Father Benedict Dudley & The New York Giants Dark Ages

Tommy punts while Pop ponders a hard Math problem

Owning a four game losing streak in professional football is the equivalent of losing 40 straight games in professional baseball. It's 25 percent of your team's season. The New York Giants four game losing streak makes me blue.

The losing stretch reminds me of the bad old days, before Pete Rozelle forcefully escorted Wellington & Tim Mara across the dance floor to their new general manager, George Young.

I'm old enough to vaguely remember the Giants glory years coming to a close in 1963. Then the dark age: from 1964 through 1980 the Giants were terrible except for one tease in 1970 when the George "Straight to Hell" Allen led L.A. Rams beat the Giants in the last game of the season denying them the N.F.L.'s Eastern Conference crown, and worse, giving the crown to the Anti-christs from Dallas.

Below are the first few paragraphs of a Sports Illustrated article from September 25, 1972, about the New York Giants bad times.

Rory facing camera in Yankee Staium bleachers 1966

A cool Yorkville related thing in the article is a prominent character is Father Benedict J. Dudley. Father Dudley was the pastor of St. Stephen of Hungary Church on East 82nd Street, and he served me my first communion and I served him as his altar boy in mass. Father Dudley was also the Chaplain for the New York Giants & the New York Rangers and one of Wellington Mara's closest friends.

It's a good read, but I'd prefer the Giants put a little winning streak together starting next week.

Tommy & Father Bendict J. Dudley 1963

It's Just One Man's Family

Wellington Mara is moving his beloved—if baffling—Giants to New Jersey, hoping others will love them, too.

by Robert H. Boyle

Father Dudley said the 6:30 a.m. Mass and then looked in on the St. Francis of Assisi

Breadline on Manhattan's West 31st Street that has been running since 1929—the oldest breadline in the world, according to Father Dudley. Not scheduled to hear confessions that day, Father Dudley got into his car and drove to the Giant training camp in New Jersey. There he watched the workouts, checked on the progress of the rookies and talked with his friend, Wellington Mara, the president of the team. Father Benedict Dudley has been a fixture around the Giants since 1932 when a man saw him standing in the bleacher ticket line at the old Polo Grounds and said, "Take this, Father." It was a box-seat ticket right on the 50-yard line. There were three or four other men in the box, and Father Dudley kept up a running commentary on the performances of the players and the progress of the game. When one of the men allowed that Father Dudley certainly knew a lot about professional football, Father Dudley said, "I used to see the Frankford Yellow Jackets play when I lived in Philadelphia." It turned out that Father Dudley was sitting in the box of a very close friend of Tim Mara's, and from then on he never had to stand in the bleacher ticket line again. Another priest, Father Kevin O'Brien, who was a professor of physics at Fordham, has always hung around the Giants, too. He became known as the defensive priest; Father Dudley was the offensive priest. Once at a dinner in Milwaukee the late Fred Miller, president of the Miller Brewing Co. and himself a Catholic, introduced Father Dudley as the offensive priest. Father Dudley drew a chortle when he cautioned Miller on pronouncing the first syllable offensive. "The word has two meanings," he said. In the course of years, Father Dudley has become not only honorary chaplain to the Giants but to what Wellington Mara calls "the Giant Family."

To finish Robert H. Boyle's article go to this link:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1086564/index.htmin