The St. Louis Cardinals played the San Diego Chargers in the NFL’s first game not played in North America on August, 16, 1976. The game took place in Tokyo, Japan.
If you read Revenge of the Birds, the narrative about the game was published a few days ago. This is the goofy and odd stuff that happened during that trip. Here’s the link:
RELATED: CARDINALS INVENTED INTERNATIONAL GAMES
This game kicked off the NFL’s international era in an exhibition setting. Today, nine international games are scheduled
across the globe, and all are regular-season matches. This year alone, two new countries, France and Australia, will host contests. Back in the day, all international games were preseason only.
With that historic 1976 game, ROTB came up with some of the weird things and stuck them all into one place. 行こう!
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1. Neither NFL club remains in the city it represented back then. The Cardinals moved from St. Louis and became the Phoenix Cardinals in 1988, while the Chargers went back to their maiden city of Los Angeles in 2017.
2. The game set the record for two NFL teams that had traveled the most miles to play each other. The straight-line air distance from St. Louis to Tokyo is 6,369 miles (10,250 kilometers) and from San Diego, 5,557 miles (8,943 kilometers). St. Louis to San Diego is just 1,809 miles (2,911 kilometers).
3. The game wasn’t scheduled by the league, but by a lettuce farmer out of Southern California. A Japanese-American named Frank Takahashi was a produce farmer from the Los Angeles area. He pitched the game, financed it completely, and then hoped the NFL would love Japan and place one of its expansion teams there, which he would then own.
4. Since the NFL had limited control and decision-making, a major sponsor was brought in by Takahashi. So, he named the game after them: “The Mainichi Star Bowl” after the Mainichi Daily News. In future years, it would become the forerunner of every American college football bowl game by naming its traditional fixture after a sponsor. We can vibe on the “Capital One Orange Bowl” but still get past the “Pop-Tarts Bowl.”
5. The game, while a mini-vacation to some, was slap in the middle of training camp, and took valuable time away from both rosters. It was more of an obligation than anything else.
6. The seating on the plane was three across, in coach. If you were a smaller guy, no worries. But those offensive and defensive linemen had lots of issues. On a 13-hour flight.
7. The Chargers were able to fly out of San Diego, but the Cardinals first had a four-hour flight from St. Louis to San Francisco, and then flew out to Alaska to refuel. The Cardinals’ flight out of San Fran was a commercial Japan Airlines 747, not a chartered plane. Players sat in the back and flew with other passengers flying to Tokyo.
8. Players were able to take their wives on the trip for a flat $1,000.
9. The Japan Airlines plane ended up going through a storm with quite a bit of turbulence. At some point, running back Jim Otis had to poop. He found the restroom, but because of the plane jostling over and over, the door kept popping open and would not remain closed.
10. When the Cardinals arrived in Tokyo, the only alcohol remaining on their plane was sake.
11. Cardinals center Tom Banks discovered sake. At one time, he was wandering around the plane front to back and was pretty drunk. Getting him off the plane and onto the hotel elevator was another problem, pushing and holding a huge man.
12. Going through customs in the Tokyo airport, Cardinals DT “Big Louie” Kelcher exclaimed, “Man, there sure are a lot of Japanese people here.”
13. One night, CB Roger Wehrli and his wife walked the city streets with KR Gary Hammond and his wife before settling into a restaurant. Getting back to the hotel, they all got food poisoning.
14. Players who visited Tokyo bars, which are called an “Izakaya” (which translates to”stay-drink-place”), found out that in Japan, a patron has to purchase the entire bottle, then drink from it. When you leave, they write your name on the bottle to partake when you return. Several players state they believe their bottle remains on a shelf in a Japanese bar.
LINK: 1976 ST. LOUIS CARDINALS ROSTER
15. Several players who went sightseeing after practices would tell their taxi driver the name of the hotel for the trip back, and ended up at the Imperial Palace instead. The athletes then started placing their hotel matchbooks in their pockets to show the driver.
16. Players who didn’t prefer Japanese food, or could not get enough to eat based on smaller portions, found a local McDonald’s down the street.
17. The Japanese thought the cardinal head logo was a woodpecker.
18. The stadium was a pro baseball stadium. When the Cardinals practiced there, the entire venue smelled like fish. A traditional Japanese snack is crunchy toasted baby sardines. And of course, after a game, there is plenty of fishy trash.
19. The day before the game, the Cardinals staff instructed the stadium crew to place the football coaches in the press boxes located above the fans during the game. This confused the stadium crew. In Japanese, the word “coach” means “bus.” Their crew had no clue why the Americans wanted their buses up so high, or how to get them installed at such a height.
20. The stadium floor was Astro-Turf. Painted lines were there for baseball games, but since this was a single American Football match, the gridiron lines were going to be temporary. So, they used white flour, the self-rising kind. The game had a slight mist, so some lines started to disappear, become gone after tackles, or begin to rise during the game. Perhaps understandable if the Japanese had never seen a football game over there before.
21. Both locker rooms had slanted ceilings being constructed underneath the stands. The Cardinals gave the bigger players the front lockers and the smaller ones towards the back when the ceiling was quite a bit smaller.
22. The locker room urinal was a concrete trough in the floor, right down the middle of the room.
23. The greatest amount of cheering? Amazing touchdown runs? A diving catch? Great tackle? It occurred on every long pass, field goal attempt, kickoff, or punt. The Japanese didn’t really know what was going on, but liked the high balls.
24. Today, both NFL squads maintain they should all be inducted into the “Japanese Football Hall of Fame.” Which, by the way, is based on soccer.
25. Japan has an American Football entity called the “X-League,” which is a semi-professional corporate system.
この旅を楽しんでいただけたなら幸いです！
