Greatest Game

Over the past three decades, some of the greatest moments in pro football history have aired on NBC.From the New York Jets' startling upset of the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, to the Dolphins' dramatic overtime win over Kansas City on Christmas Day in the 1971 playoffs, to perhaps the greatest game in league history, the 1981 AFC divisional playoff match between San Diego and Miami, when a gimpy Kellen Winslow seemingly willed San Diego to a 41-38...

IT WAS 90 YEARS AGO today that American boxer Jack Johnson knocked out Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia to become the first black man to win the heavyweight championship of the world.OK, so I'm a sucker for anniversaries. Of all kinds. Sporting events, political events, entertainment happenings, social issues. Put me on the game show "Jeopardy" with a crack at an anniversaries category, and I'd probably run it.The Johnson-Burns fight had sporting and social significance. Johnson didn't just deliver some smarting blows to Burns' head to knock him out in the 14th round to become the first black heavyweight champion.

NOTEworthy Day:One quarterback to another -- John Unitas sent Jim Harbaugh a thank-you note for presenting him the game ball after the Ravens beat the Colts. A fine gesture all-around and one we at first thought PR director Kevin Byrne might have prompted.Our Heisman Trophy votes, without apology or explanation, went to Michael Bishop, Ricky Williams and Cade McNown. Baltimore Colts Hall of Famers Unitas, Lenny Moore, Raymond Berry, Jim Parker, Art Donovan and Gino Marchetti will be involved in the coin toss ceremonies at the Super Bowl, marking the 40th anniversary of "The Greatest Game Ever Played."

It was Ordell Braase's desire that the winners of what was proclaimed "The Greatest Game Ever Played" would return home one more time to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Baltimore Colts' most momentous attainment. To him, it's comparable to an old army regiment falling into muster to recall and relive what it was like to be there during an epic battle -- this one of friendly strife -- that produced an identity no other group of men ever approached, because what they were doing had never been done before.

When you're having a bad night and want to put your worries away, just fire up one up from about 50 feet out and win the game.That's what Bakari Ward did last night to give No. 10 Arundel (13-3) a 68-67 victory over No. 7 Broadneck (14-2) in Cape St. Claire.Sean Fairbanks grabbed the rebound off a missed free throw by Eric Elston on the front end of a one-and-one with four seconds left, and his outlet pass to Ward was about 15 feet out.Ward, the county's leading scorer (22-point average), was held scoreless through three periods mainly by Johnny Williams and had only nine points before the incredible shot.

News of the dayThe players and owners yesterday agreed to meet with federal mediators in an attempt to settle the walkout.Management negotiator Richard Ravitch said he would meet next week with Labor Secretary Robert Reich. Donald Fehr, head of the Major League Baseball Players Association, said the union would speak with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service during the weekend.The sides met for two hours but reported no progress in solving the work stoppage.Quote"Baseball must be the greatest game in the world because it has survived all the idiots who have run it over the years."

THE COLTS-GIANTS championship football game of 1958, was "the greatest game ever played," but the game that was played 25 years ago yesterday may have been even more important.At least in two regards.That game was Super Bowl III. The Colts were the National Football League champions and the New York Jets were the champions of the relatively new American Football League. Most sports writers and fans believed the AFL was not quite major league. The NFL champion had won Super Bowls I and II. The Colts were favored over the Jets by 16 1/2 points on Jan. 12, 1969.

Was it the greatest college basketball game ever played?That was the question being asked moments after Christian Laettner's 16-foot jump shot beat the overtime buzzer and enabled Duke to beat Kentucky, 104-103, in the NCAA East Regional final Saturday night at the Spectrum in Philadelphia.The shot by Laettner, which came after he caught a 75-foot inbounds pass from Grant Hill, followed an even more sensational 14-footer by Wildcats guard Sean Woods with 2.2 seconds to play. Woods drove around Bobby Hurley and threw in a one-handed bank shot over Laettner.

Reading Time, Two Minutes:Happy 34th anniversary of "The Greatest Game Ever Played."If the Baltimore Colts' 23-17 victory over the New York Giants for the NFL championship in raw, windy Yankee Stadium in sudden death was the best, as Sports Illustrated writer Tex Maule decreed back in 1958, then Saturday night's 5-5 tie between the Washington Capitals and Philadelphia Flyers at the Capital Centre is a nominee for "The Greatest Game You Never Saw."It's rare, almost unique, when Home Team Sports doesn't carry a home game of the Caps.

SORRY, Colts fans. That wasn't the greatest game ever played. It was the greatest game ever played in football, but the greatest game ever played in sports was 40 years ago today. It took place at the Polo Grounds in New York, and the Giants won the National League pennant over the Dodgers, 5-4.Bobby Thompson, of course, won it with a homer off Ralph Branca, while announcer Russ Hodges shouted, "The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! . . ." It was a shout heard 'round the world (as we knew it then)

The image did not add up in Raymond Berry's mind. There he was, sharing a moment of purest fulfillment with his Baltimore Colts teammates as they left Yankee Stadium on Dec. 28, 1958. World champions! They could call themselves that after beating the New York Giants in a tense overtime before a huge national television audience. And yet, there stood National Football League commissioner Bert Bell, quietly weeping. "I didn't comprehend why, but the memory stuck with me," Berry said recently from his home in Tennessee.

News item: The Ravens could clinch a playoff berth before they take the field for today's late-afternoon game against the Jacksonville Jaguars if the New England Patriots lose their 1 p.m. season finale in Buffalo. My take: That would be nice because there are several banged-up Ravens players who would look good relaxing on the bench all afternoon, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Related news item: Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi is expected to miss today's game against the Bills, and defensive end Richard Seymour is out. My take: Losing two key defensive players would make it that much tougher to win on the road, but I agree with John Harbaugh.

Fifty years ago, an undersized defensive back named Andy Nelson climbed into a car alongside a 25-year-old, fresh-faced quarterback. Was it a Pontiac? A Chevrolet? Tricky thing about time: Just as easily as it can help shape a legacy, it can fade a memory. Nelson and his friend drove together to Memorial Stadium, where they would catch a bus to the airport, where they would board a plane for New York, where they would make history just a couple of days later. If there were only a way to get into his head.

Too bad we can't jump in the car today and drive to Johnny Unitas' Golden Arm restaurant in Rodgers Forge and celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1958 championship game between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants with a hearty meal and a couple of cold ones. But don't bother steering for the York Road Plaza restaurant. If you do, you'll only be disappointed. A Radio Shack electronics store sits where the fabled restaurant once stood. Unitas opened the restaurant in 1968 with defensive back Bobby Boyd and owned it for the next 20 years, until he sold it to Bill Grauel in 1988.

It matters not that their gaits are slowed and frames stooped, the result of ancient wounds and the passing of decades. These former Baltimore Colts - the 1958 Baltimore Colts - are arrested in the collective mind's eye of generations of football fans in the flower of their strength and swiftness and fortitude. And last night, some of them gathered once again as they did nearly 50 years ago at frozen Yankee Stadium, where they won the NFL championship, 23-17, in sudden-death overtime. But instead of preparing to take on the New York Football Giants - as their foes were often called back then - in a struggle none of them could have imagined would come to be known as "The Greatest Game Ever Played," these old Colts were assembled in the club level at M&T Bank Stadium in a warm spirit of fraternal bonhomie known only to those who have joined together in a great struggle.

On Dec. 28, 1958, the NFL's best offense and defense, its finest quarterback, its best possession receiver and big-play threat, its most dominant defensive lineman and prototype offensive tackles, its best-rounded linebacker and its most promising assistant coaches all took the same field at Yankee Stadium. The championship game that resulted between the New York Giants and Baltimore Colts is widely known as "The Greatest Game Ever Played." It is most often remembered for the remarkable drives authored by John Unitas, for the NFL's first sudden-death overtime and for introducing professional football as a potent television product to millions of new viewers.

I spoke to Art Donovan last week after seeing him having a good, old time with Michael Strahan in the ESPN special on the 1958 NFL title game, The Greatest Game Ever Played. Donovan said he told the gap-toothed former Giant: "With all your money, why don't you get another tooth?" Donovan also said he turned down an invitation to attend a screening of the documentary in New York because he was taking two of his grandchildren to Disney World. ( For more, go to baltimoresun.com/mediumwell)

In a current country song, Jamey Johnson sings the refrain, "You should have seen it in color," referring to a grandfather's vivid memories of times past captured in black-and-white photographs. Like those old photos, most documents of the legendary Baltimore Colts-New York Giants 1958 NFL title game - the game that launched pro football into American sports ascendancy - have existed in black and white. But producers of ESPN's documentary The Greatest Game Ever Played (9 p.m. tomorrow)

Oh, the momentum the Ravens must be carrying into tomorrow's clash, right? "It's irrelevant," coach John Harbaugh insisted Monday. "Doesn't matter. We've got a road game this week playing the New York Giants." Well, at the very least, we can agree this is a big game, right? I mean, the Giants are the defending Super Bowl champs. They've lost just once this year. "Everybody can make out of any game what they want to make out of it," Harbaugh offered Wednesday. "It might be interesting for some people or some fans more than other fans, but nonetheless every single one of them counts the same."

In a photo capturing the most famous moment of George Preas' football career, he's not even there. The picture, from 1958, shows Colts fullback Alan Ameche blasting through a hole for the winning touchdown in Baltimore's 23-17 sudden-death NFL championship victory. Preas, a lineman, helped blaze that trail - though he's missing from the famous photo, having already done the work. "That picture sums up George," teammate Alex Sandusky said. "He did a hell of a job for years and nobody knew it, except for the guys who played with him."