Chuck Bednarik made one thing perfectly clear Thursday night: He had nothing — repeat, nothing — against the late Reggie White.
Terrell Owens? That’s another story. He can’t stand him.
Bednarik, the retired Eagles legend (and Coopersburg resident), said he confused the two during an appearance at the Birds’ training camp Wednesday, when, in response to a reporter’s question about White, he said there was “something about him I despised.”
Actually, he meant T.O.
“Reggie White was a beautiful person,” the 81-year-old Bednarik said. “I really confused him with T.O. That guy was a jerk. I didn’t know which was which.”
White, who passed away in January 2005, will be inducted Saturday into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, where Bednarik has been enshrined since 1967.
An ordained minister, White had always been renowned not only for his play at defensive end but his character. That’s what had made Bednarik’s initial comments surprising and troubling.
So, again, he said: “Reggie was a beautiful person. The other one was the jerk. That was the nasty person.”
Bednarik left a message for me to call him Thursday, after I had been critical of his earlier remarks in a column that morning.
And it was at that point that I felt the same dread Jimmy Taylor must have felt when he saw Bednarik closing in on him in the closing seconds of the 1960 NFL Championship Game. Surely ol’ Concrete Charlie was gonna lower the boom, just as he did on the Green Bay running back that day, sealing the Eagles’ victory — and the title.
Which is fine, by the way. Not comfortable, but fine. You write tough things about tough people, and you expect to get aired out on occasion. They have every right to have their say.
So I dialed the phone, and he explained himself. And he spoke frankly about his golden years. How sometimes he doesn’t process information as well as he used to. How that leads him on occasion to make what he called “goofy remarks.”
“I’ve got a great wife,” he said, referring to Emma, to whom he has been married for 58 years. “She saves my soul.”
Then he changed gears.
“I never expected to live this long,” he said.
He lives simply. In bed by 9:30. Up between 5:30 and 6. He reads the paper, has his cup of coffee and then makes the 12-minute walk to 8 a.m. Mass.
Back home, he watches some TV, gears back. But he also looks ahead.
“I wore No. 60,” he said. “When we reach our 60th anniversary [on June 5, 2008], we’re going to have one helluva splash. Look out — we’ll have five polka bands, all over the place.”
He is far removed from his 14-year playing career (1949-62), even further removed from exemplary service to his country. He was a waist-gunner on a B-24 bomber at age 18, flying missions over Europe in World War II.
No one has ever had a longer career with the Eagles, and it was filled with indelible moments, like the hit on Taylor and the concussive blow he delivered to the Giants’ Frank Gifford earlier in the 1960 season, securing another Eagles victory.
If Bednarik is forever associated with the franchise — and if the Birds honor him with, among other things, an immense floor-to-ceiling rendering in the auditorium of the team’s practice facility — there had been a falling-out in recent years, after owner Jeffrey Lurie refused to buy copies of Bednarik’s book from the retired star in 1996.
But that appeared to be resolved when the two huddled at practice Wednesday.
And now, so too is any confusion there might have been regarding Bednarik’s feelings for Reggie White.
And Terrell Owens.
“I feel so bad,” Bednarik said. “I just had those guys mistaken.”
gordon.jones@mcall.com
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