Greatest Game

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)

William Louis "Bill" Miller, an original member of the Colts Marching Band and a retired educator, died Sept. 15 of myelodysplastic syndrome at Mandarin House Hospice in Harwood. Mr. Miller, who had homes in Columbia and Annapolis, was 77. Mr. Miller, whose parents owned Miller's Hardware at East Baltimore and Clinton streets, was born in Baltimore and raised in Highlandtown. He was a 1950 graduate of the old Patterson Park High School and earned a bachelor's degree in education in 1954 from what is now Towson University.

Mount Washington Club outlasted Chesapeake Lacrosse Club on Saturday at Norris Field in what many say was the longest lacrosse game in history.Lou Delligatti's unassisted goal 1 minute, 19 seconds into the sixth four-minute overtime period gave the Mounties a 15-14 victory over the Peakers and the Southern Division championship in the United States Club Lacrosse Association. The game took 101 minutes, 19 seconds."The actual time was more than three hours," said Mount Washington coach Skip Lichtfuss.

Fifty years ago, the Baltimore Colts rallied to win a world championship over the New York Giants before 57,545 jubilant fans at Memorial Stadium. Go on, scratch your head. The 1958 title game is burned into our brains: 23-17, sudden-death, Ameche's plunge, the stampede at the airport. But the sequel, on Dec. 27, 1959? Half a century later, who can recall the cast, the Colts' comeback, or the score? Not even the players, it seems. "Don't remember it at all," said Hall of Famer Lenny Moore, who caught a 60-yard touchdown pass in the 31-16 victory that day. "Man, oh man. Can you believe that?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

For Mark Bowden, writing a book about the 1958 pro football championship game between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants was a return to his roots. Bowden made his name writing prize-winning articles for The Philadelphia Inquirer and best-selling books such as Black Hawk Down, his reconstruction of a disastrous U.S. military raid in Somalia, and Killing Pablo, his chronicle of the manhunt for Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. But before all that came Baltimore. Bowden was 13 when his family moved to town in the mid-1960s.

Like a few thousand other Baltimore fans counting down the days to Super Bowl XXXV, Brian Cooper can't help feeling as if he's been here before. Depending on how you look at it, he has. It was 1958 when his parents, Joseph and Annette Cooper, traveled to New York to watch the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants battle for pro football's championship in what became known as "The Greatest Game Ever Played." They left their two young sons at home, but they had company of sorts: Annette was four months' pregnant with Brian.

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)