A Hotbed for Quarterbacks : Marino & Montana: 2 More From Western Pennsylvania : By CHRIS DUFRESNE, Times Staff Writer

L.A. Times Archives

Jan. 20, 1985 12 AM PT

PITTSBURGH, Pa. — From the shadows of billowing smokestacks they rise, in numbers too great to ignore or write off as coincidence.

It is here, in the land of steel, that their talent is honed and harnessed. It is from here that they leave, molded in uncanny similarity.

They file out of this region as if spewed from some mill on the banks of the Monongahela River.

They rise, from humble beginnings in burroughs of little distinction, to stardom. One after another. Day after day. Year after year.

They are the quarterbacks of western Pennsylvania. Not your run in the steel-mill quarterbacks, mind you.

They carry names to remember, these quarterbacks for whom streets are named and folk songs written. They are Joe Namath and Johnny Unitas, Joe Montana and Dan Marino. They are George Blanda, Johnny Lujack, Terry Hanratty, Chuck Fusina and Jim Kelly. They are Jeff Hostetler and Tom Clements.

Those are the ones we know about. There will be others. There are always more on the way.

They grow up in the same area code, breathing the same air. They grow up to be winners.

Regardless of the outcome of today’s Super Bowl game between the Miami Dolphins and San Francisco 49ers, every champion of professional football this season will have been quarterbacked by a native of western Pennsylvania.

Tom Clements, from McKees Rocks, led the Winnipeg Blue Bombers to the Canadian Football League title. Chuck Fusina, from McKees Rocks, is quarterback of the United States Football League champion Philadelphia (now Baltimore) Stars.

The quarterback of the NFL champion will be either the Dolphins’ Marino, from Oakland, Pa., or the 49ers’ Montana, from Monongahela.

Don’t forget that Houston Gambler quarterback Jim Kelly, the USFL’s most valuable player in 1984, is from nearby East Brady.

You can try to pass this provincial dominance off as coincidence, but the people here know better. That their heroes went from small mining towns to magazine covers is no quirk nature, they’ll tell you.

It isn’t anthing they put in the water here and, as one Pittsburgh writer said, “It certainly isn’t the air.”

Rather, it’s an attitude, born of necessity, that pervades this region. There’s a toughness about these people, from the way they talk to the way they drive. Darwinism lives here. Namath, Unitas, Marino and Montana are the survivors. They were among the fittest.

Here, when you get knocked down, you get back up and fight,or you get left behind.

Here, athletics are more passion than pastime. Football isn’t a game, it’s a ticket out, an avenue of escape from a lifetime of soot and sweat.

“I can’t tell you, I can’t find the words to describe how important (football) is,” said Aliquippa High School Coach Don Yannessa, who served as technical advisor on “All the Right Moves,” a movie based on Yannessa’s high school team. “If a kid can’t grow up and play football here, he’d might as well join the Peace Corps. It’s a stigma that stays with him all his life. I guess that’s BS, but that’s the way it is.”

Namath, Unitas, Montana, Marino. Someday, they may be regarded as four of the best quarterbacks who ever played the game.

Similarities? All are Catholic sons of working-class fathers whose familes migrated to America from Europe, seeking better lives.

Namath is Hungarian. His father worked in a steel mill in Beaver Falls, a short drive west from Pittsburgh. Unitas, Lithuanian, grew up in the Pittsburgh suburb of Mount Washington. His father, who drove a coal truck, died when Unitas was young. Marino’s father, Dan Sr., drives a truck for the Pittsburgh Press.

The name Montana was Montagna when the family lived in northern Italy. Joe Sr. runs a small financial loan service in Monogahela, but for years worked as a Western Electric equipment installer.

All dreamed of better lives for their sons. And here, dreams are made on football fields.

“There is a work ethic concept that dates as far as the 1890s,” said Art Bernardi, for 25 years the football coach at Butler High School. “These guys had grandparents that came over from Europe. Those people worked hard. Going to college was something they couldn’t do. Last year, of the 28 kids on our team, 25 went on to college. And we’ve always had the quarterback that went the extra step. It’s the whole phenomenom that drives them.”

Route 837 winds southward alongside the Monongahela River. On your way to Joe Montana’s hometown, you pass through one mill town after another. It’s a stretch lined with refineries, railroad track and smoke-filled skies.

Monongahela, population 5,950, was founded in 1769 and it appears that not much has changed since. It’s quiet and quaint, a town you could miss if you looked down to change radio stations. Five miles down the road is Donora, the hometown of baseball hero Stan Musial.

In Monongahela, most everything happens on Main Street, the only street with signals.

You wouldn’t know that Joe Montana once lived around here unless you looked hard. Oh, there’s a sign in Span and Taylor’s drugstore proclaiming: “It’s Time for Joe (16).”

But the week before the Super Bowl, there are banners, no graffitti.

Civic Finance, the loan company for which Joe Montana Sr. works, is across the street. There, you can get loans up to $3,500.

Farther down the street, at Joe’s Bar, you can order an opinion about the town’s most famous citizen.

“Montana was driven to get out of here, heck yeah,” said Dan Kelly, unemployed and 27. “It wasn’t easy growing up here. There are no jobs out there so I just crawled into this bottle and that’s been it. The mills shut down and there ain’t no work. They (Montana and Marino) got the lucky break and they’re out. The breaks are what you need.”

Around the corner at The Outhouse, Chester Young, 29, and Joe Criswell, 28, sat at the bar, drinking beer. The televison overhead was tuned to Bugs Bunny cartoons.

Young is an unemployed mill worker, Criswell an unemployed truck driver.

Young said that he and Montana were friends, that they had attended Ringgold High School and had played football together since childhood.

“Sports is the way out of here,” Young said. “It’s the way out of everyone’s jungle, I guess. Joe’s dad really pushed him. I wish I had a father that pushed me into sports. But my mother and father split up when I was young.”

Young doesn’t know when he’ll work again.

“They call this the Mon Valley, but it’s more like Death Valley.”

Monongahela is just one of many mill towns in the Pittsburgh area devastated by high unemployment.

There was a time around here when jobs were plentiful, a time when union contracts were fat and mill workers could make as much as doctors and lawyers.

But no longer. Five years ago, there were about 98,000 basic raw steel-making jobs in the Pittsburgh area. Today there are about 49,000.

“And the skid is still ongoing,” said Nick Knezevich, labor writer for the Pittsburgh Press. “And there’s not a community in the Pittsburgh region that doesn’t, to some extent, depend on steel.”

After World War II, Knezevich said, the United States helped rebuild war-torn countries by providing new steel-making technology and equipment.

“But here, labor was cheaper than the new equipment,” he said. “In recent years, there’s become a glut of steel-making capacity in the world and because of that glut, the countries that are suffering are the ones with old machinery. Now, we can import it cheaper overseas.”

So the mills here have drastically cut back on production, and workers.

“U.S. Steel started the seige of shutdowns in 1979 and have been doing it piecemeal ever since,” Knezevich said. The suicide rate is up in Pittsburgh. This city is again fighting for its life.

Charles Dickens once described Pittsburgh as “Hell with the lid off.” But today, smoked-filled skies and long-hours in scorching mills would be as welcome as a breath of fresh air.

Then, there are those who get out.

Joe Montana was 4 when he started playing catch with his father. Joey didn’t know it then, but he was going to be a football star.

Joe’s dad didn’t want his son to work. He wanted him to practice. Joey once got a summer job as a caddy in junior high but that soon ended when he almost missed a Little League game because of it.

“Working is for adults,” Joe Sr. once said. “A kid should be a kid.”

Jeff Petrucci, Montana’s backfield coach at Ringgold, remembers it well.

“They just didn’t want him in the streets as a kid,” Petrucci said. “They were very family oriented, kind of like the Italian Ozzie and Harriet. But Joey was so talented. There was nothing he couldn’t do. Now, when he comes home, it’s like the second coming.”

Yeah, football is a big deal around here. For the last 13 years, Yannessa has been the football coach at Aliquippa High School.

Mike Ditka, coach of the Chicago Bears, played at Aluquippa. It is Tony Dorsett’s hometown.

He’s only 44, but Yannessa is one of the oldtimers. Around here, schools change coaches about as often as people change socks.

“There are 20 high schools in Beaver County, and I’m the second-oldest coach,” Yannessa said. “Here, it’s win or move on. It’s a tough business.”

For winners like Yannessa, coaching can be a lucrative business. Yannessa has a $34,000 annual budget.

But he has to win.

“They (boosters) don’t buy alibis,” he said. “But I guess if it wasn’t that way, I wouldn’t like it.”

At Aliquippa, football games are an event. There are halftime shows complete with fireworks.

It’s not uncommon for fans to drive 30 or 40 miles on a Friday night to see a game. They drove that far to see Marino when he played at Central Catholic High.

Players who graduated 20 years ago show up a games wearing their letter jackets.

“In California, you can surf or chase girls in bikinis,” Yanessa said. “In Texas, you can go out and break a bronco or something. But here, you work in a steel mill or play football.”

Yannessa’s team won the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League class AAA title this year.

His team actually should have been playing in Class A. Enrollment at Aliquippa has dropped from 1,400 students in 1975 to 450. But dropping down two divisions would not be tolerated.

“These folks don’t buy the easy way out,” Yannessa said. “We probably could have won the Class A title the past four or five years, but it would have always been like we went through the back door. Thank God for me and my wife that we won the big one at the right level.”

Every coach and every player feels the pressure to win.

There’s a tradition here that must be upheld. Aliquippa averages about 9,000 fans a game.

“There is more publicity over one football team than your whole academic program,” Petrucci said. “Whether that’s right or wrong, that’s just the way it is. Winning is so important. You don’t have a job long if you don’t.”

Kids grow up around here idolizing Namath and Unitas. Is it any wonder that every kid wants to be a quarterback?

“It really is a phenomenon,” said Bernardi, who coached former Notre Dame star Terry Hanratty at Butler High. “When you go back and realize we had Lujack in the 40s, and Blanda and Namath. It just goes on and on. The kids hear all these stories and they want to know all about them. They get in arguments about who was the best quarterback.”

Those arguments may soon be over.

It was cold in Pittsburgh, a bitter winter Sunday.

Inside the house on Parkview Ave. in Oakland, a mostly Italian suburb of Pittsburgh, the Marino family was finally getting around to dismantling the artificial Christmas tree.

You’ll have to excuse the Marinos, they’ve been busy lately, what with all the commotion their son Dan is making.

The phone rings often. Just another reporter wanting to squeeze a few more words out of the parents of pro football’s best quarterback.

Sure, the lives of Dan Marino Sr. and wife Veronica have changed.

Now, they can fly to Miami on a whim to see their son play. Who would have ever thought that would be possible?

But there are no servants here, peeling grapes for the Marino family.

Dan Marino’s father still works the night shift, delivering papers for the Pittsburgh Press and Post Gazette.

“I still work every day,” Dan’s father said. “Hey, Dan’s very fortunate at 23 to have enough money to build a foundation for the rest of his life. But this is his accomplishment, not our accomplishment. . . . Still, if he was a reporter for the Miami Herald, I sure as hell couldn’t afford to go down and see him write.”

Dan Marino Sr. was raised by his grandfather just around the corner from here. Aunts, uncles and as many as 15 children lived under the same roof at the same time.

Just the same, Marino said his grandfather would have had a fit knowing that Dan Sr. was raising his son for a life of sport.

But Dan Sr. knew better. There was a story he could tell his son about a boy just like him who lived just across the Liberty Bridge up on Mount Washington.

He was a kid from a humble, working class family, a kid who fought his way out of here with a football in his hand. He was playing semipro ball for the Bloomfield Rams for $7 a game when the Baltimore Colts picked him off the sandlots for a ride that would eventually lead to the Hall of Fame. A dream came true for Johnny Unitas.

“You know, I never really thought about Danny escaping from anywhere,” Dan Marino Sr. said. “But they (all the quarterbacks) probably all have the same attitude and that is to just work as hard as you can.”

Oakland is a neighborhood filled with character and charm. Each house here has a flavor all its own. These homes, jammed tight together, are filled with nooks and crannies, jutting angles and hanging balconies.

Around the corner is Guido’s Italian market.

Before they tore it down, a kid could walk to Forbes field from here. The University of Pittsburgh campus, where Marino wound up, is just a few blocks away. Willie Stargell lived in this neighborhood. So did Andy Warhol. Down at the end of the block, near the Monongahela River and the Jones and Lockland Steel Mill, is Frazier Field.

It was there that Marino spent his days and nights playing ball.

“I don’t think there was really pressure to win around here,” Marino’s father said. “That’s just what they’re expected to do.”

Marino made sure his son had a head start. It was Dan Marino Sr. who wouldn’t allow his son to bring the ball behind his ear when he threw, forcing Dan to snap his wrist on his release.

And call it what you will, there was just something about playing sports around here that was different. A kid coming out of this neighborhood was hardened by the elements.

Before leaving practice at Central Catholic High School, players used to have to fill their helmets with the rocks that littered the field.

“A lot of the fields around here were just dirt, rocks and mud,” Marino’s dad said.

Because he was bigger and talented than boys his age, young Dan Marino always played with older players. They always let Marino know that they were older.

“When he was 8 years old, he used to get in fights,” Dan Sr. said. “He would never say anything to me about it, but I’d hear it from other kids on the block. I used to tell him to go right back up there, because a kid won’t fight you every day. He’ll get tired of fighting you every day. You just have to go out there and survive.”

By the time Marino hit high school, he was tough and brash. Most of all, he was talented.

“During Dan’s senior year, in 11 games, he probably played in front of 100,000 fans,” said Rich Erdelyi, Marino’s coach at Central Catholic. “As a senior, I said I thought he’d be one of the greatest quarterbacks ever. He was so good. He raised the level of ability for all those around him. You get those kinds of players only once in your life.”

Larry Bruno had one of those players once. In 1960, his Beaver Falls High School team won the championship with a quarterback who was brash and spirited. He would later wear No. 12 in his career, but in high school he wore No. 19. Johnny Unitas had worn No. 19. This high school kid was the kind of player who scribbled plays in the dirt and guaranteed their success.

“Joe Namath called his own plays,” said Bruno, Namath’s coach. “And when he called a play in the huddle, everyone felt it was going to be a touchdown because Joe said it was going to be a touchdown. It wasn’t cockiness, just confidence.”

Beaver Falls won the title this year for the first time since 1960, and Joe Namath came back to speak at the team’s awards dinner.

“Joe never forgets,” Bruno said.

Namath knows that had it not been for football in Beaver Falls, he never would have worn a pair of panty hose.

“A lot of them want to get out of Beaver Falls,” Bruno said. “Joe used to come home from school and see his dad all sweaty and scarred from the mills. He made up his mind that he wasn’t going to do that.”

The legend of Namath lives on.

“If you had to use one word, it’s tradition,” said Bruno, who retired six years ago. “In the 20 years I coached at Beaver Falls, we never had a quarterback that didn’t go on to college. When you become the first-string quarterback, you are something. You’re representing a position with tradition.”

Beaver Falls, in Beaver Valley, sits along the banks of the Beaver River. From Pittsburgh, it’s about an hour’s drive northwest on Route 60. It’s another mill town in transition and depression. Population has dwindled from 15,000 in 1970 to 12,500. But still, there are sports.

“Everything revolves around sports,” said Joe Tronzo, a sportswriter who has covered the Beaver Valley since the late 1930s. “In the summer, some kids used to sleep on home plate at the park just to reserve the field for the next day.”

But sports, Trunzo said, doesn’t just provide an outlet for children.

“In the old days, when the parents saw the recognition their sons were getting, they began saying, ‘Hey, football isn’t so bad.’ It was recognition for the immigrants, they could go around saying, ‘Hey, the mayor of Beaver Falls talked to me.’ It was like reflective glory.”

Bruno recalled one of his favorite Namath stories.

Once Bruno hired Namath and another teammate to haul some garbage to the dump. He said he remembers rubbish falling off the truck all the way down the street. They ended up breaking Bruno’s shovel.

“I paid him $4,” Bruno said. “Then, four years later, he signs for $450,000 with the Jets. From $4 to $450,000 in four years.”

Bruno laughed.

While he did, another kid in Beaver Falls was tying a rope around an old tire and slinging it over an oak tree. He could still get in a 100 or so throws before dinner. He could make like Blanda or Unitas or Namath or Marino and whistle the ball cleanly threw the tire every time.

An impossible dream? Not here. Not in western Pennsylvania. It isn’t like it’s never happened before.