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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Lukewarm retelling of often tall story
Mark Bowden has written some amazing and riveting works of non-fiction and would certainly rate in the top five of anyone today but this work really does not do his prior great writing justice. Basically ... Read More
Rating: - Good Look at Turning Point in History of the NFL
I enjoyed reading this book about a key turning point in the history of the NFL. Once the college game was more popular, but starting around the time of this game the NFL took over the nation's interest. While ... Read More
Rating: - Enjoyable portrait of a great moment in pigskin history
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Good Stuff
There were lots of inside things in the book. I greatly enjoyed it. It also arrived very prompt.
Rating: - one for the ages...
Bowden always delivers. This is a quick read of the '58 NFL Championship Game. It's like watching a documentary of the game on ESPN Classic. A little game action then switch to a little background on some of the colorful ... Read More