Tough Stuff: The Man in the Middle [VINTAGE 1988] [FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING]

Fine unread condition beige boards, blue cloth spine and gold spine lettering contained in a fine condition non price-clipped color photographic dust jacket. Includes Author Dedication; Acknowledgments and Introduction by Tom Landry. Illustrated with a section of black-and-white photographic plates. A bit of darkening at the lower front right board tip; the volume is otherwise in as new condition with the spine/binding in exceedingly tight and square literally unread condition (see photographs). "Sample stories from Tough Stuff, where Sam Huff talks about. Jim Brown: "Now I look down the field, and there's the biggest running back I've ever seen. He's got huge shoulders and arms, no hips, and huge legs, the perfectly built human being.It's early in the third quarter, and here comes Jim Brown through a hole and I'm thee to meet him. I hit that big sucker head on and my head gear came down and cut my nose and my teeth hit together so hard the enamel popped off. He broke my nose, broke my teeth, and knocked me cold." Frank Gifford: "Frank caught the ball and was trying to get across the field when Chuck Bednarrik nailed him. Chuck weighted about 240 and hung Frank out on his arm, just clotheslined him and smacked him on the chin.They took him to the locker room on a stretcher, and I remember going into our defensive huddle and everybody saying, 'It's all over for Frank, no way he can survive that hit.' As we walked toward the locker room, a couple of medical people were wheeling out a body on a stretcher from the training room. It was covered with a sheet and now everybody was really shaking. "'Oh my God,' somebody said. 'It's Frank.'" Vince Lombardi: "Lombardi would call for his grass drills, the true torture of training camp. You'd start running in place, and he'd holler 'on your belly ' or 'on your back' and you'd hit the dirt, then pop up when he'd yell 'on your feet.' We'd do fifteen or twenty of those and then he'd look over at me and Sonny [Jurgensen]. We were usually in the second or third row, not real conspicuous but close enough so that he could see were weren't dogging it. He'd stop the grass drills when he thought Sonny and I were about to die." - from the rear outer jacket. " Sam Huff is one of the legends of professional football, the man in the middle of the great New York Giants' defenses of the 1950s and 1960s. When he and his fellow defenders jogged onto the field during home games, 62,000 fans would chant "HUFF! HUFF! HUFF!" and "DEE-fense! DEE-fense!" As a rookie in 1956, he started on a world champion team (the Giants' last until 1986); he appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1959; he was the subject of a breakthrough television documentary, The Violent World of Sam Huff, narrated by Walter Cronkite; and, after being traded in 1964 and playing five years with the Washington Redskins, he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Tough Stuff is Sam Huff's life story, from his youth in West Virginia mining country through his extraordinary career. Football fans will savor every anecdote about the rough, gritty days of football past, including: *How Tom Landry developed the Giants' famous 4-3 defense; *Huff's great rivalries with Jim Brown and Jim Taylor'; * The inside story of "the greatest game ever played": the New York Giants/Baltimore Colts showdown in the 1958 championship game; *The day they thought Frank Gifford ahd been killed by a violent tackle; *Why Huff will never forgive Allie Sherman; *The Trade: Sonny Jurgensen, Vince Lombardi, and the Redskins. Filled with vivid recollections of teammates and rivals - Rosey Grier, Andy Robustelli, Charlie Conerly, Pat Summerall, Y.A. Tittle, Johnny Unitas, Mike Ditka, and many others - Tough Stuff is the real stuff on the golden age of football." - from the inner front and rear jacket flaps.…