Bay Area native Gino Marchetti, NFL pioneer and Hall of Famer, dies at 92

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Gino Marchetti, a towering figure during the NFL’s rise to prominence in the 1950s, died Tuesday in Baltimore. He was 92.

“I kissed him and he knew me and smiled,” his wife Joan told the Baltimore Sun. “That was  Gino’s way of saying goodbye.”

Marchetti was a fearsome disruptive defensive lineman for 14 seasons, 13 of which he played for the Baltimore Colts. He helped the Colts to NFL championships in 1958 and 1959. The epic 1958 overtime thriller came to be known as the greatest game in NFL history.

He was voted First Team All-Pro seven times, and was an 11-time Pro Bowl honoree. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1972. He was inducted into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame in 1985.

The Sporting News once ranked him 15th among NFL greats, writing, “Trying to block Marchetti was like trying to stop a steamroller at warp speed. He simply overwhelmed some of the best tackles in the game.”

Marchetti, an Antioch native, was larger than life. After graduation from high school he enlisted in the Army and fought as a machine-gunner in the Battle of the Bulge.

Returning home, he organized a semipro team in Antioch, and played one season of junior college football before transferring to the University of San Francisco. He helped the Dons to an undefeated season in 1951. When bowl game committees refused to invite USF’s black players, Marchetti, speaking for the team, told coach Joe Kuharich to decline the invitations. He did.

Marchetti was drafted by the Dallas Texans in 1952. He joined the Colts in 1953. It was said he once played half a game with a separated shoulder, and returned to action two weeks after an appendectomy. His broken leg might have swung the 1958 championship in Baltimore’s favor.

Hit by teammate Gene “Big Daddy” Lipscomb while tackling the Giants’ Frank Gifford in the fourth quarter, Marchetti suffered a broken tibia. The Giants later complained that in all the confusion the Colts got a favorable spot on the third-down play. New York had to punt. The Colts then drove for the tying field goal that forced overtime.

Forty-eight years later, Marchetti was steadfast in the result of the play: “(Gifford) was short.”