By Kevin Gorman
Rooster Fleming would have been a Hazelwood legend — if not for his cocksure nickname then for signing straight out of Gladstone High School to play for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Rooster befriended Paul Martha and roomed with Joe Namath, scored on a record 108-yard touchdown and won weightlifting competitions into his 60s.
Fleming was feared as much for his fisticuffs as he was on the football field. Not only did Rooster play 10 seasons in the CFL, winning three Grey Cup championships with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, but he once fought professional wrestling legend Bruno Sammartino in a backstage brawl.
No wonder his son once said this of his father: “If there aren’t Rooster Fleming stories, it’s not Hazelwood.”
David “Rooster” Fleming Sr., a true Hazelwood legend, died Wednesday at his Munhall home. He was 77.
“He lived a rugged life and was a street-fighting, football-playing guy,” David Fleming Jr. said. “A real man’s man.”
Fleming was ahead of his time with his training, both lifting weights and running the Glen Hazel city steps, and showed exceptional speed and toughness on the football field.
Former Steelers safety Clendon Thomas recalled knocking the air out of Fleming on a sweep, leaving the rookie running back gasping for air on the first day of training camp.
“I just wanted to see what he was made of,” Thomas said in an interview with Stephen H. Norwood for the book, “Real Football: Conversations on America’s Game.” “When he finally got his breath, he said, ‘Damn, Mr. Thomas.’ That’s all he said. And he went back into the huddle. I couldn’t help but break out laughing. He had watched me play in Pittsburgh and knew my name. The very next play, he came right back at me. I walked over to our defensive coach, Tory Torgeson, and I said, ‘I don’t know anything about the kid, but I can tell you one thing, he’s tough. I gave him a shot that would take anybody down, and he came back for more.’ He had earned my instant respect.”
Not until Fleming had to sing his school’s fight song at a rookie hazing — he stood up and belted out the Gladstone alma mater — did Thomas realize that Rooster was just 18.
The Steelers scouted Fleming while he was playing for the Pittsburgh Valley Ironmen, and coach Buddy Parker offered Fleming a contract in his family’s kitchen. Fleming’s father had to sign the deal because Rooster was still too young.
Rooster was never one to back down from a challenge, whether it was a footrace or a fight. Hazelwood native Jim O’Brien, a lifelong friend of Fleming’s, was handling publicity for the Pittsburgh Valley Ironmen semi-pro football team when Fleming was one of four players from the Steelers’ taxi squad loaned to them for Saturday night games.
“Rooster wore a white shirt buttoned up to the collar, and some guy came in and challenged Rooster,” said O’Brien, who profiled Fleming in a SPORT magazine essay titled, “The Poor Man’s Joe Namath.” “I’m trying to be voice of sanity: ‘Don’t get involved. You’ll mess up your opportunity to play for the Steelers.’
“But everybody was egging him on. Rooster opened up his white dress shirt and was wearing a Steelers game jersey under it! It was like the effect of Superman. They go outside in the parking lot, and Rooster beat the guy to a pulp.”
Fleming’s only fear was flying, so Steelers owner Art Rooney Sr. invited him to sit in the comfort of first class.
When the Steelers cut Fleming, he went to training camp with the New York Jets. That’s where he roomed with Namath, the superstar quarterback from Beaver Falls. O’Brien told the tale of Broadway Joe and Rooster hurdling the turnstiles together to sneak into the World’s Fair in Flushing, N.Y.
Rooster loved to tell the story of how he ended up playing in Canada. He was drinking at a New York City bar with Namath and Yankees idol Mickey Mantle when Hamilton’s Ralph Sazio offered him a $4,000 raise and a starting role to play in Canada.
“I didn’t know anything about the CFL,” Fleming later told the team website, “but said, ‘I’m on my way.’
”Fleming accepted and headed to Canada, playing for the Tiger-Cats from 1965-74. His 744 carries for 3,398 yards and 28 rushing touchdowns — and 50 total — still rank among the team’s all-time leaders. His 108-yard touchdown reception in 1971 remains a franchise record, and he scored the Tiger-Cats’ only touchdown on a 16-yard catch in a 13-10 victory over Saskatchewan in the 1972 Grey Cup championship.
“Rooster could fly. That’s why they called him ‘Fly,’ ” said JD Murray, a Hazelwood native who was Fleming’s best friend. “In Canada, he never left the field. He played running back, safety, returned kicks and punts. He did everything but sell programs.
“We used to go up to Canada with four or five carloads. We got treated like kings. They loved him in Canada. He stole a Canadian Mountie’s horse – even though he’d never rode a horse before – and, next thing you know, he wound up in a water founation. He should have stayed in Canada. They treated him like he was the mayor of Hamilton. He could do no wrong.”
Instead, Fleming returned to his hometown and followed his playing days by coaching football and scouting for the Tiger-Cats. To his son, it seemed like everyone knew Rooster.
“He loved Pittsburgh. He never wanted to leave Pittsburgh,” Fleming Jr. said. “Everywhere we went, he got shown love. There wasn’t anywhere we’d go where somebody wouldn’t stop him and talk to him. Whenever we would go to a Hamilton football game, they would line up around the corner to get his autograph and share stories about him playing for the Ti-Cats.”
Friends were amazed by his football acumen, saying he knew the sport like the back of his hand. Fleming coached Hazelwood’s Raiders and Vols youth teams and, later, the semi-pro Pittsburgh Colts to two national titles. Fleming is a two-time inductee into the Western Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame, as both a CFL player and a semi-pro coach.
“As a young athlete growing up in Hazelwood, he was the guy,” said West Mifflin football coach Rod Steele, who played for Fleming and became a close friend. “Everybody knew Dave from being a pro football player and a sports legend in the community. He shared knowledge. If you were involved in athletics, he went out of his way to help you.”
That courtesy, however, wasn’t extended to a 50-something Sammartino when they met backstage at a wrestling event. An iron-grip handshake turned into a fistfight, and Sammartino publicly claimed to knock out Rooster — only to get jumped by Fleming’s friends before being rescued by the Iron Sheik, who backed up the story.
“I don’t care what Iron Sheik says: I had seven dudes here last night telling me Rooster knocked Bruno out with seven left-handed punches,” said Fleming Jr., a longtime assistant football coach at Central Catholic. “Bruno doesn’t want to tell the real story. They said Bruno never got a punch in.”
Murray, who witnessed Rooster Fleming’s fighting ability on many occasions, doesn’t doubt the claims.
“He was the craziest guy I’ve ever seen and definitely the toughest,” Murray said. “I saw him fight over a hundred fights — at football games and every bar we were ever in — and never seen him lose. Boy could he fight.”
For all of his antics, Fleming was known as a devoted husband and father. He married his high school sweetheart, Susan, who suffered from multiple sclerosis for 47 years and was a paraplegic for 35 years before her death in 2018.
“He wouldn’t let her in a wheelchair. He would carry her,” David Jr. said. “He was with her every step of the way.”
Fleming also doted on his children, Jill Salopek and David Jr. — who both swore at and by him — and found a special joy in reveling in the athletic achievements of his grandchildren, Tony, Kelsey and Kylie Salopek and David Fleming III.
They all heard Rooster Fleming crow about his life story, whether it was about football or fighting, with a love as tough as he was.
“We lost a legend,” Murray said. “They threw away the mold with him.”
VIA: https://triblive.com/sports/david-rooster-fleming-hazelwood-legend-cfl-star-signed-with-steelers-out-of-high-school/
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