In a class by himself: Five decades later, Pat Richter still is No. 1

Governor Jim Doyle was a junior high student on Madison?s West Side in the 1950s when he began to hear tall tales about the athletic exploits of a tall, slightly older kid from the other side of town. “The rumor was he hit a home run over the left-field wall at Breese Stevens Field and that?s about 750 feet or something like that,” Doyle said. “We believed it. That?s how big Pat Richter was.” The legend of Pat Richter would only grow in the years after that. After starring in football, basketball and baseball at East High School, Richter won nine letters in three sports at the University of Wisconsin and spent eight seasons as an end and punter for the NFL?s Washington Redskins. Years later, after a successful career as an executive at Oscar Mayer, Richter returned to UW as athletic director and orchestrated an athletic revival at his alma mater.