Blue-Eyed Soul Brother: The Versatile Football Life of Super Bill Bradley
Autor William C. Kashatusen Limba Engleză Hardback – oct 2024
Beginning in high school, Bradley stood up for the civil rights of his Black teammates and was instrumental in breaking down the color barrier in Texas high school football. A highly recruited scholastic quarterback, Bradley played for the University of Texas Longhorns for three seasons. Unable to run the Wishbone offense, Bradley was demoted and switched to defensive back, where he reinvented himself as a ball hawk. After being drafted by the lowly Philadelphia Eagles, he became a triple threat who punted, returned, and played free safety and was the first player to lead the NFL in interceptions in consecutive seasons.
After a thirty-year coaching career in the World Football, Canadian Football, and National Football Leagues, Bradley retired to his native Texas. There, he and his wife, Susan, cared for their son, Matt, a talented college quarterback who became a paraplegic after a savage assault by a drunk college student. Matt made a heroic eleven-year effort to regain the use of his voice and motor skills before he died in 2020. Today, Bradley is engaged in another struggle, this one with memory loss and other cognitive impairments caused by the many concussions he suffered during his nine-year playing career in the NFL. But he is determined to live his life to the fullest.
Blue-Eyed Soul Brother is the inspirational story of a man whose contagious enthusiasm for life raised the spirits of those around him in both good and bad times—a story about the resilience of the human spirit in the face of personal tragedy, and a story to remember when life doesn’t appear to be going your way.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781496240422
ISBN-10: 1496240421
Pagini: 336
Ilustrații: 25 photographs, 3 tables, 2 appendixes, index
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 15 mm
Greutate: 0.66 kg
Editura: Nebraska
Colecția University of Nebraska Press
Locul publicării:United States
ISBN-10: 1496240421
Pagini: 336
Ilustrații: 25 photographs, 3 tables, 2 appendixes, index
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 15 mm
Greutate: 0.66 kg
Editura: Nebraska
Colecția University of Nebraska Press
Locul publicării:United States
Notă biografică
William C. Kashatus is a historian, educator, and the author of more than twenty books, including Lefty and Tim: How Steve Carlton and Tim McCarver Became Baseball’s Best Battery (Nebraska, 2022), Macho Row: The 1993 Phillies and Baseball’s Unwritten Code (Nebraska, 2017), and Jackie and Campy: The Untold Story of Their Rocky Relationship and the Breaking of Baseball’s Color Line (Nebraska, 2014). Ray Didinger is a sportswriter, sports commentator, radio personality, and the author of several books. He is also a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame on the Writers’ Honor Roll for his sportswriting career, which spanned more than a quarter of a century.
Extras
1
Palestine
Palestine is one of the most charming small towns in East Texas. Located
in the Piney Woods region of the Lone Star State, the town has surrounding
forests abundant in pine and hardwood trees, expansive lakes, and
white-tailed deer. Regal Victorian mansions once inhabited by railroad
executives and oil barons grace the resplendent streets of the historic
district, which beams with Southern charm. Antique shops, quaint hotels,
and Eilenberger’s, the oldest continually operating bakery in Texas, can
still be found downtown. The stately Anderson County Courthouse, with
its majestic silver dome, dominates center square, a reminder of a more
prosperous time in the town’s history. Just outside the city limits is Davey
Dogwood Park, 254 acres of emerald greenery where locals can hike and
bike along the many trails and enjoy the picturesque scenery. Springtime
is breathtaking, as the park erupts with Texas wildflowers, including
Indian blankets, bluebonnets, and pink evening primrose. Beyond the
pastoral beauty of the town and the surrounding countryside, Palestine
is best defined by its residents.
There are townies, farmers, ranchers, and even a few colorful rapscallions.
Some are wealthy. Others run the gamut of the middle class. Still
others compose the working poor who survive from paycheck to pay-
check. Regardless of their ilk, Palestinians are a social bunch. If they like
you, they like you hard and tend to organize a get-together on the flimsiest
of excuses. If they grew up together, their loyalty is unconditional. They
hold no grudges if you leave town to pursue bigger and better things, but
only if you remember where you came from and return often enough
to show it. Palestinians may have their political and cultural differences,
but they all manage to coexist like one big family. It’s always been that
way, kind of like a historical fact.
Once the site of a frontier trading post, Palestine was founded in 1846
to serve as the seat for the newly established Anderson County. Legend
holds that the town was named for Palestine, Illinois, by Daniel Parker, an
elder of the Primitive Baptist Church. But the locals still debate that issue.
Some claim that Micham Main, a Palestine, Illinois, migrant, chose the
name when he was appointed by the Texas Legislature as one of three men
to select a site for the Anderson County seat. Others insist that another
legislative appointee, John Parker, also from Illinois’s Palestine, chose
the name. What is certain is that by 1861 Palestine had grown to nearly
two thousand residents and was connected to the rest of East Texas by a
stagecoach that passed through the town every three weeks and serviced
Huntsville, Crockett, and Nacogdoches as well.
Plans for the construction of the Metropolitan Railroad between Texarkana
and Austin, passing through Palestine, were interrupted by the Civil
War. But an emerging timber industry led to the International Railroad
and Great Northern Railroad’s decision, in 1872, to build a line that connected
Palestine to Longview, eighty-eight miles to the northeast. When
International and Great Northern Railroad (ign) president Herbert M.
Hoxie moved to Palestine in the mid-1870s, the town assumed a more
important role in the railroad. A major depot was built in 1892 and a
modern passenger coach shop in 1902.
Between 1900 and 1909, the ign hired its own workforce and used
convict labor to extend the railroad. Inmates collected the iron ore from
the surrounding woods and then smelt the ore in a blast furnace at Rusk
Penitentiary thirty miles away. The finished rails were then transported
to various building sites, where ign employees laid and fastened the
track. The ign would eventually operate some 1,106 miles of track, and
Palestine would become the center for the company’s main workshops,
where locomotives and passenger cars were constructed, overhauled,
and repaired.
Regularly scheduled train service to Palestine began in 1909 and
continued until 1924, when the line was leased to various companies,
including the Missouri Pacific Railroad (MoPac). The town was a hub
for the southern branch of MoPac, linking Houston to St. Louis. Four
years later, oil was discovered at Boggy Creek, just east of town. Palestine
became a center for supplying and servicing oil wells in other producing
fields later discovered in Anderson County.6 But the railroad remained
the biggest employer in Palestine. In fact, a county immigration society
recruited railroad workers by publishing job advertisements in the Palestine
Daily Herald and a dozen other newspapers across Texas. Thousands
of unemployed men read those circulars and flocked to the Anderson
County seat in search of work.7 One of those men was Joe Hill Bradley.
Bradley and his wife, Helen, arrived in Palestine in 1927. Joe was just
eighteen years old and his new bride, sixteen. With no prospects in their
hometown of Dodge, Joe took a job with the Missouri Pacific as a telegraph
operator and settled into the life of a railroad worker.8 Life had not
turned out the way he had planned. If Joe had had his druthers, he would
be playing shortstop for the St. Louis Cardinals. But the Redbirds already
had a shortstop, Rabbit Maranville, a future Hall of Famer, and Joe was
only good enough to get a Class D contract. Money was the deciding
factor. The railroad paid more than the Minors. Therefore, Joe worked
for MoPac five days a week and played semipro ball on the weekends.
When Bradley’s marriage ended in divorce a few years later, he turned
to carousing and liquor. In fact, the only thing he swore off was marriage.
That was until 1943, when he wed Mildred Pauline Rainey, the daughter
of Omega Thomas Rainey, a carpenter, and his wife, Rosemary, who ran
a Houston boardinghouse.10 Millie tried hard to make a sober and honest
man of her husband. But theirs was an attraction of opposites. Joe, who
was fourteen years older, was a binge drinker who favored bourbon and
whiskey. Millie was a teetotaler. Joe was a “rounder,” or a philanderer, who
“ran around” with other women. Millie, on the other hand, was a devout
member of the First United Methodist Church and wholly committed to
the marriage. Despite their differences, the couple somehow managed
to coexist and raise a family that grew to include three children.
William Calvin Bradley was the couple’s second child and eldest son.
“Billy” was born on January 24, 1947, sandwiched between Rose May,
who was four years older, and Ralph, who was four years younger. Billy
inherited not only his paternal grandfather’s name but also his father’s
passion for baseball. He had no choice in either matter. Every toy in
his crib was a ball. When he was two years old, Joe discovered that his
son was ambidextrous and encouraged him to throw with both hands.
Shortly after, he began taking his son to the ballpark, where he would
seat the toddler on the grass behind the backstop to watch Joe play with
the Palestine Pals, the local semipro team. At age four, Billy was spending
his afternoons in the backyard tossing a ball of aluminum foil in the air
and hitting long flies with a plastic bat. A few years later, Joe would join
his son after work to teach him the finer points of the game. By the time
Billy joined up for Little League at age eight, he not only knew how to
bunt, field grounders, and hit the cutoff man but also switch-hit. Under
the demanding tutelage of his father, Billy became the stuff of legends.
“Billy and I played Little League against each other,” recalled David
Dickey, a boyhood friend. “Once I tried to steal home after he threw a
wild pitch. The catcher retrieved the ball and threw it to Billy who was
covering home plate. He took the throw and put his glove right above
the plate. He didn’t reach out to tag me. He just left the glove there and
let me slide right into the tag. I remember thinking, Who taught him to
do that?”
Dickey would soon learn that Joe Hill Bradley taught his son everything
he knew about baseball. In fact, Billy became so good at such a young
age that he served as an assistant coach whenever his father conducted
summer baseball camps for the local Little Leaguers. “I was my dad’s
guinea pig,” recalled Bill. “Not only did he teach me the finer points of
the game, but he [also] taught me to win. Nothing less was expected of
me. I could go three-for-four with two home runs and five rbi in a game,
and Dad would still be mad at me because I struck out the one time. He
also expected me to know everything he was coaching the other kids, so
it was a no-brainer for me to be his assistant coach.”
Joe also introduced his son to his favorite team, the St. Louis Cardinals.
Since St. Louis was 728 miles to the northeast of Palestine, the only way
the Bradleys could follow the Redbirds was through the daily box scores
in the Palestine newspapers and on radio. While Harry Caray and Jack
Buck stirred young Billy’s imagination with their lively broadcasts, Joe
knew there was nothing like being at the ballpark. One day he purchased
a round-trip train ticket to St. Louis for his son and gave him enough
money for bleacher seats at Sportsman’s Park to see his hero Stan Musial
play in person.
Palestine
Palestine is one of the most charming small towns in East Texas. Located
in the Piney Woods region of the Lone Star State, the town has surrounding
forests abundant in pine and hardwood trees, expansive lakes, and
white-tailed deer. Regal Victorian mansions once inhabited by railroad
executives and oil barons grace the resplendent streets of the historic
district, which beams with Southern charm. Antique shops, quaint hotels,
and Eilenberger’s, the oldest continually operating bakery in Texas, can
still be found downtown. The stately Anderson County Courthouse, with
its majestic silver dome, dominates center square, a reminder of a more
prosperous time in the town’s history. Just outside the city limits is Davey
Dogwood Park, 254 acres of emerald greenery where locals can hike and
bike along the many trails and enjoy the picturesque scenery. Springtime
is breathtaking, as the park erupts with Texas wildflowers, including
Indian blankets, bluebonnets, and pink evening primrose. Beyond the
pastoral beauty of the town and the surrounding countryside, Palestine
is best defined by its residents.
There are townies, farmers, ranchers, and even a few colorful rapscallions.
Some are wealthy. Others run the gamut of the middle class. Still
others compose the working poor who survive from paycheck to pay-
check. Regardless of their ilk, Palestinians are a social bunch. If they like
you, they like you hard and tend to organize a get-together on the flimsiest
of excuses. If they grew up together, their loyalty is unconditional. They
hold no grudges if you leave town to pursue bigger and better things, but
only if you remember where you came from and return often enough
to show it. Palestinians may have their political and cultural differences,
but they all manage to coexist like one big family. It’s always been that
way, kind of like a historical fact.
Once the site of a frontier trading post, Palestine was founded in 1846
to serve as the seat for the newly established Anderson County. Legend
holds that the town was named for Palestine, Illinois, by Daniel Parker, an
elder of the Primitive Baptist Church. But the locals still debate that issue.
Some claim that Micham Main, a Palestine, Illinois, migrant, chose the
name when he was appointed by the Texas Legislature as one of three men
to select a site for the Anderson County seat. Others insist that another
legislative appointee, John Parker, also from Illinois’s Palestine, chose
the name. What is certain is that by 1861 Palestine had grown to nearly
two thousand residents and was connected to the rest of East Texas by a
stagecoach that passed through the town every three weeks and serviced
Huntsville, Crockett, and Nacogdoches as well.
Plans for the construction of the Metropolitan Railroad between Texarkana
and Austin, passing through Palestine, were interrupted by the Civil
War. But an emerging timber industry led to the International Railroad
and Great Northern Railroad’s decision, in 1872, to build a line that connected
Palestine to Longview, eighty-eight miles to the northeast. When
International and Great Northern Railroad (ign) president Herbert M.
Hoxie moved to Palestine in the mid-1870s, the town assumed a more
important role in the railroad. A major depot was built in 1892 and a
modern passenger coach shop in 1902.
Between 1900 and 1909, the ign hired its own workforce and used
convict labor to extend the railroad. Inmates collected the iron ore from
the surrounding woods and then smelt the ore in a blast furnace at Rusk
Penitentiary thirty miles away. The finished rails were then transported
to various building sites, where ign employees laid and fastened the
track. The ign would eventually operate some 1,106 miles of track, and
Palestine would become the center for the company’s main workshops,
where locomotives and passenger cars were constructed, overhauled,
and repaired.
Regularly scheduled train service to Palestine began in 1909 and
continued until 1924, when the line was leased to various companies,
including the Missouri Pacific Railroad (MoPac). The town was a hub
for the southern branch of MoPac, linking Houston to St. Louis. Four
years later, oil was discovered at Boggy Creek, just east of town. Palestine
became a center for supplying and servicing oil wells in other producing
fields later discovered in Anderson County.6 But the railroad remained
the biggest employer in Palestine. In fact, a county immigration society
recruited railroad workers by publishing job advertisements in the Palestine
Daily Herald and a dozen other newspapers across Texas. Thousands
of unemployed men read those circulars and flocked to the Anderson
County seat in search of work.7 One of those men was Joe Hill Bradley.
Bradley and his wife, Helen, arrived in Palestine in 1927. Joe was just
eighteen years old and his new bride, sixteen. With no prospects in their
hometown of Dodge, Joe took a job with the Missouri Pacific as a telegraph
operator and settled into the life of a railroad worker.8 Life had not
turned out the way he had planned. If Joe had had his druthers, he would
be playing shortstop for the St. Louis Cardinals. But the Redbirds already
had a shortstop, Rabbit Maranville, a future Hall of Famer, and Joe was
only good enough to get a Class D contract. Money was the deciding
factor. The railroad paid more than the Minors. Therefore, Joe worked
for MoPac five days a week and played semipro ball on the weekends.
When Bradley’s marriage ended in divorce a few years later, he turned
to carousing and liquor. In fact, the only thing he swore off was marriage.
That was until 1943, when he wed Mildred Pauline Rainey, the daughter
of Omega Thomas Rainey, a carpenter, and his wife, Rosemary, who ran
a Houston boardinghouse.10 Millie tried hard to make a sober and honest
man of her husband. But theirs was an attraction of opposites. Joe, who
was fourteen years older, was a binge drinker who favored bourbon and
whiskey. Millie was a teetotaler. Joe was a “rounder,” or a philanderer, who
“ran around” with other women. Millie, on the other hand, was a devout
member of the First United Methodist Church and wholly committed to
the marriage. Despite their differences, the couple somehow managed
to coexist and raise a family that grew to include three children.
William Calvin Bradley was the couple’s second child and eldest son.
“Billy” was born on January 24, 1947, sandwiched between Rose May,
who was four years older, and Ralph, who was four years younger. Billy
inherited not only his paternal grandfather’s name but also his father’s
passion for baseball. He had no choice in either matter. Every toy in
his crib was a ball. When he was two years old, Joe discovered that his
son was ambidextrous and encouraged him to throw with both hands.
Shortly after, he began taking his son to the ballpark, where he would
seat the toddler on the grass behind the backstop to watch Joe play with
the Palestine Pals, the local semipro team. At age four, Billy was spending
his afternoons in the backyard tossing a ball of aluminum foil in the air
and hitting long flies with a plastic bat. A few years later, Joe would join
his son after work to teach him the finer points of the game. By the time
Billy joined up for Little League at age eight, he not only knew how to
bunt, field grounders, and hit the cutoff man but also switch-hit. Under
the demanding tutelage of his father, Billy became the stuff of legends.
“Billy and I played Little League against each other,” recalled David
Dickey, a boyhood friend. “Once I tried to steal home after he threw a
wild pitch. The catcher retrieved the ball and threw it to Billy who was
covering home plate. He took the throw and put his glove right above
the plate. He didn’t reach out to tag me. He just left the glove there and
let me slide right into the tag. I remember thinking, Who taught him to
do that?”
Dickey would soon learn that Joe Hill Bradley taught his son everything
he knew about baseball. In fact, Billy became so good at such a young
age that he served as an assistant coach whenever his father conducted
summer baseball camps for the local Little Leaguers. “I was my dad’s
guinea pig,” recalled Bill. “Not only did he teach me the finer points of
the game, but he [also] taught me to win. Nothing less was expected of
me. I could go three-for-four with two home runs and five rbi in a game,
and Dad would still be mad at me because I struck out the one time. He
also expected me to know everything he was coaching the other kids, so
it was a no-brainer for me to be his assistant coach.”
Joe also introduced his son to his favorite team, the St. Louis Cardinals.
Since St. Louis was 728 miles to the northeast of Palestine, the only way
the Bradleys could follow the Redbirds was through the daily box scores
in the Palestine newspapers and on radio. While Harry Caray and Jack
Buck stirred young Billy’s imagination with their lively broadcasts, Joe
knew there was nothing like being at the ballpark. One day he purchased
a round-trip train ticket to St. Louis for his son and gave him enough
money for bleacher seats at Sportsman’s Park to see his hero Stan Musial
play in person.
Cuprins
List of Illustrations
Foreword by Ray Didinger
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Palestine
2. Friday Night Lights
3. Blue-Eyed Soul Brother
4. Longhorns
5. Reality Check
6. Penthouse to Shithouse
7. Billy Bo Bitch
8. Bamboozled
9. Teacher-Coach
10. Faith, Hope, and Love
Appendix A: Bill Bradley’s NFL Career Statistics, 1969–77
Appendix B: Bill Bradley’s College Career Statistics, 1966–68
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Foreword by Ray Didinger
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Palestine
2. Friday Night Lights
3. Blue-Eyed Soul Brother
4. Longhorns
5. Reality Check
6. Penthouse to Shithouse
7. Billy Bo Bitch
8. Bamboozled
9. Teacher-Coach
10. Faith, Hope, and Love
Appendix A: Bill Bradley’s NFL Career Statistics, 1969–77
Appendix B: Bill Bradley’s College Career Statistics, 1966–68
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Recenzii
“William Kashatus captures the rise and fall and rise of Super Bill Bradley. His access to Bradley pays off big time. The book brims with inside information and sharp anecdotes. All are told in the context of the times with special attention to civil rights, Vietnam, high-stakes amateurism, the rising counterculture, substance abuse, the relentless pressure placed on young men to whip each other at a child’s game, and, most importantly, to Bradley’s journey from player to husband and father. It’s a hell of a good read.”—Bobby Hawthorne, author of Longhorn Football: An Illustrated History
“Blue-Eyed Soul Brother is the inspirational story of Bill Bradley, my friend and teammate on the Philadelphia Eagles between 1971 and 1976. Although those were difficult years because of all the losing, Billy was a team leader who made the rest of us accountable on the playing field and kept us loose and laughing off of it. With this book, others will learn how fiercely competitive Bradley was as a player and how special he is as a person.”—Harold Carmichael, Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver, 1971–83, and Pro Football Hall of Famer, Class of 2020
“William Kashatus captures the essence of the greatest athlete I have ever seen. Super Bill Bradley was not only one of the NFL’s best free safeties but punted, returned, and held for our kickers. He was the ultimate ‘free spirit’ off the field but the fiercest on the gridiron. . . . I treasured the years we played together in Philadelphia and am grateful for his lifelong friendship.”—John Bunting, Philadelphia Eagles linebacker, 1972–82
Descriere
Blue-Eyed Soul Brother is the biography of Bill Bradley, an All-Pro free safety who starred for the National Football League’s Philadelphia Eagles from 1969 to 1976.