Читать книгу FINS AT 50 - Greg Cote - Страница 16

15

RUNNING BACK COOKIE GILCHRIST

Cookie Gilchrist barreled into Dolphins history driving a long-fin Cadillac on which he had professionally painted: “LOOKIE, LOOKIE! HERE COMES COOKIE!”

He was a star running back who’d been to the Pro Bowl every year from 1962-65, yet was made available in the expansion draft. There was a reason for that.

Apparently, Cookie was nuts.

He rushed for 262 yards that season and was out of football by the next year.

“Probably the greatest athlete I’ve ever been around,” said the center, Goode, “but a bit eccentric.”

“He gave the Dolphins a ton of trouble,” fellow running back Casares recalled. “He was demanding. Difficult about practice.”

Former teammates have only heard rumors of Gilchrist’s whereabouts – none confirmed. A preacher in Wilmington, Delaware? Selling “Cookie’s Cookies” in Pennsylvania? On a mountainside near Denver?

He has a website that was set up in 2000 and answers no inquiries. On the site, it reads that Gilchrist was “stolen by Paul Brown from the 11th grade and induced in signing an illegal contract,” and later “sold to Ralph Wilson, slave-holder of the Buffalo Bills.” [Book editor’s note: Gilchrist died Jan. 10, 2011, at age 75 in Pittsburgh, according to CookieGilchrist.com, which is still active.]

RECEIVER BO ROBERSON

Bo Roberson was a remarkable athlete long before sports became packaged and marketed and anybody had heard of Bo Jackson.

Running back Cookie Gilchrist at practice during his only season with the Dolphins, October 20, 1966. (John Pineda/Miami Herald)

The Original Bo had the Dolphins’ first 100-yard receiving game, and his 161 yards later in that 1966 season stood as a club record for 13 years. He had an Ivy League degree and an Olympic medal. He had a curiosity in Black Panthers-style ideology of the era and a penchant for dressing sharp as a seashell shard in all white.

Roberson left football after that inaugural Dolphins season and all but disappeared. Bo knew privacy.

Roberson was inducted into Cornell’s Hall of Fame in 1978 but did not attend; even his mother could not locate him.

He died in 2001 in Pasadena, Calif., at 65, decades removed from all hint of public life.