The Best Game Ever

THE BEST GAME EVER: GIANTS VS. COLTS, 1958, AND THE BIRTH OF THE MODERN NFL; Mark Bowden; New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008; 239pgs. Nonfiction.

Most sports fans have favorite plays or games, but Mark Bowden argues convincingly for this pro football contest as number one in this fine volume of sports history. Bowden is a Colts fan and it is hard not to take his side in this book with its beguiling portraits of Raymond Berry, the guy with indifferent natural talent who studied his way into the record books, and Johnny Unitas and his nearly frightening ability to predict what would happen on the other side of the line of scrimmage. Even knowing how the game will turn out hardly lessens the suspense as the Colts, down three with scant minutes to go, drive towards field goal range and the first Sudden Death playoff in football history. But the greatest delight of this well-written book is in its stories and player profiles: Raymond Berry scouting the field before the game to find the wet and icy patches where his defenders might slip; NBC sending an employee onto the field in a fake drunken state when they lost their feed during the waning moments of the game and needed time to plug back in, and the Catholic novitiate where the nuns, forbidden to watch the game, draped a blanket over the TV and listened. In those days, pro football played a distant second fiddle to baseball in the hearts of American fans, and future Hall of Famers worked in steel mills and as insurance agents to supplement their skimpy football checks. The championship game of 1958 changed all that and Bowden tells the story oh so well.

LW