Lou Saban never reached the Super Bowl, but he almost won the World Series.
Buffalo Bills coach Lou Saban Photo by Robert L. Smith taken 9/2/65
Lou Saban led the Bills to the only championships in franchise history, the 1964 and ’65 AFL titles. Buffalo News file photo
The man who coached football for 49 seasons, including two tours of duty with the Buffalo Bills, was also once the president of the New York Yankees. And who else can say they worked for Ralph Wilson and George Steinbrenner?
Today is Opening Day in North America − not counting MLB's early opener in Japan. When last we left baseball, the Los Angeles Dodgers had just topped the New York Yankees in the World Series. The ancient rivals had not met in the Series since 1981, which happened to be Saban's first season with the Yankees.
That makes this a good time to remember when a football lifer became the boss of a baseball team. Wait, did we say boss? Saban was president of the Yanks, but only Steinbrenner could be The Boss, as the New York tabloids always styled him.
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At spring training in 1981, when Steinbrenner introduced Saban as Yankees president, he cited Northwestern's 1955 record of 0-8-1.
"The eight losses were mine," Saban said. "George says the tie was his."
There were laughs all around as the old pals did their Sunshine Boys act in the Florida sunshine.
"Lou is my kind of man," Steinbrenner said that day. "When he was fired at Northwestern in '55, Lou could have leveled some blasts at people. He didn't. I was his assistant coach then, and he told me something I've always remembered: 'The fish that keeps its mouth shut never gets caught.' "
Steinbrenner, of course, never followed that advice. No one in baseball history made more off-field noise than Steinbrenner, who infuriated his players in 1981 when he issued a public apology after the Yankees lost that World Series to the Dodgers in six games.
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The '81 season was interrupted by a 50-day strike. I happened to be on vacation in New York, visiting college friends, on the August day when the strike ended. I was then the new sports columnist for the Courier-Express, and I called the Yankees to ask about seeing Saban. He greeted me in his Yankee Stadium office, which had a picture window looking out on the field.
"Isn't that a beautiful sound?" Saban said as the players took batting practice. "The crack of the bat is music to my ears."
Then again, so was the crack of a crackback block. I asked Saban if he missed his first love in sports.
"Hey, I miss football, sure," he said. "But president of the Yankees is one of the best jobs in sports. I have no regrets, at all. I might have gone into baseball as a player myself, but back in the '40s, colleges were giving scholarships for football."
From the archives: Lou Saban
1966: Coach Lou Saban and Bills owner Ralph Wilson Jr. By Buffalo News archives
Saban played at Indiana University and then for the Cleveland Browns before embarking on his peripatetic career as a football coach − including, in no particular order, the Bills (twice), the Boston Patriots, the Denver Broncos, Northwestern, Western Illinois, Maryland and the University of Miami, among others. He had last coached at Army, in 1979, when Steinbrenner hired him in 1980 as a troubleshooter for his holdings in Florida, including the Tampa Bay Downs racetrack. That led a year later to Saban getting the gig as president of the Yankees.
Steinbrenner was famous for firing managers and front-office personnel. The New York Times reported that he fired Saban several times, but that each time, when Saban failed to show up for work the next day, Steinbrenner would call and say: "Get back in here right now.”
Saban’s tenure with the Yankees lasted for just two years. That may have been as much his own doing as Steinbrenner's. Saban never stayed anywhere for long. He was once athletics director at the University of Cincinnati for 18 days.
"Baseball is a great game," Saban told me in his office that day. "But every once in a while, I catch myself drawing Xs and Os."
By 1983 he was back to drawing them again, this time for the University of Central Florida. He kept on coaching into his 80s, toward the end in high schools and at small colleges.
When Saban died in 2009, at 87, Steinbrenner put out a statement through the Yankees. "He has been my friend and mentor for over 50 years, and one of the people who helped shape my life,” The Boss said. "Lou was tough and disciplined, and he earned all the respect and admiration that came his way."
I often think about that day in Saban's office at Yankee Stadium. What I remember best was that he wanted to know what was happening back in Buffalo − and especially with the Bills. He even slipped and called them "we" a couple of times.
"I loved it in that city," Saban said. "I've got a lot of fond memories. And some tough ones, too."
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