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Steelers and fans made the place come alive

Monday, December 18, 2000

By Bob Dvorchak, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

This preview is excerpted from a special 12-page section in today's print edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette including more features, football highlights and pictures from the stadium's 30-year history.

Andy Russell was there at the beginning, the only Steelers player to kick a shovel into what was once a blighted industrial North Side landscape for the April 25, 1968 groundbreaking.

It took some labor pains before Three Rivers Stadium came to life. But anyone who thinks concrete and steel can't have a pulse wasn't there on Dec. 3, 1972, a cold, gray, bleak Pittsburgh day, when a building rocked and shook from the energy infused by a standing room only crowd.

"I have been in a lot of stadiums in my life, like the snake pit in Oklahoma when I played in college, but I have never been in a stadium that alive," Russell said.

Deep inside the bunker-like structure, players felt the stadium shake an hour before kickoff. It stirred even more during warm-ups, then intensified when the defense was introduced.

"We thought the place would cave in," Russell said.

It was too loud to think, and somehow the crescendo continued unabated for hours during a 30-0 win over hated Cleveland.

Although the first division title in franchise history wasn't clinched until a week later, that day's breakthrough win during a breakthrough season catapaulted the Steelers over the Browns and heralded in a new day, a new era.

"I had the distinct impression that if we didn't beat the Browns, the fans were going to come out of the stands and take things into their own hands. They wouldn't let us lose," Russell said.

It sounds like Frankenstein's lab, inanimate parts jolted to life by lightning in a bottle -- a stadium, a crowd, a franchise, a city, a region, fused and sustained by a single spontaneous heartbeat.

Come to think of it, it was a monstrous place for opponents, who remembered the bus rides past the animated parking lots which were home to the Steeler Nation. Ask Doug Dieken, a former lineman for the Browns, who lost their first 16 games there.

"If they need someone to pull the hammer down and explode the place, I'm available," he volunteered.

He'll have to buy a raffle ticket.

A real home

It's mission complete, the cheering ended, Three Rivers stands empty, cold and lifeless today. Prep work for implosion has begun. The Pirates are in the process of leaving their offices for their new digs at PNC Park. The public auction of stadium memorabilia in early January will draw the last crowd. Then the place has one last blast and it's gone, it's space needed to re-establish a street grid and open development that never materialized around the concrete bowl.

Can it have been 31 seasons ago that the Steelers christened Three Rivers football with a 21-6 preseason win over the Giants? On that Aug. 28, 1970 evening, a callow rookie quarterback named Terry Bradshaw took chalk in hand and wrote on the blackboard: "Winners!"

But the players who arrived B.C., Before Chuck, appreciated it the most. They played at Forbes Field and Pitt Stadium, both of which are gone. Before Three Rivers, they practiced at South Park, dressing in a creaky first-aid building that allowed the snow to drift in.

Chuck Noll said his players' eyes sparkled that first game, and none sparkled brighter than the late Ray Mansfield's.

"I was so proud. We had our own home," the Old Ranger once said.

It was a home shared with the Pirates, to be sure, but it was the place where the Steelers as we know them were born. Not that fans were knocking the doors down to get in.

The first regular season game with the Houston Oilers, who have been reincarnated in Tennessee, didn't even sell out. You could walk up on the day of the game and buy a general admission ticket for $3.15. The sellouts began in 1972. Before Three Rivers, the franchise had never averaged 40,000 fans in a single season.

"Three Rivers Stadium brought together fans, players, coaches and the city of Pittsburgh. I think it was a special place, and there are a lot of memories there," Noll said.

No memory is more powerful than the Immaculate Reception, shown one last time, along with other video tributes, on the big screen at the final game. Voted the top play in stadium history, the play is a moment frozen in time: Franco Harris gathering in a last-minute ricochet to resurrect a victory in the Steelers' first-ever playoff game.

Harris, who had Frank Sinatra in his fan club during his rookie year, owns the original patch of Tartan Turf where the miracle occurred. (The rug has been replaced several times since.)

"It took a lot of players to build this house," Harris said. "The memories will always be with us. The past will always been a part of us. But I'm excited we're blazing new trails."

Sublime and silly

Three Rivers Stadium, once the site of Babushka Power for the Pirates, erased all kinds of barriers. Where else could there be a polka for a fight song while Harold Betters played jazz? That musical diversity is as much a part of Three Rivers' legacy as concerts by The Grateful Dead, Bruce Springsteen and 'N Sync, not to mention the monster truck shows and the Rev. Billy Graham's crusade.

It was a place were a Jack Ham banner was ethnically written Dobre Shunka (Good Ham), hung alongside banners for Franco's Italian Army, Gerela's Gorillas and Lambert's Lunatics. One sign honored the Steel Curtain, for the front four that made the cover of Time and was immortalized on a postage stamp as an icon of the Seventies. The sign Joe Greene will always remember read: You're In Steeler Country. The chant that still echoes in his ears is: Dee-fense, dee-fense, dee-fense.

On the same turf trod by Clemente and Stargell, the Steelers produced enough Hall of Famers to open their own wing in Canton -- Greene, Bradshaw, Harris, Ham, Mel Blount, Jack Lambert, Mike Webster, Noll and the Rooneys, Art Sr. and Dan. For good measure, former Steelers cornerback Rod Woodson was the only active player chosen for the NFL's 75th anniversary team.

The Steelers, who finished with 18 playoff teams in 31 seasons and didn't have a losing season there for 29 years, were so dominant that Andy Russell once looked up in the huddle at a Pro Bowl to see seven defensive teammates there with him. Lambert was calling Steelers defenses and told the other three guys to stay out of the way.

Three Rivers was a place where O.J. Simpson made his cuts and dashes on the field, where a fading Johnny Unitas, dressed in Chargers' lightning bolts, was left battered and bruised.

Although it never had a nickname like the House of Pain, it played a part in Oilers coach Bum Phillips to pre-writing his epitaph: "He'd have lived a hell of a lot longer if he didn't have to play Pittsburgh six times in two years."

A theater in the round, it had its share of absurdities, especially those involving quarterbacks: fans cheering lustily when Bill Bergey separated Bradshaw's shoulder, which allowed Terry Hanratty to play; an angry sellout crowd at a USFL game pelting Cliff Stoudt with ice balls and chicken bones; a deranged fan, upset with Mark Malone's play-calling, driving his car up a stadium ramp in 1987 and crashing into a barrel of nacho cheese; a fan dousing Kordell Stewart with beer following a 1998 loss.

Part of a makeover

Conceived as part of the city's first Renaissance -- and it says something that city makeovers are measured in Super Bowl-like Roman numerals -- Three Rivers Stadium symbolized a city shedding its gritty, grimy, smoky image.

It was first proposed in 1955 by Democratic political leader David L. Lawrence and Republican financier Richard King Mellon to ensure Pittsburgh remained a major-league town.

That it was occupied by the greatest football team ever and a two-time World Series champion went a long way to replacing the region's inferiority complex with a new title, City of Champions.

It was built in the era of multi-purpose, cookie cutter stadiums. And now, only Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia remains a football venue.

Never acclaimed for its attractiveness, it's taken its share of knocks. Just a few months ago, Bradshaw said, "Basically, it's pretty butt-ugly."

But don't tell that to Mean Joe Greene, who will always remember it as the brightly-lit, eye-catching landmark seen by those emerging from the Fort Pitt Tunnel.

"You tell me something that looks better than that. I always thought it was a beautiful place," Greene said. "I am so proud I was a part of that football team."

The new Steelers stadium dwarfs Three Rivers. It's no small irony that Huber, Hunt & Nichols, which built Three Rivers, is part of the joint venture building the new place, or that the University of Pittsburgh, which once played host to the Steelers, will be a tenant at the new site.

Three Rivers cost $35 million to build, and because of remodeling and refinacing, about $26.3 million is still owed on it. That debt will be rolled into the new stadiums package.

It's still structurally sound, but it's been called economically obsolete, unable to generate the kind of money that flows from premium seating, personal seat licenses, retail stands and naming rights.

"I'll always see it in my mind's eye. Those priceless moments will never go away," Russell said. "But it's sad in a way. The Roman Coliseum lasted for centuries. This thing's been here 31 seasons and they're tearing it down. That's progress?"

At the end, there was no Rocket Man. That's not the Steelers way. But there were fireworks and a cascade of confetti. And there was one final appearance by dozens of former greats and current players taking one last bow.

Andy Russell was there at the end, wading through the nostalgia. It reminded him of the Monday night game last year when the 1974 team reassembled for a curtain call of the first Super Bowl team.

"I thought it was going to be kind of corny, a bunch of old guys hanging on to what they used to do. But nobody in the stands left their seats. I was thinking, 'Man, this is like it used to be,'" he said.

The one constant

The last time Three Rivers was a championship venue, Bill Cowher held up the AFC trophy and dedicated it to the fans.

"This is for you, Pittsburgh," he said.

That game was the prelude to Super Bowl XXX, and right up until Neil O'Donnell threw that second interception, Steelers fans had Sun Devil Stadium rocking the way Three Rivers once did.

And the way Jon Kolb sees it, it doesn't matter where the Steelers play, it's that they play.

An offensive tackle with four Super Bowl rings, Kolb once tried to define what the Pittsburgh Steelers are.

Is it the players? No, they move on and new talent comes in.

Is it the coaches? No, Noll left and Cowher carried on.

Is it the owner? No, The Chief died and Dan runs things, with his son, Art II, in the wings.

Is it Three Rivers? No, the building with all those memories is coming down, to be replaced by a new structure just 65 feet away.

"I decided that the Pittsburgh Steelers are the people who fill the seats and cheer this team," Kolb said. "The fans. That's the one constant. That doesn't change."

Good-bye, Three Rivers. Thanks for the memories.

Your stillness is almost as deafening as your noise.