Big Ben.jpg
At last.
Ben's career in football began after a freight elevator injury shortened his right foot from size 11 to size 7. His right shoe was smaller and square on the front giving him a place kicking advantage before the advent of the soccer style place kickers. He bounced around a lot, but did play two games in San Francisco kicking for the Los Angeles Dons. He played more with the New York Giants in the mid fifties. His 1955 Bowman card is shown as part of the last Bowman football set. By today's standards he wasn't that good, but he played into the mid sixties with a number of teams including the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Texans in 1961. The AFL and NFL were not on friendly terms then but Vince Lombardi and Hank Stram were good friends and when Hank needed a kicker, Vince had the guts to let Ben Agajanian go to Dallas. In November at the age of 42 Ben kicked the longest field goal of his career, 51 yards to put Dallas ahead 20-10 at the beginning of the fourth quarter. However the Buffalo Bills then score three touchdowns and won the game 30-20.
He was unique as the only field goal kicker without toes. Ben Cohen, Jerry's ice cream partner was alluded to in the second clue only to give you a hint about Ben's first name. He was clearly physically asymmetric. His career spanned 20 years playing for 9 different teams. He lived until 2018 and was 98 years old when he passed. He died in Cathedral City in California, which doesn't have a cathedral, but is named for a canyon with a rock formation reminiscent of a cathedral. The New York Giants moved to San Francisco during his career, he couldn't have been a baseball player with only a handful of games played in San Francisco.
I tried very hard not to bias the clues toward baseball. Having common names between baseball and football teams in the 50s was actually an effort to get you away from assuming that the answer was a baseball player. Several clues were added just to add confusion and actually I had no idea Ben played from so many different teams. i do remember seeing him on the football game of the week in 1957 with the Giants. The weekly NFL game back then lasted slightly less than 2 hours of air time.
I was surprised that so many other answers almost fit the clues given, but I think there was a problem with each of them. There is no prize, so if you think your guy should have won, so be it. Mark encouraged me to do the #3 sequel, but let's take a break, but I wouldn't bet against a
"Who AM I? #4" showing up sooner or later.]
Thanks to all who participated and please don't be to hard on me.
