cover image Giants Among Men: How Robustelli, Huff, Gifford, and the Giants Made New York a Football Town and Changed the NFL

Giants Among Men: How Robustelli, Huff, Gifford, and the Giants Made New York a Football Town and Changed the NFL

Jack Cavanaugh. Random House (NY), $26 (315pp) ISBN 978-1-4000-6717-6

The latest from sports writer Cavanaugh (Tunney) looks at a time when professional baseball and college football ruled the sports scene, just before the New York Giants of the late 1950s and early '60s made the National Football League a nationwide phenomenon and became the hottest ticket in the country's media capital. Cavanaugh's play-by-play offers a wealth of information regarding the lives of players and coaches, both on and off the field. The depth of Cavanaugh's detail may be lost on all but the biggest football fans, but the author recaps often, careful to make the large cast and multiple stories easy to follow. Readers get in on the team's camaraderie in scenes from quarterback Charlie Conerly's parties, post-game subway rides to downtown Manhattan, and celebrations at Toots Shor's or P.J. Clarke's. Through the tales of assistant coaches Tom Landry and Vince Lombardi, and players like Sam Huff, Frank Gifford, Andy Robustelli and Rosey Grier, Cavanaugh chronicles engagingly a definitive era in professional football with surprising ease.