The run 75 years ago, still the Rams’ longest from scrimmage, was a high point in the pro football career of the former UCLA star who re-integrated the NFL in 1946.
Someday, somebody will break the record Washington set on Sunday, Nov. 2, 1947, against the then-Chicago Cardinals at Comiskey Park.by Dan Taylor , published this year, traces Washington’s rise from Lincoln High School, in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, to UCLA, where he was a baseball and football teammate of Jackie Robinson, and later to the NFL, where he played a Robinson-like role by reintegrating the league that had barred Black players for the previous 12 years.
That’s ironic, because, as Taylor establishes in “Walking Alone,” baseball was Washington’s preferred and better sport, and had he not already committed to playing football for the Rams after their move from Cleveland to L.A., he could have followed recommendations by Robinson and others and joined Jackie in signing with the minor-league Montreal Royals and then the major-league Brooklyn Dodgers.
Another reason for that might be that while Robinson came to the major leagues at 28 at his athletic peak and was able to have a Hall of Fame career with the Dodgers, Washington came to the NFL at 28 with damaged knees and played only three seasons with the Rams. “The 92-yard run was a great product of all the work he had done, wanting to not just succeed but really excel in the National Football League.”“When he was under piles, he took a lot of abuse,” Taylor said. “And in this particular case they really yanked and twisted his leg, and he reinjured the knee and missed most of the rest of the season.”
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