Several players from the 1957 Detroit Lions share stories from the franchise's last championship year. Video by Junfu Han/DFP
Five of the 10 living members from the 1957 NFL championship team met in Bloomfield Township to reminisce in July. Their stories didn't disappoint.
Editor's Note: This is the first installment in a week-long series highlighting the Detroit Lions' run to the NFL title in 1957. Since that championship win over the Cleveland Browns 60 years ago, the Lions have won just a single playoff game, the fewest among the NFL's 32 current franchises:
The best stories often involve a bar and a gun. The story of the 1957 Detroit Lions is no different.
Defensive end Gene Cronin owned the bar. A robber owned the gun.
He was serving a meal to a customer at the counter when he felt the assailant press it against the back of his neck.
“He never said a word,” Cronin recalled.
He didn’t have to. Cronin knew what the gunman wanted.
“I said, ‘Ok, everything is going to be fine,” Cronin said.
The robber got his cash. No one got hurt. And it made for a great story to share all these years later, here in the banquet room of Andiamo’s in Bloomfield Township, as Cronin and four of his former teammates gathered to reminisce about the last time the Lions won a championship.
Sixty years ago.
The Free Press invited Cronin, Joe Schmidt, Roger Zatkoff, Dorne Dibble and Steve Junker to help commemorate the anniversary. They gathered one late morning in July.
For more than two hours, they swapped tales about their championship days and shared details of their lives since. A couple of them talked about their wives’ breaking their hips; getting old can be rough.
All five players are in their 80s. Junker, who played wide receiver, is the youngest. He’s 82. Dibble is the oldest. He is 88. Of the 36 who made the ‘57 roster, only 10 are alive.
Cronin, who lives in Sacramento, the town where he once got robbed, traveled the farthest for the mini-reunion. Schmidt, Zatkoff and Dibble all remain in the area, and see each other once in a while.
Cronin and Junker, however, hadn’t seen the three locals in a decade, when the Ford Family held a 50-year reunion to celebrate the title.
From the moment they began to arrive at the restaurant, the stories flowed freely. Like when quarterback Bobby Layne broke his ankle against Cleveland that year in the penultimate regular-season game, and Cronin went up to see him in the hospital.
“I go up to the room. He’s still laying there. He’s got his football pants on. A Marlboro cigarette in his mouth. He’s got an ice pack on his ankle. He’s watching a game involving the 49ers,” Cronin said. “The doctor comes in. Layne tells him, ‘you get out of here! I told you not to bother me until this game was over!’”
“Toughest old guy I ever saw,” said Cronin.
Layne didn’t return that year and was shipped to Pittsburgh the following October . Then, legend has it, put a 60-year hex on the franchise.
Which led to this question: Did Layne curse the Lions?
“Yes,” said Zatkoff, who played linebacker and defensive end.
“It’s past 50 years,” said Schmidt.
“Time to let us loose (then),” said Zatkoff. “Let us win again.”
Schmidt didn’t like the way management treated Layne in the end.
“He was the heart of the team,” said Junker, who was a receiver.
The spirit, too.
Everyone at the table had stories about Layne sneaking out during training camp forever in search of a teammate – or five – who would join him on his hell-raising escapades. Some of them used to hide when he came calling.
8 Photos
Free Press pages from 1957 Detroit Lions championship win
Not Dibble, whose unofficial job was to shadow Layne during his forays and make sure he didn’t get into too much trouble.
“I went out with him to make sure he went to bed,” said Dibble, a receiver.
“Those were fun times,” said Cronin.
Different times, too.
The game was more violent. Not as fast, obviously. Nor as pass-happy.
“I don’t like the way it’s played (now),” said Schmidt, a refrain that’s often told from the players of that era. “(They) might as well use a flag … Maybe I’m jealous.”
Of the money the current players make. Of the training opportunities they have. Of the advancements in health and medicine.
“Back then,” said Schmidt, a Hall of Fame linebacker, “the cure for anybody was the Novocain shot.”
“They’d sit the needle right on the bench,” said Junker.
You broke a finger. Took a shot. Taped it up. Kept your mouth shut.
They wanted the glory. And needed the money.
Almost every player had a second job. Cronin worked construction. Zatkoff was a teacher, then ran a jackhammer. Dibble worked on the railroad. Schmidt sold cars.
He was star, like Layne, and was able to parlay his celebrity into a less demanding off-season job. For everyone else, football was a five-month interruption into their “real” life.
Though they wouldn’t have had it any other way. Not then. Not now.
You can hear it in their voices as they remember those snowy days at Soldier Field in Chicago. See it in their smiles as they laugh about making sure an opponent was gonna kill one of them in a post-game fight.
“We took care of each other,” said Cronin.
Like the time Schmidt got into a shouting match with the 49ers’ Karl Rubke, an offensive lineman who’d offended Schmidt.
“Joe (tells him), ‘I’ll meet you in the tunnel,’ ” said Cronin. “I didn’t know if he could handle that big son-of-bitch.”
So he followed Schmidt to the locker room as backup, banking that the two of them could take out Rubke if he came swinging.
The fight never happened, and Cronin had never told Schmidt he’d had his back. Until they met last July for this reunion.
“Thanks,” Schmidt told him, laughing.
He didn’t need to. Not really.
That’s the thing about playing on a championship team. Loyalty is understood. Brotherhood embraced.
And here, six decades later, it still spilling forth.
The 1957 Detroit Lions players discuss what they would’ve done if they were getting paid in millions per year. Back then, players made about $5,000 or $6,000 per year. Video by Junfu Han/DFP
“It was the thrill of my life,” said Junker of his time in Detroit – he lives in Ohio now. “Being part of a group of guys like this is about as much as you can ask for.”
The same goes for Zatkoff, who said: “It’s been everything, playing ball.”
Despite the pain, the injuries, the stiffened joints and jarred memories. They are lucky, they know, to be in their 80s and relatively intact. And they’ve kept up with science behind CTE and the dangers of the game.
“The hits you had during that time are taking its toll,” said Schmidt.
But they also know what they signed up to do.
“It was my choice to play,” said Cronin, “I wouldn’t trade that choice for anything. I had the time of my life.”
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor. Download our Lions Xtra app for free on Apple and Android!
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