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The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL |  | Author: Mark Bowden
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Category: Book
List Price: $23.00
Buy New: $3.39
as of 7/30/2010 23:43 PDT details
You Save: $19.61 (85%)
New (14) Used (17) from $2.55
Seller: TSCBOOKS
Rating:  32 reviews
Sales Rank: 514543
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 240
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.8 x 1.1
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.332640973
ASIN: B001K3IJ0E
Publication Date: May 5, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | Hardcover - The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL | | • | Paperback - The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL | | • | Audible Audio Edition - The Best Game Ever: Colts vs. Giants, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL | | • | Hardcover - The Best Game Ever: Giants Vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL | | • | Preloaded Digital Audio Player - The Best Game Ever: Giants Vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL [With Headphones] | | • | Paperback - The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL | | • | Kindle Edition - The Best Game Ever | | • | Audio Cassette - The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL | | • | Audio CD - The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL | | • | Audio CD - The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL | | • | MP3 CD - The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL | | • | MP3 CD - The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL |
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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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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 32
 A GREAT BOOK ABOUT THE BEST GAME EVER March 14, 2010
COOL JEWEL (MACEDONIA, OHIO USA)
THIS IS A WELL WRITTEN AND ACURATE ACCOUNT OF THE 1958 NFL TITLE GAME. WE ARE GIVEN SOME GAME ACTION ALONG WITH SOME BITS AND STORIES ABOUT SOME OF THE BETTER KNOWN PLAYERS ON BOTH TEAMS. AMONG THE PLAYERS COVERED IN DEPTH ARE RAY BERRY, UNITAS AND HUFF. BOTH TEAMS HAD SEVERAL HALL OF FAME PLAYERS AND COACHES. MANY OTHERS ARE MENTIONED AND INTERVIEWED SUCH AS DONOVAN, MARCHETTI AND GIFFORD. THEIR INSIGHT AND INFO FIT RIGHT IN WITH ACTION COVERED IN THE BOOK. THIS WAS THE VERY FIRST NFL GAME TO EVER GO INTO OVERTIME AND SEVERAL OF THE PLAYERS DID NOT KNOW THAT THE GAME WOULD CONTINUE AFTER THE 4TH PERIOD ENDED. THE COLTS WON THE GAME WITH A TOUCHDOWN INSTEAD OF AN EASY FIELD GOAL BECAUSE THEIR KICKER, STEVE MYRA WAS VERY SHAKY. I FOUND THE INTERVIEW WITH SAM HUFF ONE OF HIGHLIGHTS FOR HE FELT THAT UNITAS COULD READ HIS MIND AND KNEW WHICH DEFENSE HE WOULD CALL. I ALSO FELT THE STORY ABOUT RAYMOND BERRY WAS INTERESTING AND HIS WORK ETHICS WERE AMONG THE BEST EVER. THIS GAME PUT PRO FOOTBALL ON THE MAP AND HELPED CREATE A LARGER FOLLOWING. THE AUTHOR MARK BOWDEN DOES A GOOD JOB. I HAVE READ OTHER BOOKS ABOUT THIS GAME AND I CONSIDER THIS ONE OF THE BETTER ONES. VERY RECOMMENDED.
Master of the two-minute drill January 14, 2010
Neil The Unreel (MD)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Bowden's book puts the spotlight on wide receiver, Raymond Berry as the unsung hero of the 1958 Championship. The book is more than about the game or the weeks leading up to the game that transformed football into America's number one pastime. As a former sports reporter and forever Baltimore Colts fan (there are no Colts anymore since they left Baltimore!!!) I relate and love the job that Bowden did with this book. Finer details emerge such as: Berry pioneering contact lenses when he played, Berry's scouting and use of game films which are a staple today and weren't back then, a teenage photographer waits and gets the moment the Horse, Alan Ameche crashes through the line and into the end zone, are all in Bowden's book. The build up to the game and the aftermath on the viewing audience set the 1958 game apart from any that were ever played. A must for any sports fan. Bowden tackles a wide range of subjects from a military operation that goes bad in "Black Hawk Down" to a junkie that finds more than a million dollars in "Finders Keepers." This book not only shows his range, but his talent as a writer.
Sheer enjoyment of the sport October 14, 2009
John Galluzzo (Weymouth, Massachusetts)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
Great book but an irritating issue with the audio CD edition September 10, 2009
plach (New Jersey)
Other reviewers have written the many positives of this book. I echo those sentiments. I love this "golden age" of the NFL and the book captures this period very well.
However, I have to provide a negative comment about the audio version of this book. While the reader's voice is clear and he adds attempted accents and voice inflections to make the listening even more pleasurable, he really falls short with the pronunciation of some of the game's stars. While not a BIG deal, this does take away some of the enjoyment in listening to the book. A simple call to either the Giants or Colts offices or to some older sports writers(or, even, the book's author) could have very simply confirmed how to pronounce the players mentioned in the book. Names like Katcavage (read as KAT'ka vige)and Marchetti (the "ch" read as the ch in cheddar)were major stars in this era. Hard to imagine getting these names wrong. But, every time I start to listen to this book in the car, I immediately get into the book and then ... it happens. The audio makes mention that the ball carrier on the current play being described is stopped by KAT' ka vige!! Immediately, I tighten my grip on the steering wheel as I struggle to keep the car on the road. I then realize (once again) that the book is going to have these audio references for the rest of the book and I start anticipating them. I then start to wonder if the Colt's QB is going to be mentioned as Johnny "un E tas" or some other odd pronunciation! Some may feel this is picky but, I've listened to this book three times (I love the period and there's not much on audio to satisfy my interest) and I still react to the audio in this way. It is distracting. I still love the book as written but, as spoken? Not so much.
Why can't all readers research their books before recording; seems only right to get it right. If I were the author, such a reading would be a real disappointment.
 Great Account of the Era and the Game May 23, 2009
Neil Bacon (Williamsburg, VA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Bowden brings the setting and the game alive in a thrilling account of the game that launched modern football. Enough detail for a rabid football fan but enough human drama for a Sunday afternoon viewer. fascinating, funny, touching, makes you wish you'd seen it and knew the men that played it.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 32
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