By George!

It's been a while since I posted the last one, so let's rectify that.

Here’s another of the wonderful TV documentaries that George Plimpton made with David Wolper for ABC in the early 1970s.  Though the editor of the erudite Paris Review, Plimpton was most famous for his participatory journalism, where he wrote books about his experiences training in a wide range of challenging fields, mostly sports, but he branched out on occasion, generally for these TV documentaries.

As I mentioned before, my favorite of those TV films was one where Plimpton sort of re-created his Paper Lion experience.  It wasn’t with Detroit again, but this time with then-Baltimore Colts.  (The later team later moved to Indianapolis, and years after that Baltimore got another ballclub, the Ravens.)   And that’s what me have today.  Plimpton!  The Great Quarterback Sneak.

Although there was a movie about his Paper Lion experience, that wasn’t with Plimpton himself, but an actor (Alan Alda) playing him.  For the TV documentary, however, it’s all Plimpton – going through training, interacting with the players and then getting another chance at redemption, to run four plays at quarterback in an exhibition game.  But this game was ratcheted up – it wasn’t an intersquad contest, but playing against another NFL team.  And making it more dramatic, that other team was his old team, the Detroit Lions.  Furthermore, it was held in a stadium where…106,000 people were in attendance!  At the time (and maybe still, I don’t know), the biggest crowd to ever see an NFL game, albeit an exhibition.  

I find it a joy, most especially if you like football, but even if you don’t.  Because like all of Plimpton’s work, while detailed about the sport (mostly in the first segment, to establish the world we’re now in), it soon turns and becomes about the people involved, not the event itself, as Plimpton talks with the players on the sidelines and throughout the training camp, and in the dorm, getting them to open up, more than a typical athlete interview after a game.  Plimpton’s narration is thoughtfully described, not by a professional athlete but an outsider trying to make sense of it all.  And ultimately, hoping he can put together all he learned, as it leads up to his four plays… 

Here then, running 50-minutes (not 64 like the video shows) is the wonderfully titled, Plimpton!  The Great Quarterback Sneak.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjNKw4tmCT0