Man known as 'Slingin' Sammy' was just dad to district judge
By GREG TUTTLE
Of The Gazette Staff
A touchdown pass that wasn't even scored is G. Todd Baugh's most indelible memory of his father's Hall of Fame football career.
His father, "Slingin' Sammy" Baugh, was playing an exhibition game in Texas with his young family watching from the stands. In the age before television, it was one of the few times that Baugh could recall seeing his father on the gridiron.
During the game, Sammy Baugh threw a pass toward the end zone, but the ball hit a goal post and bounced back into the field.
Sammy Baugh grabbed his own pass on the rebound and threw it again, this time for a touchdown. The referees ruled that the score didn't count.
"I thought he should have two touchdowns," the District Court judge said Thursday at his office in the Yellowstone County Courthouse.
Sammy Baugh, a football legend who died Wednesday at age 94, was remembered by his eldest son as a quiet man who never pushed any of his five children into professional sports.
Judge Baugh grew up on the family farm in Rotan, Texas, where one of his brothers still lives. He came to Montana in the 1960s to practice law and has served as a state District Court judge in Billings since 1984.
Baugh said he last visited his father a few days after Thanksgiving. His father's health had been deteriorating for several years, he said.
Baugh said his father's funeral is scheduled for Monday and will be attended mostly by family, friends and a few neighbors from the ranching community.
But his father's death has been a chance for sportswriters across the country to recall the career of one of the game's earliest, greatest heroes.
In news articles from New York to Los Angeles, Slingin' Sammy Baugh is being remembered as the man who changed professional football during his 16 years as a player for the Washington Redskins.
"It is no exaggeration to say that his tremendous passing skills were a major factor in the evolution of the game from the grind-it-out days of old to the exciting passing game of today," Steve Perry, executive director and president of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, said in a statement published Thursday on the organization's Web site.
Sammy Baugh's list of accomplishments is long. He set 13 NFL passing records, including two that still stand, between 1937 and 1952.
More than a half-century after playing his last game, he still holds the title of pro football's all-time leading punter.
During one game, Sammy Baugh threw four touchdown passes and intercepted four passes. In another, he threw six touchdown passes and had an 85-yard punt.
As the team's quarterback, punter and defensive back, he led the Redskins to two championships and five division titles.
Sammy Baugh continued his football career as a coach, starting in the college ranks. In 1960, he became the first coach of the New York Titans. The team later became the Jets.
In 1963, he was named to the inaugural class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was the last surviving member of that class.
While sports fans will remember him as among football's first star players, Judge Baugh recalls his father as a quiet leader at home. It wasn't until later in life that Baugh realized his father was famous.
"When I was growing up, it didn't seem unusual to me," he said. "When he was home, he was just an ordinary person."
Baugh recalls his father as having a "sense of justice" with his children when it came to discipline.
"He didn't have to preach to you," he said.
Later in life, his father rarely spoke at family gatherings of his time on the football field, Baugh said. His father didn't have a trophy room at the ranch house.
"He never looked upon himself as being anything but just a football player who loved the game," Baugh said.
