Nobody ever loved Cal more than Joe Kapp, who died at the age of 85 on May 8 from complications of Alzheimer’s (although I’ll always suspect that all the hits he took on the football field had something to do with it, too).
He was deeply grateful to the university for taking a poor Mexican American kid and giving him a first-rate education while launching him on a storybook football career. In 1958, he took a Cal team that had gone 1-9 the previous season and willed them to the Rose Bowl, the last time the Bears played in that game.
(I can just hear him bristling at that and adding, “so far!” Though he loved tequila, he vowed never to drink another sip until the Bears returned to Pasadena. And he never did.)
He was the only quarterback to take his teams to the Rose Bowl, the Canadian Grey Cup and the NFL’s Super Bowl. He was also the Cal coach in the 1982 Big Game, which Cal won on what is now known as “The Play,” a last-second kickoff return that featured seven laterals and finally ended with Kevin Moen crossing the goal line and flattening the trombone player in the Stanford Band.
(Ever since then, whenever Stanford wins the game the Stanford rally committee changes the score of the ’82 game on the plaque that holds The Axe to remove that final Cal touchdown. When Cal wins, its rally committee changes the score back again.)
But the thing he was most proud of was the love he shared with his teammates, who are now in deep mourning for the man they called El Jefe, the chief.
“All hail El Jefe, the toughest leader of them all,” said his right guard, Pete Domoto. “We will miss his loyalty and inspiration.”
“Joe was by far the best leader I ever met, including my 38 years in elected office,” said his wide receiver, Tom Bates, who became the longest-serving mayor in Berkeley’s history.
And running back Jack Hart, who went on to run East-West Game for many years, told me, “I named my oldest son Joe. That should tell you what I think of my teammate.”
Joe and Jack were the co-captains of that team, and they set the tone on the first day of practice by leading the grueling wind sprints, which everyone dreaded. The other guys got the message and thought, “If these two can make the sacrifice, so should I.”
He led by example, but he also led by exhortation. “I remember a timeout early in the Washington game when Joe leaves our huddle, goes over to the other team, and proceeds to yell at them, ‘We’re going to kick the ___ out of you!'” said Tom. “We won, 12-7.”
But the story everyone remembers most fondly happened not at Memorial Stadium, but at Harmon Gym, where the Bears played hoops. Joe played point guard on the basketball team and his roommate was the late Earl Robinson. The only African American on the team, Earl was often subjected to taunts and slurs – and often worse – from opposing players.
“I remember one game against ’SC when they were deliberately trying to injure him,” said guard Bob Dalton. “In the locker room at halftime, Coach (Pete) Newell looked around and said, ‘Where’s Joe?’
“We finally found him in the ’SC locker room, pointing his finger at them and saying, ‘If you do one more thing to him, I’m going to be looking for you outside after the game.’ And when Joe Kapp sticks his finger in your face in those days, boy, you’d better listen!”
“Nobody got within a foot and a half of me the whole second half,” Robby told me, laughing at the memory.
The last time I saw Joe was five years ago, at a reunion of the football team. He was already showing signs of dementia, and there were fears that he and his wife Jen wouldn’t be able to come.
But a half hour into the event they showed up; and Joe, who always had a great sense of the moment, rose to the occasion one last time and seized the microphone, regaling the crowd with jokes, joshes and one-liners as everybody laughed uproariously.
Sometimes he told the same joke all over again and everybody happily laughed again, relieved to see their beloved friend reveling in his element.
When I left two hours later, he was still holding forth. And they were still laughing.
“The Bear will not quit. The Bear will not die.” – Joe Kapp
“Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” – Horatio in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Martin Snapp can be reached at catman442@comcast.net.