Gerry Sandusky, sportscaster for WBAL television, is the son of John Sandusky, not Alex Sandusky. The television broadcast of the 1958 National Football League championship game between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants has been lost to history, but the radio broadcast still exists.
There were more mistakes in that game, Sandusky said, than there were in the much-maligned Super Bowl V between the Colts and the Dallas Cowboys. Was I really supposed to be learning all this sports stuff at the Maryland Historical Society?
Well, there I was Monday night, in a room filled with fans of the old Baltimore Colts. I learned that Sandusky has had a dickens of a time convincing people he's the son of John Sandusky, who was a line coach for the Colts, and not Alex Sandusky, who played guard. Gerry Sandusky said some people have even gotten downright indignant when he's insisted he's Gerry, son-of-John-not-Alex.
The star of the evening was supposed to be Mark Bowden, author of the recently released The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL. But with retired Baltimore Colts Art Donovan, Ordell Braase and Jim Mutscheller sharing a panel with Bowden, the author found his thunder was stolen a bit.
Donovan, Braase and Mutscheller all played in that '58 game, which Bowden decided to make the topic of his latest work of nonfiction. Bowden has quite an author's resume: Doctor Dealer, Bringing the Heat, Finders Keepers, Road Work, Guests of the Ayatollah, Killing Pablo and - probably the most famous - Black Hawk Down. (His next book will be a novel set in 18th-century Pennsylvania. Go figure.) Most of those in attendance directed their questions toward the former Colts, but they were quick to put the focus back on Bowden, praising his work.
"The author did an outstanding job with Raymond Berry," Braase said.
Braase might have been understating the matter. Editors at Sports Illustrated thought so much of Bowden's portrait of Berry that they made it their selection for an excerpt from Bowden's book that was reprinted in the magazine. And for a Raymond Berry fan like me, Bowden's superb writing and revelations about the Hall of Fame receiver were almost heaven-sent.
When I was a kid, it's possible I could have been convinced there were three more sacred words in the English language than "Unitas to Berry," but it would have taken brass knuckles brandished by a guy named Bubba the Violator to do it. For me, those were the three most sacred words in the English language, and the four most sacred were "Unitas to Berry, TOUCHDOWN!"
