E-GIANTS
Dave Klein was the Giants' beat writer
for The Star-Ledger from 1961 to 1995.
He is the author of 26 books and he is one of
only five sportswriters to have covered all the Super Bowls.
Dave has allowed TEAM GIANTS to reprint some of his articles.

By DAVE KLEIN
This offering is only in part about the Giants. What it really might be considered is a paean to pro football the way it was, the kind of quality and excitement that made pro football what it is.

It is about, arguably, the two best teams in the NFL in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Giants and the Baltimore Colts, who bear no resemblance (and should not have been allowed to keep the name) when the air-conditioning salesman named Robert Irsay loaded up moving vans at midnight and drove his team halfway across the country to Indianapolis.

Baltimore and its Colts was as magic a marriage as New York and its Giants, and for a few golden, shining moments, in the overall scheme of time, these two worlds collided and created the most memorable of confrontations.

We are talking, of course, about the 1958 NFL Championship Game, the one that went into the first-ever sudden-death overtime, the one that is remembered as "The Greatest Game Ever Played" but might, perhaps more accurately, be remembered as "The Game That Saved the NFL."

That single game, won by the Colts, 23-17, produced more Hall of Fame members than any championship game before or since.

And one of the very best died the other day. Monday, to be precise. Fittingly, he died in Baltimore, where he had moved when the Colts made him their first-round draft choice out of Ohio State.

He was Jim Parker, and he was one of the two greatest offensive tackles of his day - along with Rosey Brown of the Giants. That pair still ranks in the highest echelon of all-time tackles. Oh, sure, you might add Anthony Munoz, Ron Yary, Joe Stydahar and Art Shell to the small gang of greatness, but Parker and Brown will still rank as the two best.

Parker was a Pro Bowl guard as well as a tackle and as he put it once: "As I got fatter and fatter, they moved me out toward the ends." So this All-America from Ohio State, who was called "the greatest offensive lineman I ever coached" by the legendary curmudgeon, Woody Hayes, who served as his presenter into the Hall of Fame in 1973, made it to the Pro Bowl for eight consecutive years in his 11-year NFL career.

He played with some of the greatest on those Colts' teams, guys like John Unitas and Lenny Moore, Ray Berry and Alan Ameche, Gino Marchetti and Art Donovan. And others, scores of others, all coached by Weeb Ewbank and, like him, all in the Hall of Fame.

The Giants and the Colts met two years in a row for the NFL championship, and the Colts won both of them. Yet it was worth everything - priceless, as the commercial says - to see Parker lock horns with Andy Robustelli and Jim Katcavage, the Giants' two defensive ends. In the 1960 game, it was Robustelli against Parker, Parker against Robustelli, and when a guy asked Parker what he thought of the game when it was over, he said: "Did we win? I couldn't think about anything besides that devil on the other side of the line."

Robustelli beat Parker one time in that game and crashed Unitas to the ground. Ewbank, the roly-poly little coach whose offensive mind was like a scalpel, once said: "Big Jim actually cried after that game, and we had won it. He hated to get beat, you know?"

They were glory days, and Parker was at the forefront. He became the first full-time offensive lineman inducted into the Hall of Fame (the others before him were relics of the two-way football player and all had defensive line experiences).

Rosey Brown, who died in 2003, was asked what he thought of Parker, his only real rival for best-in-the-league. "He's great," Rosey said. "I'm pretty good, but Jim Parker is the greatest tackle I ever saw."

Parker was 71 when he lost a long, long battle with diabetes, and his best friend, the Hall of Fame running back Lenny Moore, was at his side when he passed. "When that big guy pulled," he said, "somebody was going to hit the ground. Nobody was better at his position, both positions. And obviously, he was more than just a teammate to me."

By today's standards, Parker would have been a small tackle, and perhaps even a small guard. He was 6-3 and 275, but as Donovan said in his biography, "Fatso", he was more than just big enough then. "Parker was a decapitating blocker who lusted for defensive blood," he said, perhaps over dramatizing but nevertheless self-explanatory.

It should be noted that as a kid, I saw those two games. Just watching those guys, all of them, performing on the field, was a feast for football eyes. In addition to the Hall of Fame Colts, you could see Giant legends like Robustelli, Brown, Katcavage, Frank Gifford, Alex Webster, Kyle Rote, Jack Stroud, Emlen Tunnell, Rosey Grier, Sam Huff, Jimmy Patton, Dick Lynch.

This humble opinion holds that all of them should be in the Hall of Fame, even though not all of them have made it, or ever will.

But they made my personal Hall of Fame, however, and so did such Colts as Ordell Braase and Don Shinnick, Johnny Sample and Bob Mutscheller, Big Daddy Lipscomb and L.G. Dupre. And so, too, did everybody involved in that game, including such as Giants' head coach Jim Lee Howell and a couple of his assistants, Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry.

It isn't a Hall of Fame in the normal sense. It is my Hall of Fame of great games I have seen, live and in person, and it is the first on my list.

And when one of the greats, like Jim Parker, goes on to that great green football field where he can play forever and never get hurt and never get tired and never-never-never lose, it is a sadness that cannot be put into words. He was 71. Make that only 71, and for everybody who ever saw him play, he took a little bit of us with him.

Go easy, big fella.

Check out Dave's website at E-GIANTS where you can subscribe to his newsletters which run much more frequently than what is available here.
- Team Giants

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