Night Train Lane

Richard Lane (April 16, 1928 – January 29, 2002), commonly known as Dick "Night Train" Lane, was an American football cornerback who played for 14 years in the National Football League (NFL).

Lane was born in Austin, Texas, in April 1928.

When he was three months old, he was abandoned by his birth parents, a prostitute and pimp.

He was found, covered in newspapers, in a dumpster.

Lane later recalled, "My father was called Texas Slim. I never saw him—I don't know if he's the one that told my mother to throw me away. A pimp told my mother I had to go. They put me in a trash can and took off. Some people heard me crying. They thought it was a cat."

Lane was adopted and raised by Ella Lane, who also had four other children.

As a youth in Austin, Lane grew up poor, busing tables at local hotels and shining shoes on Congress Avenue.

He also helped his mother with a laundry business she ran out of the home.

He played basketball and football and was a member of the school's 1945 and 1946 football teams.

The 1945 team was runnerup in the Prairie View Interscholastic League, an association of black schools in Texas.

After graduating from high school, Lane lived for a time in Council Bluffs, Iowa, with his birth mother, Etta Mae King.

She had visited during Lane's youth, and the two reconciled.

His mother and a man had opened a tavern in Council Bluffs.

While in Council Bluffs, a baseball scout signed Lane, and he played for a time with the Negro league Omaha Rockets, a farm team for the Kansas City Monarchs.

In the fall of 1947, Lane enrolled at Scottsbluff Junior College in Scottsbluff, Nebraska.

He played one season of college football at Scottsbluff.

He was the only African American player on the team, and a clipping from the college newspaper noted, "He is outstanding for his vicious tackles, hard running and pass snatching."

The Scottsbluff football team compiled a 5–3–1 record with Lane in the lineup in 1947 and finished in third place in the Nebraska Junior College Conference.

In 1948, Lane enlisted in the United States Army and served for four years.

He served at Fort Ord on Monterey Bay in California and played on a Fort Ord football team.

In 1951, he caught 18 touchdown passes for Fort Ord. He received second-team All-Army honors in 1949 and first-team honors in 1951.

After his discharge from the Army, Lane worked in an aircraft plant in Los Angeles, lifting heavy sheets of metal out of a bin and placing them into a press.

While working at the aircraft plant in Los Angeles, Lane passed the Los Angeles Rams offices on his bus ride to work.

He played for the Los Angeles Rams (1952–1953), the Chicago Cardinals (1954–1959), and the Detroit Lions (1960–1965).

As a rookie in 1952, Lane had 14 interceptions, a mark that remains an NFL record over 70 years later.

He walked into the office with a scrapbook of clippings in 1952 and asked for a tryout.

He was recommended to the Rams by Gabby Sims and signed as a free agent.

Lane initially tried out as a receiver, the position he had played at Fort Ord, but was switched to a defensive back by the Rams.

In the Rams' first scrimmage on August 3, 1952, Lane drew praise as "the outstanding player in the scrimmage by a country mile" due to his "ferocious" approach to the game and his speed in chasing down Elroy Hirsch.

After the scrimmage, Rams head coach Joe Stydahar said, "Lane came out here to make the ball club. Well, last night he got himself a job."

Lane acquired the nickname "Night Train" during his first training camp with the Rams.

He played in the Pro Bowl seven times and was selected as a first-team All-Pro player seven times between 1956 and 1963.

His 68 career interceptions ranked second in NFL history at the time of his retirement and still ranks fourth in NFL history.

After retiring from professional football, Lane worked for the Detroit Lions in various administrative positions from 1966 to 1972 and then held assistant coaching positions at Southern University (1972) and Central State University (1973).

He was named to the National Football League 50th Anniversary All-Time Team in 1969, named to the 75th Anniversary All-Time Team in 1994 and unanimously named to the National Football League 100th Anniversary All-Time Team in 2019.

He was also known as one of the most ferocious tacklers in NFL history and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1974.

For 17 years, from 1975 to 1992, he was in charge of Detroit's Police Athletic League.

In 1999, he was ranked number 20 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Football Players.

Lane became known as "Cue Ball" and later recalled how he acquired the nickname: "I was in a pool hall in 12th street. We were playing for money, maybe a dime. As soon as I made the eight ball, the other guy took off running. He didn't want to pay. I grabbed that cue ball and just as he made the corner I threw it and hit him upside the head. The guy didn't know what had hit him."

Lane attended L.C. Anderson High School, Austin's segregated high school for African Americans.