Tom Brady's Third Triumph

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Last weekend, Tom Brady joined the most elite of NFL quarterback groups, the QBs who won four Super Bowls in their careers. Brady was the third to achieve that feat.

The other two are Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana.

There were plenty of times in the last decade when Brady must have wondered if he would ever win his fourth Super Bowl ring. In fact, he did get a couple of opportunities in the last 10 years, but the Patriots lost both to the New York Giants.

Brady has now played in six Super Bowls, more than any other quarterback. But the gap between his most recent victory and his triumph last Sunday was almost exactly 10 years.

Ten years ago today, the Patriots took on the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl XXXIX in Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville, Florida. It was New England's third appearance in four years.

The Eagles were playing in a Super Bowl for the first time in a quarter of a century. The Patriots were back after being absent from the big game the year before.

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Brady had a good game, completing 23 of 33 passes for 236 yards and two touchdowns, but he wasn't named the MVP. That went to receiver Deion Branch, who caught 11 of those passes for 133 yards.

It may have been the most consistently close Super Bowl ever played. Neither team scored in the first quarter, and both teams managed to score a touchdown in the second and third quarters. Heading into the fourth quarter, it was 14–14.

The fourth quarter began with the Patriots marching downfield. The drive began at their own 34 with 3:35 left in the third quarter and concluded at the 13:49 mark of the fourth quarter with Corey Dillon scoring a touchdown from two yards out. Dillon was in his first season with the Patriots after seven fruitless years in Cincinnati, and he led all rushers in this, his only Super Bowl appearance, on this day 10 years ago.

New England padded the lead a few minutes later with Adam Vinatieri's 22–yard field goal. Nearly midway through the final period, one of the teams finally had a two–score lead, but it wouldn't last. Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb led Philadelphia downfield for a touchdown with just under two minutes to play, and the Eagles were within a field goal of tying the game and sending it to overtime.

But New England recovered the onside kick and went on to claim its third Super Bowl title.

Dillon was on the winning side, and that is almost always where you'll find the Super Bowl MVPs. (Chuck Howley of the Dallas Cowboys took home the MVP in spite of losing Super Bowl V to the Baltimore Colts, but he is the only exception to the rule.)

That being the case, it is only natural to wonder who would have been the MVP if the Eagles had won.

McNabb is as likely a candidate as any. He completed almost as many passes as Brady did (30 of 51) for 357 yards and three touchdowns. But he also threw three interceptions, two of which came on New England's side of the field.

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Try as he might, McNabb just couldn't lift the Eagles past the Patriots. They lost by three points — just as the Rams and Panthers did before them. By comparison, last Sunday's four–point win over the Seahawks was a breeze.

Actually, in the Tom Brady era, the Patriots have played in six Super Bowls, and each was decided by less than a touchdown. New England's two losses to the New York Giants were by four points or less.

The Cinderella Man

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"People die in fairy tales all the time."

Max Baer
Cinderella Man (2005)

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In spite of the oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico and the flooding in Arkansas and all the other terrible things happening in the world, there is a kind of fairy–tale quality to this June.

It is the anniversary month of two related events.

Earlier this month was the fifth anniversary of the theatrical debut of a movie that was well reviewed — but not terribly well attended, which seems odd in hindsight because it was directed by Ron Howard and it starred Russell Crowe, Renee Zellweger and Paul Giamatti.

The film, "Cinderella Man," was inspired by something that happened in New York on this day 75 years ago. James J. Braddock, a journeyman fighter, defeated Max Baer for the heavyweight championship.

Braddock was written off as a real tomato can. He was chosen by Baer's handlers because he was believed to be an easy payday for a fight scheduled on the eve of the anniversary of the fight in which Baer took the title from Primo Carnera.

What followed resembled the plot of the original "Rocky" film.

Apparently convinced that Braddock, a 10–to–1 underdog, was a pushover, Baer hardly prepared at all for the fight while Braddock was deadly serious in his workouts. "I'm training for a fight. Not a boxing contest or a clownin' contest or a dance," he said. "Whether it goes one round or three rounds or 10 rounds, it will be a fight and a fight all the way."

Like Rocky's fight with Apollo Creed, though, it went 15 rounds. And history shows that, unlike Rocky's, Braddock's dream came true. He won the title and held it until Joe Louis knocked him out two years later.

The Braddock–Baer fight has been elevated to legendary status in the three–quarters of a century since Braddock's upset victory. It was astonishing to me that no one ever made a film about it until long after both men died.

But even though the movie got great reviews and promoters spent a bundle trying to get audiences interested, it never caught on with the movie–going public. Promoters even took the unusual step of offering a money–back guarantee to anyone who didn't like the movie. I haven't seen any figures that would indicate how many people took them up on the offer.

Frankly, that public reception surprised me. I mean, Howard had already won an Oscar for directing and Crowe and Zellweger had already won Oscars for acting. How much more star power did a movie need to be successful?

Part of the problem may have been the fact that 2005 was considered a down year in general for box office receipts. There were some films that drew large audiences, but they tended to be in the fantasy/escapist genre — Hary Potter, Narnia, Star Wars, as well as "War of the Worlds," "King Kong" and "Batman Begins," etc.

It's also possible that it came up short in an unofficial competition with another boxing movie, "Million Dollar Baby."

Some folks have speculated that negative publicity about Crowe's behavior at a New York hotel — in which he threw a phone at an employee — was a contributing factor to low ticket sales.

But I have always wondered if any previously proposed projects treated Baer as Howard's script did. If they did, the people responsible for them may have been reluctant to deal with Baer's family. As a result, by the time it made it to the big screen, the fight was largely forgotten by all but hard–core boxing fans.

Even so, Baer's survivors protested. All three of Baer's children are still living, and his son and namesake, who made his name playing Jethro on the Beverly Hillbillies, was particularly incensed about the depiction of his father, who was portrayed as a brutal man who savagely killed two of his opponents.

Part of that may have been due to Baer's reputation as a great puncher. Ring Magazine ranked him #22 all time among punchers. He just may have been. He wasn't better than Louis — or George Foreman or Rocky Marciano or Mike Tyson — but he was better, in Ring's estimation, than Joe Frazier and Evander Holyfield.

And part of it indisputably was the result of the course of events. One man slumped to the canvas when his fight with Baer was halted, then he died the following day.

According to Baer's family, Baer was a gentle man who was devastated by that death. He was acquitted of manslaughter charges, but he seems to have held himself responsible for what happened until his own death. None of his relatives seem to have disputed that.

However, Baer's family stoutly resisted the film's suggestion that injuries inflicted in the ring led to the death of another fighter several months after he and Baer fought, even though the autopsy on that opponent indicated that he was suffering from meningitis, a swelling of the brain, at the time of his death.

It's also worth noting that he died after fighting Carnera, who was a mountain of a man at 275 pounds. It could not be concluded that any injuries he sustained some five months earlier when he fought Baer caused or contributed to his death.

Thus, the alleged link between Baer and that opponent's death was tenuous at best.

But the storybook quality of Braddock's improbable championship earned him the nickname "Cinderella Man" from Damon Runyon.

And that is how he still is remembered 75 years later.