The Best Game Ever by Mark Bowden

Author:Mark Bowden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2008-06-10T16:00:00+00:00

Giants Sam Huff threatening Colts head coach, Weeb Ewbank, as trainer Dimitri Spassoff looks on.

Raymond Berry (left) and Johnny Unitas (right) led the Colts during a thrilling fourth-quarter comeback. (Courtesy of Hy Peskin/Sports Illustrated)

Steve Myhra’s game-tying field goal. (Courtesy of Sports Illustrated)

Overtime. (Courtesy of Sports Illustrated)

7

Three Plays

In their locker room at halftime, the Giants’ players felt they were lucky not to be further behind. Gifford’s fumbles had cost them dearly, and their offense had failed to move the ball. Landry, who never had much to say, told his defense to have faith in his game plan.

“If you keep doing what I’ve told you to do,” he said, “We’ll win.”

As the game moved into the third quarter, cold and darkness settled down on Yankee Stadium. In the stands, fans burrowed deeper into scarves and blankets. Pocket flasks came out as men fought the chill with hard liquor. The lights overhead began to throw the game into eerie contrast, the field brightly illuminated against the darkening stands, just in time for more and more TV sets around the country to tune in. Families were settling in for the evening, and many, finding this gritty drama unfolding on NBC, one of only two or three channels available in most places, were twisting their aerials to sharpen the image. And at just the right moment, the Giants made the game more interesting, first with a dramatic goal-line stand, and then with that grand and goofy play—Conerly to Rote to Webster—to set up the first New York touchdown.

Suddenly the score was New York, 10, Baltimore, 14. Up in the NBC radio booth Joe Boland took over the play-by-play from Bill McColgan, and noted the shifting tide.

—New York has definitely come up with a more inspirational brand of play since that goal-line defense fired this crowd as I am sure it fired you listening across the nation. . . . Now let’s see whether that high emotional supercharge of the New York Giants team, which seemed to be lifted by that goal-line defense that stymied the Baltimore Colts, will enable them to stay alive.

At one end of the field with the wheelchair-bound vets, sixteen-year-old Neil Leifer had been snapping pictures with his camera, but he envied the more sophisticated equipment carried by the pro photographers, and the sideline passes that allowed them to move up and down the field with the action. He was trapped behind the end zone with a simple Yashica Mat camera and the lens that came with it. There was no chance of the close-ups sought by the newspapers, magazines, and wire services. Once or twice during the game he took a cup of hot coffee to the cop at his end of the field on the sidelines, and the cop winked at him and let him creep up the field a little. He took a few pictures before one of the pro photographers made a beef and the cop waved him back.

Emotions on both sides of the field were high. When

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