Raymond Berry

Every time Gino Marchetti takes a step, he remembers The Game. It was Dec. 28, 1958. Marchetti's Baltimore Colts were playing the New York Giants in what is now known as The Greatest Game Ever Played.It was fourth down. Marchetti had just made the tackle on Giants running back Frank Gifford, when his Colts teammate, Gene "Big Daddy" Lipscomb, fell on him, breaking the ankle that still bothers him today.By the time Marchetti was carried off the field and the ball was marked, the Giants found themselves short of the first down.

The dilemma hits me immediately when I turn to the local sports section of Friday's paper. Listed under the schedule for the day's high school football games are Poly at Dunbar, 2: 30 p.m., and Gilman at City, slated for a 3: 45 p.m. start.What is a high school football fan to do? I dismiss thoughts of a plot by the coaches of these schools to deliberately drive me crazy with such a scheduling conflict and get down to business. Which game do I attend?Dunbar is a defending state champion and ranked No. 1 in the Baltimore area.

WHEN THE COLTS BELONGED TO BALTIMORE. By William Gildea. Ticknor and Fields. 311 Pages. $21.95.CALLING William Gildea a Baltimore Colts fan would be akin to calling Michael Jordan a pretty good basketball player. Mr. Gildea, now a sportswriter for the Washington Post, was going to Colts games with his father when the team played in the old All America Conference in the mid-1940s.William Gildea was 8 years old when his father took him to the first game ever played by the Baltimore Colts -- a 16-7 victory over the Brooklyn Dodgers at the old Municipal Stadium on Sept.

ATLANTA -- It's difficult for Jerry Richardson to find the appropriate words, something of a fitting and consoling message, to comfort Baltimore, the city that gave him a start in the NFL and, ultimately, allowed him to establish himself as one of the country's outstanding business leaders.He's here for a quick visit to the Super Bowl, his first as owner of the Carolina Panthers, who will not begin play until 1995. Richardson was hoping the NFL would honor Baltimore with the other expansion franchise but that didn't happen.

This was a homecoming for Raymond Berry, who was such a remarkable young man that some teammates, given to a torrent of profanity, would clean up their language when he approached. That was the ultimate sign of respect.Berry didn't "wear religion on his sleeve" and wasn't about to force personal beliefs on others. He was, though, an extraordinary man and football player, graduating from SMU before a 13-year career as a pass receiver with the Baltimore Colts earned him enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

I AM a recovering football fan, and I live in the recovering football town of Baltimore. I have no idea who won the last Super Bowl. On Sundays, I don't even turn on the TV.But there was a time when football was everything. Then, I was a scrawny kid in need of heroes, and the Baltimore Colts had plenty of them. There is a part of me that believes that if ex-Colt quarterback John Unitas wanted to, he could walk out on any field in the National Football League today with two minutes left and drive a team to victory.

Before and after football practice each day, Johnny Unitas spent hour after patient hour creating a football player -- a Hall of Fame-bound quarterback -- a guy named Johnny Unitas.That was 40 years ago. On the playgrounds and practice fields of his time.There, morning, afternoon and evening, Unitas at first aimed for -- and then played for -- the old Baltimore Colts.Endowed with no more than modest talent, he built himself into the National Football League's most famous self-made quarterback by endlessly repeating every little thing that the good ones try to do on every play.

PONTIAC, Mich. -- Raymond Berry, a Hall of Fame receiver and a Super Bowl coach, was hired yesterday as the Detroit Lions' new quarterbacks coach.That's right -- quarterbacks.No, Berry has never coached quarterbacks.No, he's not at all familiar with Lions quarterbacks Rodney Peete or Andre Ware.No, he has no working knowledge of the run-and-shoot offense, although he did see the Lions play on television a couple of times last season.And, yes, coach Wayne Fontes was aware of those factors when he gave Berry the job."

The Redskins were stacking touchdowns on the Detroit Lions on Sunday night at RFK Stadium, and I kept coming back to this phone conversation I'd had with Raymond Berry's wife in July.I'd had reason to speak to Berry, who caught hundreds of Johnny Unitas' passes and later coached the New England Patriots, and tracked him down in Detroit, where he is now the Lions' quarterback coach. It was 9:30 on a weeknight. His wife answered the phone."You'll never get him here," she said. "He leaves at 6 in the morning and comes home at midnight."

Before and after football practice each day, Johnny Unitas spent hour after patient hour creating a football player -- a Hall of Fame-bound quarterback -- a guy named Johnny Unitas.That was 40 years ago. On the playgrounds and practice fields of his time.There, morning, afternoon and evening, Unitas at first aimed for -- and then played for -- the old Baltimore Colts.Endowed with no more than modest talent, he built himself into the National Football League's most famous self-made quarterback by endlessly repeating every little thing that the good ones try to do on every play.

Today we examine the year 1958 and what it was like in Baltimore and New York around the historic Dec. 28, 1958, game between the Colts and Giants. As the 50th anniversary approaches, we'll look at the game through the eyes of those who played in it and those who watched it at Yankee Stadium. In addition to The Baltimore Sun's coverage the next week, there will be events in Baltimore commemorating the game: Tuesday The Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards is opening an exhibit honoring Baltimore's first football champions, the 1958 Baltimore Colts, and celebrating the 50th anniversary of "The Greatest Game Ever Played."

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.

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?

Philip M. Prestianni, a retired optical lens crafter who designed a prescription face-mask shield worn during games by Baltimore Colts receiver Raymond Berry, died Wednesday at his home in Gardenville. He was 90. Mr. Prestianni was the third of eight children born to Signorino and Basilia Prestianni in their Camden Street home. He graduated in 1937 from City College, where, family members said, his interest in the vision industry began. A year later, Mr. Prestianni started working at New City Optical.

Marvelous mark Marvin Harrison broke the Colts' franchise record for receiving yards and set the NFL record for fewest games needed (114) to reach 700 receptions. He passed Hall of Famer Raymond Berry (9,275) for the franchise record. He now holds the club records for receptions, yards and touchdowns. Back-to-back Browns' William Green, who rushed for 115 yards last week vs. Pittsburgh, is the first Cleveland back to have consecutive 100-yard games since Kevin Mack in 1986. Winning personality Titans' Jeff Fisher picked up his 80th win, making him the fourth-youngest coach to reach that total behind John Madden, Don Shula and Bill Cowher.

Disappointment - but not anger - flowed through the community of Baltimore Colts legends when the Ravens decided not to name their stadium in honor of John Unitas after the quarterback's death Sept. 11. Unitas would have been the first to understand why it didn't happen, as fellow Hall of Famer Lenny Moore explained yesterday when Towson University announced plans to rename its 11,198-seat outdoor athletic facility Johnny Unitas Stadium. "John was not the type of guy who concerned himself with anything personal, that focused on him," Moore said.

RAYMOND BERRY was at the lectern, giving his fond eulogy for Johnny Unitas, when I looked up at the nearly 90-foot ceiling of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen and had the strange, fleeting and irreverent vision of a football spiraling perfectly through the somber atmosphere, under the contemporary-Gothic buttresses, all the way from the back of the great place and through the main nave to the sanctuary. The cathedral is 373 feet long, 41 feet longer than St. Patrick's in New York, and 373 is just a little longer than a football field plus end zones.

Every time Gino Marchetti takes a step, he remembers The Game. It was Dec. 28, 1958. Marchetti's Baltimore Colts were playing the New York Giants in what is now known as The Greatest Game Ever Played.It was fourth down. Marchetti had just made the tackle on Giants running back Frank Gifford, when his Colts teammate, Gene "Big Daddy" Lipscomb, fell on him, breaking the ankle that still bothers him today.By the time Marchetti was carried off the field and the ball was marked, the Giants found themselves short of the first down.

The dilemma hits me immediately when I turn to the local sports section of Friday's paper. Listed under the schedule for the day's high school football games are Poly at Dunbar, 2: 30 p.m., and Gilman at City, slated for a 3: 45 p.m. start.What is a high school football fan to do? I dismiss thoughts of a plot by the coaches of these schools to deliberately drive me crazy with such a scheduling conflict and get down to business. Which game do I attend?Dunbar is a defending state champion and ranked No. 1 in the Baltimore area.

WHEN THE COLTS BELONGED TO BALTIMORE. By William Gildea. Ticknor and Fields. 311 Pages. $21.95.CALLING William Gildea a Baltimore Colts fan would be akin to calling Michael Jordan a pretty good basketball player. Mr. Gildea, now a sportswriter for the Washington Post, was going to Colts games with his father when the team played in the old All America Conference in the mid-1940s.William Gildea was 8 years old when his father took him to the first game ever played by the Baltimore Colts -- a 16-7 victory over the Brooklyn Dodgers at the old Municipal Stadium on Sept.