Sometimes an incident sticks in your mind and you get a chance to pursue the lead years later. Thus it was with Jerry May, a football player of no great note other than that he was an interesting person. November 11: Jerry Mays Didn't Lose His Poise You often remember little things for a long time. An incident from the first Super Bowl game in1967 has lingered. This was at the end of that game, after Green Bay whomped Kansas City, 35-10, establishing National Football League superiority over the upstart American Football League. I was ambling across the Los Angeles Coloseum field toward the locker rooms. I had made my way to the edge of the field in the closing moments of the game, so I was among the players as they walked off the field. Up ahead, I noted a big dirt-stained Kansas City lineman quickening his pace a few steps so he could catch up to Green Bay linemen. The KC lineman was defensive end Jerrry Mays, and he was button-holing Green Bay offensive lineman Forrest Gregg, whom he had played opposite, and Bill Curry. Mays said something like, "You guys did a great job. You were much better than us. You are great champions and it was a privilege to be in the game with you. Good luck." Yesterday, Mays and the Kansas City Chiefs came to Shea Stadium and pounded the Super Bowl champion Jets, 34-16. Mays had a fine game. He outplayed Jets rookie guard Roger Finnie in much the same way Gregg had outplayed him in that Super Bowl. Mays was congratulated for his good day's work, and I brought up the incident of the first Super Bowl. Mays said, "Yes I remember. I never was sicker about a game than I was about that Super Bowl game. I never have looked at the films of that game. I suppose I never will unless we go back and win the Super Bowl. The Jets did that. They did a tremendous thing for the league when they won the Super Bowl. They showed we weren't a pumpkin league, which we may have been when we lost to Green Bay. I was tickled to death the Jets won. I admire them tremendously, just as I did the Packers. Mays is a nine-year professional now, a solid 30-year-old pro with numerous all-league mentions to his credit. He is one of the workhorses of the strong Chief defensive line. His teammmates call him "Huzza" for Mr. Hustle. After every Tuesday workout Mays helps show the way by runnning a mile in laps around the practice field. That's not bad for a man who wakes up at 5:50AM so that he can combine pro football with the life of a businessman. Mays is the head of the Kansas City division of the Avery Mays Construction Company. It's his father's business based in his home town of Dallas, and Mays runs the KC operation. He wonders about not spending enough time with his wife and three children, but he's committed to football right now. There was a time when he thought about quitting the game because he knew a career in construction awaited him. He said, "That was after my first year in pro football. We had a terrible season and I had difficulties, so I was ready to chuck it. But then some people launched a letter-writing campaign among Chiefs fans to ask me not to retire. One company put signs on its milk trucks urging people to write to me. The letters trickled in and piled up while I was trying to make my decision. There were 2,700 of them in all; they helped me decide to stick with the game. After that there's never been any question about staying with it until they strip the uniform from me."
As I think back on it I believe I said to him that I thought it was quite unusual for him to go over to the Packers after that Super Bowl. He didn't think it was unusual and I didn't mention that in the column. I think I should have. There was another occasion when remembering an instance from another time paid off more than I might ever have imagined. While covering a track meet at Madison Square Garden I talked to runners after races. After the 3,000-meter event, I talked to one fellow because I was intrigued by his name: Ambrose Burfoot. He finished well back, but I was impressed that he said, "I think the race wasn't long enough for me. I need more distance." That struck me because he had just run a race of almost two miles. Move the clock ahead a few months now to the Boston Marathon. I am on the press bus that includes the rollicking Boston newspapermen who have a grand old time cracking jokes while following the runners. One of them always gets up a pool in which you put in five dollars trying to pick the winner. I noticed that the field included the same Ambrose Burfoot. Though he was not mentioned as a contender in any of the advance prognosticating, I recalled his comment that the 3,000-meter wasn't long enough. I reasoned that 26 miles, 385 yards ought to be long enough, so I listed Burfoot as the winner. Nobody else even considered him. Well, Burfoot took the lead from the start. As he led the pack, the Boston newspaperman needled me about getting inside information. Burfoot continued to lead and I continued to get good-natured invective hurled at me. Burfoot won. And I won the pot of some $100.
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Jets Go to Prison-Just for Practice 
