Hall of Famers

Last Saturday I went to Canton and met up with my buddies Dave and Mike and Dave's cousin Mark to see the Pro Football Hall of Fame induct two of the all-time Redskins greats, Art Monk and Darrell Green.

Now, see, I'm getting old. Because I remember when the Redskins drafted these guys, and now some 25 years later, they're going into the Hall of Fame. In 1980, Art Monk was the Redskins' first first round pick since, well, Methuselah. Three years later, Darrell Green was this little guy I'd never heard of from a little school that I'd never heard of (no, it wasn't Texas A&M) that we drafted while I was still recovering from the Redskins first Super Bowl win.

They both turned out to be pretty good pickups for the Redskins. That Bobby Beathard knew what he was doing.

Anyway, so I drove down to Canton and met up with Mark, Dave, and Mike at the Hall. Here they are, with Murno wearing his special Joe Theismann home jersey. (As Murno will gladly tell you, anyone can get a burgandy Theismann away jersey, but you dont see many in the home whites....)

As it turns out, we weren't the only Redskins fans there. Not by a long shot. I'd say maybe 90% of the people there were Redskins fans, and I'm not exaggerating. It was like a home game at RFK Stadium. We had planned on maybe picking up a shirt or cap, but by the time we got there two hours before the ceremony, everything Redskins-related had long since sold out. Well not everything. There was quite a sale on Brad Johnson autographed helmets:

(You buy a helmet like this, I bet you get a free bowl of soup, huh?)

Ahh, Brad. I'm sorry guy, I know it wasn't really your fault, but if you had managed to control that errant snap on the field goal attempt back in 1999, maybe your autographed Redskin helmet would be worth more than $29.00.

So after wandering around a bit, we went on up to the stadium for the ceremony. The stadium was decked out with big banners of the inductees:



And when we got to our seats, here was our view:


Uh, yeah. Not exactly the front row. But the Joe Montana guy in the visor in front of us notwithstanding, it really was a totally pro-Redskins crowd; look at all this burgandy and gold (and white):


So they started things off by introducing a bunch of Hall of Famers that had come for the ceremony, including Redskins greats like Bobby Mitchell and, of course, Joe Gibbs. And among those Hall of Famers was none other than Michael Irvin. The whole stadium erupted in boos when he was announced, it was the longest, loudest booing I'd ever heard (and you bet your sweet bippy I was booing along with the rest of the crowd). When the booing finally died down, Chris Berman -- who was MC'ing the event -- turned to Irvin and said "Oh, they're just booing because they love you" and in the now-quiet stadium you could hear some guy yell out "No, we really don't." Heh, classic.

Then it was time to introduce the inductees. The first Redskin announced was Darrell Green, and just to give you a flavor of what it was like in the stands, here's a (rather low quality) videoclip:

Yeah, the place went bonkers. Now, I saw some ESPN clips of the ceremony, and I can tell you it was much louder in the stands than it sounds like on TV. And then the place went even more bananas when Art Monk was announced:

And here's Murno when Monk was announced:


And then it was time for all the speeches. Three-and-a-half hours of speeches can get pretty boring, Redskins or not. One amusing moment was when Eddie DeBartolo Jr introduced Fred Dean, at one point in his introduction speech he said "In his first game with the 49ers, Fred sacked Dallas Cowboys quarterback Danny White three times..." and then you couldn't hear anything else but the entire stadium cheering madly for about 30 seconds. Heh, Redskins fans do not like the Cowboys.

Now, people were pretty loud cheering for Darrell when he got up to give his speech, but it was amazing when Monk got up. The place went nuts. It was a four minute standing ovation (timed at 4:04, I read later) which, when you think about it, is a pretty long time. There was clearly some pent up frustration on the part of Redskins fans that it took so long for Monk to be inducted. Heck, even my Mom was mad about that...

Anyway, I'm glad I went. As Murno said, it was kind of closure on that era of the Redskins for us. We watched them get drafted, we watched them lead the Redskins to three Super Bowl wins, we watched them retire, and we watched them go into the Hall of Fame. Now we can get on with the business of rooting for our now-rather-mediocre team, heh.

Oh, and a postscript: at breakfast the next morning back home in my neighborhood, we walked out the door of the diner and nearly walked smack into none other than Tony Dungy. I thought Murno was going to walk straight into a telephone pole, he was so flabbergasted...