CANTON, Ohio – The Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony turned Hog wild yesterday.
Darrell Green and Art Monk walked across the stage waving their arms and urged thousands of Washington Redskins fans to give them one more salute. Emmitt Thomas, the former Chiefs player and Redskins coach, simply waved back.
And they applauded the three other inductees without Redskins ties – former Chargers and 49ers defensive tackle Fred Dean, Andre Tippett and Gary Zimmerman.
Clearly, this was Washington's showcase. It was such a partisan crowd that Green's son joked 95 percent of it was from Washington.
Dean, Tippett and Zimmerman chose team owners as their introductory speakers. Green, Monk and Thomas gave the honor to their sons. None was more moving than that by Derek Thomas, who broke down as he tried to announce his dad's name.
“My dad always used to give me and my sister advice. Like most kids, we didn't always follow that advice,” he said. “A piece of advice he gave me once was never make athletes your heroes, because they make mistakes, too. I guess I didn't follow that advice very well. I'd like to introduce you to my hero, my mentor, my father, Emmitt Thomas.”
Thomas spoke of the hardship of growing up after his mother died when he was 8, and as a tribute to his grandfather asked the Hall of Fame to let him enter with the name Emmitt Earl Fyles Thomas.
In the middle of Fred Dean's deliberate, emphatic speech that had the tone of a church sermon, he told the crowd he forgot his glasses and couldn't read his speech. Another Hall of Famer responded quickly by handing them to Dean. “I think that's gonna work, dog,” Dean said, drawing laughter.
Dean recounted that when the Chargers drafted him as a linebacker in 1975, he balked.
“I want to set the record straight, finally,” he said. “I was a defensive end then (in college), and I wanted to be a defensive end (in the NFL). So I wasn't a linebacker.”
In 1981, the Chargers traded Dean to San Francisco, where he became the first pass-rush specialist in league history. He finished with just 28 official sacks, although countless others were not calculated because sacks did not become an official stat until 1982.
