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

· Brilliance Audio · Narrated by Phil Gigante
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6 hr 4 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook

On December 28, 1958, the New York Giants and Baltimore Colts met under the lights of Yankee Stadium for that season’s NFL Championship game. Football, growing in popularity amid America’s post-war economic boom, was still greatly over-shadowed by the country’s favored pastime—baseball—but the 1958 championship proved to be the turning point for pro football.

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.

Played on a freezing Sunday evening in front of 64,000 fans and an estimated forty-five million television viewers around the country—at that time the largest crowd to have ever watched a football game—the championship would become the first sudden-death contest in NFL history. With two minutes left in regulation, Baltimore had possession deep in its own territory, and the ball in the hands of the still unproven quarterback Johnny Unitas.

The Best Game Ever is a brilliant portrait of how a single game changed the history of American sports.

On December 28, 1958, the New York Giants and Baltimore Colts met under the lights of Yankee Stadium for that season’s NFL Championship game. Football, growing in popularity amid America’s post-war economic boom, was still greatly over-shadowed by the country’s favored pastime—baseball—but the 19...

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About the author

Mark Bowden has been a reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer for twenty-one years and has won many national awards for his writing. He is the author of "Black Hawk Down," "Bringing the Heat," "Doctor Dealer", "Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw." and, more recently, The Finish: "The Killing of Osama bin Laden", and Hue 1968: A Turning point of the American war in Vietnam. Bowden has also written for Talk, Men's Journal, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone and Playboy, among others. The original series of articles which became "Black Hawk Down" earned him the Overseas Press Club's Hal Boyle Award, and made him a finalist for the NBA in nonfiction. Phil Gigante has narrated over 70 audiobooks including Audie Award winner The Dark Highlander, Savage Season, and The Defector. He is also an actor, director and producer with over 20 years experience in theatre, film, television, and radio. Based in Chicago for many years, he is currently the artistic director of Gigantic Productions and Little Giant Children's Theatre.
Mark Bowden has been a reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer for twenty-one years and has won many national awards for his writing. He is the author of "Black Hawk Down," "Bringing the Heat," "Doctor Dealer", "Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw." and, more recently, The Finis...

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Narrated by Phil Gigante