The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL

by Mark Bowden

  The Colts could not afford to waste a play now. John called two in the huddle, the first to Raymond. The Giants gave up on moving Svare out wide directly in front of the receiver. He lined up this time split about halfway out. Huff was no longer positioning himself at the center of the line. He was cheating a little backward and to the right, something John, like a boxer noticing a weakness in his opponent’s technique, noted and filed away. The most likely move was to the sideline, to stop the clock, but what John had called for was a square-in pattern. It was a gamble, John was opting here for surprise over caution. If it was successful, it would not stop the clock, and every second now was precious. Raymond broke straight downfield, and then cut across the middle behind Svare and in front of Karilivacz. Again, Raymond caught it in stride and turned up the center of the field. This time he was hauled down on the Giants’ thirty-five-yard line, another gain of fifteen.

  With less than a minute to play, the Colts lined up again without huddling. In the pro game, the clock did not stop while the team moved downfield to set up after a first down. The second of the two plays John had called was known as the “come open late.” He would drop back and check off three receivers, Moore on the far right, Dupre in the middle of the field, and if both were covered, he would look last to Raymond on the left. The pass routes were staggered so that each of the three receivers would make the final cut on their routes a few seconds behind the other. In all the years they had run it, Raymond had never known John to decline throwing to one of the first two targets.

  Before the game started, when Raymond had scouted the field looking for wet spots, one of the ones he had found was right in front of him, right where Karilivacz was standing. It was the place where water tended to drain off the tarp as it was removed from the field. Raymond had gone back to the locker room and changed into his mud cleats, and now it was going to pay off. When the ball was snapped, Raymond ran about ten yards upfield, and then curled back two steps to the wet spot, which had begun to ice. John rapidly looked to his two primary receivers, and drilled the pass to Raymond. As Raymond caught the ball he pivoted sharply to his right on his long cleats, and when Karilivacz tried to make the same cut his feet slipped out from under him. Raymond had nothing but open field ahead, up the sidelines. He made it all the way to the fifteen-yard line before the Giants’ pursuit caught him from behind.

  Three plays, three passes to Raymond Berry, sixty-five yards. “Unitas to Berry,” said the Yankee Stadium public address announcer for the third consecutive time. Huff was sick of hearing it. The Giants’ defense was reeling. There were fifteen seconds left. The referees called a brief time-out to move the first-down sticks upfield again. The Colts’ offense raced off the field, and the field-goal kicking team sprinted on.

  Back in Baltimore, Toni J. Carter and her brother had been watching the game together on TV, finishing off their Christmas turkey, and when Myhra trotted out for the kick, they both got up off their chairs and knelt before the TV set, holding hands and their breath. At the home of William S. Emrich in Arnold, Maryland, poor Barbara Emrich, William’s wife, was banished to the second floor. Her husband was convinced that every time she came downstairs, something bad happened to the Colts. Barbara humored him. She took a seat on the top step.

  George Shaw was the holder for Myhra, who was thinking what a long cold winter it was going to be for him back in the wheat fields of North Dakota if he missed. He also thought about the attempt that the Giants had blocked in the first quarter, and resolved to get this one off more quickly. Shaw took a knee and scratched an X in the turf where he planned to set the ball. Myhra stood behind it, took one long deliberate step back, and readied himself. It would be a nineteen-yard try. There wasn’t much time to think about it, or to fret over the kicker’s poor percentages. The ball was snapped, Shaw placed it, Myhra took one step and swung the wide toe of his cleats into the ball. He glanced up in time to see it sail cleanly over the crossbar.

  In Baltimore, a driver listening on the radio ran his car into a telephone pole. Toni Carter’s brother picked her up and threw her so high that she cut her shoulder on a ceiling fixture.

  The score was 17-17. Myhra and Shaw were leaping for joy as they came back to the Colts’ sideline.

  Most of the players on both sides of the field thought the game was over. In the entire previous history of the NFL, when a game ended in a tie it had gone in the record books as a tie. Many of the players bolted for the locker room, eager to escape the mob that generally raced across the field at the end of a big game. But this game wasn’t over yet. The NFL was about to play its first ever sudden-death overtime.

  The largest audience to ever witness a pro football game was watching and listening. Bert Bell was in heaven.

  Injured Marchetti watches from the sideline.

  Neil Leifer’s famous photograph of Alan Ameche’s game-winning touchdown. (Courtesy of Neil Leifer)

  Game over. (Courtesy of Hy Peskin/Sports Illustrated)

  Gino Marchetti and Jim Parker in a post-game celebration.

  8

  Living to See

  Sudden Death

  Sam Huff thought the game was over. It was disappointing to tie, but as he trotted in off the field from the failed attempt to block Myhra’s field goal (he played on special teams), he was already calculating his share of the take. He figured both teams would share the winnings equally, which he added up to something like $3,700. It was a thousand less than for winning, but almost a thousand more than he would have received for losing. Not too bad. He was bone-tired and even a little happy.

  With seven seconds left on the clock, the Colts kicked off to Don Maynard, who caught the ball in the end zone and ran it back to the eighteen-yard line. Conerly just fell on the ball at the snap, and the regulation game was over.

  Then the referee came over to the Giants’ sideline.

  “All right, we got sudden death coming up in three minutes,” he announced. “We’re gonna kick it off again. The first team that scores wins.”

  The revelation that they would get another chance to win, or lose, was not universally welcome news on the Giants’ bench. Huff turned to one of his teammates.

  “Sudden death? What the hell’s he talking about?”

  Few of his teammates knew. It was news to lineman Al Barry. Somebody told him that it had apparently been spelled out in the program for that day’s game.

  “Who reads the program?” asked Barry.

  “What happens now?” Pat Summerall asked Kyle Rote.

  “I think we play some more,” said the receiver.

  “Shit, man, I’m tired,” said Huff.

  Gifford was sitting next to Conerly on the bench, and the veteran quarterback looked beat.

  “Wow, I can’t go any more,” said Conerly, surprised at how exhausted he felt.

  “Boy, you’re gonna have to go some more,” said Gifford.

  “I can’t,” said Conerly. “I just can’t.”

  Colts safety Andy Nelson didn’t know about sudden death either. After Myhra’s kick, he had run off the field and was halfway to the locker room when he heard a voice behind him.

  “Andy, come on back! We’re going to play it out.”

  He was delighted. Unlike Huff and most of the Giants’ team, he had never played in a championship game before. He wanted to win.

  Raymond had also bolted for the locker room. Several weeks earlier, when the Colts had come from behind dramatically to defeat the 49ers at home, the Memorial Stadium fans mobbed the field so quickly that he feared for his life. He saw people getting knocked down and trampled, and was amazed when there was no report in the Sun the next morning about people being killed or injured. He didn’t want to be in the middle of a mob like that again. But when his teammates started calling out, he came back and saw the referees assembling in the middle of the field.

  Bert Bell had fought the owners for this years ago. The commissioner had argued to the traditionalists that you could not end a champion
ship game and a season on a tie. The only purpose was to crown a champ. This was the first time a sudden-death opportunity had presented itself, and it could not have come at a better time. He knew that millions of fans were watching all over the country. They were caught up in the most dramatic showdown in the league’s history, two heroically talented teams playing their hearts out. Now they would fight to the finish. It was doubly pleasing that one of the teams was the Colts, the new franchise that he had mid-wifed five years earlier with his old friend and former player Carroll Rosenbloom. A healthy league had to be structured in a way that would let new teams from small markets, like Baltimore, compete with the established clubs in big cities. Bell had appeared before Congress just months earlier to successfully defend the staggered system he had invented for drafting college players, arguing that it was not a monopolist conspiracy but a vital tool for ensuring equity in his league. On both counts, this suspenseful season-ender proved his point.

  At midfield, referee Ron Gibbs stood between the Giants’ cocaptains, Rote and linebacker Bill Svoboda, in their blue capes, and John Unitas, who was filling in for the Colts’ fallen team captain, Marchetti. Gibbs explained that Baltimore, the visiting team, would get to call the flip. John shouted “tails,” but the coin dropped—all four men stooped to see—heads.

  —And the Giants won the toss, and they are going to receive!

  A roar arose from the dark wall of people around them. The crowd was on its feet. This may have been the first sudden-death overtime ever, but this primarily New York audience knew that in sudden death, winning the toss was a huge advantage. John looked disgusted, his hands on his hips.

  At Henry Mack’s pub on Ritchie Highway in Glen Burnie, Maryland, Ed Chaney Jr., one of about three dozen Colts fans watching on TV, called his boss at a nearby service station to say he was going to be late for work. The boss fired him. Chaney hung up happily and ordered another beer.

  —A most historic moment in football history . . . A sudden-death play-off with all the marbles on the line. Members of the winning team will receive about five thousand dollars. The members of the losing team will receive slightly less. Seveteen-to-seventeen thanks to some brilliant passing by Johnny Unitas to get the ball into field-goal-kicking position. Joe?

  —Bill, I was just hoping to call attention to the fact that the first team that scores, field goal, safety, touchdown, will win the game now, and the game will be over with the first score. That’s what the sudden-death rule means, and the Giants, as you pointed out, are in a favorable position because . . . they will get the first opportunity with the ball. Here we go. We’re almost set for the kickoff.

  It was now fully a night game. The stands were completely dark and the field shone like it was spot lit from heaven. There was a sense throughout Yankee Stadium and in homes all over America that something truly memorable was unfolding. It was television prime time. The nation was experiencing what was still a new kind of human experience, a truly communal live national event, something made possible by the new medium. In future years the phenomenon would become familiar, but no less powerful, as the nation gathered to watch rocket launches, the aftermath of assassinations, a magnificent civil rights speech, an astronaut stepping on the moon, a presidential resignation, and someday even the slow-speed highway chase in Los Angeles of a former NFL football star charged with a double-murder—O.J. Simpson was still in grade school in 1958. In this moment, football itself was about to step fully into the age of television, of multimillion-dollar player contracts, slow-motion replay, cable sports networks, Super Bowls, and franchises with market values exceeding the gross national product of many small countries. Not even Bert Bell could imagine where his sport was heading.

  At ground zero it was now freezing. The wet spots Raymond had noted before the game had turned to ice. Players were chilled to the bone and exhausted. On the Baltimore sideline, Weeb stood at the center of a circle of worn out, muddy players, and reminded them to block and tackle the way they knew how. He added, pointing down to the end zone where Marchetti was still sitting up on his stretcher, refusing to leave the field, “Win it for Gino.”

  Colts kickoff man, Bert Rechichar, booted the ball into the end zone, so the Giants started on their own twenty-yard line. Conerly rallied and dragged himself back out on the field, but his prediction to Gifford was true. He couldn’t go any more. They could not make a first down. Gifford picked up four yards on the ground, then Conerly gambled, throwing another deep pass to Schnelker, running the same route that had produced the big play earlier. The pass was incomplete. He couldn’t find a receiver on third down and had to try and run for it himself—Conerly hated to run with the ball—and he almost made the first down. Bill Pellington tackled him one yard short. New York had lost its last chance. Pellington would later say that as he trotted off the field after that tackle, “I knew right then that they had to turn the ball over to us and that Raymond and John were going to lead us to a score.”

  Indeed, Howell once again gave little thought to going for it on fourth down. A failure that deep in their own side of the field would almost certainly hand Baltimore victory. Don Chandler trotted back out.

  —Again, a tremendous vote of confidence in the New York defensive team. New York is going to punt.

  The kick flew high and deep into Baltimore territory, and Huff and the rest of the tired Giants defense came back on the field to resume battle. John was about to top his just-completed, game-tying drive with a masterpiece, a thirteen-play performance that would secure his reputation as football’s premier play-caller. These back-to-back, critical scoring drives would enter the NFL history books as the most dramatic performance ever.

  The first play was a handoff to L.G. Dupre, who ran through the right side of the Giants’ line, broke into the secondary, and scooted eleven yards before Frank Youso, playing for the injured Rosey Grier, leapt on his back and dragged him down. On the second first down, John went back to the play they had tried twice earlier, the bomb to Moore down the right sideline. The first time it had worked. The second time Moore had caught the ball but stepped out of bounds. This time he had a step on cornerback Lindon Crow. John flung the ball sixty yards, a high, arcing pass that seemed to hang forever in the stadium lights against the black backdrop of the stands, where the New York crowd was holding its collective breath, and fell right into the racing Moore’s hands. But this time Crow’s hand was there, too, and he knocked the football away.

  Sensing triumph, hundreds and then thousands of Baltimore fans had begun to leave the stands and crowd behind the goalposts at both ends of the field. It was the tradition, borrowed from the college game and soon to be banned by the NFL, to storm the field after a victory and tear down the goalposts. After this game, everybody wanted a souvenir. As Moore trotted back to the huddle, a police captain walked over to Marchetti’s stretcher bearers, who were now surrounded by spectators. If the mob moved, the injured Colts captain might be trampled.

  “Get him out of here,” the captain said. So they carried the protesting lineman down the dark tunnel and into the visitors locker room, under the stands. The men set him down, draped a blanket over him, and then ran back out to the field to see the game. There was no TV or radio in the locker room. The big defensive end lay there alone, in suspense, trying to divine what was happening by the rumble of thousands sitting overhead.

  On second and ten, Unitas handed off to Dupre again, for only a two-yard gain. A time-out was called by the officials to push back the crowds in the end zones.

  When play resumed, it was another critical third and long from the Giants’ thirty-three-yard line, a Raymond Berry situation. Landry again moved his right linebacker, Svare, all the way out to line up nose to nose with the receiver. This time Raymond ran a deep route, pulling both Svare and Karilivacz downfield with him, while John threw a swing pass to Ameche, who raced along behind Raymond up the left sideline. By the time Svare recovered and came back to tackle the running back, Ameche had gained eig
ht yards and another first down. A big cheer went up from Colts fans.

  The Colts’ patient progress continued. Unlike the drive minutes earlier at the end of the fourth quarter, John now had plenty of time. He could chip away, mixing the run and pass, taking short bites like quick jabs, keeping the Giants’ defenders off-balance. On first down, Dupre again plunged into the right side of the line and gained three yards. On second down, John dropped back to pass and was sacked for an eight-yard loss by left tackle Dick Modzelewski. Once again the Colts had a critical third-down play. They needed fifteen yards to sustain this all-important drive.

  Raymond lined up on the left side, out just a few yards from the line. Having been twice burned lining up Svare on Berry’s nose, this time Landry positioned the linebacker halfway between the receiver and the line, and at the snap of the ball, Raymond took off upfield, heading for the left sideline, again to the icy spot in front of the Giants’ bench. Karilivacz played him loose, backpedaling, determined to keep Raymond in front of him. John looked for Moore on the right side, but he was covered, so he began drifting to his left out of the pocket, searching for Raymond. His favorite target had stopped suddenly about twenty-five yards upfield, reversed direction about five yards, and stopped again. He was standing all alone, twenty yards downfield. Karilivacz, working on that slippery patch, could not reverse direction as quickly. John’s rifled pass reached Raymond before the cornerback did. The receiver tried the same move he had made earlier in that spot, spinning to his right, but this time Karilivacz got hold of one foot and would not let go. Raymond pulled and pulled, and finally ducked to the turf as a wall of angry Giants flung themselves at him. He was down on the Giants’ forty-four-yard line with another first down.