Slice of Life: A game that brings to life Giant memories

The following column ran in this same week four years ago, the last time the Giants were in the Super Bowl. Then, as now, the Giants faced the Patriots. The only real difference is that this year I won’t be able to call my dad after the game, as he lost his battle with cancer a week before Christmas. My friend, Jack Sherwood, Iwo Jima Purple Heart veteran and avid Giants fan, also left this earth just two weeks ago. Jack would have turned 92 and celebrated his 62nd wedding anniversary on Super Bowl Sunday. This column is dedicated to their memory.

Don’t be alarmed. What follows is not a sports column. I am not now, nor do I feel that I will ever be qualified to write a bona fide sports column. But the current rise of the post-season New York Giants has rekindled some long dormant memories of a bygone era. If you are not a football fan this would be a good time to flip to another, more exciting part of the paper like the classifieds or the public permit notices. It is with your indulgence and a nod to John Feinstein, Bob Lipsyte and Pete Vecsey that I present herewith a “slice of life” from the early 1960s.

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Pro football was very different half a century ago. It was a time when there were only 12 or 14 teams, two divisions and one championship. Professional athletes had day jobs in the off-season and local games were blacked out on television to encourage attendance at the stadium. The New York “football Giants” were the darlings of the city. Head coach Jim Lee Howell along with offensive coach Vince Lombardi and defensive coach Tom Landry took the Giants to the NFL championship in 1956. During the next seven years (four under Howell and three under Allie Sherman), the Giants were conference champs five times, yet nearly a quarter century would pass before they captured another title.

It was Allie Sherman’s Giants that stand out most vividly for me. The rosters included the legends of Giant lore: Tittle, Gifford, Shofner, Robustelli, Summerall, Huff, Rote and Katcavage, just to name a few. The games were broadcast on CBS television and WNEW radio. I can’t remember the names of the broadcasters for the televised games, probably because we always turned down the sound and turned up the radio so we could hear Marty Glickman and Al DeRogatis.

What a team! Glickman’s emotional and vivid play-by-play coupled with DeRogatis’ flawless and precise technical insights even prompted fans who actually attended the game to bring their transistor radios. Once, on the way to Yankee Stadium, I wondered aloud what kind of reception we would get at the game. “What do you think?” my Dad said. “Are we some kind of dignitaries or something?”

“No, Dad,” I replied. “I mean on the radio.”

“Oh.”

At my house in suburban New Jersey, we were Giant fans and Sundays in the fall were special.

The smells of a pancake or waffle breakfast would beckon us down to the table early in the morning and then it was off to church. After coming home, we would read about three newspapers’ worth of funnies and sports and then, depending on where the Giants were playing, either watch the game or go out and pretend we were Y.A. Tittle or Joe Morrison until the game came on. By this time, the house was full of the irresistible aromas of a roast beef, pork or leg of lamb, which Mom would have all ready at just the right time … halftime.

Our early afternoon meal would generally extend into the third quarter and there was not much conversation, except during commercials. Often in mid-fork, my Dad would quickly outstretch both arms in a command of silence as we heard the roar of the radio crowd. We would listen. We would dare not speak. Win or lose, it was the post-game retreat to the den that would round out a perfect Sunday.

Mom would knit, Dad would do the Times crossword and we four kids would sprawl out on the floor with a paper or a board game. Soon it was time for “College Bowl,” a knowledge game that would pit one college against another. Then, our favorite, “Wild Kingdom.” Our whole family loved it. A grandfatherly type named Marlin Perkins was the host and each week he would recount another trial in the exciting profession of animal conservation. His assistant was Jim.

It always seemed like Jim was the one who was doing all the dangerous work like circumcising rhinos or performing pedicures on lions while ol’ Marlin checked out the action from a goodly distance away, safe behind a big rock or tree.

After that it was “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color” and then, to bed.

The morning after the Giants’ victory over the Packers five years ago, I called my Dad, then 82 and living in Virginia. We talked about the game and this week’s upcoming contest and drifted into memory lane for just a little while. He told me of listening to the “sneaker game”; the 1956 championship in New York that was won because the Giants were better at running on the frozen turf with sneakers than the Bears were. Twenty-two years earlier at the Polo Grounds, when my Dad was nine, the Giants had done the same thing in similar conditions against the same team and the same coach.

So this Sunday I’ll watch every minute of the game, thinking of my Dad, win or lose. What could make it better? Only Glickman and DeRo.