Dinardo, who once, while the players were getting their keys at a hotel in San Diego, came up behind Mean Joe Greene and told him, in drastically impolitic terms, that he would have to stay in Tijuana. This was when Greene was as forbidding a presence as his nickname implied. He whirled, saw it was Dirt and just laughed.

You had to know Dirt. He liked to drive his Zamboni over loose balls on the field, pooping them around to the exasperation of Jackie Hart, the field manager. Hart himself once slugged Art Rooney Jr., a son of the owner and then the Steelers' head of scouting. Jackie's employment status was unaffected. Artie did throw him into a laundry hamper.

Aw, I'm waxing nostalgic already—and those tarps brought to mindtwo other stories I heard while hanging around the Steelers in the 1970s. Once, when the Rooneys' friend Squawker Mullen was getting the worst of it from a carnival boxer, various family members engaged the boxer and his carny friends in a "Hey, Rube" that brought down the tent and raged on lumpily under folds of canvas. Then there was the game in Green Bay in which Andy Russell, the Steelers linebacker, saw a fired-up Ray Nitschke dive, miss a tackle and skid headfirst under a sideline tarp. You could see big bulges, Andy said, where the Packers linebacker was kicking and heaving.

Why was I at the Chiefs-Steelers game? Well, Immaculate Reception Day is just around the corner. Usually I observe the anniversary of Franco Harris's game-ending 60-yard