Though the team, in the ’70s, played in the L.A. Coliseum, they spent a majority of their time together in Long Beach, practicing at Blair Field, across the street from Wilson High School. Because of that, a lot of Rams players, Namath included, lived in Long Beach. John Morris, the Long Beach businessman who would establish Legends Sports Bar in 1979 with Rams All-Pro offensive lineman Dennis Harrah, recalls living together with Harrah, then Namath’s teammate, during the late \u201870s just a few blocks away from Namath\u2019s rental on 59th Place. Morris\u2019 friend, Long Beach realtor Mike Colonna, rented the place to Namath and that gave them plenty of access to hang out with him.<\/p>\n
“Today, I\u2019m sure people might ask: Who the hell was he?” Morris said. “In our generation, he was and always will be \u2018Broadway Joe,\u2019 with kids going crazy around him, and always so nice to everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/hi-lo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/51cUZ7cG2bL-1110x1686.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
But Namath’s kindness belied a man at a painful, quite literally, point of his life. After a dozen years of professional football\u2014before a bevy of rules that made hitting a quarterback virtually impossible\u2014he could no longer depend on his body to do as he wanted.<\/p>\n
“During games, when the Rams came screaming out of the dressing room in the Coliseum they had a tradition of running the length of the field along the sideline and then breaking across the field into rows to do calisthenics. It was all I could do to keep up,” he writes in “All The Way.” “My left leg wouldn\u2019t straighten out\u2026 I was scared I was going to fall over just trying to keep pace. I was 34 and considering my five knee surgeries, beginning to feel like a senior veteran.”<\/p>\n
As a Ram, Namath lasted just four games. In a Week 4 Monday Night Football loss at Chicago, he was knocked out of his 140th and final NFL contest. The last pass Namath ever threw was intercepted by the Bears, though he never actually saw the interception because “I took a helmet to the chest.”<\/p>\n
Namath was sidelined the rest of the season as his backup, Pat Haden, took over and Vince Ferragamo moved past Namath to No. 2 on the quarterback depth chart. (The Haden-Ferragamo combination would eventually lead the Rams to the 1980 Super Bowl.)<\/p>\n
Those were the circumstances of Namath’s life during Christmas of 1977. In “All The Way” he describes it as both lonely and a key, life-changing moment to getting on with his life after football:<\/p>\n
On a cool night at the Coliseum on Dec. 26, 1977, our Rams played the Minnesota Vikings for the division title (a playoff game). The stadium was a sloppy mess from an earlier rainfall. It was just a pile of mud between the hashmarks. The Vikings won 14-7. There was a moment in that game, man. Must have been late third or early fourth quarter, when we were behind. I was standing near Coach Knox and he turned and glanced in my direction. We made eye contact and he gave me a look, the sort that was subtly asking if I had something left in the tank for one more comeback. I didn\u2019t give him anything back, though. We just looked into each other\u2019s eyes, a few seconds went by, and he glanced back out to the field.<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019ve often thought about that moment.<\/em><\/p>\n I really feel like I let him down.<\/em><\/p>\n In retrospect, that was the first time I dug deep only to discover I didn\u2019t have the confidence to compete.<\/em><\/p>\n The day before the game was the only time I\u2019d ever spent Christmas alone. And boy did I ever feel alone. At around 10 at night, I decided to go for a stroll, so I walked out of my rental duplex in Belmont Shores and headed south. The back door was on the beach and I headed toward the water. Normally, I might have carried a drink with me, but for some reason, I didn\u2019t that night. I just walked, looking around, thinking about what was happening and how everything seemed so big and empty. I didn\u2019t see a single person. I\u2019m walking and thinking, What am I doing?<\/em><\/p>\n I was all by myself and I glanced down at my flip-flops and the sand around my feet. I headed toward the jetty and climbed up on the rocks and found a place to sit. I just looked around, feeling loneliness. I was thinking about the grains of sand and the vastness above the black sky full of stars and it hit me how insignificant I was in the universe.<\/em><\/p>\n What was next for me? I knew I wasn\u2019t going to play pro football anymore after this season. I was thrilled to be on the Rams and the coaches and layers and trainers were terrific guys. I can\u2019t recall a bum on the team. The realization that I was so small and trivial in the makeup of things helped put everything into perspective.<\/em><\/p>\n Looking back, I\u2019m thankful for that moment, for being alone and how that helped me connect with the greater energy out there.<\/em><\/p>\n Namath retired after the Minnesota loss and cashed in on his football fame with the starring role of C.C. Ryder next to Ann Margret in 1970’s regrettable \u201cC.C. & Company\u201d motorcycle flick. By \u201978, he was starring in a TV series called \u201cThe Waverly Wonders,\u201d as a washed-up pro basketball player turned history teacher at a Wisconsin high school. “Waverly” was NBC\u2019s answer to CBS’ popular \u201cWhite Shadow,\u201d but lasted only nine episodes.<\/p>\n Looking back, John Morris said he could “visualize Joe on that peninsula, on the breakwater channel, feeling lonely because maybe everything didn\u2019t feel real to him; I could see that.<\/p>\n “Maybe he didn\u2019t have close friends or family near him. But I could also see both sides of that. I could imagine different kinds of loneliness. He got so much attention from everyone around him. Everyone gushed over him, and you\u2019d think I was just talking about the ladies. But it was everyone. When Mike and I would be with him back at Bobby McGees, we\u2019d go to that scene and he wasn\u2019t bloody lonely there at all.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Joe Namath would probably rather not relive the Christmas he spent in Belmont Shore in 1977. After 12 seasons of being \u201cBroadway Joe,\u201d superstar quarterback of the New York Jets who he led to a Super Bowl title 50 years ago, the oft-injured 34-year-old decided to come to L.A. and play for the Rams. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":17120,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[545],"class_list":["post-6765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hi-lo","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6765"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=6765"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}