Flashback: George Plimpton's 1963 tryout with Detroit Lions inspired book, movie

“I decided finally to pack the football.”

So begins the first chapter of writer George Plimpton’s 1966 bestselling book “Paper Lion,” based upon his experience of “trying out” as the last-string quarterback at the Detroit Lions training camp 60 years ago this summer while on assignment for Sports Illustrated.

“Paper Lion” received rave reviews for its insights and hilarious stories provided by Plimpton, a 36-year-old Harvard grad and editor of the Paris Review literary magazine who had never played organized tackle football. Yet he practiced with such NFL bruisers as Joe Schmidt, Roger Brown, Dick “Night Train” Lane, Gail Cogdill, Nick Pietrosante, Milt Plum and Earl Morrall.

Renowned football writer W.C. Heinz called “Paper Lion” the “best book about football I’ve ever read.”

Plimpton was an early pioneer of participatory journalism. He had previously explored what it was like for an average person to compete in professional sports in 1960, when he pitched to a lineup of baseball stars at Yankee Stadium that resulted in his book “Out of My League.” He later wrote books on what was like to box, play on the golf circuit and tend goal for the Boston Bruins.

An unlikely jock, Plimpton was a gangly 6 feet 4, a beloved Manhattan literary figure who came across as a blue-blooded highbrow complete with a self-described “Eastern seaboard cosmopolitan accent” and lockjaw delivery. He was a friend of the Kennedys who helped Rosie Grier wrestle the gun out of the hand of Bobby Kennedy’s assassin, Sirhan Sirhan.

After being turned down by several teams, Plimpton got a favorable response to practice with a professional football team from Lions head coach George Wilson. He invited Plimpton to the three-week training sessions at Cranbrook Schools in Bloomfield Hills and offered the opportunity to play in an intrasquad game Aug. 3 at Wisner Stadium in Pontiac.

Before checking into room 122 at Page Hall at the leafy Cranbrook campus, Plimpton received an ominous warning from veteran equipment manager Roy “Friday” Macklem:

“I’ve been with Detroit for 27 years dishing out uniforms and if I’d ever been tempted into one, I wouldn’t be around to tell of it for sure.”

Macklem later gave Plimpton uniform number “0,” previously worn by Johnny Olszewski in 1961.

One of Plimpton’s first indoctrinations as a “rookie” occurred when, in a hazing tradition started by the legendary quarterback Bobby Layne, he was ordered to stand on his chair in the Eliel Saarinen-designed dining hall to sing his alma mater’s fight song. With his right hand over his heart, Plimpton meekly chirped what he could recall:

“Crimson in triumph flashing‘Til that last white line is paster………..We’ll fight for the name of Harvard‘Til ……that last white line is past…”

Plimpton wrote: “No one seemed much put out. Everybody went on eating, though perhaps one or two heads came up at the name of the college, an institution with little identification with professional football.”

The writer’s biggest complaint was the tight-fitting helmet that painfully pinched his ears. He put it on before practicing the five plays he was learning following calisthenics and running through a rope obstacle course.

Throughout “Paper Lion” Plimpton shared insights and tips from teammates at different positions on how the game is played while sharing stories of the Lion players’ hijinks that included scaring each other in the dormitory with fright masks.

With the swashbuckling Lions, it was hardly all work and no play.

Occasionally, he joined some of the players for a night of partying and dancing at the long-defunct Gay Haven nightclub in Dearborn, where they twisted the night away before making it back to Cranbrook for bed check.

Plimpton also served as the emcee at the annual “rookie show” full of skits and songs that made fun of the veteran players and coaches. While playing NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle in one skit, Plimpton was roundly booed by his teammates because Rozelle earlier in the year had suspended tackle Alex Karras and fined a handful of others for gambling.

Finally, on Aug. 3, 1963, at Wisner Stadium in front of 7,000 Lion fans just before halftime, Lion Assistant General Manager Bud Erickson announced to the crowd that “No. 0 was an amateur, a writer who had been training with the team for three weeks and that he learned five plays, which he is now going to run.”

As one might expect, it was an embarrassing disaster for Plimpton. In the end, he received polite applause from the fans for trying.

On the first play, Plimpton fumbled the ball and fell on it for a 5-yard loss.

On the second play, he went back for a planned 10-yard pass to Pietrosante but tripped and fell down for a 2-yard loss.

On play three, he was supposed to hand off to Danny Lewis but Plimpton was late and was grabbed by Brown, the massive tackle, who stripped the ball and ran in for a 10-yard touchdown. But the referee whistled the play dead.

On play four, Plimpton threw an incomplete pass over the head of Jim Gibbons.

Before the writer attempted his final play, coach George Wilson yelled, “Last play, the ball’s on the 10-yard line, let’s see you take it all the way.”

Plimpton wrote that one player asked, “Which end zone is he talking about?”

Plimpton pitched a lateral to Pietrosante, who was tackled at the 1-yard line “a yard away from the mortification of having moved the team backward from the thirty-yard line into one’s own end zone for a safety,” Plimpton wrote.

A week later, Plimpton dressed for the exhibition game against the Cleveland Browns, hoping to take some snaps if the Lions had a lead of 20 or more points near the end of the game. However, at halftime, Lion General Manager Edwin J. Anderson informed him that Commissioner Rozelle would not allow him to play under any circumstance.

The next day, Plimpton cleaned out his locker and left but not before the Lions presented him with an engraved gold football: “To the best rookie football player in Detroit Lions history.”

In September 1964, Sports Illustrated published Plimpton’s two long features about his Lions adventure. Two years later, “Paper Lion” was published.

In 1968, the movie “Paper Lion” was released. It starred members of the ’67 ballclub; Alan Alda portrayed Plimpton.

In September 2003, at halftime of a game in Detroit against the Vikings, Plimpton, who had become a die-hard Lions fan, was introduced with 26 of his 1963 teammates.

The night before, at a charity dinner, Lion coach Steve Mariucci and team president Matt Millen presented Plimpton with his famous, game-used number “0” Honolulu Blue jersey. It had been found weeks before at the bottom of Friday Macklem’s original equipment trunk at the Lions’ headquarters in Allen Park.

Plimpton told the Free Press that the jersey was nice but unnecessary because the mementos he takes with him are the memories of his experience with the team.

“I had a great time,” Plimpton said. “It was a bonding.”

Sadly, the following Friday, the nation learned that Plimpton had passed away in his sleep. He was 76.

Forever a Lion.

Bill Dow is a metro Detroit freelance writer.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: George Plimpton's tryout with Detroit Lions inspired book, movie