Sport: Setting the Record Straight

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Early immigrant kickers had much to fear from all sides. "We were not loved," says Yepremian. In the secret hearts of football players, they were interlopers. "When they kicked a field goal," sneers Alex Karras, Yepremian's old Lion teammate, "they'd jump up and down and yell, 'I kick a touchdown! I kick a touchdown!' " Yepremian says, "I was short, I was bald, and I didn't understand football. But worst of all, I walked off the field cleaner than I walked on."

Back fashioning neckwear after 15 seasons, Yepremian has settled in Miami near his warmest memories. Over nine years there, the Dolphins came to regard him as fondly as a pet and eventually forgave him for the blocked-kick touchdown pass he accidentally threw to the Washington Redskins in the 1973 Super Bowl. "Washington is also where my streak ended at 20," he remembers, "but I didn't really mind Moseley breaking my record. A last-second field goal to win the game, that's doing it in style."

Moseley was a quarterback at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, and he is accepted by his fellows as a football player. (Occasionally in his twelve-year pro career he has practiced as an emergency quarterback.) "I know that has been an advantage," he says. "I can share in the feeling, the emotion, the atmosphere of the entire game."

Besides being a dreary calling at times, kicking positions are as fragile as Viennese chandeliers. After twelve years and four teams, egg-shaped Austrian Toni Fritsch missed two field goals for New Orleans last week and, disgusted with himself, went home to Vienna. Some of the soccer kickers, domestic and foreign, know enough about both football and human nature to risk tossing their lithe bodies about the field recklessly. If they never get smudged, they are certain to feel more isolated from teammates when the extra points blow off course. The New York Jets' Pat Leahy has had a particularly lonesome time this year. "It's not lonely if you don't let it be lonely," says Moseley, meaning if you never miss any field goals. For neglecting to make eleven of 30 last season, he had to wait until the final cut this year to find out if he was even on the team.