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Title: The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL
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Manufacturer: Atlantic Monthly Press
List Price: $23.00
Our Price: $13.96
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| The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL by Atlantic Monthly Press The Raymond Berry Biography in Disguise | What you have here is not so much a book about the game but rather some feather duster treatment of a few of the people who played in it ... and a whole lot about Raymond Berry which, combined with the Epilogue, constitute the only redeeming features of the book.
You will read about John Unitas but there are certainly better books about him. You will read about Sam Huff, but oddly in this volume you will not read a word about the 1960 documentary narrated by Walter Cronkite called "The Violent World of Sam Huff" which will tell you more about the player than anything you'll find between the pages of The Best Game Ever. You'll find out about the tenacious kid who took a lucky picture of the final score in overtime but who really cares? And you'll soak a little in the late 1950's nostalgia assuming you are interested in how many people watched television back then.
To tell the truth, if it weren't for the Epilogue featuring some transcribed conversations among Colt veterans this would be a 1.5 star book. And without the Berry story, there would be virtually no book at all. The author handles language well enough. He just didn't produce anything close to The Best Sports Book Ever. | | The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL by Atlantic Monthly Press What a magnificent book! | | 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. | | The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL by Atlantic Monthly Press A Playbook of Mixed Success | The 1958 NFL championship game between the Colts and Giants has been chronicled and debated so much over the past 50 years that another book would seem to be past redundant.
But author Mark Bowden runs a fly route past the typical coverage and places the contest in a context of the NFL's evolution in the decade after the Second World War and relives the era through sketches of the participants, some who remain familiar names and others whose glory had faded like the print on the pages of sports sections in old newspapers.
The book is an nice primer to new fans and a decent stride down the sidelines to paydirt for those who have read extensively on this classic contest.
| | The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL by Atlantic Monthly Press Don't Believe All the Legends! | Raymond Emmett Berry did not have one leg shorter than the other; his father was NEVER called "Ray" by anyone except this author; and he went to Schreiner Junior College because he weighed 151 pounds his senior season in high school and, more importantly, because former Paris Junior College head football coach Chena Gilstrap had just moved to Kerrville as the new Schreiner head coach.
Coach Gilstrap was a life-long friend of both Raymond Emmett--his family name and his "Paris, Texas" name--and his father, Mark Raymond Berry, who was always called "Raymond," "Coach," or "Mr. Berry" by everyone who knew him. Another life-long friend was Gene Stallings--the Texas A&M, Alabama, St. Louis Cardinals coach--who replaced Raymond as the left end at Paris High School after Raymond graduated.
Why couldn't the author just ask Raymond to clarify some of those "legends" and errors instead of just copying them from some old newspaper story? Although they distract from the story--especially if you are Raymond Emmett's cousin, revered his father, and your brother played for Coach Gilstrap at UT Arlington--the story of the game itself is worth every minute of this read. Although I'm obviously somewhat biased, it was certainly the greatest NFL football game I ever saw! | | The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL by Atlantic Monthly Press Product Description | On December 28, 1958, the New York Giants and Baltimore Colts met under the lights of Yankee Stadium for the NFL Championship game. Played in front of sixty-four thousand fans and millions of television viewers around the country, the game would be remembered as the greatest in football history. 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. An estimated forty-five million viewers—at that time the largest crowd to have ever watched a football game—tuned in to see what would become the first sudden-death contest in NFL history. It was a battle of the league's best offense—the Colts—versus its best defense—the Giants. And it was a contest between the blue-collar Baltimore team versus the glamour boys of the Giants squad. The Best Game Ever is a brilliant portrait of how a single game changed the history of American sport. Published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the championship, it is destined to be a sports classic. |
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