Was my dad really on the field with Franco or was it all an immaculate deception?

I always thought my dad was full of crap.

Like far too many smartass sons, I questioned so many of the lessons he taught me. There’s no way the average person finds a stud by knocking. And I’m definitely not going to salvage that maple syrup by scraping the mold off the top.

I was skeptical of the stories he told me, too. The little ones — “I get blue jays outside of my workshop door every morning in the winter” — and the big ones — “I was on Franco’s back after the Immaculate Reception.”

I really never bought into that last one. Maybe because my dad thought it was so legendary. Maybe because it seems like a story that would over time balloon beyond, simply, “I was there.” Maybe because the NFL is dedicated to reminding us of its anniversary and I was locked into an annual reminder to tease my dad.

The story — his story — really isn’t all that detailed. My dad claimed he rushed the field after Franco Harris scored on the Immaculate Reception and was on his back to congratulate him. That was it.

Some background:

My dad was alive in the 1970s, lived in Avalon and played football at the borough’s now-defunct high school, which is two more bits of info than required to say what’s true of 98% of people in the geographically impossible sprawl that constitutes Western Pennsylvania: He was a Steelers fan.

He and his friends made it routine to sneak into games at Three Rivers Stadium by rushing the gates or finding gaps in the perimeter security on Sundays. On rare occasions, they’d make their way in on Saturday night and find a place within the stadium to sleep, comfort and an appearance in church the next morning be damned.

They wore their letterman jackets when they did this because, one, it was a winter coat and, two, because they didn’t think through the logistics of blending into a crowd at 16. Security caught on. If they were seen in the stadium with that white “A” jacket, they were tossed on sight.

I can’t remember his retelling of the exact method of entrance to the Dec. 23, 1972, game between the Steelers and Raiders, or what the alternate apparel was, but the crux of the story was that he congratulated Franco on the field.

Yeah, he and 60,000 other yinzers, right?

I’d tell him it was a convenient story when the video evidence of the play itself leaves so much to be desired. The tricky part was he had people vouching for him. My grandpa said he saw him on TV and got calls from neighbors that they also “saw Johnny.” I had asked longtime neighbors, and yep — they wanted a piece of this lore, too.

Still, no receipts, and the fame-chasing neighbors didn’t do it for me, either. I’d check every so often to see if any video was archived online, but nothing ever turned up.

It became a running gag among my family that my dad was making this up. My brother and sisters and mom didn’t believe the story, and we let him know. We saw Franco years later at a Pirates game and we traded quips about if he’d remember my dad. He took the jokes well and was happy to be in on the bit.

Every year around Thanksgiving, my dad would go build homes in a border town in Mexico. (No exaggerating, he would accomplish that in a week … in his 50s … and 60s … but I didn’t believe he had it in him to hop a fence and run onto a field in his teens.)

When he’d fly for this trip, he’d send us a photo of him patting the shoulder of the Franco statue at Pittsburgh International Airport. When he sent the photo in 2019, we let him know what was up.

“There should be a statue of you on his back,” my wife texted.

“It’s about time you provided the proof,” I said.

It was the last time he got the airport photo op.

My dad died in January 2021 from a stroke he suffered while in his basement workshop, the one where the blue jays gathered and he bought a trailcam and bird seed to prove it. He was 64 and right about the birds.

Do you have an Immaculate Reception story, verified by video or not? Share it with the Union Progress. We’ll be in touch about it.

Seeing the teasers of the Immaculate Reception 50th anniversary coverage brought me comfort over the past week or so. It brought back memories of watching football on Sunday with him. I mean, I watched. He took part in a Sunday routine much different from his youth: church, lunch, sleep (while still gripping the remote; he was “listening,” after all). He wasn’t a hugely passionate Steelers fan when I was growing up, but still he was proud of his small place in Pittsburgh history.

When news of Franco’s death spread Wednesday, I felt differently. Seeing and hearing the memories he left with so many people left me sensing a void. Everyone had their Dec. 23, 1972, stories, and I had mine. Right?

So my wife went searching for the video. She turned up a few fruitless clips, the ones we’ve all seen, as well as some algorithm-thirsty conspiracy videos about the catch. Meantime, I texted my uncle — not my dad’s brother, but he was friends with my dad in high school and they married sisters of the same family — to see if he could remember what my dad was wearing by chance.

“I was thinking of Johnny when I heard about Franco,” he responded. “I missed that game because I had mono and was too sick to go, and I’ve been bummed out for 50 years about it. Only home game I missed in four years.”

No luck. My wife and I hunted. We’d peer and pinch at grainy footage. Is that his blond hair? Zoom in on that jacket. Slow down here.

I sent a couple of videos to my uncle to see if he recognized anyone. Later, my wife and I saw my mom and showed her. We dissected the possibility of my dad being either of two blonds in a 10-minute, allegedly never-before-seen video that was posted to YouTube earlier this year. Maybe him. There was a guy in a Santa suit, but that detail probably would’ve been mentioned before and anyway …

There he is!

At a minute and a half of this video, there he is. Undeniably him, from the blond hair to the way he fixes that blond hair to the glasses I remember seeing in his school photos. Holy crap, it’s him!

In the seven seconds he’s on video, my dad balls his fist and pounds Franco on the left shoulder, flips his hair out of his eyes and fades into the crowd of others swarming in. The game hasn’t even ended at this point. My uncle notes he looks dressed up for some reason. Right before he’s out of frame, he takes another look back at the guy who gave him the experience of a lifetime.

“I’ll tell my kids about this one day,” he might be thinking in that moment.

Realistically, probably not. He’s 16 at the time and likely thinking he needs to duck security.

Now, in the present, I have to have the conversation with my dad, even if it’s one that can’t actually exist. Upon further review, his place in Pittsburgh history has been confirmed. So what would he say after decades of pent-up, hard-fought I told you so’s?

I’ve settled on the conversation going like this: I would argue a few quibbles over the details of his retelling that didn’t match the video — it was a shoulder pat, not a piggyback ride. He’d note that the 2019 airport photo is pretty damn close to the real-life interaction.

Then he’d get a bit serious.

“Ty, don’t show that video to Pap. I told him I was at church that day.”

One smartass son should have known.