Dandy Don Meredith turns 68 today. I followed his career when he was at SMU and later when he was with the Dallas Cowboys, first as part of the infamous quarterback shuffle, alternating plays with Eddie LeBaron, and then when he was on his on. He was part of the reason I used to enjoy watching the Cowboys so much. When I was going to grad school in Austin, Judy and I had a color TV set. A couple of our friends, Fred and Paul Williams, would come over every Sunday, and we'd all watch the Cowboy game. Part of the fun of it was cheering for Dandy Don or yelling at him when he'd screw up.Gary Cartwright, a sportswriter for the Dallas Morning News, always wrote his best stuff about Meredith, including one article which began something like this: "The Four Horsemen rode again at the Cotton Bowl yesterday. You remember them: War, Pestilence, Famine, and Meredith." Cartwright went on to write a novel called The Hundred-Yard War, which was about a team much like the Cowboys, with a QB named Riley Sylver (it's been a long time, and I'm not 100% sure of the name of the spelling), who was much like Meredith. A pretty good book, as I recall.
I read recently that Dandy Don had some health problems, but I hope he's doing better by now and that he'll have a good day and many more good years to come.
4 comments:
Thanks, Kent. I knew there was a "Y" in one of those names. Cartwright also wrote a Gold Medal novel. It wasn't a mystery. It was about hockey. I have it, but I don't recall the name of it.
I was never a Dallas fan, but I loved Dandy Don on Monday Night Football. I won't forget the night he jumped all over Cosell for one of Howard's many dumb remarks.
After Dandy left MNF, I pretty much quit watching. He'd gotten bored long before he left, though, and quit even pretending to do his homework on the teams that were playing.
Sadly, there are many PBOs that I don't own. But I have a lot of 'em.
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