| Rush
Street Joe? It might have been.
While Bear Bryant was courting Joe
Namath to attend Alabama, the Chicago Cubs offered Namath a baseball
contract. A three-sport star at Beaver Falls (PA) High School,
Namath was an accomplished -- if laid-back -- baseball player.
Old-timers still talk about his skills,
as well as a classic American Legion match-ups with Wampum's Richie
Allen.
In Namath's senior year, Beaver Falls
won the 1961 Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League
championship in a game played at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh.
This first-generation photograph was
taken by the now-defunct Beaver Falls News-Tribune. The original photo
was cropped tighter at the top and bottom and used as the team photo
in the 1962 Beaver Falls High School yearbook, the year after Namath's
graduation.
Here is Namath at his best -- wearing
sunglasses, legs and arms crossed. Were he any more relaxed, he
would be holding a glass of Johnnie Walker Red.
This beautiful photo is printed on
Fujicolor Crystal Archive Paper. The picture is flawless and is much
sharper than the scan. Our web address appears only in the scan
below, and not on the actual photo.
|