The Glory Game: How the 1958 NFL Championship Changed Football Forever

by Frank Gifford; Peter Richmond

  Through the years, Peter took care of a lot of players. Peter was pretty connected with the people one shouldn't know, but he never apologized for having a very diverse set of connections. Peter was a huge Giants fan, and, I must admit, a huge Gifford man. When I'd show up at Eddie Condon's, Peter would always announce, "The fabulous Mr. Gifford arriving," which would embarrass the hell out of me, but he didn't care.

  Peter was eventually stricken by a long, lingering illness. To bolster his spirits, I gave him my '56 championship ring. He lost it. Years later, his wife, Slatsy, gave me Peter's old pocket watch. It had an engraving of a train on the back of it. It reminded me of the one my father had carried. I still have it. At the funeral home, Slatsy and I discreetly checked to make sure that Peter was wearing his red socks. He was: the Fabulous Mr. Pesci, departing in style.

  At the other end of the social spectrum was the 21 Club, a real highlight, another temple to New York history. It was at 21 West 52nd Street, the classiest address on the Street. But for most of us, 21 wasn't a regular spot, and you'd have been hard-pressed ever to call it a saloon. But on the days we were feeling flush enough, we'd drop in-maybe on the more cultural evenings, for dinner before or after the theater. I didn't go to 21 much; we just couldn't afford it. But it was one of the places Maxine always loved to go.

  In its days as a speakeasy, when it was known as Jack and Charlie's 21, it had a mythology all its own. Federal agents knocking on the door looking to bust the place were thwarted by an ingenious system. The bouncer would press a buzzer, and a moment later, inside, the bar would move into the wall and the glasses and liquor would plummet down into a pit of sand, to muffle the sound of glass breaking. Meanwhile, in the basement, five thousand cases of liquor were automatically sealed behind a huge masonry door designed to look like part of the basement wall. (That subterranean room is now available as a private dining room.)

  When alcohol became legal again in 1933, 21 was a joint that attracted the well-connected-"a Tiffany's window onto society," in the words of a writer for Fortune magazine.

  By 1958, that description still seemed accurate to me. The patrons of 21 tended to be on their best behavior. Bogart was known to hit 21, El Morocco, and the Stork Club, in that order, but as the story goes, while Bogey would occasionally cause a scene at the two other places, he was known to never do anything even slightly improper at 21. Its policy of not catering to the press made 21 feel a little higher class than its brethren; during Prohibition, the joint even barred the newspaper writers, to ensure that its patrons could drink and eat in peace. (Not that they didn't eventually welcome writers of a different sort; Hemingway and John Steinbeck were patrons of 21, too.)

  Another quirk of 21: they took only cash, no matter who you were. No checks, no credit. There was the occasional exception; when a man named George Humphrey signed his check one night, and the waiter politely informed him that cash was required, Mr. Humphrey produced a dollar bill, and pointed to the signature on the bill: it was his. The credit of Eisenhower's secretary of the treasury was deemed sufficient.

  Maxine and I paid cash-21 was one place where it wasn't likely anyone was going to take care of your tab because you lugged a football up in the Bronx. But we'd always have a table at 21, although the maître d' would never make a big deal out of it. No one announced you at 21, where I always felt a sort of thrill that I never felt at our other regular haunts. Today, my helmet still hangs amid the bullfighters' swords and the toy cars and the muskets. That's pretty cool: you can sit beneath Frank Gifford's helmet. And I often do.

  On most of our cross-town rambles, our last stop was over on Third Avenue, up on 55th Street: the venerable P.J. Clarke's-in many ways our favorite spot, and still going strong. The history of P.J.'s was nearly as storied as our other watering holes. Its bar had been featured in the classic Ray Milland movie Lost Weekend; the Giants preferred to visit on winning weekends. And we often did. Clarke's was another old speakeasy, owned by a gentleman named Danny Lavezzo. He was the key guy. You'd get through the front bar, with its tiled floor and dark wood, if you could, then work your way back to the "main" room, run by Frankie Rebundo. You had to know Frankie to get into the back room. And Frankie knew us. If any of us had to go to a cocktail party, or a postgame commitment, or a dinner commitment, it'd always be, "See you at P.J.'s later."

  That would be around midnight-or sometimes later, depending on how you felt after the game. I was usually pretty well beat up.

  But I could usually make it.

  "21 was out of my league," Pat Summerall recalls. "P.J.'s was always good to us, though. We got thrown out of there many times."

  There was one spot that we never missed: a three-story redbrick building whose distinctive emblemed awning beckoned us in, its vertical neon sign flashing a name into the night: Toots Shor's, the mecca of our kind of New York nightlife, presided over by one of the most remarkable men I have ever met.

  Bernard "Toots" Shor was a hard-living, life-loving mythic figure. He offered no apologies for some of his more questionable friends, and felt no regrets for living a long and roller-coaster marquee life, during which he squandered everything he'd ever had, just for the sake of being New York's number one saloonkeeper. "A Damon Runyon Land" is what the writer Nick Pileggi once called Toots's place, and that pretty much says it all. Toots rose from speakeasy bouncer to a guest in five different White Houses. He counted Supreme Court justices, presidents, TV stars, and gangland capos among his friends. And I was lucky to be able to count him one of mine.

  I'll never forget the first time I went to Toots Shor's in 1952, my first year in the city. Maxine had read a lot of things about the city. She came up with all these places I had never heard of, and we'd go exploring together. "Toots's is where everyone goes," she'd told me, so we got all dressed up one night and walked through the door underneath the big awning with the interlocking T and S emblem on the front. Toots greeted me at the door: hair slicked back, a big broad nose, a wide smile. I'll leave it to more eloquent and artistic types to describe my friend Toots-as so many have been tempted to, at one point or another: "This huge man, one of the biggest men I'd ever seen," remembered Peter Duchin, the son of the famous bandleader Eddie Duchin, "with a huge, rubber face that had crinkles. It looked sort of like putty in a way." Novelist Don DeLillo, as cited in Carlo DeVito's biography of Wellington Mara, Wellington, added a true writer's touch to his portrait of the man: "The slab face and meatcutter's hands . . . a speakeasy vet, dense of body, with slicked-back hair and a set of chinky eyes that summon up a warning in a hurry."

  Toots was big, all right: 6 foot 3, increasingly wide, with a waistline that ever expanded-270 pounds, at one point-in direct relation to the brandy he'd consume in mind-boggling quantities, night after night, as he moved from table to table. But Toots was big in another way: He was larger than life. He could be standing between Crosby and Sinatra and, somehow, it was Toots standing in the spotlight.

  As Gay Talese once put it, Toots's place was the first Elaine's the first truly marquee hangout in the town-and if that's true, make no mistake: The Giants were hardly the marquee drinkers. Jackie Gleason, Toots's great buddy, was a regular. Mantle and DiMaggio were hanging out there when I first started going. One night I saw Frank Costello, the mob guy, on one side of the room, and Justice Earl Warren on the other. Harry Lavin, the captain of the waiters back then, used to say that Toots could pick up the phone and get Truman or Eisenhower on the other end. (A few years later, I was drinking with Paul Hornung at Toots's the night before he met with Pete Rozelle, who was about to suspend Paul from the league for a year for gambling on NFL games. Meeting Paul there that night was fittingly appropriate; according to a wonderful film documentary of Toots's place, produced by his daughter, at one point it had been a drop-off point for shady characters running the numbers rackets.)

  Whitey Ford loved Toots. Whitey had a custom on day games when he was the Yankees' starting pitcher: After his eight warm-up pitches at the start of th
e first inning, he'd always look over at Toots, in his box, to let Toots know he saw him. Toots wasn't a fixture at only the Stadium; he'd be at every sports event in town. You'd see him at the Garden for fights, where he invariably had a wager on the contest. He lost $100,000 on the Billy Conn-Joe Louis fight in 1941, one year after he'd opened his place.

  I'd even see him at the Polo Grounds, where he'd talk to the players, because our bench nearly abutted the field-level seats on the sideline. (You'd be standing there, watching the game, ready to go in, and someone would just reach out, tap you on the shoulder, and introduce himself. Neal Walsh, a man who later became a dear friend, tried to sell me an insurance policy while we were playing the Bears one day.)

  But if there wasn't a prizefight or a game at the Garden that night, you'd find Toots at his place, with Phil Silvers, Wilt Chamberlain, John Wayne, Dempsey, Hemingway. Toots would bounce from one table to the other, pausing to insert himself into a conversation between Whitey and some politician, or Yogi and some writer. (It was at Toots Shor's that Toots famously introduced Yogi and Hemingway to each other. "Yogi," Toots said. "This is Ernest Hemingway. He's an important writer." Yogi's reply: "What paper you with, Ernie?") He'd always stop to talk to you, and somehow having Toots greet you-"Crumb Bum" was one of his favorite labels; anyone Italian, like Sinatra, would be "Dago"-would make you feel important. Toots himself would usually introduce himself as "I'm Tootsie, the Pretty Jew"-which was really a reach.

  We'd drink with cops, working stiffs, copy editors from the Associated Press across the street-their drinks already poured, waiting for them-with their visors still on their heads, garters holding up their sleeves. At the circular bar, admen would bump elbows with the star of some TV quiz show.

  But no matter who you were, or what you did, Toots could make you feel special. That's another one of the big reasons we'd go to Toots's-me, Charlie, Kyle, Heinrich, Summerall, Mo, Sam.

  It wasn't just that we might not have to pay the tab. It wasn't just for the chance to see all these famous people. The truth is, most of the great athletes I know are shy people. Toots received us all with open arms and a big bear hug, and that made an insecure guy feel pretty good. When I came out of USC, I was shy. Still am, believe it or not. I could always run faster, jump higher, and I'd always, constantly, been athletically ahead of where I should have been. But I was just an athlete, born and raised in the oil towns. I'd gotten to where I was because of innate athletic talent and hard work. Now, here I was mingling with Supreme Court justices, and great writers, and actors who'd worked at their crafts to rise to the top. And the man who oversaw them all-the man who certified greatness in our town, who almost single-handedly decided who was a star in New York-was certifying me. In New York, I was coming to realize, it didn't matter where you come from-and I'd really come from nowhere. I'd had been a pretty rootless upbringing. And now Toots was saying, in a way, that I had a home. That I was really a New Yorker. And it felt pretty good. I suppose it may be surprising to people now to think I ever felt this way-I guess I seem pretty secure in the eyes and minds of most people. But I never was. Having the guy who presided over all those celebrities acknowledge you as one of his friends was a very big thing.

  But then, Toots knew what it was like to rise from nothing.

  His mother was killed in a freak accident when he was fifteen, down in Philadelphia, and his father committed suicide five years later. He was sitting in a bar in Philadelphia when his uncle told him, "You'll never amount to anything." So he came north, and got work as a bouncer in his first speakeasy. He worked in four different clubs during Prohibition. He was strong, and he was tough. He was perfect for the job description-although, truth is, Toots liked to pretend he was tougher than he was.

  Toots's bar was a huge, circular affair, the first thing you saw when you walked in the door. It had more than a dozen seats, the drinkers three-deep, surrounding a couple of bartenders in white jackets and black ties, and, in the middle of the circle, a two-tiered tower of glistening bottles. Circular bars were great. Eight or ten guys could stand around, friends and strangers, and you could see each other while you drank and smoked.

  And Toots was always there-from opening to closing, with a break to go home to his town house for dinner with his two daughters and his wife, Baby. She was a former Ziegfeld Girl. Toots was huge. Baby was tiny and blond and pretty. And she was the only person I've ever seen him afraid of. When Baby talked, Toots would listen.

  But there weren't too many other women at Toots's. Women had a different set of rules. If you swore in front of a woman, or insulted her, Toots would throw you out. He threw a lot of people out, for a lot of reasons. If you ordered white wine, you were gone. (He always gave Father Dudley grief about his Manhattans, but he never threw him out.) If he didn't like you, you were gone. He didn't have to explain; some people Toots just didn't like.

  Toots was a little sexist, too. He had a rule about women and their drinking: He'd want to know anytime a woman ordered two martinis. That wasn't right, as far as Toots was concerned; a woman shouldn't ever drink too much. Meanwhile, his own head would be lolling over by the end of the night.

  Whitey Ford once said Toots's place took two years off his career. I don't think he took any off mine. In fact, he might have added some-that's how good he made me feel, because when Toots took you in, he took you in completely, literally and figuratively.

  He always saved a space for the Giants, no matter how packed the place was. He'd hold tables for us. He didn't care who you were-senator, congressman, ambassador-it didn't matter. The Giants would get a table. "He'd say, 'Defense up front, offense in the back-the offense doesn't score any points'" is the way Sam remembers it. (Of course Sam would remember it that way.) "I was a special guest, up by the bar," Sam recalls. "In the number one booth were Toots and Gleason. I remember one time when Fat Jackie and Fat Toots got into an argument over who could run faster. 'You ain't fast,' Toots said. They had a race around the block. Toots went one way, Jackie caught a cab. Jackie was waiting on him."

  Back then, a cab could beat someone running around a block.

  Sam has good reason to remember Toots's generosity. The big man offered Sam tickets to a World Series game in '56. Sam passed-and missed Don Larsen's perfect game.

  "After the games," Modzelewski recalls, "it seemed like everyone would go their way-then at about nine or ten everyone could come to Toots. I remember coming in one time, after a loss.

  Toots said to me, 'What the hell are you laughing about? I saw you knocked on your ass the whole game.' He'd keep it up till midnight-when he couldn't talk."

  It's true that Toots had a habit of over imbibing. He drank way too much. But it was also true that he was the best friend a man-a football player-could ever have.

  Not everyone on our team drank. Rosie Grier abstained. That didn't mean he didn't hang out with those who did partake, usually up in Harlem: "I'd go out with the guys, but when they started drinking, I'd say, 'See you guys later.' " Rosie's main vice was eating.

  Rosie was funny about things like that. During games, he could be a terror-his body immovable, his long arms swatting runners down. But in person, he could be as meek as a lamb. Most of us wished Rosie would bring a little more intensity to his practices, but one thing he could never be accused of was a hangover.

  "My dad gave me something to think about a long time ago," Rosie told me. "He'd say, 'Trouble is easy to get into, and hard to get out of.' So when I saw guys losing control, guys yelling, that would be my time to leave. See, I never forgot the night we were playing an exhibition game in Oregon. There were a bunch of us in a nightclub that night-all these guys making a bunch of noise. An older guy started giving the waitress money. They made fun of him. I said, 'Leave him alone.' I went and stood outside. Next thing I know, I saw the guy coming back with a shotgun. I went in and said, 'The guy you been making fun of is coming back. With a gun.'

  "But I'd still go out in New York. Sometimes we'd go up to the Red Roost
er in Harlem, next to Big Wilt's. Emlen would swing on the chandeliers. Emlen loved the Red Rooster, and the Rooster loved him."

  Everyone loved Emlen Tunnell, our veteran safety-the Giants' first black player, signed in 1948. Em often tried to talk me into joining him at a nightclub up in Harlem called Jack's. I deferred for a while, but Em was one of the truly great guys, and he kept at me, so eventually, Charlie and I went up there-and, of course, we had a great time. But I can't say I ever became a regular.

  Not everyone wanted to spend their time pub-crawling across 52nd Street. A lot of the guys stayed close to the hotel to do their drinking; there were more than enough bars and family restaurants in the Grand Concourse neighborhood to accommodate every taste in liquor and food. Guys like Don Chandler and Al Barry and Frank Youso, our big rookie lineman who would play a huge (literally) role that day, had their favorite spots, low-key, laidback places where their profile was as low as the prices.

  Youso remembers one particular night when he was dining at his favorite place under the el, its name long lost to history (and Frank's memory). He'd just bought a brand-new topcoat, and he'd put it on his chair so it wouldn't get stolen from the coatroom. The place was full of off-duty cops and a couple of priests. Frank was delighted when a guy came up and introduced him to his friend:

  "This is Frank Youso; he plays for the Giants." Frank rose to shake the guy's hand. When he sat back down, his coat was gone.

  "Figure that out," Frank says now. "Twelve policemen sitting there, and two Catholic priests, and someone had stolen the coat.

  When I got off the plane in International Falls the next day, it was twenty below zero-and no coat."

  Downtown, if you were a Giant, you could usually count on someone picking up a tab. Back in the neighborhood, they picked up your coat. Such was the so-called celebrity surrounding the New York Giants.

  Not surprisingly, Maynard, the Texas receiver who'd never seen a tall building in his life, never ventured too far from the Concourse Plaza. To hear Don tell it now, I'm surprised he even left the hotel.