Colts with a Kick

Pro football locker rooms are great places for signs--messages like KILL! KILL! KILL!, and USE FOOTBATH BEFORE SHOWERING, and DORIS--HU 4-6301. Come Nov. 8, when the Chicago Bears and the Baltimore Colts meet again at Wrigley Field, the bulletin board in the Bears' dressing room will carry another reminder. Clipped from a newspaper headline, it says, simply, 52-0--the score by which the Colts humiliated the world-champion Bears last week.

Up Like an Auction. Other teams have taken worse drubbings, but never the Bears. "Our offense did poorly, our defense did poorly," raged Papa Bear George Halas, 69. "I apologize to the fans, and I promise--it won't happen again." Maybe not. But if the Bears or anybody else are going to stop the Colts this year, they are going to have to stop Johnny Unitas first. At 31, in his ninth pro season, Quarterback Unitas once again is demonstrating that he is the finest passer in the game, and maybe --as Green Bay Packer Coach Vince Lombardi has said--"the greatest football player in the world."

Against the Bears last week, Unitas threw the football only 13 times. Any more would have been unkind: as it was, his score for the day was eleven completions, 247 yds. and three touchdowns. In the first quarter, with a third down and 28 yds. to go on the Bear 36, Unitas dropped back and looked for End Raymond Berry, who was zigzagging downfield. Now Ray Berry is no speedball; one of his legs is shorter than the other, and his eyes are so bad that he can barely see the ball without his contact lenses. No matter. Unitas stepped into the pocket and--plop!--laid the ball squarely in Berry's outstretched hands for a touchdown. A field goal, a Bear fumble, another Unitas touchdown pass, and the score began to mount like prices at an Atlantic City auction. In the third quarter, Unitas flipped a 27-yd. pass to make it 31-0. Then he pulled off his helmet and let Substitute Gary Cuozzo take over.

Investment by Phone. Bear Coach Halas spoke in reverent tones of Unitas. "A great quarterback," he said. "A great day." Actually, for Unitas it was just about par: he has been averaging 15 completions and two TD passes a game ever since he broke into the N.F.L. in 1956. Of course, he almost didn't break in at all. The son of a Pittsburgh coal dealer, he was turned down at Notre Dame and Indiana ("I only weighed 145 then," he explains), finally settled for the University of Louisville. After graduation, the Pittsburgh Steelers gave him a tryout, sent him home. Baltimore found him playing for a Pittsburgh sand-lot team -- and signed him up with an 80-c- phone call that has to be the best investment in pro football history. Unitas set an alltime record by throwing touchdown passes in 47 straight games. He led the Colts to two N.F.L. championships, was voted the league's Player of the Year, made the all-pro team seven years running. His scrambling ability is legendary: he once completed a 20-yd. pass underhanded, and, in a pinch, he can fling the ball with his left hand.

Off to his best start since 1959 -- the last year the Colts won the champion ship -- Unitas ranked No. 1 among N.F.L. quarterbacks last week with 29 completions for 610 yds. and seven touchdowns. The Colts already have a victory over the tough Green Bay Packers as well as the Bears, and if they beat the surprising Los Angeles Rams this week, they will take over first place in the N.F.L.'s Western Conference. As for the return engagement with Halas' revenge-hungry Bears, Unitas can hardly wait. "I didn't take advantage of all the situations last week," he says. "I was saving a few."

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