On the Patriots’ 60th birthday, we recall the humble start of an NFL superpower (2024)

The original Boston Patriots were about as big-league as a pick-up softball game at Moakley Park in Southie. They were the last of eight teams invited to join something called the American Football League, a newly-formed, assembled-from-spare-parts outfit that was launched in 1960 as a brazen assault on the established National Football League. The new league’s owners had big dreams, and yet they understood the risks involved with going up against the big boys. Hence the nickname they gave themselves: The Foolish Club.

In terms of who among that bunch had the deepest pockets, Billy Sullivan, owner of the Patriots, was the runt of the litter. He had scraped together the $25,000 that was needed to gain entrance to the AFL, and only about $8,300 of that was his own money. And then he gathered 10 investors to provide the nearly $1 million that would be needed to actually field a team.

A PR guy is what Sullivan was, notably with the old Boston Braves, the city’s National League baseball club until it packed up and moved to Milwaukee during spring training in 1953. But long before there were marketing teams and focus groups, Sullivan was a bubbly, outgoing guy who got by on charm, plus a talent for schmoozing, bluster and gimmicks. He cranked out so many press releases during his Braves days that Red Smith, a rising young sports columnist with the New York Herald-Tribune, called him “the Braves’ maitre d’mimeograph.” When Braves third baseman Bob Elliott won the National League MVP Award in 1947, Sullivan crowed that his avalanche of pro-Elliott press releases helped make it happen.

But therein lay the rub: The owner of Boston’s new pro football team was the former flack of a big-league baseball franchise that had relocated to the midwest because it couldn’t draw fans to Braves Field, an uncomfortable, windblown place just off the Charles River. Now he was going to market a new team with even less cachet than the Braves, which is to say it had nocachet. And where did the newly-minted Boston Patriots play their home games in 1960? Why at Braves Field, of course, only now the place was owned by Boston University, which rebranded the old park as Boston University Field. (And, later, Nickerson Field.)

Wednesday marks the 60th anniversary of the Patriots, who played their first game on Sept. 9, 1960. It was a Friday night, this because the Pats wisely chose not to go up against telecasts of New York Giants games on Sundays — for geographical reasons many Boston football fans rooted for Big Blue — and they didn’t want to compete with high school and college football on Saturdays. A hopeful gathering of 21,597 turned out at BU Field to see the Pats lose to the Denver Broncos 13-10, thus beginning one of the craziest rides in the history of American professional sports franchises. Older Pats fans know the story well — how the team was a calamity for much of its first decade, hopscotching from BU to Fenway Park to Boston College’s Alumni Stadium to Harvard Stadium, with coaches coming and going, and with losses and bills piling up.

The closest the Pats ever came to a championship during their AFL days was in 1963. They claimed a 26-8 victory over the Buffalo Bills to make it to the championship game against the San Diego Chargers, and that’s where the fun ended: Chargers 51, Patriots 10. There was no dancing on the Chargers’ beloved bolt logo for the Patriots that day at Balboa Stadium. In 1966, the Pats were upset by the Jets in the last week of the season, costing them the Eastern Division title and a chance to play the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFL title game. The Chiefs wound up defeating the Bills and went on to get crushed by the Green Bay Packers in the first AFL-NFL Championship Game … now known as the Super Bowl.

The AFL’s merger with the NFL gave the Patriots a new identity, new hope, and, soon, a new name. They were the New England Patriots now, and the ceaseless rumors that they’d eventually move to some yahoo Sun Belt city were put to rest when Schaefer Stadium was built on Route 1 in Foxboro. Opened in 1971, it wasn’t much more than a glorified high school stadium, slapped together for a little more than $7 million, but it did the trick.

But not even a new name, a new league and a new stadium could turn the Pats into champions. And when they did manage to play stellar football, there would always be a trap door at the end, a Lucy pulling the football away just as the Pats were trying to make the big kick. The 1976 Pats were a juggernaut, going 11-3, but then they played the Oakland Raiders in the playoffs and were done in by one of the worst calls in NFL history. Referee Ben Dreith’s roughing-the-passer flag on Sugar Bear Hamilton gave new life to Raiders quarterback Ken Stabler, who settled matters by plunging into the end zone with the winning touchdown.

The 1985 Patriots made it to a Super Bowl for the first time in franchise history. Though they were demolished by the Chicago Bears, it was seen as a turning point for the Pats: Having played in pro football’s Big Game they could now sit at the grown-ups table with the Red Sox, Bruins and Celtics. Yeah, right. By 1990 they were the same ol’ Patsies again, submitting a 1-15 season and selling out just one home game. And that was the regular-season finale against the Giants, whose fans drove up to Foxboro and gobbled up every spare ticket from disinterested Pats fans who were happy to unload them. For a loud, joyous, celebratory mob of New Yorkers to take over the joint to watch the Giants tune up for Super Bowl XXV with a 13-10 victory made for a humiliating afternoon for the Pats.

OK, so you don’t need to be tooseasoned a Patriots fan to know what came next. Robert Kraft, who as a kid growing up in Brookline was devoted to the ill-fated Boston Braves, bought the team. Bill Parcells, who had coached the Giants to two Super Bowl championships, took over in New England. And thanks to a 2-14 season in 1992, the Pats had the first pick in the ’93 draft. They selected Drew Bledsoe.

Though the ’96 Pats lost Super Bowl XXXI to Green Bay, with Parcells packing up the next morning and moving on to the Jets, the Pats were finally for real. Kraft provided the solid, responsible local ownership, Parcells the level of coaching that demands respect, Bledsoe the Grade A quarterbacking that had been absent since the days of Steve Grogan in the 1970s and early ’80s.

More than anyone, Kraft, Parcells and Bledsoe built Gillette Stadium.

More than anyone, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady are responsible for the six Super Bowl championships the Patriots have won in the 21st century.

But they all owe a debt to the 1960 Patriots of the rag-tag AFL. Without them, does Kraft ever enter the picture? Is a stadium ever built in Foxboro? Do the words “dynasty” and “football” and “New England” ever get spoken in the same sentence? Oh, make no mistake: With or without the Patriots, pro football was going to come to New England. No way was the NFL going to plop expansion franchises into Charlotte, Tampa and godforsaken Jacksonville and ignore the rich television market that is Boston. Sooner or later there would have been the Boston Pilgrims, or Beaneaters, or Sailors.

But that’s alternate history. The 1960 Boston Patriots are actual history, and their arrival forever changed the lives of many, many people.

‘Meet me under the clock tower’

It’s no coincidence that it was at the Elbola Lounge that Gino Cappelletti caught his first glimpse of Sandra Sadowsky. The Elbola, after all, advertised itself in the local papers as a place “Where the Sporting Crowd Meets,” and its location on 1032 Beacon Street in Brookline, to again cite the ad from the local papers, was “only a short walk from Fenway Park.”

Nor was it that far a walk from Boston University Field, home of the BU Terriers, and, on certain Friday nights, the Boston Patriots.

True, the Pats weren’t much in the looks department during that inaugural 1960 season, going just 5-9 and landing in last place in the AFL’s four-team Eastern Division. But that Cappelletti guy, a 26-year-old Minnesota native known as “The Duke” who had played a few seasons in the Canadian Football League, had found a home with the Patriots as a kicker and receiver. He liked being with the Patriots. He planned on being around for a while.

So, yes, absolutely, Gino Cappelletti felt comfortable stepping into the Elbola Lounge. He was, after all, part of the “sporting crowd.” As for how Sandra Sadowsky found herself at the Elbola, it’s not because she was part of that crowd. Football? She didn’t know a blessed thing about it. But she was working at the time for Vincent Quealy and Bob Crane, owners of a local food brokerage firm, and Crane, who was also a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives representing nearby Brighton, was a huge sports fan. Young and ambitious, he would later serve for decades as state treasurer of Massachusetts and build friendships with countless Boston sports stars, including Red Sox pitcher Luis Tiant and Bruins legend Bobby Orr.

On this day he was joined for lunch by Vincent Quealy and Sandra Sadowsky, and, well, how else to say it: Sandra caught Gino’s eye, except that decorum and good manners prevented him from interrupting the group. He instead back-channeled, making an inquiry with Larry Brown, the gregarious owner of the Elbola who had been an early supporter of the Patriots, often treating the players to spreads of lobster rolls and beer after home games. Larry Brown then made an inquiry with Bob Crane, who took it upon himself to supply a telephone number.

Gino placed a call to Sandra to introduce himself. The exchange went something like this:

Gino: “Hi, I’m Gino Cappelletti and I play for the Patriots.”

Sandra: “Who are the Patriots?”

Gino forged ahead anyway and they agreed to meet for lunch at the Elbola. But the first real date — Sandra has long maintained that grabbing a bite at the Elbola doesn’t count — involved meeting for dinner in Harvard Square. She was taking classes at the Harvard Extension School, and the plan was to rendezvous “under the clock tower,” which is her way of referring to the Cambridge Savings Bank and its large digital clock display above the bright neon letters atop the building.

“I was working days and going to school at night,” she said. “I envisioned myself marrying a professor. Football? I had never been to a football game. I had no interest in it.

“Professional athletes were not on my radar. I was totally prepared to dislike him.”

And then they had dinner.

“He was this very unassuming young man from Keewatin, Minnesota,” she said. “We never even talked football. He spent the evening talking about his immigrant parents, who came over to this country from Italy, and how he grew up in northern Minnesota, 200 miles north of Minneapolis.

“For the lack of a better word, he just charmed me, really charmed me, by being very different from what I had anticipated. And I guess the rest is history.”

Here’s the history: Gino and Sandra Cappelletti have been married since 1962. They have three grown daughters and nine grandchildren. Gino played for the Pats throughout the 10-year history of the AFL, and he was the league’s all-time leading scorer when it merged with the NFL. He coached for a few years, and then stepped into the radio booth for a decades-long run as the team’s color analyst. His years working with the late Gil Santos were radio gold.

On Feb. 3, 2002, when Adam Vinatieri’s 48-yard field goal in the closing seconds of Super Bowl XXXVI lifted the Patriots to a 20-17 victory over the St. Louis Rams, Sandra Cappelletti was standing in the back of the radio booth. She watched intently as Santos made the call — “And … it … is … good! It’s good! It’s good!” — after which the two longtime announcers, Gil and Gino, reached across and hugged each other. Gino then seemed to have a moment to himself, dropping his head, closing his eyes.

“He told me afterward he was thinking about all the guys who played with him during the ’60s, and how it all started in 1960,” she said. “That was back when there was no money and they were hanging up sheets to watch game films. Now they were Super Bowl champions, and Gino was remembering what a long road it was.”

Thanks to the Elbola Lounge, thanks to Larry Brown, thanks to Bob Crane, thanks to the perseverance of a football player from some football team called the Patriots, Sandra never did marry a college professor. She and Gino have been together for 58 years.

Pro football comes to Haverhill

John Ottaviani played football at Haverhill High School and was a member of the 1955 squad that captured the Eastern Mass Class A title. His next stop was UMass, where he would emerge as a two-year letterman. He went on to a long, distinguished career as a coach in both track and football, and he was athletic director at Haverhill High from 1982 to 1996. He is a member of the Massachusetts Track Hall of Fame and the Haverhill Hall of Fame.

And yet when you ask this man — who is addressed as “Coach O” by the locals — to cite his biggest moments in sports, he’s always quick to mention that warm evening, July 27, 1960, when real, live professional football came to Haverhill.

It was only a squad game, sure. But it marked the first time the newly-formed Boston Patriots played hard-hitting, you-don’t-know-what-the-guy-across-from-you-is-going-to-do football, with Coach Lou Saban separating his players into teams of red shirts and white shirts. The squad game was staged as a charity event, and Ottaviani, 21, who was home for the summer and working as a recreation instructor at St. James Park, was intrigued.

Other than the overall glow of watching professional football being played on the very field on which he had played in high school, Ottaviani doesn’t remember much about the squad game. What he does remember is that after it ended and it was time to go home, his exit from Haverhill Stadium took him past the locker room, where he happened upon several Patriots players.

“I recognized Gerhard Schwedes, because he had been a big star at Syracuse,” he said. “And then I saw Ron Burton. I was able to talk with him and get his autograph on my program. That was a pretty big thing to me, because he was a star. He was this very rugged-looking guy, and so affable. I enjoyed talking with him.”

Ottaviani’s investment in the Patriots wasn’t just emotional. It was financial as well.

“I was very excited about pro football after that night, and I decided to invest a whole 25 dollars in buying stock in the Patriots,” he said. “It was a lot of money back then for someone my age, but I did it. It got me one share of stock in the original Patriots. I still have the certificate.”

Ottaviani also held onto the program — with its Ron Burton autograph — for decades. A few years ago he donated it to the Patriots Hall of Fame.

“I don’t think they had a program from that game, and I figured it belonged someplace where people could see it,” he said. “It wasn’t anything fancy. It looked like a regular high school program. They’ve used it a couple of times for various displays and I feel good about that.

“Not only was it their first squad game but it was a big thing for Haverhill. I don’t think it was a sellout by any means, but there was a big turnout. The team was just starting out, and people wanted to see them. As for myself, I liked football. I started following the Patriots early on, right when they came into being.”

He soon returned to UMass, but then headed back to Boston to attend the Pats’ season-opening 13-10 loss to the Denver Broncos at BU.

“I remember driving back to Amherst with a bunch of friends from my fraternity, and I kept thinking we had just seen professional football at old Braves Field,” he said. “Isn’t that something?”

Once he got into coaching, he’d attend Patriots practice sessions during the years when the team used the facilities at Phillips Academy in nearby Andover.

“I was dating an Andover girl, and it was very convenient for me,” Ottaviani said.

He would later attend the Pats’ first exhibition game at Schaefer Stadium — “It took forever to get in and it took forever to get out, all on a very hot night,” he said — and for years he was a season ticket holder.

“What I’m proud of,” he said, “was becoming part of it from the very beginning while not knowing it was going to be a success. You know, when I was coaching football at Haverhill High one of the sportswriters at the Haverhill Gazette, Freddie Burnham, gave me a sideline pass for a Patriots game. I forget the year, but all of a sudden Houston Antwine, he was a big tackle, he was chasing someone out of bounds and I got pinned right up against the bleachers at Fenway Park.”

It was also at Fenway Park, under the center field bleachers, just before the start of the Patriots’ Dec. 1, 1963, game against the Buffalo Bills, that John Ottaviani asked that girl from Andover, Mary Ellen Winters, to marry him.

“It was a close game but then Gino put it away with a field goal,” he said. “Pretty good day.”

The past meets the present

Henry-William Obiajulu “Obi” Melifonwu was born in 1994.

In London.

He was three years old when his parents, originally from Nigeria, decided to move the family to the United States.

They settled in Grafton, Mass.

So far, none of this has any connection to the 1960 Boston Patriots.

But then this happened: Beginning at around 12 years of age, Melifonwu began attending the Ron Burton Training Village, based in Hubbardston, Mass.

It was founded by the late Ron Burton, an undersized kid while growing up in Ohio who turned himself into a good enough football player to make the varsity at Northwestern University. In November 1959, when the owners of the fledgling AFL assembled in Minneapolis to hold a draft for the inaugural 1960 season, the Patriots snatched up Schwedes, the Syracuse halfback, as a so-called “territorial” selection and then, in the actual draft, chose halfback Ron Burton. He also was selected by the Philadelphia Eagles in the 1960 NFL Draft.

Burton chose the Patriots, for whom he played six seasons. In the Pats’ 31-24 loss to the Denver Broncos on Oct. 23, 1960, at Bears Stadium, he ran for 127 yards on 16 carries, making him the first Patriot to register a 100-yard rushing game.

But Burton’s contributions to Boston sports run deeper than stat sheets. He and his wife Joanne settled in Framingham and raised five children. Elizabeth is a former school teacher who now offers online SAT training courses. Steve Burton is the longtime sportscaster at WBZ-TV. Paul Burton is a reporter at the station. Ron Burton Jr. works in community relations for the Red Sox. And Phil Burton is a vice president at the Ron Burton Training Village.

“It’s a training village but it’s more than that,” Melifonwu said. “It’s helped develop kids that are less fortunate, or don’t have the resources because they’ve grown up in an environment that probably won’t give them the best chance to succeed.

“I liked being around the other kids. I liked the training. I liked the camaraderie. When I got there, it was mind-blowing. Right when you walked in you were at peace. I was completely shocked. Obviously when I got there I thought it was just going to be training and stuff. But there was such a tremendous emphasis on life skills. And it taught me about humility, which is something that has stayed with me to this day.”

On his own, Melifonwu took a course in Ron Burton 101.

“One of the things I learned about Ron Burton is that growing up in Ohio he was a small, skinny kid who used to get picked on a lot,” he said. “He wanted to do something to change that, so he started running when he was little. He’d be running seven miles a day to build up his strength and stamina.”

A quarterback and running back at Grafton High School, Melifonwu accepted a scholarship to UConn, where he was introduced to the joys of the defensive backfield. It was thus safety Obi Melifonwu who was selected in the second round of the 2017 NFL Draft by the Oakland Raiders, for whom he appeared in five games in his rookie NFL season. He thus became only the second product of the Ron Burton Training Village to play in the NFL, the other being Northwestern receiver Curtis Duncan — he was actually a camp counselor — who was drafted by the Houston Oilers in 1987 and played seven seasons in the NFL.

Melifonwu wound up on injured reserve and was eventually waived, and that’s when the New England Patriots — descendants of Ron Burton’s Boston Patriots — signed him.

He appeared in three games for the 2018 Pats, including the 37-31 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC championship game. He didn’t get into Super Bowl LIII — Patriots 13, Los Angeles Rams 3 — but he did get a Super Bowl ring. Beset with injuries for much of his career, he spent some time on the Pats’ practice squad in 2019 and is currently a free agent.

As to what uniform number he wore with the Patriots, that’s when Melifonwu’s Ron Burton Training Village-acquired humility comes into play. Though it’s been said that he asked for and received No. 22 — Ron Burton’s old number! — to honor the man whose training village contributed to making his NFL dreams come true, that’s not entirely accurate.

His first thought when he joined the Patriots was that he’d wear his number from the UConn days — 20. Alas, that was Gino Cappelletti’s number and nobody has worn it since The Duke retired 50 years ago.

So they gave him No. 22.

“It’s nice to have a number in the 20s when you’re a DB,” Melifonwu said. “But I’ll be honest, I didn’t even really put two and two together until I received the number and then I realized, wow, that’s the number Ron Burton Sr. used to wear on the Patriots. It didn’t click until I actually got the number and looked at it.

“I didn’t get that number for having gone to the Ron Burton Training Camp. They just gave it to me. That, to me, makes it surreal in a way. It was really cool.”

We can play all kinds of “if” games here. Such as … if Ron Burton Sr. didn’t get with all that running when he was a kid … if he had signed with the Eagles instead of the Patriots … and, for the purposes of this discussion, if he had never opened up the Ron Burton Training Village …

“Obviously it’s hard to tell the future, but I would say that my life would definitely have gone on a different path,” said Melifonwu. “But I guess everything happens for a reason. The fact that I went there, that I learned all the things I’ve learned, and not just football. They’re really big on education, and it never dawned on me until my third year in high school that even if I wanted a scholarship to play college football I’d still need to be able to get into college.

“Education,” Melifonwu said, repeating the word. “So that’s definitely one thing that stuck with me.”

Through the eyes of a child

The Patriots dropped their final four games of the 1960 season, beginning with a 24-10 loss to the Houston Oilers at Boston University Field. And yet the game has significance both for the Patriots and the AFL, as it went into the books as the first official sellout in the history of the young league. Oh, other teams had logged bigger crowds in bigger stadiums, but this Pats-Oilers game was a true bangout: A crowd of 27,123 filled what was left of the former home of the Boston Braves. It would be the Pats’ biggest crowd during the three years they played their home games at BU.

But it’s funny the things you remember. Billy Sullivan’s eight-year-old son Patrick was there that night, though it’s not so much the crowd inside Boston University Field that has stayed with him all these years. It’s the crowd that was outside the old ballpark.

Or to be precise, the crowd abovethe old ballpark.

A significant portion of the former Braves Field had been demolished before the Patriots moved in, including the grandstands behind home plate and down the left field line. In their place Boston University was building three dormitory towers, later to be called Claflin Hall, Sleeper Hall and Rich Hall. The area would be called West Campus.

That was all later on. The extensive BU expansion was still under construction the night the Pats and Houston Oilers packed the park, with steel beams and scaffolding climbing into the sky in a way that offered a collision of the past (Boston Braves), the present (Boston Patriots) and the future (BU’s West Campus).

“And on that night there were hundreds of people just dangling from the steel work, watching the game,” Sullivan said. “They couldn’t get inside, so they’re climbing up this skeleton of a building to watch the game.”

Again, Patrick Sullivan was an eight-year-old, and these are the type of things eight-year-olds remember. You expected, what, for the kid to break down Patriots quarterback Butch Songin’s short game? (For you stat geeks, Songin was 18-for-34 passing for one touchdown and an interception. Applying modern-day stats, Songin had a 74.9 passer rating that night.)

“Our seats were in the back of the grandstand, two rows in front of the new press box they had built for the 1960 season,” Sullivan said. “We were pretty much right in front of the booth where Bob Gallagher and Fred Cusick were doing play-by-play.

“But I kept looking at those towers being built, and those steel beams,” he said. “It was amazing to me. I couldn’t figure out how they did it. I had gone to BC games at the old Alumni Stadium and sat in the last row when it was just bleachers, and you could look down on the ground and at my age you felt like you were on top of the Empire State Building. They were literally five or six stories up.

“My dad was there, of course, but he’d sit with us for a while and then go up to the press box,” he said. “He was always moving around. I watched the game and the people on the steel beams.”

It was the beginning of a lifetime spent in professional sports for Patrick Sullivan. Like his father he attended Boston College, after which he worked for the Pats in various capacities, including eight seasons as general manager.

He continues to spend as much time focusing on what’s happening outside the stadium as what’s happening inside: As the founder of Game Creek Video, he owns those television production trucks you pass as you’re stepping into sports venues.

“If there had been no 1960 — if my father hadn’t founded the Patriots — my life would be radically different,” Sullivan said. “I likely would have been a teacher. I went to BC and was an education major, so that’s how I look at it.

“I look at what the Patriots are today and what they were in 1960 and it’s hard to believe,” he said. “There were maybe 10 employees outside of the players. It was a completely different world back then.”

Not everyone was a Billy Sullivan fan

Naturally, there is a Red Sox connection with the 1960 Patriots. In Boston, there’s alwaysa Red Sox connection.

But it’s not what you’re thinking. Though the Patriots did play the bulk of their home games at Fenway Park during the AFL days, it wasn’t until 1963 that Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey finally relented and allowed Boston’s shoestring football outfit to rent his ballpark as second tenants.

Billy Sullivan had reached out to the Red Sox as early as 1959 about using Fenway for the AFL’s inaugural 1960 season, but, “One really interesting thing about Tom Yawkey is that he didn’t like to share anything that he owned,” said Glenn Stout, who, with Richard L. Johnson, authored, “The Pats: An Illustrated History of The New England Patriots.”

“One great example of that is the estate he had in South Carolina,” Stout said. “At one point his sister wanted to build a house there. He wouldn’t allow her to do it. I think the quote was, ‘What’s mine is mine.’ And he had the same attitude toward Fenway Park. He didn’t feel any civic fealty to share Fenway, not only with another team but even with the city. Which is ironic, considering Fenway Park is now this symbolic sort of place where all Boston can come together.”

But when the Patriots did finally move to Fenway Park in 1963, the deal was brokered by one of their original investors — former Red Sox outfielder Dominic DiMaggio. The youngest of the three baseball-playing DiMaggio brothers — Vince DiMaggio and Hall of Fame New York Yankees outfielder Joe DiMaggio were the others — Dommie was a dazzling defensive center fielder who in 11 seasons with the Red Sox hit .298 with a .383 on-base percentage. He was a seven-time All-Star. The sportswriters dubbed him The Little Professor and the nickname caught on, this because he was bespectacled and had a courtly, diminutive presence, making it appear he’d just stepped out of a lecture hall at Harvard Yard.

But there was more to that nickname than appearances, as Dom DiMaggio was one smart fellow. He was barely out of baseball in 1953 when, at age 36, he settled down in the Boston area with his wife, Emily, and made a seamless transition into the business world. He was president of the American Latex Fiber Corporation in Lawrence, eventually buying out his original partners and turning the company into the Delaware Valley Corporation. Dom DiMaggio was 92 when he died in 2009. His son, Dominic Paul DiMaggio Jr., who goes by Paul, is CEO of the company.

“I’m more proud of my father as a businessman than as a baseball player,” Paul DiMaggio said. “Dad was a great baseball player. Should have been in the Hall of Fame. He was a natural-born athlete, as all his siblings were, but for him to take the stab at business the way he did was remarkable.”

Dom DiMaggio made millions. Asked exactly how many millions we’re talking about, Paul DiMaggio responded, wryly, “Let’s just say he made about the same amount of money his brother Joe made, and I think Dad had the lead.”

But in his role as an investor in the Patriots, Dom DiMaggio was never a fan of Billy Sullivan, to the degree that within a couple of years he tried to oust him as president of the team. Things further soured between DiMaggio and Sullivan, said Paul, after his father stepped in and worked out a deal for the Patriots to play at Fenway Park.

“I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I asked him about as the years went on, as I would ask him questions about a lot of things,” said Paul. “Dad was very upset about that whole thing. He brokered the deal with Tom Yawkey and I guess it was Billy Sullivan who didn’t like some of the terms and Dad got pissed off. He said, ‘Well, you handle it,’ and he walked out.”

Dom DiMaggio was unimpressed with Billy Sullivan from the beginning, said Paul, “mainly because of Sullivan’s mouth. He never shut up. Dad was insulted that the deal he set up with his former owner, Tom Yawkey, was being questioned. To have this guy Sullivan come in and disagree with terms that Dad had set up, again, it bothered him. Dad prided himself in being good for his word.”

In 1966, shortly after the AFL’s merger with the NFL was announced, Dom DiMaggio and another original investor in the Patriots, Dean Boylan, president of Boston Sand & Gravel Company, sold their shares. A variety of figures have been offered over the years as to how much DiMaggio and Boylan invested and how much they got back, but for this article Paul DiMaggio checked with his mother (“She’ll be 98 in November and is sharp as a tack,” he said) and members of the Boylan family and came up with this figure: They each put in $30,000 and each sold out for $300,000.

“We still have lots of Dad’s correspondence and papers,” said Paul. “What we don’t have is the original purchase agreement when he invested in the Patriots, which is too bad.”

DiMaggio could have made much more had he held onto his interest. But, said his son, “He and Dean Boylan — Dad and him were the best of friends — it was in their minds that they didn’t want to deal with somebody (Billy Sullivan) they thought was a bad apple. They were both upright, straight, solid businessmen, so Dad got out of it.”

According to Paul DiMaggio, his father used the money he made from the Patriots to build a new factory in Tewksbury for Delaware Valley Corporation.

Dom DiMaggio did make another bid at being part of the ownership of a sports franchise — after Yawkey died in 1976, he headed up a group in hopes of buying the Red Sox. Instead, Yawkey’s widow, Jean R. Yawkey, held onto the team via the JRY Trust but brought in club executive Haywood Sullivan and former trainer Buddy LeRoux as partners.

“He was a Red Sox,” said Paul. “He couldn’t have cared less whether the Patriots changed their name from the Boston Patriots to the New England Patriots. He couldn’t have cared less if they moved to Hartford.

“Those were the two major questions I remember asking him, but he viewed it as a business. I was surprised both times that he didn’t have an emotional attachment.

“Me, I’m more of a Patriots fan than a Red Sox fan — and I’m more of a Bruins fan than a Patriots fan. I’m going to miss Tom Brady, of course, but they’ve done fabulously. They’ve come a long way.”

Trailblazers

According to Pro-Football-Reference, 20 players from the original 1960 Patriots are still living. This estimable cast ranges from Jack Atchason, who played one game for the Pats in 1960, to Cappelletti, who played in every Pats game during the AFL years followed by a sort of victory-lap final season with the NFL Pats in 1970, the year the team played its home games at Harvard Stadium. The other still-living Patriots are Walter Beach, Joe Biscaha, Jake Crouthamel, Bill Danenhauer, Jerry DeLucca, Tom Greene, Art Hauser, Harry Jacobs, Walt Livingston, Oscar Lofton, Mike Long, George McGee, Alan Miller, Al Richardson, Gerhard Schwedes, Hal Smith, Harvey White … and cornerback Chuck Shonta, who appeared in 105 games for the Pats between 1960 and 1967.

Shonta’s key contribution to Patriots history? On the last play of the game as the Pats were battling the New York Titans at the old Polo Grounds on Sept. 17, 1960, he recovered the ball on a Titans punt gone bad and emerged from a scramble with the ball. He ran it 52 yards as time ran out, giving the Pats a 28-24 victory over the future New York Jets.

It was the first victory in the history of the Boston/New England Patriots.

There were many more to come.

(Top photo: Richard Stagg / Getty Images)