Congratulations, Jerry Kramer: The Hall of Fame Finally Got It Right
There’s a saying about mistakes are the reason why pencils have erasers. If that’s true, the Pro Football Hall of Fame broke out an industrial-sized chunk of rubber last night. At last, out long national sporting nightmare is over; Jerry Kramer is a Hall of Famer.
Last year, Mrs. J-Dub and I were planning a road trip to the East Coast, and our route took us right by Canton. My wife asked me if I wanted to visit the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I said “Why bother? The place isn’t legitimate without Jerry Kramer.”
But rather than get on a rant about how Kramer’s exclusion was an abomination, I’d rather celebrate that it has been made right.
For those of you who don’t know, Jerry Kramer spent his 11-year NFL career with the Green Bay Packers as a 6’3″, 250 pound guard. Kramer was an integral part of the famous “Packer Sweep,” a signature play in which both guards rapidly pull out from their normal positions and block for an end run. Kramer led that “Packer Sweep” to five NFL Championships in seven season, easily the greatest dynasty in the league’s history.
Jerry Kramer leads the way for Elijah Pitts in Super Bowl I
As such, Kramer was an All-Pro five times, a member of the NFL’s All-Decade team of the 1960s. and was named to the NFL’s 50th anniversary team in 1969. Kramer was one of the most colorful players of his era, and like the Hall of Fame, the story of the NFL is not complete without him. His book “Instant Replay” forever changed the view of professional football and the men who play it. Not to mention, he threw arguably the most famous block in the league’s history when he de-cleated Dallas Cowboys defensive tackle Jethro Pugh, thus clearing the way for Bart Starr to score the winning touchdown in the 1967 NFL Championship Game, immortalized as the “Ice Bowl.”
For obvious reasons, Kramer topped the NFL Network’s Top Ten list of players not yet enshrined in Cooperstown. That’s why we here at Dubsism were proud supporters of the Jerry Kramer for the Hall of Fame movement. We wrote our share of letters to the Hall of Fame committee and pretty much anybody else we thought might give a damn and or could do something about it.
Did those letters, or those written by others make the difference, or was it the relentless pursuit of this moment by Alicia Kramer and all those who made the Jerry Kramer for the Hall of Fame movement happen? Ronald Reagan once said that great things can be accomplished when you don’t care about who gets the credit. This might just be one of those great things; to erase 45 years of eligibility and 10 times as a finalist for induction. I’d like to think it was all those things which came together to make the 11th time the charm for the football world’s recognition of the accomplishments of one Gerald Louis Kramer.
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Another example of how younger retirees keep worthy older players out. He should have been in long ago … so cheers to Jerry Kramer getting being in his rightful place.
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