Pittsburgh Great Jack Butler Dies at 85

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Jack Butler, driven from the NFL in his ninth season by a devastating knee injury while playing for the Steelers at Forbes Field, wanted to make one thing unabashedly clear.

"I loved the game," he said last summer before his August induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. "I loved playing the game, I liked everything that went with it, the friends, everything, all the action. I liked the [fame], I liked it all. I enjoyed it. I would have done it forever if I could have."

 

Instead, his career was cut short by a knee injury that spawned a staph infection. Today, John Bradshaw Butler, one of the Steelers all-time greats and one of the NFL's best cornerbacks, died at UPMC Shadyside Hospital after battling the same staph infection that cut his career short more than 53 years ago.

 

Butler, 85, entered the hospital in November when a lingering staph infection that developed from the knee injury that ended his career in 1959 attacked an artificial knee replacement, his son Mike Butler said. The infection persisted and Butler died about 7:45 a.m., his son said.

 

"His heart just stopped," said Mike Butler, who was hired by the Steelers as a scout on Thursday. "He was completely lucid last night, my sister and brother made him a root beer float and he went to sleep. He never complained, never said anything hurt."

 

Butler, who lived most of his life in Munhall, retired after nine seasons in 1959 with 52 career interceptions, second-most in the NFL at the time. He made four Pro Bowls and three All-Pro teams and the NFL's All-Decade Team of the 1950s. He was forced into retirement by a leg injury so severe it nearly killed him when a staph infection set in.

 

That infection would flare up every five-to-seven years, Mike Butler said, and did so last November, attacking the artificial left knee he had implanted in 1995 to replace the damaged one that left him with a permanent limp. He made it home only a few times since then for a day or two.

 

"He fought the good fight, always," said Art Rooney Jr., the Steelers former head of player personnel and a close friend of Butler's.

 

Butler, born in Pittsburgh, did not play football in high school, a prep/seminary in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Art Rooney Sr., a friend of Butler's dad, recommended St. Bonaventure University to him. There, he wandered onto the football team mainly out of curiosity, worked his way into a starting wide receiver as a senior and went undrafted by the NFL.

 

It was some inauspicious start to a Hall of Fame career.

 

The Steelers signed him, probably as a favor to Father Silas, the St. Bonaventure athletic director and Art Rooney's brother. They tried him at wide receiver in the single wing, then defensive end, where he somehow made the team as a rookie in 1951 at 6 feet 1 and 200 pounds. In the third game of his rookie season, a defensive back was hurt and Butler was told to replace him.

 

"That's how I became a defensive back," Butler said last year.

 

Butler played there the rest of the decade, not missing a game for eight straight years until his final season in '59. In his second game, the first time he touched a ball he returned an interception 52 yards for a touchdown. That number would appear again because it was the first of his 52 career interceptions that ranked second all-time until his knee injury forced him prematurely out of the game and still ranks 14th. He intercepted fellow Hall of Famers Sammy Baugh, Johnny Unitas, Otto Graham, Y.A. Title and Norm Van Brocklin.

He made the NFL's team of the decade, four Pro Bowls and a lasting impression on those who saw him play, which weren't many back in the Same Old Steelers days of the 1950s.

 

"He was the perfect guy for a defensive back in those days," former teammate and NFL coach Ted Marchibroda said. "He did not have the greatest speed, but he had good speed, good, good size, good hands and his instincts were tremendous. Jack worked at his profession in those days; most guys didn't work as hard as he did."

 

Butler paid the price. He was in pain every day of his life since that gruesome knee injury on Nov. 29, 1959 against the Philadelphia Eagles in Forbes Field. He had many surgeries, both knees replaced, and walked with a limp for more than half a century.

 

Art Rooney Jr. said last year that "We were having dinner and I said 'Jack, if you had to do it again, with the pain you're in, the things you missed, would you?'"

 

"He said, 'Playing football was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. If I could go out today and suit up, I would do it.' "

 

Days after that 1959 injury to his left knee, staph infection set in and doctors once considered amputation. The Buffalo Bills of the new AFC hired Butler as an assistant coach, but he had to quit soon thereafter because of his knee.

 

Around then, a new scouting combine formed and Jack Butler would become the executive director of BLESTO for the next 45 years. The combine offices were in Pittsburgh so he never had to move out of his Munhall home, where he and his wife Bernadette raised nine children. Appropriately, son Mike Butler's new job with the Steelers is as their BLESTO scout.

 

Butler is survived by his wife, Bernadette, and their nine children: Maureen Maier, John, Michael, Bernadette Hobart, Kathy Butler Ruffalo, Kevin Butler, Tim and Mariann Butler. He also has 15 grandchildren.

 

His brother Tom is a priest in Tuscon, Arizona, and his sister Catherine Mooney lives in West Mifflin.

 

 

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Dude is often forgotten but he was a damn good player. R.I.P Mr. Butler.