Raymond Berry leaves us, at age 93, and takes with him an entire generation’s memories of Dec. 28, 1958, the day the Colts turned Baltimore from a city with a mass inferiority complex into America’s darlings.
How memorable was it?
Fifty years after that legendary Sudden Death championship game, Berry came to Baltimore and had dinner one evening at Sabatino’s in Little Italy. The restaurant was packed and noisy. One table over, a dozen people sang a loud “Happy Birthday” to a teenage girl.
Then, somebody asked Berry about the final moments of regulation play in the contest that became known as “the Greatest Game Ever Played.”
“We were down to a little more than a minute left to play,” Berry said in his soft Southern drawl.
And suddenly, the whole restaurant seemed to go quiet. In Baltimore, we had long since memorialized that game and its final moments. But here was Berry, who caught a remarkable 12 passes for 178 yards that day, and everybody in the place seemed to strain to hear him.
For more from Olesker, read the full article at Jmore.