More than three decades later, Washington legend Joe Jacoby is still reflecting on the great times he had with the "Hogs."
Jacoby – who won three Super Bowl titles in his 13 years in Washington – hopped on Twitter one afternoon in 2016 and shared a link to a very cool video of a very iconic moment in Washington history. The video's entitled, "The 'Making Of' The Hogs Night Out Poster," and it's a gem that you'll be sure to enjoy.
Four years ago, in a blog post for Mr. Irrelevant, Washington fan Phil Reed gave some background on how the poster came to be.
In May 1983, Reed says his father, Walter, went to another Washington legend, former tight end Rick "Doc" Walker, with an idea to celebrate the greatness that was the "Hogs," in poster form. There were certain details that had to be hammered out: In exchange for a golf lesson from Walter, Walker would introduce Walter to the "Head Hog," George Starke, who was responsible for getting the "Hogs" together for the event.
After one of the team's practices, Jacoby, Walker, Starke, Jeff Bostic, Fred Dean, Russ Grimm, Mark May and Don Warren gathered at a hog farm in Leesburg, Va. As you can see in the video, the players arrived in top hats, tails, white gloves, burgundy and gold suspenders and sneakers of their choosing. Some on-the-spot tailoring had to be done to a few players' outfits, but when it was all said and done, everyone was fresh and dressed to impress.
You might notice that a few of the players were missing their bow ties in the photo. That's because the shoot got done really quickly, leaving Reed no time to get back from his car with the other ties.
The players were the stars of the show no doubt, but coming a close second was a 700-pound, award-winning hog named "Worthy." The hog was all set on doing her own thing and couldn't care less about being in the photo. All "Worthy" cared about was getting as much feed as she possibly could.
Reed said Starke was instrumental in getting the ball rolling on poster sales. Reed said, upon first sight, People's Drug bought 50,000 copies of the poster from Starke, and put in additional orders soon after that.
"Some days later, I stayed up late with my dad as the posters came off the printing press," Reed said. "I then helped roll and stuff them into tubes. As a 13-year-old at the time, I was thrilled to help (and to get to stay up into the wee hours)."
