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

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Mark Bowden has a proven record as an exciting writer of history. The Best Game Ever is his best book ever. He makes the 1958 NFL title game come alive. I have memories as a high school senior of watching this game on television. The game's black-and-white starkness is imbedded in my memory. Mr. Bowden makes this memory come alive in all its vivid character. His lively style is more that of an analytical journalist than an academic historian, and he offers insights that I have not read elsewhere. The photos of this cold-weather game offered in the book made me want to bundle up in spite of the fact that it is 90 degrees in San Antonio (my home) today. Every football fan should be grateful for this book.

December 28, 1958 marks one of the most classic moments in NFL history. That's the date the Baltimore Colts defeated the New York Giants in sudden death overtime to win the NFL title as 45 million fans watched on television. It marked the birth of the modern NFL as football began to step out of the shadows of baseball.

The match up featured the greatest concentration of football talent for one game as 17 future Hall of Famers were involved. It pitted a team of self-made men and the league's best offense (Colts) versus a team of glamour boys and the best defense (Giants).

Author Mark Bowden tells the story of the 1958 championship game through a handful of players and coaches such as Raymond Berry, Weeb Ewbank, Sam Huff, Tom Landry (Giants' defensive coordinator) and Vince Lombardi (Giants' offensive coordinator). Bowden's exceptional study of Berry is the cornerstone of the book.

Bowden recounts how Johnny Unitas and Berry teamed up to take the Colts 86 yards in two minutes to tie the game. And, how Unitas engineered the 13-play drive in overtime to secure the thrilling victory. Unitas' greatness and leadership in the game elevated him to the highest echelon of NFL quarterbacks.

Interestingly, many of the players didn't realize that the game would continue into sudden death overtime after it was tied in regulation.

As a writer, Bowden makes the reader feel like he's in the middle of the game. He makes you wish you had been able to witness this great game. You envy those who did. NFL Commissioner Bert Bell called the Colts-Giants sudden death overtime game, "The greatest day in the history of professional football."

While I thoroughly enjoyed the book, it's definitely a lightweight treatment of the subject. The book is 239, easy-to-read pages. When I finished the book, I wanted to read more about the game and its impact. I suspect many other readers will feel the same way.

Bostonians like me are as parochial as sports fans get. In fact, we're sometimes downright myopic. "Who cares about the Giants and Colts? Well," we'd think, "Raymond Berry played in the 1958 championship game, and he later coached the New England Patriots. Maybe I'll read it."

The beauty of Bowden's treatment of the game - of course debatable as to its superlative (American publishing marketing working overtime) - is that it allows the football purist to read all the way through cheering for neither side in particular, but for the game and the sport itself. I wasn't alive when the game was played, and didn't have a rooting interest when I picked up the book. I just wanted a good read on a favored topic, and got just that.

Appropriately dedicated to David Halberstam, "The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL" seamlessly blends a gripping journalistic description of the thrilling National Football League championship game with riveting personal stories of participants and witnesses. Author Mark Bowen clearly outlines the background and significance of the contest; he does so with both admiration and considerable affection for the men who fought on the semi-frozen Yankee Stadium turf that late December afternoon and evening. If Bowen extols the performance of the favored Giants, he reserves his greatest warmth for the underdog Baltimore Colts. Seventeen members of the NFL Hall of Fame participated in the contest, "the greatest concentration of football talent ever assembled for a single game."

Bowen provides compelling portraits of some of the sport's iconic figures: Vince Lombardi, Sam Huff, Tom Landry, Frank Gifford, Art "Fatso" Donovan, Lenny Moore and Johnny Unitas. However, Raymond Berry, the self-made wide receiver for the Colts holds a special place in Bowen's heart. Undersized and undervalued, Berry quietly revolutionized the sport with his meticulous preparation and unceasing quest for information. As the Colts marched down the field for the winning touchdown, the public address announcer's repetitious statement, "Unitas to Berry," exemplified two emerging stars summoning peak performances during moments of unbearable pressure.

"The Best Game Ever" contains marvelous anecdotes about the game and its witnesses. Bowen informs us that some of the players did not know about the "sudden death" rule, designed to produce a winner in a championship game. He gives life to the most famous photograph of the day, one taken by a teenager who gained access to an end-zone perspective by pushing wheelchair-bound veterans to one end of the field. As well, Bowen expertly analyzes the nascent confluence of television and football, a relationship nurtured by prescient NFL commissioner Bert Bell.

Ardent fans of professional football and students of American culture will find something to cherish in "The Best Game Ever."

Bowden is a tremendous non-fiction writer, and I enjoyed this book tremendously, but it is a quick, light treatment of a subject loaded with nuance and historical context. The subtitle is Giants vs. Colts, 1958 and the Birth of the Modern NFL, but other than an epilog chapter, it does not really cover much ground after 1958.

This is the work of a terrific author churning out a quick book between his more serious efforts. There are strong portraits of several players, particularly Unitas (one of my boyhood idols) the Giant linebacker Sam Huff, and the methodical Raymond Berry, whose meticulous preparation altered the future of the wide receiver position, as well as the outcome of this championship game.

In light of a recent story about Donovan McNab, the Eagles quarterback being unfamiliar with the rules of overtime football during a regular season game, it was amusing to note how many of these now iconic NFL players actually thought the 1958 championship game could have ended in a tie. Sam Huff was walking off the field and mentally figuring out how the playoff shares would be divided when he first learned about the concept of sudden death.

The book misses many opportunities. The Giants had Tom Landry and Vince Lombardi on the same coaching staff, which strikes me worth a story line or two, but is not developed here. And Bowden makes some really odd choices I felt, perhaps reaching for a new angle on a frequently covered subject. For example, at the moment of the clinching touchdown the focus suddenly shifts to the amateur photographer who caught the moment Alan Ameche broke into the end zone.

Bowden acknowledges he spent some time reviewing the game film with Eagles coach Andy Reid, and while the background information gained there was probably helpful, I feel that experience could have been brought into the book more. What does a current NFL coach think of the level of play in the 50s? How did a mistake filled first half change into a beautifully played second half and overtime, as field conditions worsened?

If you are a football fan, you will not doubt enjoy the book, but it is certainly not in the same league with the author's own remarkable Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War

The 1958 NFL Championship Game is and always will be the starting point for any discussion about the birth of modern pro football. While some consider it the greatest game ever played, I think an argument can be made against that. Bowden recalls a list of the sloppy play that were part of this game. However, what is undoubtedly true is that this was the most important game in NFL history. Pro football was not the dominant sport and money making machine of today. Baseball still ruled the roost of professional sport. Bowden nicely weaves the elements that converged to give this game its importance -- growth of television in post-WWII America, a game that ran into prime time viewing hours so millions more than die-hard fans were tuning in to catch the end of the game, the first sudden death championship game in the NFL and the backdrop of the most important American city and the pantheon of sports, Yankee Stadium.

Bowden does a solid job, especially as he zeroes in on Raymond Berry and Johnny Unitas, the most unlikely of stars to emerge. However, I couldn't help feel that something was missing. I was left wanting more -- more detail, more context, more perspective. I felt like Bowden delivered the facts but a game of this magnitude and importance deserved more.

This is a solid book, certainly a quick read and well worth the investment. It certainly does match the magnitude of the game which it is covering, but is a great starting point for any fan of the NFL.

In recent times, using the adjective "best" in the title of a book about a sporting event has been used liberally. A golf match, the seventh game of the World Series and the NCAA basketball championship tilt have all received the designation as the greatest contest in the history of the sport. Mark Bowden's THE BEST GAME EVER casts its lot with the championship game celebrating its 50th anniversary this football season. The New York Giants and Baltimore Colts battled at Yankee Stadium in the first overtime game in football history. It was watched by millions of fans on their grainy black-and-white televisions, some who still recall the vision of Colts running back Alan Ameche plunging into the end zone to score the winning touchdown in sudden death overtime.

Bowden's title is ironic because, while it had a lasting impact on the National Football League, the championship game was more memorable for miscues than for quality. A crucial moment in the third quarter when the Giants made a goal line stand was the result of Ameche running the wrong play. But legends are built upon success, not failure. The game also marked the introduction of John Unitas and Raymond Berry to a nation of fans, unaware of their football talent. Unitas coolly led a drive in the fourth quarter to tie the game. Berry's 12 pass receptions are an NFL championship game record that stands today.

Though the game itself has been chronicled on many occasions, THE BEST GAME EVER recounts a number of details in a slightly different fashion. Using transcripts of the game's radio broadcasts, Bowden recreates some of the twists and turns that made the contest so memorable. Interspersed with the game details are biographical chapters of many of the players who dotted the rosters of the two teams. From Berry, Unitas and Sam Huff, to coaches Tom Landry, Weeb Ewbank and Vince Lombardi, the total number of participants ultimately enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame is 17.

Remembering this epic game 50 years after the fact, this reader is struck by some new details. When time expired and the teams were tied at 17, many of the players thought the game was over. Some began heading to the locker rooms only to be admonished by the officials that an overtime period would commence. Sudden death has become a staple of professional football, but the 1958 overtime struggle between the Colts and Giants was a first. Likewise, in reading Bowden's account, I learned that when television transmission was interrupted by a cable problem, the network, not wanting the 45 million viewers to miss any action, had one of their own run on the field to stop play. Both the NFL and the television networks have come a long way since December 28, 1958.

Whether it was the Colts-Giants game or another NFL contest that qualifies as the greatest ever in NFL history is not really the question. The game chronicled by Bowden changed professional football, and television captured that moment. That the images of 50 years ago remain with us today speaks volumes about the game, the players and the moment. Football fans will enjoy being reminded of all those as they read this enjoyable portrait of a great moment in pigskin history.

--- Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman

Bowden brings the setting and the game alive in a thrilling account of the game that launched modern football. Enough detail for a rabid football fan but enough human drama for a Sunday afternoon viewer. fascinating, funny, touching, makes you wish you'd seen it and knew the men that played it.

The Best Game Ever is a fairly good account of what is probably the most famous game in NFL history - the 1958 NFL Championship game where the Baltimore Colts defeated the New York Giants 23-17 in the NFL's first sudden death overtime game. The game pitted some of the greatest players of all time against one another such as Johnny Unitas and Raymond Berry of the Colts, and Frank Gifford and Sam Huff of the Giants. The game also sported three legendary coaches, Vince Lombardi on offense for the Giants, Tom Landry on defense for the Giants, and Weeb Ewbank, head coach of Baltimore who went on to win another seminal NFL Championship when his New York Jets upset his former team, the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.

As most who follow football closely know, this game is considered the launching point of the modern NFL because it occurred in the early years of television and at least the last part of the game was seen by an estimated 30 million people. After this game the popularity of professional football took off, particularly because the action is well suited for television viewing.

This book tells the story of the game mostly from the players' perspective, focusing somewhat more on the Baltimore Colts, particularly Johnny Unitas and Raymond Berry, who both had phenomenal performances in this game. But it also tells the story of other key players on both sides of the ball to greater or lesser degrees. It does a less stellar job of building the drama of the game, maybe because we already know the outcome. But overall it completely documents the game and the key turning points that lead to the eventual outcome, including Frank Gifford not making a first down on third and short that would have allowed the Giants to run out the clock to win the game, and the Unitas to Barry connection on an improvised play for a first down on the final drive in regulation to tie the game.

For a football fan this is certainly an enjoyable book and provides some insight into the game and the players, particularly Raymond Berry who gets the most coverage. While I wouldn't classify this as The Best Football Book Ever, it is well done and worth reading.

This book is an instant addition to the Sports Writing Hall of Fame. Bowden takes us back to an earlier time, a time when football as we now know it did not yet exist. He brings us to the game that might well mark the birth of today's NFL, and he captures the moment with uncanny clarity and style. He sets the stage by introducing us to the game as it was played before TV made it a weekly spectacle, when its players often had to hold second jobs in the off-season just to make ends meet, thus making them more accessible and somehow more real to fans. He introduces us to a group of dedicated men doing something they loved, and he shows us the old game through their eyes. His portrait of Raymond Berry is exquisite, helping me appreciate Berry's eventual term as head coach of the New England Patriots in my own time. Then he shows us The Game with a style that is detailed yet smooth and flowing. His account is riveting, even though we know the outcome from the start. Football, with so much going on in every play, is a sport made for TV, with its instant replay and multitude of camera angles. Describing it in writing is a tricky proposition that rarely rises above flat and boring, but Bowden pulls it off. He captures the grit, the pain, the excitement and the flow without ever losing sight of his larger theme. He gives us sportswriting at its best. Bowden had me wishing that someone had had the foresight to somehow tape the game as it was broadcast so we latter day fans could watch that epic game today. It's more than a little ironic that the TV broadcast is, as Bowden tells us, lost to history, but the radio broadcast was recorded and preserved. Nonetheless, Bowden brilliantly brings The Game back to life for our current generation. Bowden's book ranks with "Instant Replay" and "Ball Four" as my personal favorite sports books