of a new football league was the way to go. It was Richey’s New York apartment that Hunt used to interview Tom Landry for the head coaching job of the Dallas Texans. It was Richey who was Lamar’s partner in his first sporting venture: a batting cage complex called ZIMA BAT. At Hunt’s suggestion, Richey became a minority owner in the New York Titans.

It’s a story that started at the Hill School, a boarding school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. Richey met Hunt for the first time in the fall of 1947. He was from Connecticut, Lamar from Texas. They were on the football team and they would get together before the start of football practice and hold their own training camp, usually outlined and scheduled to the minute by Lamar.

One night after a busy day of conditioning, Tom and Lamar laid in their beds and talked about the future. Hunt asked the question: “What do you want to accomplish with your life when it’s all said and done?” Richey said he wanted to do bigger and better things than his father. Then Lamar said:

“You know I always felt it was important to make a name for yourself, to do more than my brothers or even my father won’t be easy. The answer I guess is to make my own name for myself … you see Tom no matter what I do I’ll always be H.L. Hunt’s son. Whatever YOU do you’ll be your own man because you don’t have a prominent family. It’s is important for me to step out and do something on my own.”

After graduation from Hill School – which included an undefeated football season in 1949 – Lamar went back to Dallas to go to college at SMU, while Rickey went off to Yale.

After college, Lamar and Tom started the first of many Hunt sporting ventures, ZIMA BAT, a batting range and miniature golf course right on Mockingbird Lane next to the Central Expressway in Dallas. It was on vacant land at the time, but is now some of the most prime real estate in Dallas, sporting giant office towers. In fact, the pair opened two sites, the other being farther west next to the stadium used at the time by the Dallas Rangers minor league team. Both were immediately successful.

In the late 50s, Richey would spend Sunday afternoons at Hunt’s house, where they had two televisions side-by-side, so they could watch two games at a time. “Wouldn’t it be fun to own a pro team?” Hunt said one Sunday. “Much more fun that a baseball team, wouldn’t you think?” Lamar would pull out a map and they would pour over the available cities where there was no pro football.

It was 1959 when Hunt came to New York to have dinner with Bill Shea, a Manhattan lawyer who was campaigning to build a new baseball stadium and was involved in discussions to start up what was going to be called the Continental Baseball League. After dinner, Lamar and Tom strolled into Central Park where they sat on a bench and talked until the sun started coming up over the New York office towers.

When the American Football League was coming together, Hunt asked Richey to become a limited partner in the New York Titans, where the managing owner was flamboyant broadcaster Harry Wismer, who ran the team out of his apartment on Park Avenue.

It was in the early months of 1960 that Hunt called Richey in New York to ask a favor. He was going to be in the city and needed a spot to interview the man he hoped would be his first head coach. He asked to use Richey’s apartment. So on this night, Richey was in the lobby of his apartment building where he greeted Tom Landry, then the defensive coordinator of the New York Giants. After delivering Landry to Hunt in the apartment, Richey went downstairs to wait. He writes:

“I prepared for a long evening. Surely this negotiation would take at least two to three hours if not longer. In fact, I had purchased a sandwich, some Cokes and a Milky Way candy bar. I was prepared to camp out in the lobby all night. Imagine my surprise when Coach Landry appeared in the downstairs lobby twenty minutes later and courteously said “Good night Mr. Richey.

“I raced upstairs, opened the apartment door and there was Lamar sunk deep into the couch, arms outspread with a stare that was a cross between disbelief, frustration and anger.”

This book is filled with tidbits like that of the early days of the American Football League, and the early days of the move of Hunt’s franchise to Kansas City. There was the cold, rainy December day in Houston where Hunt, Richey and their party sat in the worst seats in the stadium to see the Texans win the 1962 AFL Championship Game in double-overtime. There are memories of Super Bowl IV in New Orleans.

I must tell you, I’ve sat with Tom Richey and listened to these memories and he did an admirable job of committing the best ones to the printed page. For anyone interested in the history of the AFL, pro football or the background behind how the Texans became the Chiefs, this is a good read.

For anyone that wants to know more about what made Lamar Hunt tick this is required reading. Short of family members, few knew him as well as Tom Richey.