Archives
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Something to See
Unitas.
Berry. Unitas. Berry. And other guys too.
TIME MACHINE. It's already been shown, and you probably missed it. But the good news is that ESPN is certain to show it again because they obviously threw a lot of money at the job of transforming the old footage into high definition color. This is just a word to the sports-minded among you. It's worth every single minute you spend looking for it and watching it. The game that involved seventeen Hall of Famers and changed the course of sports history in the United States. The game that began the nation's obsession with NFL football. So many milestones. The first sudden-death overtime championship game. The first professional come-from-behind two-minute drill miracle. Maybe the most legendary names on one football field ever: Johnny Unitas, Frank Gifford, Sam Huff, Gino Marchetti, Raymond Berry, Pat Summerall, Lennie Moore, Roosevelt Grier. Not one of whom celebrated or performed any idiotic dance after a sack or a touchdown. They all played as matter-of-factly as if they were punching a time clock. But punching it really hard.
It's tough to say what is most affecting or impressive about what was obviously a labor of love for someone(s) at ESPN. There are many things that chip, chip at you. They don't have the whole game, so don't be expecting that. The original telecast vanished into the ether. They ran down highlight footage and pieced it together chronologically, a surprising amount of it when you consider that's how they did it. Forensic football. But what they did assemble and remaster is miraculous, a little washed out as is typical of colorized film, yet it works better in this instance than it does for old Hollywood movies because it reminds you -- despite the high-def clarity -- that this was another time, another age almost, and the difference between this and a standard NFL telecast is reminscent of the difference between live action movies and "300." Unreal but oddly three-dimensional. Yes, that's Unitas. The Main Man. It is. And it isn't. Almost literarily, you never get a real good look at him, even though he's the enigmatic superhero of the piece. Considering that what we're looking at here is a 1958 football game, it's actually kind of haunting. He is instantly recognizable and unique -- the black high-tops, the stiff-legged scrambles, the peculiarly heightened onscreen gravity of his presence as he commands his team against the odds to a victory he must somehow see inside the helmet that obscures his face more than it does other players. He's the ghost who walks, the dead hero who doesn't get the opportunity to compare notes with his latter-day heir, as most of the other key participants do.
Which is the other gem of this production. Colts and Giants. 1958 combatants paired with their counterparts from the Super Bowl Champion Colts and Giants of the last two years. Between plays, they chew the fat on camera about this and that, the little stuff and the big stuff. It's a way of seeing not just how NFL football has changed (a lot), but also how life in these United States has changed (more). Despite the generation difference, they're all still football players, bonded at that elemental level. But there are also huge differences. Championship NFL players who had day jobs during the season, expected to hit the factory floor Monday morning regardless. Memories of a grasssless frozen field that was softened with horse manure. Winning purses of $5,000 a man. Some empty seats at Yankee Stadium for "the greatest game ever played." Rosey Grier dissing Sam Huff ("we did all the blocking so all he had to do was look good"). Recollections of Raymond Berry running pass routes with Unitas after practice was over, in the dark, and Unitas's explanation that he did it because Raymond wanted to, and "I only work here."
And the game itself. Unitas calling ALL his own plays. Engineering the unprecedented. Creating the whole future for generations of players who probably know more about the far lesser contribution of Joe Willy Namath (Unitas was hurt in '68 btw. What if...?) than they will ever know about the greatest quarterback who ever played the game. And won the greatest game ever played.
