www.montereycountynow.com May 16-22, 2024 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 17 He reportedly told a crowd of 15,000 at a farmworkers’ protest in 1970, “Get off your knees; unite!… Fight!…Fight the bastards!” That was Joe Kapp, a singular man, someone who could be at home both in Hollywood—he appeared in several films and TV shows—or in the barrio, the word he used to describe the neighborhoods of his youth. Kapp’s eldest son, J.J., absorbed that spirit, and went on to become a public defender in Santa Clara County. In retirement, he helped his dad, who’d long suffered from dementia brought on at least in part by head injuries he suffered playing football, complete his memoir, Joe Kapp — “The Toughest Chicano,” which first printed in 2019. The heart of the book was written in 1988 and ’89 by Joe Kapp and Ned Averbuck, but J.J. and his friend Robert Phelps brought it to the finish line. Most of the book is about football and details chapters of his career, but all throughout, it’s sprinkled with his wisdom—Kapp may have been a fighter, but he was also studious, as a great quarterback must be. In a game of X’s and O’s and ever-changing formations, to be good at playing quarterback—the most singular position in sports—you have to be smart. There is now a second edition of that book with an afterword written by Jim Rainey, a journalist with the Los Angeles Times who is also a UC Berkeley alum, that delves deeper into what is arguably the most incredible play in the football history. It happened in 1982 in a game between Stanford and Cal when Kapp, who’d played quarterback at Cal in the late ’50s, was in his first season as Cal’s coach decades later. To this day, it’s still known as “The Play.” The National Steinbeck Center in Salinas is hosting an author’s talk on Saturday, May 18 with J.J. Kapp and coauthor Phelps, along with Rainey. Ignacio Ornelas Rodriguez, a Salinas native and a historian at Stanford who focuses on civil rights and social movements, will moderate a panel discussion, and sale proceeds from the book will go toward two one-time yearly scholarships of $2,500. One goes to a Latino student entering Cal, the other to a college-bound senior at Alisal High. Kapp died on May 8, 2023—just over a year ago—at the age of 85 at his home in Los Gatos, and per his wishes, his brain was sent to UCSF for study. On Feb. 29, UCSF doctors reported back to Kapp’s family that he had suffered the most advanced form of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, aka CTE, a condition affecting the brain that’s impacted many former professional football players. It’s because of CTE that the rules of football keep changing—the league is at least making a show of trying to protect its players. CTE’s symptoms can manifest in myriad ways, with depression and memory loss among them. But would Kapp still have played today, as a kid in Salinas, knowing all we know now? There is no doubt the answer is yes. “There are many good things about football,” Kapp wrote at the end of his memoir, “most importantly, providing an outlet for the violence that exists in the souls of men. Men are born for games.” And Kapp was a gamer with the best of them, and now, just over a year after his passing, the second edition of his memoir provides an opportunity to look back on the life of a man who spent his formative years in Salinas, proving his toughness, and who later became a national celebrity. Kapp lived a fascinating life, but unlike Chavez, he’s not widely celebrated locally. And while he wasn’t born in Salinas and didn’t attend high school there past the 10th grade, in every other way, he was a native son. Kapp was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1938. He was the first-born. The heating source in adobe house he was born in was a pot-bellied stove fueled by coal, or sometimes 2-by-4s his dad would steal from construction sites and then saw into pieces. In his memoir, Kapp describes his dad Robert Douglas, aka R.D., the son of German immigrants, as a “charming Kapp’s 7th grade class photo from El Sausal Middle School. Kapp is top row, second from right. “He was tough enough to give up his career to do the right thing.” Courtesy of J.J. Kapp
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