Steve Milton: Zeno Karcz was one of the all-time great Ticats

Ralph Sazio, the longtime Hamilton Tiger-Cat executive who always set a very high standard, once said that Zeno Karcz was the kind of player coaches love to have on their team.

He probably wasn't as gifted as a lot of kids who come along and never make it, but the thing that made him was hard work and devotion to the job," Sazio told the late Spectator sports writer Tony Fitz-Gerald in 2015.

Karcz, who was a linebacker for the powerful Tiger-Cats during their most glorious years from 1957 to 1966, died in Burlington on Wednesday, at the age of 87.

Tough, diligent and committed, Karcz went to a stunning eight Grey Cup games with the Ticats before a severed Achilles tendon ended his career prematurely in 1966, and won the battered beaker in 1957, '62 and '65. He was the CFL's Most Outstanding Canadian Player in 1965 when the award was sponsored by the Schenley Distilleries.

Winning the Grey Cup and winning a Schenley was a great cap to the season," Karcz told Fitz-Gerald. There was Ang Mosca, Ron Howell, Bob Dawson. We were in stitches all the time. The dressing room was a riot."

Karcz was born in Windsor, and was a boyhood friend of future Ticat teammate Tommy Grant. He starred in several sports at Patterson High School, played junior football for Windsor AKO and spent two years at the University of Michigan before the Ticats signed him. He went on to become a CFL all-star in his stellar 1965 season. He had 10 career interceptions and five career fumble recoveries and saw time on offence as a running back and receiver, catching just four passes in his career, but two of them went for touchdowns.

He was named to the Windsor/Essex County Sports Hall of Fame in 1987.

After his pro football career ended he worked in sales for Newman Steel and then with Samuel, Son and Co., eventually becoming vice-president of sales. Newman Steel sent him back to his hometown for five years, and he coached Windsor AKO for three of those years. He and his family then moved back to Burlington.

Karcz is survived by Ethel, his wife of 65 years, and their five children and eight grandchildren. Visitation will be at Smith's Funeral Home on Guelph Line on Friday, Oct. 14, with funeral mass at St. Raphael's Roman Catholic Church at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 15.

Steve Milton is a Hamilton-based sports columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: smilton@thespec.com