Alan Ameche scores the winning touchdown.
Lenny Moore (24) provides the key block on Emlen Tunnell.
Johnny Unitas (19) watches.
The Giants had Charlie Conerly as their quarterback, and the biggest football star of the time, Frank Gifford, at running back. They were the 1st team to really make defense a priority, led by future Hall-of-Famers Sam Huff, Andy Robustelli and Emlen Tunnell. Two years earlier, they had destroyed the Chicago Bears in the Championship Game, 47-7.
The pre-renovation original Yankee Stadium, set up for football
But the Colts were on the rise. Their quarterback was Johnny Unitas. He had Raymond Berry to throw to, Lenny Moore in his backfield, and Jim Parker to block for him. All 4 would make the Hall of Fame. His defense was led by Hall-of-Famers Gino Marchetti and Art Donovan.
The 1st half was a bit sloppy, and didn't live up to the legend. Pat Summerall, future broadcasting legend, began the scoring with a field goal in the 1st quarter, putting the Giants up 3-0. In the 2nd quarter, Alan Ameche, who won the Heisman Trophy at the University of Wisconsin in 1954, scored a touchdown to put the Colts ahead. Unitas threw a touchdown pass to Berry, giving the Colts a 14-13 lead at the half.
In the 3rd quarter, Mel Triplett snuck the ball over the goal line to put the Giants back in it. Early in the 4th quarter, Conerly threw a touchdown pass to Gifford, giving the Giants a 17-14 lead. As the clock wound down, Unitas drove the Colts, but couldn't get them over. So Steve Myhra was sent in to kick a field goal as time expired. With the clock reading 0:00, the scoreboard read 17-17.
No NFL Championship Game had ever ended in a tie. Overtime was needed, for the 1st time in NFL history. (The League didn't institute overtime for the regular season until 1974.) The Giants won the toss, but couldn't score. Unitas led an inspiring drive, toward what would have been left field in The Stadium's baseball setup, which finally ended with Ameche scoring from the 1-yard line -- appropriately where Monument Park would later be in The Stadium's post-renovation period (1976-2008).
Bob Wolff, who had been in the same Stadium 2 years earlier to call Don Larsen's perfect game for the New York Yankees against the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1956 World Series, was at the microphone for NBC again, and had the call: "Unitas gives to Ameche... The Colts are the World Champions! Ameche scores!" He later said he was glad he didn't "bury the lead" by saying, "Ameche scores!" first.
This game had the largest TV audience in NFL history to that point, 45 million people. The fact that it was in New York, and involved a New York team, helped it loom large in the public consciousness. This was the game that launched the NFL on a path to becoming, at least in perception, more popular than Major League Baseball.
It made legends of the Colts, and Unitas in particular. He would go on to be recognized as the greatest quarterback of all time. It's been 62 years, and some people still think he is. And the Colts, playing in a city that didn't have a big college football team -- Morgan State University is a historically black school, the U.S. Naval Academy is a national school, and the University of Maryland is closer to Washington -- became known as the team of America's working class, an "America's Team" in a way that felt artificial when the Dallas Cowboys later called themselves that.
Johnny Unitas
It also became known as "The Greatest Game Ever Played." It has been noted that it would never have been called that had the Colts beaten, say, the Philadelphia Eagles. But it was the New York team that they beat, in New York City. And so, every so often, polls are taken that show this game as the "greatest." The most recent was in 2019, for the NFL's 100th Anniversary. In 1981, John Thorn left his comfort zone, baseball, and published Pro Football's 10 Greatest Games. He included this game as one of them.
The teams had a rematch in the 1959 NFL Championship Game. In those days, home field was rotated between the Eastern and Western Champions, and the Colts hosted it at Memorial Stadium, beating the Giants again.
It remains the longest game in New York Giants history.
*
December 28, 1958, as you may have guessed, was a Sunday. There were no more NFL games to be played. It was the off-season for baseball.
There was only 1 NBA game played that day: The Cincinnati Royals beat the Minneapolis Lakers, 120-116 at the Cincinnati Gardens. Jack Twyman of the Royals scored 32 to lead all players in this game. Bob "Slick" Leonard, later to coach the Indiana Pacers to 3 ABA Championships, led the Lakers with 20 points.
The Lakers moved to Los Angeles in 1960. The Royals moved to Kansas City, becoming the Kings, in 1972, and to Sacramento in 1985.
All of the NHL's "Original Six" were in action that day:
* The New York Rangers beat the Montreal Canadiens, 5-3 at the old Madison Square Garden. This was an anomaly, as the Canadiens were in the middle of a run of 5 straight Stanley Cups, and the Rangers were in a down period.
* The Detroit Red Wings, beat the Boston Bruins, 5-3 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.
* And the Chicago Black Hawks beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 4-3 at the Chicago Stadium. ("Black Hawks" was written as 2 words until 1986, when the team's original charter document was found, and it was discovered that "Blackhawks" was written as one word, and it has officially been so ever since.)
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