Does anyone recall 'The Greatest game ever played' '58 NFL Championship Balto/Giants

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I was reading about the details of this game , Colts led early 14-3 ball on the 1 yard line 1st and goal, somehow they don't score on 4 tries...

Giants come back lead 17-14 with the ball and just over 2 mins ,a 1st down would have sealed it, they end up punting, Balto takes over on its own 14.

Does anyone have ties or memories to this game?

There was no such thing as the 2 minute drill, Unitas invented it and that game was the start of it, the clock as I recall was not digital (not sure when that started)

HOF'er Gino Marchetti broke his ankle on the last play of reguation, refused to go to the locker room ,watched the O.T. from a stretcher on the sidelines.

30,000 people showed up at Balto's old Friendship Airport to greet the team, imagine 30,000 people back then, it must have been unheard of for 1958.

John Unitas earned $17,500 in 1958 :suomi:
 
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No actual memory, as I was born a year later, but I've seen highlights, with the Colts scoring the winning touchdown and the fans, already basically on top of the players, pouring into the end zone. Love seeing the films of old-time football, real grass, many times played on fields also used for baseball, dust flying, mud, not like that anymore, unfortunately.
 

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Yeah watched it in on a small screen black and white. Can still see Alan Ameche rumbling in.

Twas the birth of todays's NFL.
 

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Mr. Jones do you remember anything else?

Every NFL lifer, has seen Ameche scores 7,000 times minimum.
 

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The game winning play...

ameche58.gif
As Unitas handed off to Ameche, Mutscheller and Moore leveled Livingston and Tunnell, Alex Sandusky and George Preas ripped open a gigantic hole on the line, and Ameche barreled into the end zone, literally falling from his own momentum. The Colts had won 23-17. There was no need for the extra point.
"They couldn't have stopped him if we'd needed ten yards," said Unitas.
There was 8:15 gone in the overtime when the Colts won the game, but many feel the
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Giants actually lost when Myhra kicked the game-tying field goal with seven seconds left in regulation.
"I remember standing next to Charlie Conerly on the sideline, watching the Colts drive down the field near the end of regulation," said Gifford. "He was really beat up, and he turned to me and said, 'I hope this doesn't go into overtime, because I can't go any more.' We had been driven to the limit so many times late in the year, I guess we just reached a breaking point there."
"We were completely spent," agreed Howell.
The Colts, younger and hungrier, were still lively. "At the beginning of overtime," said Moore, "it was almost like the opening kickoff. I had so much energy. I was fresh as a daisy. I could have played for three more hours."
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No doubt Unitas, who was so brilliant in those last two drives (and who won the MVP award originally destined for Conerly), could have too.
"They were just giving us certain things," Unitas said, "and we were taking them. Berry was working back there on [Carl] Karilivacz, I believe it was, deep on his outside, and then we'd come back inside and work on a linebacker. They were just leaving it there, so we kept going back to it, taking advantage of it. We could just as easily have gone to the other side, but when you've got something like that going, you don't just give it up.
"We were also beating the linebacker, [Harland] Svare. We'd beat him deep...go behind him...and then we'd throw it in front of him next.
"Sam Huff was concerned about that little quick slant-in on the weakside. He was trying to help Svare and Karilivacz. But the should never have gotten out of the middle. If you can take care of your own responsibilities first, and then go back and help there too, fine, but he couldn't do both things at the same time. He never should have gotten so far out of his position. When he did that, he just left open the big play for Ameche [the back-breaking 23-yard trap.]
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"A defense always gives you something," Unitas said, "Any defense. You just have to pick and scratch until you find it."
The Giants, of course, didn't have just any defense. But Unitas wasn't just any quarterback.
A lot of quarterbacks can throw long. Unitas was one of the very few who could pass long. And he won with his head.
"The man was a genius," said Huff. "I never saw a quarterback that good on those two drives."
"I'll tell you," said Johnny Sample, a Colts defensive back in 1958 who also later had to play against Unitas, "he scared grown men silly just by taking the snap and looking your way."
 

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I think WILHIEM was at the game he was about 30 at that time....

must have been a gret game to watch
 

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I was only 8 but was a Colt fan.I seem to remember the Giants claiming they got a bad spot on their last drive which would have given them a first down and enable them to run out the clock.That Colt drive and Johnny U's play on that last drive were unbeleivable.
 

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Johnny Sample and Johnny Unitas involved in both this game and Super Bowl III, nice trivia question.
 

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