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

by Mark Bowden

  He wiped a tear from his eye.

  “I get emotional about it,” he said.

  Raymond Berry came out to meet me at the airport in Nashville. He stood at the bottom of the escalator by baggage claim, jotting notes to himself on a small slip of paper, which he slipped into his shirt pocket when I introduced myself. Back at his home, in a spacious office, he showed me the faded, worn loose-leaf binders that filled an entire upper shelf, one for each of his thirteen years as a player, containing the detailed preparatory notes and play diagrams he made before every game.

  His career was just getting started when he helped the Colts win their first championship. He told me that he didn’t really start to work on serious head and body fakes until after that season. He kept on getting better. His catch total went from fifty-six in 1958, to sixty-six the following year, and then to seventy-four, and stayed in that vicinity for most of his thirteen years as a player. When he retired in 1967, he owned the record for the most receptions in a career. When Weeb introduced Raymond at his induction into the Hall of Fame five years later, he noted how unlikely it was, given his physical limitations, that Raymond had ever even played pro football, much less become the most successful player at his position in NFL history.

  “Raymond and Raymond alone turned himself into the receiver he became,” the coach said. “If I had a son, I would want him to be like Raymond.”

  This is his legacy. Today many of the techniques Raymond employed are standard at all levels of football.

  After the first four years of being in the league, you know, I asked myself, ‘Were does this drive come from?’ I began to realize that I was doing this so differently than everybody else that was playing in the league. I began to get very curious about the source of this drive that was—it was a powerful thing. I began to realize it was a tremendous gift. It had everything to do with how I was playing and it just did not get deterred by obstacles, it just drove me to beat all these people and keep on going. I got very curious about the source, and I finally realized God gave me that drive. It was just as much a part of what you bring to the table as speed, jumping ability, strength, the weight, you know? The desire and the drive was more important than all of them. It totally made me.

  No one was surprised when he became a coach after his playing days. Raymond became head coach of the New England Patriots in 1984, and took them to the Super Bowl the following year. He was a head coach for six seasons in Boston before the team let him go and he retired from the game.

  * * *

  Gino Marchetti wasn’t on the bus that night they got mobbed by Baltimore fans, returning home as the conquering heroes. He had been placed in an ambulance right off the plane, and was driven directly to Baltimore Memorial Hospital. He had downed a few beers by then, and was feeling no pain.

  As the ambulance left the airport, pulling away from the swarms of people who had come out to cheer the team, Marchetti saw a man and a boy standing alone by the side of the road. This was miles from the airport. The man had pulled his car off onto the shoulder, figuring the team bus would eventually pass that way, and was holding a flashlight to illuminate his sign, which read, WELCOME HOME CHAMPS.

  Marchetti shouted for the driver to stop. The gesture moved him. He wanted to stop and thank the man personally, reward him and the boy for the effort. How good would that be? They would have a story to tell everybody. But the driver couldn’t hear him. Gino hollered and the ambulance kept on going. A half century later, sitting in an easy chair in his living room outside Philadelphia, his once powerful shoulders stooped, Marchetti shook his head sadly.

  “I always regret that I couldn’t make that guy stop,” he said. “I didn’t think fast enough. I was gonna make him stop and say hello to them, you know,’ cause I thought that was probably the greatest thing I seen, you know? Anybody can be a part of a crowd but . . . you know?”

  Source Notes

  Interviews

  Bibliography

  Books

  America’s Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation, by Michael MacCambridge, Anchor Books, 2005.

  Johnny Unitas: America’s Quarterback, by Lou Sahadi, Triumph Books, 2004.

  Johnny U: The Life and Times of Johnny Unitas, by Tom Callahan, Crown Publishers, 2006.

  The Greatest Football Game Ever Played, by John Steadman, Press Box Inc., 1988.

  Backseat Quarterback, by Perian Conerly, University Press of Mississippi, 2003.

  Sundays at 2:00 with the Baltimore Colts, by Vince Bagli and Norman L. Macht, Tidewater Publishers, 1995.

  Of Mikes and Men: From Ray Scott to Curt Gowdy, by Curt Smith, Diamond Communications, 1998.

  Football in Baltimore: History and Memorabilia, by Ted Patterson, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.

  The Fifties, by David Halberstam, Fawcett, 1993.

  Wellington: The Maras, the Giants, and the City of New York, by Carlo DeVito and Sam Huff, Triumph Books, 2006.

  All Things Being Equal: The Autobiography of Lenny Moore, by Lenny Moore with Jeffrey Jay Ellish, Sports Publishing LLC, 2005.

  Tales from the New York Giants Sidelines: A Collection of the Greatest Stories Ever Told, by Paul Schwartz, Sports Publishing LLC, 2004.

  Always a Winner, by Don Shinnick as told to James C. Hefley, Zondervan Publishing House, 1969.

  Tom Landry: An Autobiography, by Tom Landry with Gregg Lewis, Harper-Prism, 1991.

  When the Colts Belonged to Baltimore: A Father and a Son, a Team and a Time, by William Gildea, Houghton Mifflin, 1994.

  Tough Stuff, by Sam Huff with Leonard Shapiro, St. Martin’s Press, 1988.

  When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi, by David Maraniss, Simon and Schuster, 2000.

  Pigskin: The Early Years of Pro Football, by Robert W. Peterson, Oxford University Press, 1997.

  The Game of Their Lives, by Dave Klein, Random House, 1976.

  The Football Encyclopedia: The Complete History of Professional NFL Football from 1892 to the Present, by David S. Neft, Richard M. Cohen, and Rick Korch, St. Martin’s Press, 1991.

  Pamphlets

  “Here’s Why It Was the Best Football Game Ever,” by Tex Maule with illustrations by Robert Riger, William H. Shriver and Helicon Press (a reprint from the pages of Sports Illustrated), 1959.

  Some Tips From Raymond Berry: Drills for Catching, by Raymond Berry, unpublished, 1972.

  Recordings

  The NBC Radio Broadcast, NBC News Archives. Announcers Joe Boland and Bill McColgan.

  NFL Films The Greatest Game, 1998.

  NFL Films 1958 Baltimore Colts Team Highlights (Season in Review).

  NFL Films 1958 New York Giants Highlights (Season in Review).

  NFL Films 1958 Championship (Coaches’ Tape).

  Chapter One

  Football Noir

  It was freezing . . . black and white. Field conditions are from press accounts, the NBC radio broadcast, and interviews with players. Attendance from The Football Encyclopedia, press accounts. Although many subsequent accounts of the game have said that it was a full house, including Wellington, the fact that the stadium was not full was noted in John Steadman’s The Greatest Football Game Ever Played, along with many press accounts at the time. Steadman wrote: “Six thousand less than had watched them on the same field Nov. 9 [which] set what became . . . an all-time New York pro football crowd, 71,163. Why was this one not a sellout? It couldn’t be blamed on television because the New York metropolitan area was blacked out. Numerous other factors were responsible. It was the Sunday after Christmas, the end of the holiday weekend, when a segment of the population had traveled home for family visits. There also were airline strikes in some parts of the country—plus the New York daily newspapers were shut down for seventeen days” (p. 29) . . . Images from NFL Films. Spooky black and white . . . black backdrop. The number of TV viewers varies from account to account. I have gone with MacCambridge’s number, which is the most conservative. Entertainment Weekly in 2008 ran
ked the game as number 14 on a list of “the greatest moments in the history of television,” right behind the Watergate hearings and just ahead of Oprah Winfrey’s first national telecast. National Football League . . . in Philadelphia. NY Times, 12/29/58, Jack Gould, “Football Blackout Pierced.” Gould wrote: “The picture was badly speckled and streaked but even with the visual handicaps the game was the sports spectacle of the year.” President Eisenhower . . . Coca-Cola. NY Times, 12/29/58, (UPI) “President Passes Leisurely Sunday.” Brooks Robinson . . . game live. Steadman, The Greatest Football Game Ever Played. Auto mechanic . . . for the game. Ed Chaney, Jr, letter to The Baltimore Sun, 12/28/83. At the home . . . against listening. Gildea, When the Colts Belong to Baltimore. Many of the viewers . . . struck match. NFL Films documentary, game day photos in The Baltimore Sun library. Some of the ambience of the grandstands in the period is from my memory of attending games with my father and brothers at Wrigley Field, Shea Stadium, and Memorial Stadium during the same period. Nineteen-year-old . . . the day before. Gildea. Behind the end zone . . . on his birthday. Leifer. Joanne Kemp . . . NFL quarterback. Jack Kemp. I covered some of the games Jeff Kemp ably quarterbacked for the Philadelphia Eagles in 1991. Marcia Hersh . . . is being made!” Marcia Hersh Haskin. Consider the men . . . Hall of Fame. The NFL Hall of Fame. In 1958 . . . provide the Spark. David Halberstam, The Fifties.

  Early in the third quarter . . . room to maneuver. Background about the team comes from having grown up partly in New York and Baltimore during this period, general reading, and press accounts of the 1958 seasons in the NY Times and The Baltimore Sun, and NFL Films’ excellent documentaries about the 1958 season of both teams. Details of the game are from the NFL Films documentary, the coaches’ film (supplied to me by NFL Films). Andy Reid, the head coach of The Philadelphia Eagles, who kindly spent hours reviewing this film with me, breaking the game down play-by-play and giving me invaluable insight and analysis. The NBC radio broadcast of the game was provided by NBC. I also referred to the detailed play-by-play account of the game by Stead-man. Lindon Crow . . . anything fancy. Crow. The play called . . . five-yard line. Mutscheller, NFL Films The Greatest Game (interview with Cliff Livingston). Tom Callahan described the mix-up on this play in his book Unitas, through the eyes of both Ameche and Mutscheller, who told the author, “He [Ameche] threw like a girl. But even Alan could have completed that one.” It set up . . . much give. NBC radio broadcast, NFL Films The Greatest Game. Looking on . . . a healthy sign. Background about Bell is from MacCambridge, pp. 41–42, Steadman, and a marvelous profile of Bell by Al Hirschberg in the NY Times, “He Calls the Signals for Pro Football,” 11/23/58. Still, there was TV . . . suspense of live action. Halberstam, pp. 185–186. That’s how it had . . . right in the game. . . .” “Television Forward Passes Football to the Home: A Kick-Off on the Air” NY Times, 10/15/39. Baseball seemed made . . . Red Barber. George Vecsey, “Voices From the Past Are Echoing Today” NY Times 1/13/08, In the full-throated din . . . Crowd noise from the NBC radio broadcast. Milt Davis . . . like a wooden peg. Davis. Alex Webster . . . awarded the touchdown. NFL Films The Greatest Game, Nelson, Davis.

  Chapter Two

  Raymond

  The tall, skinny young man . . . same routine. Brennan, Berry. Brennan had only . . . was desperate. Berry. His name was Raymond . . . he told Winner. Winner. At a time when . . . locker to dry Berry, Winner. Imagine how . . . little more room. Donovan, Sandusky, Marchetti, Winner. Raymond had been drafted . . . lists of reminders and observations. Berry, Winner. Football was a game . . . you were dead. This is my observation after interviewing pro football players for three years after games; I covered the Philadelphia Eagles for The Philadelphia Inquirer from 1990 through 1992. Not Raymond . . . wide receiver. Berry. The idea of splitting . . . size and speed. Most of this history was drawn from MacCambridge, but also from The Football Encyclopedia, and from Peterson, Pigskin: The Early Years of Pro Football. When the position . . . relatively new, too. Berry, http://smumustangs.cstv.com, “90 Greatest Moments in SMU Football History.” The record didn’t show . . . getting good. Winner, Berry, Mutcheller, Donovan, Marchetti, Shinnick, Always a Winner, Callahan, Johnny U, Sahadi Johnny Unitas: America’s Quarterback, Baltimore Colts Press, Radio, TV Guide, 1959–1960,” NFL Films documentary The Greatest Game, and 1958 Colts Team Highlights (Season in Review), The Football Encyclopedia. But no one was more aware . . . terrific shape. Berry. At the time . . . boring routines. Berry, Donovan, Nutter, Marchetti, Sandusky, Davis, Winner. Raymond was one . . . “Johnny.” Berry, Winner.

  Chapter Three

  Johnny U

  Raymond got . . . “Unitas.” Berry. He had grown up . . . “. . . professional football.” Sahadi pp. 27–31, Callahan pp. 16–17. At the time . . . love of the game. MacCambridge, Peterson, NFL Encyclopedia, DeVito, Wellington. John would go on . . . first-string quarterback. Callahan p. 21, Sahadi p. 32, Berry, Winner.

  As John was maturing . . . Paul Brown. Halberstam, Peterson, MacCam-bridge, Winner. In the words . . . inquiry.” MacCambridge, p. 23. As a high school coach . . . they knew it.” MacCambridge, Winner. Before Brown . . . Sunday afternoon. Berry, Winner, Donovan, and my observations of modern football practices under Buddy Ryan, a disciple of Weeb Ewbank, disciple of Brown. Led by Otto . . . Weeb Ewbank. MacCambridge, The Football Encyclopedia. Weeb was . . . to do so. Winner, Berry, Mutscheller and Donovan (on Weeb’s handling of Ameche) Sahadi quotes Unitas about in, pp. 276–277, “Weeb was on him constantly. He would just berate Ameche constantly. Weeb felt he had to do that, to get after Ameche to make him play. And you really didn’t have to.” The Renfro anecdote is from Berry. Despite this tendency . . . that he did. Mutscheller, Nutter, Donovan, Sandusky, Winner.

  In the years . . . build a winner. Jesse Linthicum, “Rosenbloom, Head of Colts, Has Fine Football Background,” The Baltimore Sun 9/30/56, MacCambridge pp. 78–79, Ted Patterson, “Football in Baltimore” p. 97, The Football Encyclopedia. Weeb got the job . . . six points! Winner, Berry, Donovan. The Finnin anecdote is from Donovan. The Womble story is from Winner.

  John Unitas . . . had left the field. Callahan, Sahadi, Berry, Winner, Donovan. Staying after . . . the torture of training camp. Donovan. Nutter, Winner. The brutal summer practices . . . every penny. Parker interview in Bagli & Macht, Sundays at 2:00 with the Baltimore Colts p. 23. Competition was fierce . . . out of his job. Nutter, Sandusky. Jack Bighead, an all-American at Pepperdine University, played two years in the NFL, one with the Colts and the other with the Rams. He caught just six passes. He had played himself in the movie Jim Thorpe—All-American, and went on to a long career playing bit Indian roles in television and film. Raymond found . . . from a distance. Berry, Winner. The description of Unitas’s exaggerated throwing motion comes from Andy Reid, who noted that Brett Favre, whom he coached as an assistant at Green Bay, was the only other quarterback he had ever seen who threw that way. “It’s perfect mechanics,” Reid said. “It makes for consistent accuracy.” The coaches were all amazed . . . ungainly stoop. Winner, Ewbank in Bagli & Macht, p. 47. The first few times . . . get in his way?” Callahan, p. 80. Unlike Shaw . . . receivers’ hands. Reid, Berry. “I can work with . . . passing game. Berry. Don Shula . . . two touchdowns. Callahan, p. 69. Lenny Moore . . . cover, too. Callahan, p. 96. Moore, “All Things Created Equal.” Both Raymond and John . . . resident nut. Winner, Berry. For all his intensity . . . to his players. Winner, Marchetti. When Gene . . . handed it over. Donovan, Sandusky. At the beginning . . . league championship. Nutter. So Rosembloom was . . . scouting trips. Winner. Weeb already had . . . Andy Nelson. Winner, Berry, Donovan, Mutscheller. His offense . . . this guy? Mutscheller. From that first day . . . would need. Winner, Berry, The Football Encyclopedia. “I always figured . . . Cameron Snyder.” Callahan p. 3. He was the opposite . . . trusted him completely. These are impressions formed in part by my own memory of Unitas, but also from interviews with his teammates, and by Callahan and Sahadi. According to Callahan . . . “Shaw ain�
��t coming back.” Callahan p. 81. Throughout the game . . . all that would follow. Mutscheller, Berry, Nutter, Callahan p. 81.

  Chapter Four

  Huff

  The Colts team . . . in NFL history. The Football Encyclopedia. There was more to it . . . elected All-Pro. Berry, Winner, Huff, Reid, The Football Encyclopedia. Success not only . . . he missed. Winner, Berry. Raymond wrote and self-published a handbook in 1972 entitled, Some Tips from Raymond Berry: Drills for Catching, which breaks down his methodology in great detail. The terminology quoted here is from this handbook. Weeb sometimes worried . . . pointing at the receiver. Gildea p. 125. Weeb had such respect . . . “Why didn’t you say so?” Winner, Berry. During the season . . . and play action. Berry, Sahadi’s interview with Unitas at the end of his biography p. 273, Bagli & Macht p. 72. He got better every year . . . John didn’t play. The Football Encyclopedia. He watched it on television . . . the New York bench. Donovan, Callahan pp. 135–137, Sahadi (Unitas interview) pp. 258–259. The franchise . . . point spreads. Callahan, Sahadi, Donovan, Winner, Berry, Nutter, Marchetti. The Giants were one of the . . . a professional triumph. This thumbnail sketch of the Maras is from Carol DeVito’s Wellington: The Maras, the Giants, and the City of New York. More than most . . . the NFL championship. Huff, Grier, Huff in Dave Klein’s, The Game of Their Lives, David Maraniss’s When Pride Still Mattered, p. 160, Huff & Shapiro’s Tough Stuff, Tom Landry & Gregg Lewis, Tom Landry: An Autobiography. A squat, dark, driven man . . . Book of Revelation.” Maraniss, p. 155. Impressions of Lombardi are mostly from Maraniss’s superb biography. The connection, or lack of it, with Wellington Mara is on p. 153. “rough soul” is on pp. 98–99. But Lombardi . . . split him wide. Maraniss, Reid, who in watching the championship game film noted with admiration as the Giants’ offensive line executed a perfect “Packers” sweep months before Lombardi began coaching in Green Bay. The new offensive coach’s . . . the team’s history. Maraniss p. 158, Gay Talese, “Of Pigskins and Hams,” NY Times, 6/26/58. As important . . . was required. Landry & Lewis, The split lip story is on p. 93. Huff. In his first game . . . team in the league. Landry & Lewis, the Mac Speedie story is on p. 87. As talent scouts . . . best defensive backs in league history. Neil Amdur, NY Times, “Emlen Tunnell, 50, Dies, Star of Football Giants,” 7/24/75. The Maras had signed Rote . . . first pick. DeVito p. 121. The Maras tracked down . . . season started. Klein pp. 63–78, Arthur Daley, “Clutch Hitter,” NY Times 11/24/57. Andy Robustelli . . . Los Angeles Rams 1956. DeVito p. 135. The Rams threw in . . . “The great negotiator.” Grier. The Maras traded for . . . Carl Karilivacz. Louis Effrat, “Giants Hope to Draft 1959 Quarterback Before Supply Runs Out,” NY Times, 11/25/58. They used their first . . . their running game. Arthur Daley, “The Eager Beaver,” NY Times 9/18/58. Of all the players . . . him as Sam. Huff, The Football Encyclopedia.