The New York Times Book of New York

by The New York Times

  During most of the first half, after the Bears had overcome a first-period lead that Ken Strong gave the Giants with a 38-yard placement goal, the Westerners, undefeated in 13 National Football League games this year, seemed the certain winners. Then when Jack Manders, the great kicker, shot across a 23-yard field goal late in the third period it was apparently all over but the shouting.

  The Bears had come back in the second period with a touchdown when Bronko Nagurski bulled his way across from the one-yard mark. A pass paved the way to this score. Then Manders had made his first field goal, a rifle shot from the 17-yard mark. The third-period goal was apparently the final touch.

  But with Lou Little, Columbia’s coach, sitting up in the stands and phoning to the bench, Steve Owen directing down there and Strong playing one of the greatest games any back has ever turned in, the Giants came back to win. They returned to the field in the second half with basketball shoes replacing the cleated football shoes. The solidly frozen ground made cleats useless, and the basketball shoes made all the difference.

  The final touchdown was quarterback Ed Danowski’s. The stage had been set by Molenda’s interceptions of a Ronzani pass, followed by a lateral to Burnett. The interception came on the Bears’ 34-yard line and the play ended on the 22.

  Four times the Giants crossed the Bears’ goal line for touchdowns in that final period

  Danowski, the ex-Fordham ace, punched out a first down just over the 10. He went off right and on the next play and cut back behind fine blocking to cross the line standing up. Molenda added the extra point.

  Giants Win Super Bowl With Nail-Biting Finish

  By ROBERT MCG. THOMAS JR. | January 28, 1991

  HOW ’BOUT THEM GIANTS?

  That, more or less, was the rhetorical question of the moment among the New York fans last night as the team they call Big Blue came from behind in the fourth quarter and then held off a last-minute surge to defeat the Buffalo Bills, 20-19, in Super Bowl XXV.

  It was the second Super Bowl victory for the Giants in five seasons, but unlike their 39-20 romp over the Denver Broncos in 1987, this one was a clinical heart-stopper. The lead changed four times and the outcome was not decided until the last four seconds.

  The game was watched by 73,813 flag-waving fans in Tampa Stadium, by tens of millions on television across the United States and via satellite relay by tens of thousands of the nation’s military men and women on war duty in the Persian Gulf.

  After more than a week of news dominated by missile attacks and aerial bombardments, a contest in which the most potent weapon was the forward pass seemed a decided relief.

  There were stark reminders, however, that a nation of football fans is also a nation at war: the most extensive security ever mounted for a sporting event and a pregame flyover by four F-15 jets.

  For the Giants, who trailed 12-10 at the half, took the lead on a third-quarter touchdown, lost it when the Bills scored a touchdown in the fourth and then went up a point on a field goal by Matt Bahr. The ending was a mirror image of their last-second defeat of the San Francisco 49ers the week before.

  This time it was the Giants’ opponents who needed a last-minute field goal to win, and this time the kick, by Scott Norwood, was wide.

  Giants Stun Patriots In Super Bowl XLII

  By JUDY BATTISTA | February 4, 2008

  David Tyree wrestles the ball away from Patriot Rodney Harrison in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XLII.

  THE GIANTS WERE NOT EVEN SUPPOSED TO BE here, taking an unlikely playoff path through the behemoths of their conference and regarded, once they alighted on Super Bowl XLII, as little more than charming foils for the New England Patriots’ assault on immortality.

  But with their defense battering this season’s National Football League’s most valuable player, Tom Brady, and Giants quarterback Eli Manning playing more like Brady than Brady himself, the Giants produced one of the greatest upsets in Super Bowl history Sunday night, beating the previously undefeated Patriots, 17-14.

  The Patriots’ coach, Bill Belichick—who was the Giants’ defensive coordinator the last time the Giants won the Super Bowl, in 1991—led his team to the brink of a historic 19-0 perfect season and had survived a spying scandal that cost him money and the Patriots a first-round draft pick. But he could only watch as it all collapsed under the weight of the Giants’ ferocious pass rush. For another year, the 1972 Miami Dolphins will stand alone with the only perfect season in N.F.L. history.

  “It’s the greatest victory in the history of this franchise, without question,” the Giants co-owner John Mara said, his voice hoarse. “I just want to say to all you Giants fans who have supported us for more than 30 years at Giants Stadium, for all those years in Yankee Stadium and some of you even back to the Polo Grounds, this is for you.”

  Manning connected with Plaxico Burress for the winning touchdown, a 13-yard pass with 35 seconds remaining in the game. Manning drove the Giants 83 yards in just over two minutes after the Patriots had marched down the field to take a 14-10 lead.

  Jet Propulsion

  By ARTHUR DALEY | January 14, 1969

  JOE NAMATH TALKS BIG. HE ALSO ACTS BIG. It was the wizardry of this quarterbacking marvel that lighted the afterburners of the New York Jets and sent them rocketing to unexpected heights in a Super Bowl upset of historic proportions. The Jets beat the supposedly invincible Baltimore Colts, 16-7, and thereby became the first American Football League team to humble the proud and condescending National League in world championship action.

  The Colts had been favored by something like 17 to 20 points. That’s what made the result so difficult for the Establishment to take, and that’s why the red faces of the assembled experts were not entirely caused by the Florida sunshine. In the final analysis, though, the thing that confounded them most was that it was no fluke.

  The Jets won on their merits. On this day, at least, they were the better football team. They showed no respect to a club whose awesome efficiency on both offense and defense all season had set almost matchless standards of excellence. Like the disdainful Namath, they treated the Colts with the utmost impoliteness and savaged them outrageously. The Jets were pretty much in control of the situation all the way.

  “Namath psyched two teams,” said George Blanda of the Oakland Raiders, pro football’s oldest inhabitant. “He psyched the Jets into believing they could win and he psyched the Colts into doubting that they could win.”

  It’s a reasonable observation, although the doubts that crept into the Colts may have been planted there not so much by the Jet quarterback as by their own, Earl Morrall, a gypsy who has played for four teams in a dozen years. Reading men’s minds is a rather arcane art, but I seem to sense the Baltimore confidence oozing out like air escaping from a captive balloon.

  For Many Jets Fans, It’s Super Sunday In Name Only

  By VINCENT M. MALLOZZI | February 3, 2008

  NOT SINCE JOE NAMATH MADE GOOD ON HIS guarantee to beat the Baltimore Colts in 1969 have the Jets been back to the Super Bowl. The players continually change, so the wait may be harder on longtime Jets fans who have endured two victories in three Super Bowl appearances by the rival Giants.

  So what will some of those green-with-envy, rabid Jets fans be doing Sunday during Super Bowl XLII, in which the Giants will play the New England Patriots in Glendale, Ariz.?

  “I’ll be playing video games with my two sons,” said Joey Fiordalisi, 38, a printer who lives in Hamilton, N.J. “I can’t watch because it kind of makes me sick to my stomach, and if I sound like a jealous Jets fan, well, I am.”

  Fiordalisi has a theory about why the Jets have been to only one Super Bowl.

  “I think Joe Namath made a deal with the devil,” he said. “The devil said, ‘O.K., Joe, I’ll give you this one, but your Jets will never win another.’ ”

  Caryl Cohen of Secaucus, N.J., who is retired as the director of teacher recruitment for the New York City Department of Education, said that despite her loya
lty to the Jets, she would root for the Giants.

  “When it comes down to it, I have to root for the New York team,” she said. “I hate the Pats, so I would have been rooting for whoever played them, anyway.”

  Cohen said she would watch the game with fellow Jets fans.

  “Misery loves company,” she said. “We want to commiserate.”

  To the Crowds, He’s Everybody’s Joe

  By JOSEPH DURSO | January 23, 1969

  Joe Namath at Giants Stadium in October 2000.

  BROADWAY JOE CAME BACK TO BROADWAY and touched off waves of hero worship from City Hall to Times Square.

  Like conquering heroes, Joe Willie Namath and his teammates on the New York Jets were lionized throughout a tumultuous day as they officially brought home the championship of professional football.

  Most of the public passion was lavished on Namath, the 25-year-old quarterback with the Rhett Butler sideburns and the most celebrated passing arm in the land. He upstaged Mayor Lindsay, he turned on thousands of teenagers, he calmed the multitudes with a wave of his hand, he led a police caravan through the midtown streets, he made two graceful speeches, he accepted a sports car as the outstanding performer in the Super Bowl—and then he required a wedge of 12 policemen to cross a sidewalk thronged with female admirers.

  Broadway Joe’s triumphal return started on the steps of City Hall at noon. It was 12 days since the Jets had upset the odds and the Baltimore Colts, 16-7, in the Super Bowl game.

  The door of City Hall opened and Mayor Lindsay stepped down through a double line of policemen toward the platform facing City Hall Park. Solid booing broke out, as though the mayor was a Baltimore Colt.

  A stride behind him marched Namath. The booing dissolved into roaring cheers.

  Then the mayor stepped to the microphone to pay tribute to “our conquering team, the greatest football team in the world.” This time he was drowned out by a rising chant of “Namath for Mayor, Namath for Mayor.”

  “I noticed some Giants’ fans out there,” Namath said, and his public hooted and hollered. Then, turning more serious, he nodded toward his teammates and said:

  “You see here Matt Snell—who was our most valuable player in the Super Bowl game.”

  More cheering erupted, and it continued as each of the dozen Jets on hand came forward to receive a gift from the city fathers—a tie clasp and cuff links engraved with the municipal seal. In return, the Jets gave the mayor a gift—a framed LeRoy Neiman painting of Joe Namath in action.

  Then the Jets got into half a dozen limousines and one team bus and headed uptown for the second half. The frenzy shifted to West 48th Street between Times Square and Eighth Avenue because Namath & Co. roosted at Mamma Leone’s restaurant. En route uptown along the Avenue of the Americas, the police gave the Jets the full hero treatment—sirens, flashing red lights and all. The midday crowds waved and clapped.

  Namath was there primarily to accept Sport magazine’s 11th annual pro football award, and as teenage girls packed the sidewalk outside and peered through windows of the restaurant, Namath was given the keys to his prize car by Al Silverman, the editor of Sport.

  When Namath went outside to inspect the car, Jet pennants were being hawked for 75 cents and the police were fighting a long battle against the young crowd. It was like a combined appearance by Frank Sinatra, the Beatles and Tiny Tim.

  “If you had lost the big game,” somebody told Namath, “you would’ve avoided all this.”

  BASKETBALL AND HOCKEY

  Three City College Aces and a Gambler Held In Basketball “Fix”

  By ALEXANDER FEINBERG | February 17, 1976

  THREE CITY COLLEGE BASKETBALL PLAYERS, members of the team that won two national championships last season, were arrested yesterday on bribery charges.

  District Attorney Frank S. Hogan said they had admitted receiving sums up to $1,500 each for “fixing” three Madison Square Garden contests in the current season. In each case they were supposed to lose or to keep the margin of victory below the point-spread that City College was favored by in advance betting. City lost all three games.

  Taken into custody when they returned with Coach Nat Holman and the remainder of the squad from a record-setting victory over Temple University at Philadelphia on Saturday night, the three—co-captains Ed Roman and Ed Warner, and Al Roth—were questioned all night. Confronted with incriminating testimony, they shamefacedly acknowledged a gambler’s payoffs, Mr. Hogan said.

  They had admitted receiving sums up to $1,500 each for “fixing” three Madison Square Garden contests in the current season.

  Arrested with them were Salvatore Tarto Sollazzo, a 45-year-old jewelry manufacturer and ex-convict described as a “sure-thing” gambler; Eddie Gard, a Long Island University senior named by Mr. Hogan as Sollazzo’s intermediary; and Harvey (Connie) Schaff, a basketball player at New York University. Mr. Hogan said Schaff had attempted to line up a teammate at N.Y.U. for the gambler, but had been rebuffed.

  The case explained at least in part why a City College team that had won both the National Invitation Tournament at Madison Square Garden and the National Collegiate Athletic Association Tournament in the 1949-50 season could amass a record of only 11-7 in 1950-51.

  Three games were “fixed,” Mr. Hogan said. In each City College was an 8-to-12 point favorite. The “fix” was for the City stars to keep their margin of victory down to no more than six points, Mr. Hogan said. They did better than that; they saw to it that their team was beaten in all three games.

  Short Shots In All Directions

  By ARTHUR DALEY | November 1, 1946

  THERE IS SOMETHING FASCINATING ABOUT any new endeavor in sports, particularly when success is virtually ordained from the start. Such a newcomer is the Basketball Association of America, a professional group whose franchises are held by the arena owners and who therefore are more than halfway around third base in the race for home plate. This is an important distinction because lack of adequate facilities has been the main stumbling block for all previous circuits.

  The B.A.A. formally opens its schedule tonight when the New York Knickerbockers, sponsored by Madison Square Garden, journey to Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens for the first joust of a 60-game list. Then they swing over to the Chicago Stadium and the St. Louis Arena before they return for their home inaugural at the Garden a week from Monday.

  Father Knickerbocker’s Knicks are under the watchful eye of Edward Simmons Irish, who rarely makes mistakes. He signed the shrewd Neil Cohalan as his coach and liberally larded his squad with top-flight local boys. But the more important factor is that Ned is interested in it. Other sections of the country might scream denials, but there is no escaping the fact that Irish, through his Garden productions, is the man who had made college basketball the game that it is today.

  He’ll do the same with pro ball. Backing the new league are the controlling interests at the Boston Garden, the Cleveland Arena, the Detroit Olympia, Pittsburgh’s Duquesne Gardens, Washington’s Uline Arena, the Philadelphia Arena and assorted other indoor pavilions. Unfortunately, Ned put the squeeze on himself by getting into the play-for-play phase of the dribble diversion after most of the Garden dates were taken. His Knicks will stage only 4 of their 34 home games in the Eighth Avenue sports palace, with the rest of them listed for the 69th Regiment Armory.

  Knicks Take First Title, Beating Lakers, 113–99

  By LEONARD KOPPETT | May 9, 1970

  THE NEW YORK KNICKERBOCKERS, DISPLAYing their finest qualities with the limited physical but important spiritual aid of a limping Willis Reed, won the championship of the National Basketball Association last night by routing the Los Angeles Lakers, 113-99, at Madison Square Garden.

  Walt Frazier, with 36 points and 19 assists, was the most brilliant individual, but this, like most Knick successes, was basically a team enterprise as the Knicks finally claimed the first title in their 24-year history. They gave New York’s happy sports fans their third professional world c
hampionship in 16 months. The football Jets won the Super Bowl game in January 1969, and the baseball Mets took the World Series last fall.

  Reed, as always, was indispensable, but this time in an unusual fashion. He had injured a muscle in his right leg in the fifth game of the series. His injury seemed to doom the Knicks to defeat, because it left them with no counterweapon to Wilt Chamberlain, the 7-foot-2-inch Laker center and the greatest scorer in basketball history.

  As it turned out, after some pain-killing injections and a few minutes of shooting practice, Reed was able to start. He took the first shot at the basket, with the game 18 seconds old, and made it.

  A minute later, he hit another, making the score 5-2, and the effect on his teammates was electric. The Knicks shot better, defended better, hustled more, ran faster, jumped higher, passed more accurately and stole the ball more often.

  Dave DeBusschere, the rugged forward whose arrival from Detroit more than a year ago transformed the Knicks into a great team (by allowing Reed to move to center as well as by DeBusschere’s own contributions) had another superb game. He had to do the heavy rebounding, taking down 17, and scoring 18 points.

  Bill Bradley, not at his best in much of the series, was in top form this time, with 17 points and five assists. And the much-appreciated Knick bench—Nate Bowman as Reed’s relief, Dave Stallworth, Cazzie Russell and Mike Riordan—did its share, although only Bowman played as much as usual (and more).