LANE, Richard ("Night Train")

(b. 16 April 1927 in Austin, Texas), football player who developed from an unlikely and unheralded walk-on to the acknowledged author of the book on playing cornerback in the National Football League (NFL).

Lane was abandoned by his mother shortly after his birth and was placed in the care of foster parents. With the foster parents, Lane was reared in a humble but loving atmosphere. One day when Lane ripped a pair of pants, which he later described as "the best pair of pants I ever owned," while playing football, his football career almost was sidetracked. Seeing the pants split up the back, his foster mother, whom he always called "Mom," said: "Richard, I'll tell you what. If you give up football, I'll buy you a horn or saxophone or anything you want." Lane was not about to give up sports though. At Austin's Anderson High School, he lettered in both football and basketball. Because his foster mother suffered a serious illness, Lane was forced to move to Scottsbluff, Nebraska, where his biological mother was living. While there he gained his only formal football experience past the high school level before turning pro by enrolling at Scottsbluff Junior College. Lane played just one season at Scottsbluff, in 1947, but in that season, he received Junior College All-America mention. He left Scottsbluff to join the U.S. Army and played three seasons for the Fort Ord (California) football team. He also got married while in the army. During the 1951 football season, he caught eighteen touchdown passes and attracted the attention of the nearby San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League (NFL). However, the 49ers offered no tryout or contract.

Following his discharge from the army, Lane found work in Los Angeles in one of the many aircraft plants in that city. He stacked large, oil-coated aluminum sheets in a bin, and he hated it. By his own count, he "ruined fifteen pairs of khakis messin' with that darned aluminum." Riding the bus to work one day in 1952, he noticed the Los Angeles Rams football office at 7813 Beverly Boulevard. Shortly thereafter he visited the office with a tattered scrap-book containing his high school, junior college, and service football clippings. He announced to the receptionist that he was a football player "looking for a job." When he met with the coaches Joe Stydahar and Red Hickey and the scout Eddie Kotal, they were impressed with his height, six feet two inches, but not his weight. Hickey asked how much he weighed. Lane responded, "'Bout one eighty-five." Hickey came back with, "Where you hidin' it?" Though they enjoyed a laugh, the Rams offered Lane a contract for $4,500. With a pregnant wife and a job he detested, Lane jumped at the chance.

The Rams first tried Lane at offensive end, the position in which he had made those eighteen touchdown catches at Fort Ord. But Lane, with so little formal experience, had trouble with the Rams' sophisticated system of plays. Compounding the situation, the Rams starting offensive ends were Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch and Tom Fears, who eventually were elected into the Hall of Fame. Lane visited Fears's room in training camp to get pointers on playing end in the Rams system. Fears had a 45 rpm record player and liked the current Buddy Morrow big band rendition of Jimmy Forrest's tune "Night Train," a slow, bluesy number. So did Lane. He began coming to Fears's room as much to hear "Night Train," which Fears played constantly, as he did to get tips on playing end from Fears. Ben Sheets, a rookie who was eventually cut from the Rams, roomed with Fears. Once as Lane entered the Fears-Sheets room, Sheets looked up and declared, "Look, here comes Night Train." The moniker stuck as one of pro football's most colorful and well-known nicknames.

The Rams coaching staff liked Lane's athleticism and switched his position to the defensive side of the ball, cornerback. They felt Lane had instincts "you couldn't teach." When the regular NFL rolled around in September 1952, Lane was tested by the best quarterbacks in the league, including Otto Graham, Sammy Baugh, Bobby Layne, and Y. A. Tittle, all future inductees into the Hall of Fame. Lane responded with a record fourteen interceptions, two of which he returned for touchdowns. He once said, "I coulda had more—I dropped another half-dozen or so." Lane enjoyed playing for Stydahar. But Hampton Pool became head coach, and he wanted Lane to cut down on his freelancing and play a more disciplined game. This approach hampered Lane's creativity and natural gambling instinct. He complained, was labeled a "malcontent," and was traded to the Chicago (now Arizona) Cardinals for the 1954 season. Things went well for Lane in Chicago. He continued to make passers and receivers wary, and his bone-rattling, necktie tackles caused ball carriers to look for him as they came into his territory. His interception total continued to climb in the Windy City also. Used as a receiver in clutch situations, Lane and an obscure quarterback named Ogden Compton teamed up on 13 November 1955 for a ninety-eight-yard touchdown pass, the second-longest distance in NFL history to that date. In his career as a receiver, Lane caught 8 passes for 253 yards, an astounding 31.6-yard average.

Always popular with his teammates, Lane ran afoul of another coach, Frank "Pop" Ivy, who did not appreciate Lane taking calculated risks in the secondary. Lane was traded to Detroit for the 1960 season, and for the first time he seemed to be fully appreciated by his team and his coaches. From 1960 to 1963 Lane made the Pro Bowl, and he earned All-Pro honors several times. After Lane and his first wife separated, Lane married the blues singer Dinah Washington (born Ruth Lee Jones) in Las Vegas, Nevada, on 2 July 1963. They were quite a high-profile couple, and their marriage was reported in Time magazine. Washington, known as "the Queen of the Blues," was famous for such songs as "What a Diff'rence a Day Makes," "I Don't Hurt Anymore," and "Dream." She died of an apparently accidental prescription drug overdose in the early hours of 14 December 1963.

The Detroit Lions could not get past the Green Bay Packers to play in championship games, but their defensive unit was accorded great respect by the Packers coach Vince Lombardi. The legendary coach told his quarterback Bart Starr, another Hall of Fame inductee: "Don't throw anywhere near him [Lane]. He's the best there is." Hickey, a Rams assistant who became the 49ers head coach, once switched his talented receiver R. C. Owens from the right side of the offensive formation to the left side to avoid Lane. Hickey said, "People go broke and lose their jobs throwing into Lane's territory." Lane, who played his man closely, is credited with starting the now-illegal "bump and run" tactic made popular by defensive backs of the 1960s and 1970s. He acknowledged freely that he was a gambler on the field, but his Lions Hall of Fame teammate Joe Schmidt said: "Yeah, 'Train' gambled, but he usually guessed right. He finished well ahead of the game."

In his six seasons with the Lions, Lane, now fully matured into 210 pounds, received accolades as the NFL's best. He retired after the last game of the 1965 season, on December 19. During his career he returned his 68 interceptions for 1,207 yards and 5 touchdowns. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1974.

After his playing career, Lane worked at the pro and college levels coaching and scouting. He also worked with youngsters in Detroit's Police Athletic League (PAL). He retired and moved into an assisted living facility in Del Valle, Texas, in 2001.

Even though seasons stretched to sixteen games rather than the mostly twelve games per season that Lane played, he retained the single-season interception record of fourteen at the beginning of the twenty-first century. His career total reached sixty-eight interceptions, bested only by Paul Krause (81) and Emlen Tunnell (79) at that time. Lane was the prototypical "cover" corner, the yardstick by which such stars as Herb Adderley, Mel Blount, Willie Brown, and Deion Sanders are measured.

Lane's life and career are discussed in Joe Falls, The Specialist in Pro Football (1966); Murray Olderman, The Defenders (1973); George Allen with Ben Olan, Pro Football's 100 Greatest Players (1982); and Rick Korch, The Truly Great (1993).

Jim Campbell