If the Hall of Fame calls, Joe Klecko will have the best tales, back to growing up in Chester

Joe Klecko knew all along, every step, how it never had to happen. So many forks in so many roads. Any little deviation could have knocked Klecko off stride.

Starring for the New York Jets, a crucial part of the famed New York Sack Exchange, Klecko might be on the verge of having his election in the Pro Football Hall of Fame announced.

What if Klecko’s girlfriend, now his wife of all these years, hadn’t thrown his keys out of the car window?

What if he hadn’t played glorified sandlot ball for the Aston Knights of the Seaboard Football League?

What if he hadn’t decided to finally give football a try as a senior at long-gone St. James High School in Chester?

What if Temple’s football coach had ignored his equipment manager from Delaware County who told Wayne Hardin he had to see this player for the Aston Knights, that this kid Klecko was better than anyone Hardin had?

What if Joe Frazier had really knocked him out?

The whole tale starts in Chester — “the west end of Chester,” Klecko said over the phone. “Chester made you tough. Chester was no walk in the park. A working-class town. Nobody in my family had ever gone to college.”

Klecko’s uncle owned a gas station and a fuel oil business. Before he was a teenager, Klecko was part of the business, “worked for them all the time.”

Then he switched his hours to a family friend who was a general contractor — “all dirt,” Klecko said of that work.

There was no Pop Warner football in Chester at the time, Klecko said. Baseball was his game. He remembers being a Little League all-star when he was 12.

“We used to clean heaters, had to crawl into heaters,” Klecko said. “I asked my dad, ‘Can I take off today?’ "

That was the day of the all-star game.

“Yes, you can.”

A cousin caught wind off of this. Take off for a baseball game? “What are you going to do, play games the rest of your life?”

» READ MORE: Joe Klecko, Billy Johnson, Otho Davis among semifinalists for the 2023 Pro Football Hall of Fame

That line still cracks Klecko up, since games would one day lead to being named NFL defensive player of the year by United Press International, after leading the NFL in sacks in 1981.

That was later. Klecko wasn’t a football player back then. His baseball prowess eventually turned into softball prowess. Klecko had gone out for the football team as a freshman at St. James, but remembers how the freshman coach taught a drill where two players got on a piece of wood, “like a 2-by-10,” and the pair of youngsters would hit into each other until one was knocked off the wood. Klecko had been put against the biggest guy. Klecko remembers the coach saying, “Get out of there before you get hurt.”

“He embarrassed me so bad, I quit,” Klecko said.

Who lost in that deal? Maybe the other guy on that piece of wood was the only player who could have stood his ground with Klecko.

“I was a phenom in the trench,” Klecko said when it came to work. “We’d bust up heaters, carry them out of a basement. At 12 years old, I’d carry it out like the big guys.”

Finally, senior year at St. James, “I said, you know, there’s not anybody in my senior class I didn’t think I could beat up, or a win a fight with.” He joined the team. The varsity coach, Joe Logue, saw what he had in Klecko quickly.

“A guy playing in front of me got hurt,” Klecko said. “Like the fourth game. I did so good, they couldn’t take me out.” So good, Klecko made all-state, “only playing six or seven games.”

So on to Temple?

“I wasn’t going to pay for school,” Klecko said. “We were a normal working-class family. I went to work. I was driving a dump truck.”

That’s when the chance encounter at the softball game led to a suggestion that Klecko join the Aston Knights. Klecko drove over to the football practice field with his girlfriend, but didn’t get out of the car. “I was a really timid kid,” he said.

His future wife, Debbie, maybe wasn’t as timid. She grabbed the keys out of the ignition, threw them out the window. As family lore has it, Klecko got out of the car to retrieve the keys. The Aston Knights coach who had wanted him to join the team saw him, “Hey, Joe.” All right, couldn’t back out now.

That eventually led to that Temple equipment manager, John DiGregorio, seeing Klecko playing against some rugged older competition. Better than anybody Temple had? “Yeah, yeah, sure,” Owls coach Wayne Hardin said to that.

Temple’s coach apparently respected the equipment manager’s opinion enough that Hardin got to a game out at Sun Valley High, saw roughly what DiGregorio had seen, offered Klecko a full scholarship. Klecko accepted it and showed up for preseason practice.

“I was a real rough-in-the-edges kid,” Klecko said. “I actually quit and went home.”

Klecko was thinking about this other offer he’d had to play at Dayton, how that might be a better spot. But DiGregorio “came after me — ‘Joe, you’re in camp, you can’t move around.’ I went back, broke my hand in camp. I wasn’t going full force.”

Third game, he said, “a guy got hurt — the rest was history.” By the seventh game, everyone knew this guy was special. Klecko had 15 tackles including five sacks in a big win over Delaware, was named ECAC rookie of the week. His last three seasons, he led Temple in tackles. The last two years, he was honorable mention All-American.

He didn’t quite leave the Aston Knights behind. Since this was a semipro outfit, playing could have jammed up Klecko’s college eligibility, even though he said, “I never got paid or nothing, everything was strictly legit.” To play it safe, he played under the name “Jim Jones,” from “Poland University.”

Temple offered memories he’ll never forget. Like practicing across 15th Street at Geasey Field, “right outside McGonigle Hall. Next to it, there was a city playground. There was an old abandoned pool. They used to have dogfights. We’d be going to practice and guys would be betting on the dogfights.”

Klecko boxed a little at Temple. There was no NCAA boxing, but there was a national club competition, and Klecko won it twice, heavyweight division. Word got around Philly and Klecko was invited to work out at a little gym in North Philly. “You walked in the front door, the ring was right there.”

This was Joe Frazier’s gym. The big kid from Temple wasn’t just there to watch. Frazier, who had already beaten Muhammad Ali once and lost to Ali once, the Thrilla in Manila still a year away, needed sparring partners.

“I was a big, strong, tough guy,” said Klecko, who was listed at 6-foot-3, 263 pounds as a pro player. “Joe used to spar like 20 rounds. I went two or three rounds. It was a scary situation.”

» READ MORE: Down went Joe Frazier 50 years ago in a loss to George Foreman that altered lives. Philly would rise again.

In his mind, Klecko sized it up and decided, “If things get bad, I can tackle him.”

His confidence boosted a bit one time, Klecko tried to go on a momentary offensive.

“He threw a deadly left hook to my head — I didn’t see it,” Klecko said. “I said, ‘Oh, [shoot].’ Joe started cackling.”

Klecko never saw Frazier again, until they were guest speakers at a dinner years later in Rahway, N.J. By then, Klecko was a legit pro football star. Heading to the NFL, did he finally know that he was legit?

“Oh God, no,” Klecko said. “I was so afraid that I wouldn’t get drafted.”

In 1977, the NFL draft was 12 rounds. Klecko went to the Jets in the sixth round. A pretty good round that year, since 10 picks later, the Eagles chose a running back from Abilene Christian named Wilbert Montgomery. But Klecko didn’t focus on the Montgomery pick. The Eagles had told Klecko they were going to take him in the fifth round. Instead, they chose a defensive back from Kansas named Skip Sharp.

“He never made it,” Klecko said, and Klecko never forgot that name, or being scorned by his hometown team.

When Jets training camp began on Long Island, “If I was any good, I didn’t know that,” Klecko said. Except the heat that summer, he said, was historically “horrendous,” and a lot of players were dropping. “I was last man standing.”

Klecko played 11 seasons for the Jets, and made the Pro Bowl four times, twice at defensive end, twice at defensive tackle. With him bookending Mark Gastineau, the New York Sack Exchange was born, the tabloid headline describing the whole line. Klecko had 78 sacks in his career, which ended after one season with the Indianapolis Colts. In 1982, he won the George Halas Award, given to the NFL player who had overcome the most adversity.

Klecko now lives in Colts Neck, N.J. One of his five children, Dan, had a big football career of his own at Temple, and was part of three Super Bowl titles playing for the Patriots. Dad, however, has this potential honor rising above, one of the three finalists nominated by a senior committee for consideration for the 2023 Pro Football Hall of Fame class. Each finalist needs to receive 80% approval. The voting already has occurred, and Klecko will find out Thursday evening at the NFL Honors banquet in Phoenix if his name is called out to join the best of the best.

If Joe Klecko is asked to stand on a stage this summer in Canton, Ohio, who has better tales to share? Who else traded punches with Smokin’ Joe Frazier, or played sandlot ball for Poland University? Who else is convinced still that he would never even have played college football if not for his future wife throwing his keys out of a car window?

If Klecko is on that stage, obviously expect him to be thrilled. He’ll just know this, too.

It never had to happen.