“THE SCORING SKOOG” and “MIRACLE AT THE MEADOWLANDS”

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888. NEW YORK KNICKS VS MINNEAPOLIS LAKERS

NBA FINALS

GAME FOUR

APRIL 8, 1953

69th REGIMENT ARMORY

QUALITY OF PLAY—6.90

DRAMA—7.16

STAR POWER—7.25

CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.25

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—8.57

LOCAL IMPACT—5.74

TOTAL: 42.87

“THE SCORING SKOOG”

After a dramatic seven-game series in the 1952 NBA Finals, the Knicks and the Minneapolis Lakers were right back at it in the ’53 Finals, colliding for the second straight season. The Knicks stole home court advantage right away, taking Game One at the Minneapolis Arena. However, the Lakers evened the series in a tight, low-scoring Game Two, and pummeled the ‘Bockers in Game Three in New York. Now the ‘Bockers were under immense pressure to win one at home and insure the series would continue to at least a Game Six, which would be held back in the Land of 10,000 Lakes in the 2-3-2 format used that season.

”Home” for New York was, in this case, the 69th Regiment Armory, once again the late-season replacement floor when the circus bounced the Knicks out of Madison Square Garden. The Armory, a Beaux-arts masterpiece in Rose Hill between 25th and 26th, held about 5,200 souls, and capacity was extended on this Wednesday evening, April 8, 1953, so that as many b-ball fans—a “turnaway throng” in the words of Ben Gould of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle—as possible could watch. As big of a draw as the Knicks was the chance to see the great Lakers center, George Mikan, in action.

The big center wasn’t especially intimidating—in the words of columnist Tommy Holmes, Mikan “looks like an economy-size Harold Lloyd and ambles around the court like an amiable St. Bernard,” but he was certainly effective. The “altitudinous ace” (Hy Turkin, Daily News) poured in 27 points in the game, using the array of hooks and sweeping shots that made him so hard to stop. Mikan so thoroughly controlled the opening stanza it appeared the Lakers would run the Knicks right out of the gym and on to Lexington Avenue. He had 16 in the first quarter alone, as Minneapolis built an early eight-point lead, and led 41-34 at halftime. 

The Knicks fought back behind former Erasmus Hall High star Jerry Fleischman, only playing thanks to Al McGuire’s bum knee. Fleischman and Sweetwater Clifton, a Jew and a Negro, lifted the home team back into the game, and the large contingent of both minority races inside the Armory went wild as a result. The Knicks stayed close when, late in the contest, a chance appeared, as Mikan fouled out with 3:40 to play. He “angrily trudged to the bench” as the Knicks converted the subsequent free throws to pull within a single point, 62-61.

But the Lakers didn’t need Mikan. As it turned out, the key man in the endgame was a reserve named Whitey Skoog. A former All-American at University of Minnesota, and an early adopter and advancer of the jump shot, Skoog would go on to be a legendary collegiate golf coach. He had been critical all series with late points, and now “Slippery Skoog” was at it again, slithering past Ernie Vandeweghe twice in the final moments to score the winning buckets. The Knicks had a golden opportunity to tie, but in an early forerunner of critical failures at the hoop in key situations (see Smith, Charles or Ewing, Patrick), the did not. In 1953, it was Harry “The Horse” Gallatin who came up lame. Carl Braun found Gallatin with a perfect pass under the basket, but Gallatin fumbled it away. He ran it down and threw up a desperate heave at the buzzer, but it bounced off the rim. The final score was 71-69, Lakers.

With the win, Minneapolis was a game from the title, and their second straight defeat of New York at the final furlong. The Korean War was sputtering to a close, but the racial animus remained, so more than one onlooker joked that the Knicks had been beaten by a guy whose named spelled backwards was “Gooks.”

AFTERMATH:

The likelihood of besting the defending champs three straight games was small, and indeed, Minneapolis won Game Five at the Armory to win their second straight title. The first NBA dynasty was well underway. 

WHAT THEY SAID:

“The crowd tried hard. There were people who cared in the 69th Regiment Armory—5,200 of them. Gosh, how they cared! They whooped and yelled and screamed and moaned and cursed and cajoled and whistled and stamped, trying their best to root the Knickerbockers in. But they couldn’t do it…and so the Knicks finished with their chins hanging down in their socks and their constituents filed out of the Lexington Ave. drill shed and swarmed all over the East Side, talking to themselves. Basketball is this kind of a game. No game is ever won…all games are lost.”

—Tommy Holmes, Brooklyn Daily Eagle

FURTHER READING:

MPLS: The Minneapolis Lakers and the Dawn of Professional Basketball by Andrew Van Buren

VIDEO:

887. NEW YORK GIANTS VS PHILADELPHIA EAGLES

NOVEMBER 19, 1978

GIANTS STADIUM

QUALITY OF PLAY—4.95

DRAMA—8.33

STAR POWER—5.25

CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.55

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—9.05

LOCAL IMPACT—7.75

TOTAL: 42.88

The Giants of the 1960s and 70s were synonymous with poor football, a painful truth both for their legion of fans and for the league itself. Commissioner Pete Rozelle frequently despaired at witnessing this flagship franchise stumble to such depths. During the team’s “blue period,” New York missed the playoffs every season from 1963 until 1981. By late-November, 1978, they had gone 73-130-4 in that putrid stretch, and fans who remembered the glory days of Gifford, Tittle, Huff, Strong and Conerly ached for a return to winning ways.

Unfortunately, they first would have to bottom out. The nadir was reached on a cool and blustery Sunday afternoon, November 19, 1978, when the Philadelphia Eagles came to Giants Stadium. The crowd was the smallest of the season, but the 70.318 in attendance would witness the signature play of the Giants woeful era, and perhaps the most ignominious play in NFL history.

“You are what your record says you are,” goes the cliche credited to that season’s head coach at Air Force and future Giants legend Bill Parcells. At 5-6 the Giants were indeed strictly mediocre in 1978. The Eagles were only slightly better, but at 6-5 they could at least tell themselves there was still hope for the playoffs. 

Surprisingly, New York was the team in control early. Quarterback “Parkway Joe” Pisarcik, fighting off a flu bug and the fact he was booed loudly during pre-game introductions, threw a pair of touchdown passes in the first ten minutes to give the home team a 14-0 lead. On the second score, Johnny Perkins blew right past Eagles defender Herm Edwards, who later acknowledged he messed up the coverage. 

The great Eagles wideout Harold Carmichael pulled in a 47-yard bomb to set up Philly’s first score, a Wilbert Montgomery dash from eight yards out, but the extra point was both botched and costly, as Eagles kicker Nick Mike-Mayer was injured on the play. Late in the quarter Pisarcik was intercepted in the end zone, and so Big Blue led just 14-6 after dominating the first thirty minutes. They added a field goal to extend the lead to eleven, but overall, their flying start had ground to a halt, and the offense managed just 80 yards after halftime.

Philly had likewise done precious little all game, but with time running out, they embarked on a 91-yard drive, helped mightily by some clumsy New York penalties. A touchdown cut the gap to 17-12, though the punter, Mike Michel, missed the PAT in Mike-Meyer’s stead. The Giants, as was their wont in this era, seemed desperate to give the game away, and running back Doug Kotar’s fumble with 3:22 at the Giants 33 set the Eagles up for a crack at stealing the game. 

But Ron “Jaws” Jaworski was seldom good in games at Giants Stadium, and he threw a wobbler that Odis Mckinney intercepted to seemingly lock up the game for the Giants. New York may not have seized a playoff berth, but they did appear ready to knock the Eagles out, which was about all that could be hoped for at that point. 

New York ran into the line twice, forcing Philly to use it’s final timeouts. They were left with third and 2 at the 28, with 31 seconds to play. Pisarcik need only take a knee and the game would be over. 

But Giants offensive coordinator Bob Gibson (not that one) instead sent in another running play, “Pro 65 Up,” one that called for a handoff to fullback Larry Csonka. Zonk, a good Syracuse man, was still reliable enough at this advanced stage of his career not to fumble, but the needless risk met with howls from the offensive huddle. Still Pisarcik ran the play as ordered. “That’s probably what I should have done,” Joe admitted after the game when asked about kneeling. “But it’s my job to call the play that comes in from the sideline. I don’t really have that freedom to change a play just because I don’t like it.”

“We’ve run that play 500 times,” head coach John McVay insisted after the game. “You just don’t fumble that play.”

In a sequence that still stabs at the heart of any Giants fan, Joey P. bobbled the snap, then turned and collided with Csonka. The ball bounced of Zonk’s hip and bounded behind the line. Edwards, who of course would ironically become the Jets head coach years later in that same stadium, played to win the game by scooping up the loose pigskin and dashing untouched for 26 yards and the winning score. Herm went from goat to hero in seconds flat. 

Impossibly, the Giants had conjured a loss from certain victory. To rub it in, Michel actually made the extra point, so the final score was 19-17, Eagles. At 7-5, their playoff hopes, on a respirator moments earlier, were paddled back to life, thanks to an insipid piece of playcalling and execution. About the only bright spot for Giants fans was that Pat Leahy missed an easy field goal at the gun in Foxboro as the Jets fell that afternoon to New England by an identical 19-17 score. 

AFTERMATH:

Pisarcik lost his cool in the locker room, screaming “Get out of here!!” at reporters who wanted to ask about the fumble. But GM Andy Robustelli calmed him down, and to his credit, Joe then answered all queries. Incredibly enough, Eagles coach Dick Vermeil backed the Giants strategy. “I probably would have done the same thing,” Vermeil said. “I hate that falling down on the ball play. I’ve seen it fumbled. I’m not going to second-guess John McVay.”

The epic failure was immediately dubbed the “Miracle at the Meadowlands,” though “Mistake at the Meadowlands” would have been more appropriate. Gibson was fired the next day—one wonders what took so long. The Giants cratered to a 6-10 finish, and in the finale, fans famously hired a plane to pull a banner over the stadium that read “15 Years of Lousy Football—We’ve Had Enough.” Shortly thereafter, the franchise owners, Tim and Wellington Mara, stopped fighting long enough to fire McVay and Robustelli and hire George Young as GM. Young would later hire Parcells, and the G-Men would be back at the top of the league soon enough. 

The searing pain and sheer unnecessariness of the loss led every NFL team to stop messing around and fall on the ball when the game was in hand. A few years later, the NFL changed the rules to allow the QB to simply kneel instead of falling to the ground with the ball, and the ritual was formalized. As with many such safety advances, one wonders why it took a disaster in order to be widely accepted as the smart, prudent thing to do, but that’s human nature for you. 

WHAT THEY SAID:

“I’ve been in this game 25 years, and that’s the most horrifying ending to a ballgame I’ve ever seen.”
—John McVay, Giants coach

FURTHER READING:

You Play To Win The Game: Leadership Lessons For Success On and Off The Field by Herm Edwards with Shelley Smith

VIDEO: