Instant Replay: The Green Bay Diary of Jerry Kramer [Hardcover]

Jerry Kramer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 5, 2006

In 1967, when Jerry Kramer was a thirty-one-year-old Green Bay Packers offensive lineman, in his tenth year with the team, he decided to keep a diary of the season. “Perhaps, by setting down my daily thoughts and observations,” he wrote, “I’ll be able to understand precisely what it is that draws me back to professional football.” Working with the renowned journalist Dick Schaap, Kramer recorded his day-to-day experiences as a player with perception, honesty, humor, and startling sensitivity. Little did Kramer know that the 1967 season would be one of the most remarkable in the history of pro football, culminating with the legendary championship game against Dallas now known as the “Ice Bowl,” in which Kramer would play a central role. Nor could he have anticipated that his diary would evolve into a book titled Instant Replay, first published in 1968, that would become a multimillion-copy bestseller and be celebrated by reviewers everywhere, including the Washington Post’s Jonathan Yardley, who calls it “to this day, the best inside account of pro football, indeed the best book ever written about that sport and that league.”

This groundbreaking look inside the world of professional football is one of the first books ever to take readers into the locker room and reveal the inner workings of a professional sports franchise. From training camp, through the historic Ice Bowl, then into the locker room of Super Bowl II, Kramer provides a captivating player’s perspective on pro football when the game was all blood, grit, and tears. He also offers a rare and insightful view of the team’s storied leader, Coach Vince Lombardi.
 
Bringing the book back into print for the first time in more than a decade, this new edition of Instant Replay retains the classic look of the original and includes a foreword by Jonathan Yardley and additional rarely seen photos from the celebrated “Lombardi era.” As vivid and engaging as it was when it was first published, Instant Replay is an irreplaceable reminder of the glory days of pro football.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A classic when it was published and a classic still today.” —David Halberstam

About the Author

jerry kramer was a right guard for the Green Bay Packers from 1958 to 1968. During his time with the team, the Packers won five National Championships and Super Bowls I and II. He was inducted into the Green Bay Packer Hall of Fame in 1977, and his jersey has been retired. He lives in Boise, Idaho.

dick schaap (1934–2002), a sportswriter, broadcaster, and author or coauthor of thirty-three books, reported for NBC Nightly News, the Today show, ABC World News Tonight, 20/20, and ESPN and was the recipient of five Emmy Awards.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday (September 5, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385517459
• ISBN-13: 978-0385517454
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 1 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #122,219 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Return to Packerland, 1967, November 22, 2006

By 

Carl Hoffman (Cleveland Heights,, OH United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Instant Replay: The Green Bay Diary of Jerry Kramer (Hardcover)

I read this book when it first came out, ca. 1968, when I was a high school senior in Racine, Wisconsin. I had been a fanatic Packer backer throughout the glorious early and middle 60s, but by 1968, Lombardi was no longer the coach, only the GM (and besides, I was now interested in other things). He would move on to the Redskins for the 1969 season before dying of cancer in the fall of 1970, so INSTANT REPLAY captures the end of an era, his last hurrah as coach in Green Bay.

As with another reviewer below, the Packers of the 60s have marked my life, especially Bart Starr, Ray Nitschke, and their leader, the great Coach, and I have always viewed INSTANT REPLAY as the period or exclamation point on my early infatuation with them.

Besides its subject matter, INSTANT REPLAY possesses its own literary merit. Kramer is clearly highly intelligent, and since intelligence is not stereotypically associated with the brute violence of the NFL, it's interesting to read his reflections on life in general and life in football, not to mention the ways he perfected his blocking skills. He talks about how his helmet was his best weapon in warding off defensive linemen--which certainly must have done something to his braincells and neck muscles. I also love the running joke about Lombardi's almost-weekly proclamation: "Gentlemen, this is the start of the big push!" as he exhorted the Packers to still-greater efforts in a long painful slog of a season. There's also an interesting description of how the Packers' veteran blockers made a rookie look slow--the vets had played together for so long they anticipated the snap, while the inexperienced new guy waited for it, losing a fraction of a second in the process.

And there's a mystery. With third and goal and 16 seconds left in the Ice Bowl, the famous sub-zero championship against the Dallas Cowboys, Kramer states flatly that Starr told the huddle, "31 wedge, and I'll carry the ball." This contradicts the more widely-accepted version, that Starr kept the QB sneak a secret, so everyone thought he would hand off to the fullback. What really happened? I would love to hear Kramer's side of this story.

INSTANT REPLAY is a wise reflection on NFL football and its greatest coach at a time when the sport was on the verge of making the transition to the overhyped, fabulously-profitable carnival it is today. For several years after it was published, it was the best-selling sports book of all time. Rereading it, it's easy to see why.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still a Super Bowl Winner, November 3, 2006

By 

Dale Rhines (Alexandria, VA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Instant Replay: The Green Bay Diary of Jerry Kramer (Hardcover)

First a disclaimer: I first read this book when I was a kid- maybe 10 years old- I think my dad got a copy of it when he bought a razor or razor blades- something like that. This book turned me into a Green Bay Packer fan for life. 35 or so years later- I still love the team- lived and died with them during the lean 1970's and loved them when Favre led them to the Super Bowl. Funny how something you can read as a child can impact you that way. Ok, the book itself- a classic- funny, touching, moving- it really is a great peek behind the curtain of pro football. Jerry Kramer does a terrific job of showing what his job is like as a guard for the Packers. His description of Vince Lombardi, the great coach of the Packers, is wonderful and the way he talks about his job and his life really sets this apart from most sports book. It mgiht be the finest book ever written about football (though Friday Night Lights and Paper Lion are also pretty good). The book holds up even though it is almost 40 years old. It is written in diary form and is an easy read. The season it captures, the 1967 Super Bowl winning season, helps Kramer, but I suspect the book would have been just as good if the Packers would have been bad that year. Kramer's voice rings true and he brings us into the arena- he shares with us the good and the bad. This book belongs on the shelf of anyone who likes football or likes books about sport. It really is a classic of the genre.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Inside Look at the 1967 Green Bay Packers, September 5, 2006

By 

C. Baker "cbaker" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Instant Replay: The Green Bay Diary of Jerry Kramer (Hardcover)

I'm a big professional football fan and love reading about football. Jerry Kramer's Green Bay Packers diary - which details the 1967 season of the Green Packers, was quite an enjoyable and educational read for me.

For starters, the Green Bay Packers in 1967 were clearly the best team in pro football but were showing signs of aging. This season saw the infamous Ice Bowl against the Dallas Cowboys in the NFL Championship where Jerry Kramer threw the key block to get Bart Starr in for a touchdown, securing a trip to Super Bowl II. And of course this year also saw the Packers win its second straight Super Bowl and the legendary coach Vince Lombari's retirement from the Green Bay Packers.

Kramer's diary is pretty much just that - a retelling of what he went through during the 1967 season. Some things are familiar. Don't let the hyperbole or nostalgia fool you, money WAS a big issue in professional football back even if the contracts were not that large. Kramer talks a lot about money and business issues in his book. Kramer also tells us a bit about what it was like to be a player under Coach Lombardi - who drove the players relentlessly and made them better than they otherwise would have been both as individuals and a team. The players clearly had a love-hate, father-son relationship with the coach. Also, some of the stories about the playboys on the team like Max McGee and Paul Hornung are humorous. In today's NFL it seems the shenanigans of players involve guns and criminality. On this team, it was just booze and chicks, good old boys having fun.

And of course it was interesting to see how Kramer thought of the upcoming opponents - both individuals and teams - as he prepared to face them.

Maybe the most interesting aspect of the book is a bit of introspection on Kramer's part. He was an older player (31), by football standards, and feeling it. He often wondered why he went through the pain of pro football and it mainly came down to a simple fact - he was a football player. While he didn't define himself totally by football, in essence that is what he felt he was. Of course the money and the championships made it worth it.

Overall I would definitely recommend this book to professional football fans.