updated 1:10 a.m. ET Dec. 13, 2008

NEW YORK - As Raymond Berry left Yankee Stadium on Dec. 28, 1958, he saw NFL commissioner Bert Bell with tears in his eyes.

It took decades, Berry says now, to realize why.

Berry was a star in what is known today as “The Greatest Game Ever Played,” the Baltimore Colts’ 23-17 victory over the New York Giants for the NFL championship on Alan Ameche’s 1-yard run 8 minutes and 15 seconds into the first-ever overtime. In the euphoria of the moment, Berry didn’t have time to think of long-term ramifications.

Bell saw them immediately. Though he was to die the next October, the commissioner realized the boost that thrilling game could give a league he had run since 1946 at the midlevel of American sports. So did Roone Arledge and Lamar Hunt, two men who helped turn the NFL into a colossus.

Hunt was one of roughly 50 million Americans watching the game on NBC, a record number for a pro football game in those early days of television. He instantly grasped the potential for a sport with just 12 teams in 11 cities (Chicago had two). Two years later, he and a group of other millionaires founded the American Football League.

Arledge, then the 27-year-old producer of a puppet show on NBC, recognized football’s television appeal as he moved up the network food chain. As president of ABC Sports 12 years later, he took on Pete Rozelle’s “Monday Night Football” project when the other networks had turned it down.

The players were the last to understand what they’d been a part of.

“Most of us just wanted to get out of town after a long season,” says Frank Gifford, who parlayed his stardom with the Giants into announcing jobs on, among other shows, “Monday Night Football.”

“I lived in New York, so I just went back to my hotel. But my teammates were thinking about was loading up the cars and going back to their homes and jobs.”

Jobs? In those days, NFL salaries were relatively small and so were title game shares — each Colt earned $4,718,77 and each Giant $3,111.33. So from January through July, NFL players were car salesmen, accountants, gym teachers, businessmen, whatever.

The “Greatest Game” upped the ante.

Now, as the 50th anniversary of the game approaches, it is being celebrated by the league, by two new books — one by Gifford — and even an ESPN film.

———

Greatest game?

Watch a replay or scan the play-by-play.

First series: Giants three-and-out.

Second series: “3-6-C34 — Unitas fumbles after hit by Huff on pass attempt and Patton recovers on the Colts 37.”

Third series: “2-11-C38 — Heinrich fumbles after hit by Marchetti who recovers for Colts on Colt 37.”

Fourth series: Unitas’ pass for Berry is intercepted.

Turnover ledger for the game: Giants 4, Colts 3.

———

Forget execution. Think excitement. And star power. The game featured 17 future Hall of Famers: 12 players, three coaches, Giants owner Tim Mara and his son and successor, Wellington.

The game turned John Unitas into one of America’s best-known sports heroes. It was Unitas who led the tying drive in regulation and the final touchdown drive in OT. Not only did Unitas call all the Baltimore plays (quarterbacks mostly did in the those days), he went 26-of-40 for 361 yards. Twelve of those passes went to Berry, who gained 178 yards.

The Giants coaching staff featured two future icons of the game: Vince Lombardi on offense and Tom Landry on defense. The head coach, Jim Lee Howell, was a caretaker who turned almost all decisions over to the aides who would win Super Bowls in Green Bay and Dallas.

There was even a Hall of Famer whose fame came much later: Don Maynard, a rookie kick returner for the Giants. “I caught the opening kickoff, so I was the first one to touch the ball” he laughs.

Maynard played only one year with the Giants. But he, Unitas and Weeb Ewbank, who coached the Colts, were also involved with the “second-greatest game ever played” — when the Joe Namath-led Jets, coached by Ewbank, upset the Colts in the third Super Bowl a decade later, establishing that AFL teams could play with the NFL.

———

The Giants barely got to the title game, but their presence is one reason for its influence.

“It was New York that did it,” says Lenny Moore, the Reggie Bush (and then some) of the Colts. “If it had been Baltimore against ... maybe Cleveland ... most people wouldn’t have noticed, certainly not Madison Avenue or the media.”

In fact, the Giants tussled with Cleveland for most of the season. Jim Brown emerged as perhaps the best player ever, rushing for 1,527 yards (a 5.9 average) and 17 touchdowns in 12 games, and the Browns were 9-2 entering the final game of the regular season, with the Giants a game behind as they met at Yankee Stadium.

The game was tied late 10-10 and a tie was all the Browns needed to win the Eastern Conference.

But Pat Summerall kicked a 48-yard field goal through the snow off a scruffy, dirt field and the Giants won 13-10, setting up a playoff for the conference title, again at Yankee Stadium.

New York won the playoff 10-0 as Sam Huff and the New York defense held Brown to a career-low 8 yards on seven carries.

The Colts won the Western Conference (the NFL always has been geographically challenged) at 9-3, a game ahead of the Chicago Bears and Los Angeles Rams. One of the losses was 24-21 to the Giants at Yankee Stadium, although Unitas was injured that day and didn’t play.

“We knew before that title game that we were the better team,” says former Colt Gino Marchetti, one of the most feared pass rushers of his day. “John hadn’t played in that game and we almost won anyway.”

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