“Lombardi” cleverly examines a random autumn week in the coach’s life as his Green Bay Packers are preparing to take on the San Francisco 49ers. Look Magazine has dispatched a young sports reporter, Michael McCormick (Keith Nobbs), to spend the week with Vince (Dan Lauria) and his wife Marie (Judith Light) for a profile article.

What McCormick does not know is that his editor and Lombardi are old friends and he is there for a puff piece. Even worse, Look is willing to give the Packers coach having final edit control on the piece. It turns out that the gruff Lombardi was sensitive to a harsh article about him that had been published a few weeks earlier in Esquire.

Michael McCormick represents the public and he does a great job probing Vince Lombardi by not only interviewing him, but also his better half, Marie, and a trio of Packers legends, Dave Robinson (Robert Christopher Riley), Paul Hornung (Bill Dawes) and Jim Taylor (Chris Sullivan). The supporting characters hold our interest as much as the title protagonist does.

Marie Lombardi is no shrinking violet and can go toe-to-toe with her boisterous husband if necessary. Their love was clearly deep and the play makes it clear that she was Vince’s rock when he was thinking of dropping football for a career in banking when he grew tired of being an assistant coach with the Giants. He couldn’t understand why he had been overlooked by every major college and NFL team until the lowly Green Bay Packers came calling in 1959.

While she encouraged her husband to take the job in Green Bay, it is clear that life in the NFL’s smallest outpost did not suit her. She tells McCormick that she desperately misses Manhattan and wiles away too much of the time by hitting the liquor cabinet.

“Lombardi” does not shy away from key social and economic issues. Lombardi was never a big fan of individualism and preferred a marine corps-style thinking of putting the best interests of the group first. The positive side of this was that the Packers were remarkably free of prejudice. Louisiana good ole boy Jim Taylor did not think twice about socializing with black linebacker Dave Robinson.

The negative side of that philosophy was that Vince, who was also the Packers general manager, had trouble dealing with his players when it came to their economic welfare. He goes ballistic when Jim Taylor lets it be known that he has an agent who will negotiate his next contract for him (he would soon be traded to the expansion New Orleans Saints) while Dave Robinson is team’s first union rep and relishes the idea of getting better benefits for the rank-and-file.

“Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing!” is the quotation most associated with Vince Lombardi. The play takes pains to talk about how it has been misinterpreted over the years. Lombardi was only trying to emphasize the cultivation of a winning attitude and not that one should commit harakiri if you are on the losing side.

Dan Lauria, best known for his role as the dad on “The Wonder Years,” bears a strong physical resemblance to Lombardi and sounds like him as well. He is so credible in this role that you have a feeling that some NFL teams may want to hire him as their next head coach. Judith Light, best remembered for the ABC sitcom “Who’s the Boss?”, makes Marie a sympathetic character. Keith Nobbs reminds one of a young Tom Cruise.

“Lombardi” comes in at a sprite 95 minutes and does not have an intermission. While it helps to be a football fan, even those who have little interest in the gridiron will enjoy this play. If you know little about Vince Lombardi except that his name adorns the Super Bowl trophy and a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike, then you owe it to yourself to get to the Circle In The Square Theater ASAP.

Could you imagine a festival like Woodstock occurring today? Tickets for those three days of music were sold for 18 dollars to watch super-groups like The Who, The Grateful Dead, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, Jimi Hendrix and so many more, then at the absolute peak of their creative talent, give extraordinary performances. Could a similar festival of sharing and co-existing in an open field exist today? Maybe, but the ticket prices would probably be about 600 bucks for the weekend, effectively eliminating younger people who couldn’t afford the corporate greed that exists today. Of course, the bands themselves would require all the backstage accoutrement (cases of Evian, anyone?) and lots of cash to appear. Which brings to mind the scene from the movie, “Woodstock” in which many of the musicians are filmed walking through the crowd towards the stage with guitar in hand, saying hi to their fans. Yup, times have changed, haven’t they?

That year, 1969, was also special for other reasons. We should also be celebrating the 40^th anniversary of the Amazin’ Mets first shocking World Championship and the New York Jets first (and only) Super Bowl championship season. True, the big game itself was played in January, 1970, but why quibble? But, it does make you think of some of the legendary names from that year in the sports and music worlds. If you were lucky enough to watch Namath throw his pure passes down the field, Seaver fire 95 mph fastballs on the black, and Hendrix do his virtuoso thing on the guitar, you are both lucky and getting old. Mostly lucky, though. That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway.

Of course, 1969 was also the year Neil Armstrong did the original moonwalk, with apologies to the legacy of Michael Jackson, on the powdery surface of the moon, another momentous event for the United States. It stamped this nation as the technological force in the world and provided Americans with a powerful sense of pride in fulfilling the objective of landing a man on the moon, a national goal initially broached by President Kennedy in 1961 in the early stages of his Presidency. Sadly, one gets the sense American technological supremacy has disappeared in the way most dynasties eventually go away.

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Relax, Jet fans. The only thing your quarterback-in-waiting, Mark Sanchez, did was  complete a 48 yard pass in an exhibition game against a bunch of St. Louis Rams players who won’t be on their team when the season starts. The excitement and sports talk radio call-ins about Sanchez as the Messiah is a little on the ridiculous side.

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The Yankees have just about cemented this season as a huge success, exceeding all pre-season expectations. Other than the fear of losing one of their starting four pitchers or worse, Mariano Rivera to injury, it looks like this train is steaming along to a Division championship. Given the team’s recent misfortune in the crap shoot known as a short playoff series, where a couple of hot pitchers can be the great equalizers (see Yankees vs. Tigers and Yankees vs. Indians playoffs), the Yankees are baseball’s best team and the odds-on favorites to bring a World Championship banner to its new stadium.

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The Mets are such an afterthought in the baseball world, particularly-so in their hometown. The biggest news coming out of Mets land is their decision to finally begin the process of turning their new stadium, Citi Field, from a generic ballpark with no connection to previous Mets teams or championships or its players into a building that celebrates the teams’ at-times glorious history. How have the Mets decided to honor their past and create an atmosphere celebrating New York Mets history? By putting gigantic photos of some of their players on the walls of the stadium. Big pictures of former greats like Seaver, Keith Hernandez, Doc Gooden, and Darryl Strawberry. No need to mention here those last three names were all involved with drug use during their playing careers. Maybe that’s what Fred Wilpon was considering when the notion was brought up of turning the Mets new home stadium into a shrine to their once-great players.

You have to admit, though, those Wilpon boys are sharp, aren’t they? They seem to have their finger on the pulse of their fan base, especially the younger ones who came to the ballpark in this, it’s inaugural season only to find zero connections to the Mets franchise and its history. There was a gigantic rotunda (sort of like a big lobby) with a huge, bronze statue of Jackie Robinson in the room’s center with big pictures on the walls of Robinson, the first African-American to play in the major leagues. The fact he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s and 50s seemed lost on the Mets ownership, who opted not to put big pictures of any current or former Mets players on the walls of their three quarter of a billion dollar ballfield until a gigantic crescendo of shock and dismay among Mets loyalists took place. What was Robinson’s connection to the Mets? None, or about as much of a connection as Carlos Delgado has ever developed with Mets fans. And that’s why the Mets win the first annual Mr. Irrelevance award for the 2009 season.

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