Giants v. Redskins

Ten years ago promoters of professional football were unable to fill a good-sized stadium, even with Annie Oakleys. Last Sunday 62,000 football fans jampacked Manhattan's Polo Grounds for a championship* game between the New York Giants and the Washington Redskins. The crowd was small compared to the 102,000 who watched the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia the day before. But more than 50,000 applications for tickets had been turned down, and speculators had little difficulty in getting $25 a seat from fans eager to see what they considered the best football game of the year--college or professional.

Each team had won eight games, lost one and held one another to a 0-to-0 tie in their only previous meeting this season. The Giants, best defensive team in the league, had been beaten only once in its last 23 games. Yet they were the underdogs, for the Redskins were an awesome tribe. Led by slick Sam Baugh and Frank Filchock (who between them had completed 94 out of 160 passes) and Anvil Andy Farkas (whose ferocious running had scored eleven touchdowns), they had chalked up 235 points this season--101 in their last three games.

Devotees of pro football are always sure of a good show. Last week's clash between two beautifully coordinated machines was not only a sellout but a hit. For three periods the savage-tackling, pass-intercepting Giants stole the Redskins' tomahawk, crippled their attack and also their attackers, notably ferocious Andy Farkas. Not content with defending their goal line, the Giants brandished their own favorite weapon: in each of the first three periods they scored a field goal, two by Ward Cuff, one by Ken Strong.

By the fourth quarter the Redskins got going, scored a touchdown and kicked the extra point. Then, with only 45 seconds to play, the score 9-to-7 and the ball on the 16-yard line, Coach Ray Flaherty, realizing that a field goal was the Redskins' only hope, sent in Beau Russell to placekick. The ball sailed between the uprights--so most of the spectators thought. But Referee Bill Halloran thought otherwise, ruled the kick wide. To the tune of the worst booing ever heard in the historic old Polo Grounds, the Giants marched off with the Eastern championship and the right to play the Green Bay Packers (Western champions) for the national title at Milwaukee this week.

*Of the Eastern Division of the National Football League.

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