25 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK, SAINTS KICKER TOM DEMPSEY SWUNG HIS RIGHT HALF-FOOT THROUGH THE BALL AND MADE NFL HISTORY ON A 63-YARD FIELD GOAL. TODAY, THEY'RE STILL TALKING ABOUT...THE KICK
Sunday, November 5th 1995, 4:10AM
The mind hurtles back and a quarter century vanishes, and Joe Scarpati can see himself kneeling again, at what still seems to be a thoroughly preposterous location.
He is spinning the laces away. He is holding a football, angled slightly backward, steadied by his left index finger. He is just beyond the 37-yard line his own team's 37.
Joe Scarpati is waiting for Tom Dempsey, a 23-year-old man of enormous strength and well-known disability, a man who had come into kicking by the strangest of happenstance. What Scarpati remembers next is not the hot rush of history, or the trajectory of the unprecedented. It is simply the sound of one man kicking.
"There was a big boom, like a really loud thud," Scarpati said. "I don't think I'll ever forget it."
On the opposing sideline at Tulane Stadium, Joe Schmidt heard the same thing. "It sounded almost like an explosion when he hit it," Schmidt said. "That ball just kept going and going."
Tom Dempsey doesn't recall any aural revelation of his own. "It just had the feeling you get when everything is right," he said. "You feel it the second you hit it."
Dempsey did not know where he was on the Tulane Stadium field that day, because he never measured his kicks. He did not hear a thing about 63 yards until he was carried off by his New Orleans Saints teammates, and pandemonium had long since unfolded around him. He knew it was far, though. The goalposts looked like distant prongs, poking into the gray sky.
Today at the Superdome, before the game with the Rams, the Saints will salute Tom Dempsey and his 63-yard field goal, which he made 25 years ago this week. He will be joined by his wife, Carlene, and their three children, Toby, 21, Ashley, 19, and Meghan, 16, and by the local team of 13-year-olds he coaches, the Mike Miley Cardinals.
The date was Nov. 8, 1970. The kick came with no time left on the clock and stole a 19-17 victory from the Detroit Lions. More than that, it forever redefined the concept of scoring position.
"It was the kick heard around the world," said Mark Moseley, a record-setting kicker himself, for the Redskins. It was also the only kick ever entered into the Congressional record, and it remains a magical sports achievement, for reasons beyond distance.
"He's a special guy," Scarpati said. "To kick a 63-yard field goal is something. But to have it be done by him, a guy born with a half a foot and no right hand, it makes it that much more special."
Dempsey did not break the old standard (Bert Rechichar's 56-yarder) so much as obliterate it. The closest any NFL kicker has come to him since has been 60 yards, by the Browns' Steve Cox in 1984, and by fellow Saint Morten Andersen, in 1991, the same year Jason Hanson (now with the Lions) kicked a 62-yarder for Washington St. (Three other NCAA kickers Joe Williams, Steve Little and Russell Erxleben have kicked 67-yard field goals, but each was off a tee.)
Tulane Stadium has long since been bulldozed. Dempsey lives and works in suburban New Orleans, a desk manager for a company that services automobile dealerships. He has a bushy brownish-gray beard, which doen't stop the constant questions and reminders once people hear his name.
"Twenty-five years is a long time to hold a record," Dempsey said. "The older you are, the nicer it is to be remembered."
It was a clammy, overcast afternoon on the bayou that Sunday and the ball was not carrying, Dempsey said. Maybe the only thing thicker than the humidity was the disbelief, when Dempsey trotted on for the game's last play.
The Lions had just taken a 17-16 lead on Errol Mann's 18-yard field goal with 14 seconds remaining. The Saints' Al Dodd returned the kickoff to the 28On first down, Billy Kilmer threw a 17-yard completion to Dodd, who made a terrific catch falling out of bounds at the Saints' 45.
There were two seconds left. Everyone expected some type of Hail Mary pass, except that the offensive coach, the late Don Heinrich, called for the field-goal team. Dempsey had hit from beyond 65 yards in practice. He wasn't especially accurate, but his leg was plenty strong. Still, 63 yards?
Some of the Lions were laughing. Alex Karras turned to referee Jim Tunney and said, "You've got to be bleeping me!"
Saints receiver Danny Abramowicz was disgusted. "I thought we were nuts," said Abramowicz, now an assistant with the Bears.
Lem Barney, the Lions' All-Pro defensive back, dropped back to play centerfield, anticipating a fake. Schmidt, the Detroit coach, told assistant Chuck Knox, "If they kick this field goal, I'll kiss your butt in Hudson's window (Hudson's being the Midwest's version of Macy's)."
Even on TV, CBS announcers Don Criqui and Johnny Sauer were chortling over it.
Scarpati, the holder, moved back an extra yard for his placement, eight yards behind Jackie Burkett, a linebacker and the team's long snapper. Scarpati did this on his own, unbeknownst to Dempsey, to give the ball extra space to clear the onrushing linemen. Scarpati didn't know how far the attempt was from, either. There was no time to think about it.
"I think if we knew it was 63 yards, we all might've gotten tight," Scarpati said.
The 6-1, 265-pound Dempsey was a kicker inside an offensive lineman's body. He couldn't run well, but he probably flattened more people on returns than any kicker in history. When he swung his leg forward and smacked the ball with his blunt block of a right shoe, it was like hitting it with a sledgehammer. Some people in the league, notably Tex Schramm of the Cowboys, had complained the shoe was illegal because it gave Dempsey an unfair advantage.
"I didn't have a regular shoe because I didn't have a regular foot," Dempsey said.
Karras admitted later he made only a half-hearted attempt to block the kick, and to this day Joe Schmidt believes Karras could've batted it down if he'd gone all out. "Hey, God bless the guy. He made it," Schmidt said. "It teaches you a lesson. You're never out of it. You always have a chance."
An instant after the booming sound, Dempsey's block blasting into pigskin, the kicker said he knew it had a shot. Barney, camped back at the 20, couldn't believe how fast the ball was traveling.
"It was whistling when it went over my head," Barney said. When the ball was halfway toward the goalposts, which were on the goal line then, Criqui's on-air words were: "I don't believe it."
The stadium erupted instanteously. Dempsey was swarmed under in a pile of black and gold. Fans raced on the field. Barneyfell flat on his back and didn't move. Dempsey was patted and hugged and finally hauled off in triumph, as was new coach J.D. Roberts, who had replaced the fired Tom Fears only four days earlier.
Abramowicz remembers people staying in the stadium for an hour or two. Nobody wanted to leave. The Saints didn't want the celebration to end, either, and went barhopping on Bourbon Street that night.
"We just about hit them all," Dempsey said. For Abramowicz, the highlight came when he and tight end Dave Parks cajoled a waiter into bringing a telephone to the table, telling Dempsey President Nixon was on the line.
"He chest got all puffed out. He bit into it hook, line and sinker," Abramowi cz said.
The Saints didn't win again that season, finishing 2-11-1. Dempsey's personal good times were shortlived, too. He did not get along with Roberts, a drill-sergeant type, and was cut the following year. He was signed by the Eagles, where he stayed for four years before moving on to the Rams, Oilers and Bills. In all, Dempsey's NFL career lasted 10 years.
Like long jumper Bob Beamon, Dempsey was not the greatest in his field, and certainly not the most consistent. He was just the best ever, for one day.
"Perhaps this is the only thing he'll ever be remembered for," said Lem Barney, who became close friends with Dempsey on a tour of Southeast Asia after that season. "But what a great memory it is."
That Dempsey was a professional kicker at all was nearly as unthinkable as the kick itself. He was an all-conference defensive end at Palomar (Calif.) Junior College when the coach, looking for someone to kick off, lined up everybody on the team and gave each player one boot. Dempsey took off his shoe and kicked the ball out of the end zone.
"You're kicking Saturday night," the coach told him.
Dempsey kicked in a semipro league for a year, then had a brief stay with the Packers before Sid Gillman signed him for the Chargers' taxi squad. Ever the innovator, Gillman was intrigued by Dempsey's power and had a series of special shoes made, before settling one with a flat front. Before then, Dempsey had simply kicked with his foot wrapped in tape.
Dempsey was alternately awesome and awful with the Chargers. They released him in 1969, and he signed with the Saints.
"He was an amazing guy," Gillman said. "We just gave up on him too soon."
Struggles were nothing new to Dempsey, who had more than his share of fights growing up, fending off the cruel taunts of other kids. He remains indebted to his father for teaching him to deal with it, and surmount it.
"He used to thump me in the head, the way you'd thump a watermelon, whenever he heard me say, `I can't,' Dempsey said. "He'd say, `There's no such thing as can't. You can do anything you want to do. You just may have to do it differently from other people.' "
Dempsey is a frequent speaker at schools and clubs. He makes people at ease on the subject of his half-foot and withered arm, because he is so at ease. Talking to a group in Mississippi recently about his days with the Rams, Dempsey said, "They told me the only reason they wanted me on the team was so they could park the bus in the handicapped zone."
At 48, Tom Dempsey goes about the tricky task of balancing people's fascination about his 25-year-old feat, with his own interest in keeping his life moving forward. Nonetheless, today figures to be a special trip back. He will watch the tape on the big screen. Tom Dempsey will relive the history and the sound, the day he kicked a football from 63 yards out, the longest of kicks by the unlikeliest of men.
