The Glory Game: How the 1958 NFL Championship Changed Football Forever
Page 1
THE GLORY GAME
HOW THE 1958 NFL CHAMPIONSHIP CHANGED FOOTBALL FOREVER
FRANK GIFFORD
WITH
PETER RICHMOND
To my family, to my teammates, and especially to Wellington Mara, who made all of this possible
CONTENTS
PREFACE
INTRODUCT ION
CHAPTER ONE THE BEGINNINGS
CHAPTER TWO GAME DAY
CHAPTER THREE FIRST QUARTER
CHAPTER FOUR SECOND QUARTER
CHAPTER FIVE HALF TIME
CHAPTER SIX THIRD QUARTER
CHAPTER SEVEN FOURTH QUARTER
CHAPTER EIGHT OVERTIME
CHAPTER NINE AFTERMATH
About the Authors
PREFACE
In the early years of my twenty-seven-year stint on Monday Night Football, whenever we called a game on the West Coast, I'd always take a red-eye back East, sitting in the smoking section of a 707. I could never sleep. I'd look down through the window and see those lights, 35,000 feet below, all the way across the country. As we flew south of Vegas, or over Reno, then across the Plains, then maybe over St. Louis, or Indianapolis, I'd follow those clusters of lights across the country: big cities, small towns, like the ones I grew up in, in Texas and California, the son of an oil field worker.
And whether that night's game had been a good game or bad, I'd always find myself thinking the same thing: about all the people in all of those cities and towns so far below. I'd look down, and I'd think, Did they watch the game? Did I say the right thing? Do the right thing?
And then I'd move on to thinking about all the guys I played with in my career as a New York Giant in the fifties and sixties.
Were they down in one of those towns? What were they doing?
Did they watch the game in a bar? What did they think about the broadcast? I'd look down and think, Did Dick Modzelewski watch?
Did he point to me on TV and say to his kids, "That's Frank I played with him"?
Since retiring in 1964, I'd been in touch with some of my ex-teammates through the years, but not many. It was not always an intimate contact. Maybe someone wanted an autographed picture of some player; maybe I'd see someone at an appearance somewhere.
But I'd think about them, all the time. As the years went on, and the plane changed-to a 747, to a 757-I'd still find myself looking down and wondering, Where have they gone? What have they done with their lives?
Now, as I've spent the last year writing this book, I've talked to each and every teammate who played in the 1958 NFL Championship at least, those who are still with us. When I began this book, there were eighteen of them alive. When I finished it, there were seventeen. Time takes its toll. The memories, thankfully, stand strong.
As I visited with each of my old teammates, they told me their tales, and I told them mine. My original reason for seeking them out was to tap their memories. But the funny thing is, we spent just as much time talking about each other. Our conversations drifted from our memories of the game into the stories of our lives, and then into conversations about our friends: What are they doing?
How are they doing? Unexpectedly, I had become a messenger, relaying the news-the good, the bad, the joyous, the mundane from one teammate to another. It was a pleasure and a privilege. It was sometimes painful. It was always a joy.
I talked to every Colt who had played in that game, too: nineteen at the start of the process, eighteen when I finished. And I discovered something else: that we're all teammates now. At reunions, at dinners, at golf tournaments, at games I was broadcasting, I had come to know some of the Colts over the years, but not too many.
Now I feel as close to them as I do my own teammates. I know now that on December 28, 1958, a cold and distant winter afternoon, we shared something that was extraordinary, and that now our shared experience, on a patchy, slippery football field, has brought us back together. I can't remember some of the games I saw last month. But I remember that game vividly. We all do.
We have different recollections and varied versions of just about every play in that game. But if the details change, one thing doesn't: what it meant to be part of the game itself. No matter what we've all gone on to do, whether we moved or returned to our old hometowns-some even returned to the same exact neighborhoods of their childhoods-each of us feels that in some way, shape, or form, that game defined us.
It's a funny feeling to take yourself back in time. It's tough.
After playing for a dozen years, and talking to millions of people on television for nearly four decades more, it turned out that staring at a little black tape recorder is a very difficult thing to do. And as I interviewed more and more of the men who played in that game, I began to understand the real reason why it was so hard for me to revisit the past: I came to feel a profound sense of loss, almost as if the family had split up. But writing this story has also given me a special gift: the chance to get us all together again.
Another reason I found this book so difficult to write was that I never intended to write it. David Halberstam did. I first talked to David late one afternoon several years ago, when I picked up the phone, fully expecting it to be a friend of my son Cody looking for a pickup game of football, or one of my daughter Cassidy's friends catching up on tomorrow's homework. So after my impatient greeting of "Hello?" I was more than some what stunned by this almost theatrical baritone voice, saying rather slowly, "Frank, this is David Halberstam."
At first, I didn't believe it was him. My immediate thought was to say something like, "Yeah, sure, of course, David. Frank isn't here right now, but would you care to talk with Jim Thorpe?" But it really was David Halberstam. Once we got through the formalities, and I'd told him how much I'd enjoyed his recent books, he told me that he was thinking of writing a book about Bill Belichick, and wondered whether I might be able to put the two of them in touch. I knew Bill, and said I'd be glad to do what I could. As it turned out, the two of them hit it off, and the result was a wonderful book, The Education of a Coach.
That call was the beginning of our friendship. Both my family and the Halberstams have homes on the island of Nantucket, off the Massachusetts coast, and during that summer while David was occupied with the Belichick book, we got together several times, usually for a lengthy lunch-a lot of football talk and a good bottle of wine. I was much more interested in talking about the book about the Korean War he was working on. But David always brought the conversation full circle-back to football.
He seemed to delight in the stories I told him about some of the truly remarkable and talented characters who had made up the 1958 rosters of the New York Giants and the Baltimore Colts. He was particularly interested in what I thought about the frequent reference to that game as "the greatest game ever played."
In the spring of 2006 David told me he wanted to write a book about the '58 game after he finished his book on Korea. I was thrilled that this brilliant writer and journalist was going to take this project on.
About a year later, when David was ready to begin reporting and writing, I told him that it was really the entire decade of the fifties, and not just that one game, that had set the stage for the unprecedented growth in professional football that followed. And so David began considering expanding his list of interviewees to include other stars of that era. David had made several contacts with players from the '58 game, but now he wanted to reach Y. A. Tittle, the great Giant quarterback. Tittle had not played in that '58 game, having come to the Giants in 1961 from the 49ers. But he went on
to achieve his greatest stardom as a Giant before retiring in 1965. The last time I ever talked to David, I gave him Y. A.'s number in Menlo Park, California, and knowing Y. A., I happily figured that David was in for a real treat. At eighty-two, Y. A. is a fun-loving, inquisitive, Down South conversationalist. I was certain he'd tie David up for hours, if not days.
Sadly, they never met. On April 23, 2007, David was killed in a horrific traffic accident on his way to Y. A.'s home. I'm sure that David's book would have been a classic look at a great moment in history. I am sad that I'll never be able to read a book that, I'm sure, would have beautifully captured our moment of history. But it was not to be. And so, partly for David, partly for myself, but mostly for all of the men who played in that game, I decided to write the book that David never did-in David's memory, and in the memory of those players who are no longer alive. With that in mind, what follows is not the work of one of the brilliant storytellers of our time, but rather the modest literary efforts of the guy who made the two fumbles, and scored a touchdown, and found himself on the frozen grass of Yankee Stadium on December 28, 1958-in the middle of the "greatest game ever played."
Was it really, as Sports Illustrated headlined a story a few weeks afterward, "The Best Football Game Ever"? I'll let you decide.
Here's to you, David.
INTRODUCTION
t was third down and four yards to go, the ball on our own 40-yard line, less than three minutes to go in the fourth quarter. We huddled up on the bare dirt, where the field had been worn down by a season's worth of football, and waited for our quarterback, Charlie Conerly, to call the play that could win us the 1958 championship.
The stadium, to a man and woman, was on its feet-men in coats and ties, in fedoras and overcoats, screaming their lungs out next to guys in hooded sweatshirts and ski caps and women in fur hats and overcoats. Colt fans in Colt jackets. Colt banners being pulled through the packed stands, dueling with Giant banners, exhorting their respective teams.
Semicircular red, white, and blue bunting hung from the facades of every deck: Giant colors. The winter sky was a fading blue, the stadium lights bathing the field in an eerie, early dusk. The steam rising from plastic foam cups of coffee mingled with frozen breath and with the pall of the smoke of the cigarettes and cigars that thousands of fans were nervously puffing.
The whole crazy afternoon-the fumbles, the tremendous swings in momentum, the spectacular plays, the artistry, the fights, the injuries-had come down to one play. If we got the first down, we'd run out the clock, and we'd win the title and become the "world champions of professional football," as they called it back then. I didn't care what they called it. I just wanted the ball. I knew I'd get it. The Colts knew I'd get it, and I didn't care. I knew I'd make the first down. Everything in my career had prepared me for this play.
"Power 47," Charlie said in the huddle, in that calm Mississippi drawl: the four back, going off right tackle, with our fullback, Mel Triplett, leading the way into the hole. But I thought the 49 sweep would work better. This was a once-in-a-lifetime play, everything on the line., and the way I figured it, our off-tackle power plays hadn't had much luck all day long against the Colts' huge defensive line: Artie Donovan, the round tackle from the Bronx who'd grown up forty blocks to the north of the stadium, now playing the game of his life in front of-and against-his hometown; Gino Marchetti, the undisputed best defensive end in the league; Don Joyce, the combative right end who was always itching for a fight; Big Daddy Lipscomb, the astoundingly agile giant who loomed at the line of scrimmage as big as his legend.
The sweep was our bread and butter. The play would give me a chance to slide outside and pick my hole. That was always my strength: not the head-on stuff, but the chance to slide, look for an opening, slip into a crack for a few extra yards. They always said I had "deceptive speed." To be honest, I'm not sure I had much speed at all, but what I did have was a way of finding a hole. Our offensive coordinator, Vince Lombardi, called my running "fluid." I just called it running, and sometimes I did it well.
The Giants were exhausted, physically and mentally. We were hurting: cracked ribs, bad knees, chipped bones. We'd just played two of the most emotional games of our careers: a dramatic last- second win in the snow against the Cleveland Browns two weeks before to force a play-off, and an inspired shutout of the Browns the Sunday before to get to this game. We'd come too far to lose it now.
"How about the sweep?" I said. That was the way things always were in our huddle: We could tell Charlie what we thought would work-and what we thought wouldn't-and he'd listen. The cotton farmer from Mississippi-my roommate, my best friend wasn't in it for his ego. Charlie just wanted to win. And so the old goat changed the play: "Brown right, over, 49 sweep": both guards pulling, leading me around right end, just as Vince Lombardi had designed it.
We lined up, as we had a thousand times before. Everyone knew exactly what they had to do. Lombardi had drilled it into us, and by now this sweep was second nature. We were professionals, and we'd been well trained, by the best.
Across the line, the Colts lowered into their stances, breath visible beneath their white helmets, ready for one final defensive stand. They wanted to stop us as much as we wanted to get the first down. We'd already won a title, two years earlier; at stake for the Colts was nothing less than the first major pro sports title for their proud port town since Wee Willie Keeler and the Orioles of the 1890s.
The Colts' season had been just as dramatic as ours-they'd clinched their division with an amazing come-from-behind victory against the San Francisco 49ers one month before. While we'd played the play-off game for the Eastern Conference title against the Browns the week before, the Colts had had an extra week off to get ready to win the title they felt they'd squandered with a couple of late-season West Coast losses the year before.
Man for man, they were the best team in the NFL. They were rested. They were primed.
Could these Colts snatch away our title? We didn't think so.
I didn't think so. There was no doubt in my mind that I'd get the first down.
Then, as we broke the huddle, we didn't think that the next few minutes of the game would change professional football's history forever.
CHAPTER 1 THE BEGINNINGS
On December 28, 1958, the National Football League grew up. From Madison Avenue to small-town living rooms, fans began to pay attention to our weekly battles on their small-screen televisions. On that long Sunday afternoon, a nation began to recognize the unique appeal of a sport in which any one play could bring extraordinarily athletic feats or grimace-inducing collisions. Or both.
It wasn't complicated, our game, and this was a big part of its appeal. Professional football had speed and it had brutality. We didn't have a legion of reverential sportswriters covering the game, as the national pastime did. Covering the Giants were off-season baseball writers, guys who didn't understand the nuances of the offenses or the defenses-or even some of the rules. But you didn't need to know about nuances or rules when you saw a man carrying a football, looking for running room-and then watching our linebacker Sam Huff meet him head-on, pick him up, and slam him to the ground.
Sam, of course wasn't the only man on the field that day who began to capture a nation's imagination: Kyle Rote, Johnny Unitas, Big Daddy, Rosie Grier, Donovan, Marchetti, Conerly-these were guys who did things on a football field that the common fan could understand. Could feel. Could get excited about. The hypnotizing rainbow passes, the open-field sprints . . . these were exciting, but just as compelling was the violence: the hits, the man-to-man contact that echoed into the rafters-all interwoven with the highest level of individual athleticism any sport could offer.
And after that day, the advertisers and the television programmers could feel it, too: how, in a very real way, the men who brought beauty to brutality every week on a football field could be seen as a new breed of the old American frontier ideal of ruggedness, and individuality, and-above all-toughness and resili
ence. We were men who made a living on physical contact, who could endure pain of some sort-a blow to the face, a cleat crushing your hand, a limb being twisted in a way that nature never intended-on just about every play, and then rise to our feet and do it again. And again, and again.
Crowds began filling stadiums across the country, in cities whose stadiums had been half-empty in the years before. Television ratings began to climb. Athletes who'd once labored in a lunchpail league were now the stars of prime-time television shows and graced the covers of the weekly magazines.
On December 28, 1958, everything changed.
But for the Giants, the final day of the old era began the way it always did, game day or practice day: by walking to work three blocks down the hill from our hotel home, in a working-class neighborhood in a working-class borough of a mighty city-a fitting starting point for a team that really was a band of brothers.
Star running backs, obscure linemen, punters and kickers, the oldest quarterback in the league, and a couple of brand-new rookies-we all lived in the Concourse Plaza Hotel, a twelve-story redbrick building planted atop a hill above Yankee Stadium, on a wide, ambitious avenue called the Grand Concourse, optimistically modeled on the Champs-Elysées in Paris.
We loved the hotel, we loved the neighborhood, we loved the time, and we loved our team.
In the late fifties, the Bronx was a pretty vibrant place-and the heart of a working-class football team was camped right in the middle of it, five months of the year. Most of us were making just about as much money playing professional football as the electricians, cops, and subway drivers who lived all around us. A lot of us were making less.
The rest of the year, we lived back home, working at our other jobs: as teachers, insurance salesmen, plumbers. Bert Bell, our colorful commissioner-a Philadelphia and Jersey Shore guy with no pretense-used to tell the new crop of rookies every summer: You are not going to make a living playing pro football, so don't quit the day job.
For me, the off-season before '58 had meant a brief movie- acting career that was winding down and a broadcast career that was just starting up. I'd always had my eye on the next thing I might do with my life. I'd always known-as any football player knows-that one blind-side hit on a planted leg, one searing jolt of pain as you feel the ligaments tear from your knee, could mean the instant end of a career.