He was my favorite player. I was at the AFL championship game. He beat Al Atkinson twice in the winning drive. First the long bomb by Namath to the eight. Then the winning TD to Maynard again on the right side of the end zone. I could not imagine how many yards he would have had if he played by todays rules protecting receivers. RIP #13 IMHO you were the best.
I'm hoping those were Namath's words. A simple cut and paste of a little text with a proper attribution would be much more valuable than this.
I'll help you out here. This was a tweet from Namath yesterday. If they were not his own words, Namath still put it out on his own Twitter feed.
My funny Maynard story was the time after one of the home games honoring the '68 team (40th?) me and a friend were walking back to the car after the game and we see a man in the parking lot wearing a 13 jersey tucked into his jeans. Could it be? It was. Don still had the jersey on from halftime. No coat, wandering the lot looking for his car. We approach him, say hello, and my buddy asks for an autograph (I'm not an autograph guy). Don refuses, saying "I only sign for kids". My friend was in his early 50's at the time. It was hysterical to me since my friend WAS a kid during Don's playing days. Kids don't even know who he was... I still bust his balls about being rejected by a hall of famer.
I loved Don Maynard. I especially loved his uniform quirkiness, no chinstrap, cheekbone pads, white shoes and cut uniform sleeves If anyone is familiar with the website "Uniwatch", they did a tribute to him as a uniform maverick. It's worth a look. https://uni-watch.com/2022/01/11/a-uni-watch-look-at-don-maynard/
Thanks for this. Great article. Paul Lukas kicks major ass. I remember when he first started this with a column in the village voice. Which had an excellent, very underrated, albeit tiny, sports page back in the eighties.
