Two books were published last year about the 1958 National Football League championship game between the New York Giants and the Baltimore Colts. This was the contest that, according to the subtitle of The Glory Game, “changed football forever” and has since been called, by popular consensus, the Greatest Game Ever Played. It took place on December 28, 1958, and Baltimore defeated New York, 23-17.
With all due respect to the authors and the late Johnny Unitas, the famous Baltimore quarterback, they’re off by two months. The Greatest Game Ever Played took place in 1958, all right, but on October 11, not December 28, and in Philadelphia, not New York. And Princeton defeated the University of Pennsylvania, 20-14.
I know this because I was there, at Franklin Field on the Penn campus, in Section SF, Row 20, Seat 16, and I know all that because, as I write, I am looking at the ticket, now in slight disrepair but encased in laminate, on my desk. This was the first football game of any consequence I witnessed in my life–very nearly the first public spectacle I ever saw–but it is also a kind of personal milestone that, for whatever reason, still resonates 50 years later.
The reason, I suspect, is that the very fact of attending the game at all was exotic–by my standards, at any rate. I have no idea why my father, a Penn graduate but no sports fan, chose to go to this particular game, or why he decided to take me along; indeed, the whole episode was so uncharacteristic–my father was, to put it politely, deeply reserved and not especially fond of excursions with children–that it has always seemed to me far more consequential than it actually was.
Unfortunately, the mystery will never be solved, since nearly all the principals are long since dead: my father; his younger brother, another Penn graduate who was resident in Philadelphia and obtained the tickets; and a favorite cousin of mine, who accompanied us and sat beside me, and provides a footnote. Since very nearly everyone in my family had attended the University of Pennsylvania, my contrarian instincts impelled me to root for Princeton. This scandalized my cousin, who taunted me throughout the game with Princeton’s initials (PU), but the gods are not mocked: Ten years later he graduated from Princeton, not Penn.
In 1958 the journey by automobile from the Maryland suburbs of Washington to West Philadelphia was not by interstate highway, and I recall being awakened in darkness to get on old Maryland Route 29 (and, later, the Pulaski Highway) for the slow, fitful progress through downtown Baltimore, across the Susquehanna River, into Wilmington and up the picturesque industrial stretch of the Delaware River–lit by the flames of the Sun Oil refineries–south of Philadelphia.
Franklin Field is a venerable stadium, seemed venerable at the time, and struck my eight-year-old eyes as being filled to capacity. But I recall my father surveying the crowd and asking his brother, half in jest, “Where is everybody?” He had attended Penn football games as long ago as the 1920s, when not only every available seat was filled but a moveable section of bleachers was installed on the 33rd Street side of the stadium.
I remember two things, in particular. First, the speed of the game was impressive–especially by today’s televised standards–and the field was a churning sea of action, with orange stripes (Princeton), black jerseys (Pennsylvania), and referees in knickers. This was also an experimental season in college football scoring, when a post-touchdown kick yielded two extra points, not one.
I recall being impressed–even moved, if ever so slightly–by one ritual toward the end of the game. When it was obvious that Penn was destined to lose, spectators on our side of the stadium began singing “Hail, Pennsylvania” and waving mournful handkerchiefs in the air. It was a cold day, gray and slightly windy, and the effect was suitably elegiac.
Above all, however, I remember the Princeton quarterback, Fred Tiley, who was also captain of the team. I am in no position to judge how distinguished he was in the long history of Ivy League football, but on that day he seemed to be everywhere on the field, effortlessly taking the hikes, maneuvering skillfully to the left and right, throwing the occasional exquisite completed pass.
Not long ago, on a whim, I decided that he might like to know that somebody, somewhere remembered his sterling performance on that day. Fred Tiley is now an orthopedic surgeon in Oregon, and I’m pleased to report that my tentative email yielded a friendly telephone call and long reminiscence about the details of the game. It may not have been the Greatest Game Ever Played, I told him, but it certainly was the Greatest Game I Ever Saw.
PHILIP TERZIAN
