It’s one of the NFL’s strangest connections: a mob capo and a football dynasty.
Bosa’s great-grandfather got the nickname “Joe Batters” as a mere teen, allegedly due to a penchant for beating disloyal compatriots with a baseball bat. Accardo eventually met Capone at the race track, where he was betting on ponies. He became Capone's chauffeur-bodyguard — and potentially more. Years later, when federal authorities wiretapped him, Accardo was heard bragging about being involved in the. Experts on the notorious gangland slaying think it was just bluster.
By the time Capone was sent to Alcatraz for tax evasion in 1932, Accardo was head of enforcement for the Chicago Outfit, well on his way to a lifelong career of racketeering, extortion and prodigiously avoiding the authorities. A series of deaths and imprisonments helped Accardo move up the Chicago Outfit hierarchy. Facing the prospect of jail time, Capone successor Frank Nitti killed himself in 1943, putting Accardo at the top of the organization.
Unlike his contemporaries, Accardo had a remarkable track record of avoiding trouble, both from the authorities and within the mob. He was subpoenaed a few times by the U.S. Senate, including by the Senate Rackets Committee, which called him, almost reverentially, the “godfather of Chicago organized crime … a legend in his own time, the heir to Al Capone.” At one 1984 hearing, Accardo admitted to knowing Capone but claimed he was never his bodyguard.