The Best Game Ever

The NFL championship game that changed the history of football: a New York Times bestseller by the author of Black Hawk Down. Yankee Stadium, December 28, 1958. What was about to go down on this Sunday evening in front of sixty-four thousand fans and forty-five million home viewers-the largest viewership ever assembled for a live televised event-was the first sudden death overtime in NFL history. This one battle between the league's best offense, the Baltimore Colts, and the best defense, the New York Giants, would propel professional football from a moderately popular pastime into America's favorite sport. On the field and roaming the sidelines were seventeen future Hall of Famers, including Colts stars Johnny Unitas, Raymond Berry, and Gino Marchetti; and Giants greats Frank Gifford, Sam Huff; and assistant coaches Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry. But they were opposing teams in more ways than one. It was a contest between Baltimore blue-collars, many of whom worked off-season selling insurance or taking shifts at Bethlehem Steel, and the trendy New York glamour boys of splashy magazine ads and TV commercials, who mingled with the likes of politicians, Broadway stars, and even Ernest Hemingway.