The Game of Their Lives

by Dave Klein

December, 1958. Yankee Stadium. A huge crowd watched two great teams, the New York Giants and the Baltimore Colts, take the field for the championship. The game of the century was about to begin. Now almost twenty years later, the heroes of that titanic struggle bring it all back in its near-incredible, sudden-death drama - and look back on lives that went on after the cheering had died. This is what it was like to ride the crest of youth to the very peak - and then have the rest of their lives to live...

Genres: Football, Sports

239 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Dave Klein is one of only eight reporters to have covered the Super Bowl. He is the author of THE GAME OF THEIR LIVES, a non-fiction book about the 1958 Giants Colts game that established pro football as a weekend television staple. For more than three decades, Klein was a sports reporter for THE NEWARK STAR-LEDGER, and for fifteen years he was editor and publisher of THE GIANTS NEWSWEEKLY. His novels include the bestseller BLINDSIDE.

Reviews

[Paul Schulzetenberg · Rating 1 out of 5]

An examination less of the titular game and more of the players who played it, The Game of Their Lives is a series of interviews with many of the most famous or noteworthy athletes who played in the game. Klein intersperses some of his own commentary throughout the book as well, in an effort to paint a more cohesive whole of the players he spoke with.

Unfortunately, this book has aged very poorly since its publication in 1974. The 1958 Championship seems to be held in such high regard that it is merely assumed that the reader is already familiar with the game. There is a small rundown of the game to open the book, but references are made throughout to how that game ushered in the modern NFL, but without justification. Players, too, sometimes have little introduction, as they were more widely known at the time of the book's publication. Any book is certainly a product of its time, but what separates the classics is that they can remain relevant as time wears on. It is painfully obvious that this book doesn't have that quality.

Even less palatable is the frequently held opinions of the players that "players were better/tougher/more dedicated then." This type of yearning for the good old days drives me crazy, especially as the quality of play has gotten better and better as players have been drawn from an ever-widening talent pool, started in organized football even younger, and become more conditioned and more dedicated to football as a full-time, year-round pursuit. The portrait of the spoiled modern-day athlete is present throughout the book, espoused by both the author and the interviewees. When this attitude springs forth from the mouths of fans, I can dismiss it as ignorant parroting of a frequent trope used by the media, but when from former players speak it, it is even more repugnant.

Unless you are a scholar of the pre-merger NFL (and maybe even if you are), this is a book to avoid. The over-simplified and aloofly-commented interviews are frustrating. The examination of the history and the effect of the game is missing, and the players often come across as ignorant caricatures. Even though this book is a distillation of interviews, it misses more questions than it asks.

[Patrick]

A must for Baltimore football fans. 1958 OT title game, Unitas' Colts vs. Frank Gifford's NY Giants.