The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL

Bostonians like me are as parochial as sports fans get. In fact, we're sometimes downright myopic. "Who cares about the Giants and Colts? Well," we'd think, "Raymond Berry played in the 1958 championship game, and he later coached the New England Patriots. Maybe I'll read it." The beauty of Bowden's treatment of the game - of course debatable as to its superlative (American publishing marketing working overtime) - is that it allows the football purist to read all the way through cheering for neither side in particular, but for the game and the sport itself. I wasn't alive when the game was played, and didn't have a rooting interest when I picked up the book. I just wanted a good read on a favored topic, and got just that.

This book is an instant addition to the Sports Writing Hall of Fame. Bowden takes us back to an earlier time, a time when football as we now know it did not yet exist. He brings us to the game that might well mark the birth of today's NFL, and he captures the moment with uncanny clarity and style. He sets the stage by introducing us to the game as it was played before TV made it a weekly spectacle, when its players often had to hold second jobs in the off-season just to make ends meet, thus making them more accessible and somehow more real to fans. He introduces us to a group of dedicated men doing something they loved, and he shows us the old game through their eyes. His portrait of Raymond Berry is exquisite, helping me appreciate Berry's eventual term as head coach of the New England Patriots in my own time. Then he shows us The Game with a style that is detailed yet smooth and flowing. His account is riveting, even though we know the outcome from the start. Football, with so much going on in every play, is a sport made for TV, with its instant replay and multitude of camera angles. Describing it in writing is a tricky proposition that rarely rises above flat and boring, but Bowden pulls it off. He captures the grit, the pain, the excitement and the flow without ever losing sight of his larger theme. He gives us sportswriting at its best. Bowden had me wishing that someone had had the foresight to somehow tape the game as it was broadcast so we latter day fans could watch that epic game today. It's more than a little ironic that the TV broadcast is, as Bowden tells us, lost to history, but the radio broadcast was recorded and preserved. Nonetheless, Bowden brilliantly brings The Game back to life for our current generation. Bowden's book ranks with "Instant Replay" and "Ball Four" as my personal favorite sports books

Appropriately dedicated to David Halberstam, "The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL" seamlessly blends a gripping journalistic description of the thrilling National Football League championship game with riveting personal stories of participants and witnesses. Author Mark Bowen clearly outlines the background and significance of the contest; he does so with both admiration and considerable affection for the men who fought on the semi-frozen Yankee Stadium turf that late December afternoon and evening. If Bowen extols the performance of the favored Giants, he reserves his greatest warmth for the underdog Baltimore Colts. Seventeen members of the NFL Hall of Fame participated in the contest, "the greatest concentration of football talent ever assembled for a single game." Bowen provides compelling portraits of some of the sport's iconic figures: Vince Lombardi, Sam Huff, Tom Landry, Frank Gifford, Art "Fatso" Donovan, Lenny Moore and Johnny Unitas. However, Raymond Berry, the self-made wide receiver for the Colts holds a special place in Bowen's heart. Undersized and undervalued, Berry quietly revolutionized the sport with his meticulous preparation and unceasing quest for information. As the Colts marched down the field for the winning touchdown, the public address announcer's repetitious statement, "Unitas to Berry," exemplified two emerging stars summoning peak performances during moments of unbearable pressure. "The Best Game Ever" contains marvelous anecdotes about the game and its witnesses. Bowen informs us that some of the players did not know about the "sudden death" rule, designed to produce a winner in a championship game. He gives life to the most famous photograph of the day, one taken by a teenager who gained access to an end-zone perspective by pushing wheelchair-bound veterans to one end of the field. As well, Bowen expertly analyzes the nascent confluence of television and football, a relationship nurtured by prescient NFL commissioner Bert Bell. Ardent fans of professional football and students of American culture will find something to cherish in "The Best Game Ever."

Mr. Bowden does an excellent job.. I was growing up in Baltimore at the time. He accurately captures things I remember, and gives enormous (and fun) incite into the rest of the story.

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.