Edition: U.S. / Global

Sports of The Times; 'When You Know What You're Doing'

Published: September 12, 2002

ANYBODY who was at Yankee Stadium in the dusk of that late afternoon in 1958 will never forget how Johnny Unitas heisted the National Football League championship that the Giants thought they had won.

With 1 minute 56 seconds remaining, the Giants were leading, 17-14, and the Baltimore Colts were pinned on their 14-yard line, near the baseball infield area. But that's when Johnny Unitas suddenly turned into Johnny U, arguably the best quarterback in pro football history.

''Unless the clock is stopped,'' Unitas told his teammates, ''we won't have time for any more huddles. Stay alert. I'll call the plays at the line.''

On first down, Unitas whipped a pass to running back Lenny Moore for an 11-yard gain. Then he hit wide receiver Raymond Berry with three consecutive arrows through the Giants' defense for gains of 25, 15 and 22 yards. With the ball on the Giants' 13-yard line, Steve Myrah kicked the tying 20-yard field goal with 7 seconds remaining.

For the first time, the N.F.L. championship game was in sudden-death overtime.

After the Giants had to punt, Unitas, more deliberate this time, moved the Colts to the Giants' 8-yard line. On second down, he zipped a sideline pass to tight end Jim Mutscheller, who was stopped at the 1. On the next play, fullback Alan Ameche burst into the end zone for the Colts' 23-17 victory, what some people still consider the greatest game in N.F.L. history.


''When you know what you're doing,'' he said firmly, ''you don't get intercepted.''

Put it on his tombstone. As much as anything else that Johnny Unitas, who died yesterday at 69, ever did, that line summed him up. In an era when quarterbacks called their own plays, he always seemed to know what he was doing. Sure, he was intercepted occasionally, but more often than not the receiver probably turned the wrong way.

''Being in the huddle with John,'' his tight end John Mackey once said, ''is like being in the huddle with God.''

To his teammates and his coaches, he was always John Unitas, not Johnny, but his fans always thought of him as Johnny, as in Johnny U, the kid quarterback from Pittsburgh that the Steelers cut in their 1955 training camp at St. Bonaventure in Olean, N.Y. He had been drafted out of Louisville, but Coach Walt Kiesling preferred to keep three other quarterbacks: Jim Finks, Ted Marchibroda and Vic Eaton.

''Here's $10,'' Kiesling told him, ''for your bus fare home.''

Unitas put the $10 in his pocket and hitchhiked to Pittsburgh, where he worked a pile-driver on construction jobs and threw passes for the semipro Bloomfield Rams for $6 a game. Paul Brown, then the major-domo of the Cleveland Browns, had told him to check with the Browns in the spring of 1956, but in February, Don Kellett, the Colts' general manager, made a 75-cent long-distance call to him.

''We just claimed you from the Steelers,'' Kellett said.

Unitas so impressed Weeb Ewbank, the Colts' coach, that he emerged as the backup to George Shaw that season. When Shaw was injured early in the season, Unitas had his chance. And made the most of it. As he led the Colts to the N.F.L. championship in both 1958 and 1959, he had a record streak of throwing a touchdown pass in 47 consecutive games -- the pro football version of Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak in baseball.

When the N.F.L. selected its 75th anniversary team, he was one of four quarterbacks; the others were Sammy Baugh, Otto Graham and Joe Montana.

In his best seasons, Johnny U was an idol for a youngster in Beaver Falls, Pa., a teenager named Joe Namath, who thought of himself as Joey U.

Late in the 1968 season, when Namath, with the same Weeb Ewbank as his coach, led the Jets into Super Bowl III against the Colts, Unitas had an ailing elbow. But when Unitas was inserted in the second half, the Jets held their breath until the final gun of their 16-7 upset.

Johnny U's arm was never the same, and in 1971 the Colts' general manager, Joe Thomas, ordered him benched. Baltimore was shocked. So was he.

After a practice before the Colts' next game, John Unitas was taking questions at his locker in old Memorial Stadium when he was asked if he would mop up a game that had already been won or lost. With the same cold eyes and in the same firm voice that had answered the question about the pass to Jim Mutscheller, he looked up.

''I'm no clock-runner-outer,'' he said.

Photos: Johnny Unitas was arguably the best quarterback in pro football history. (Associated Press, 1960); Johnny Unitas led the Baltimore Colts to the 1958 N.F.L. championship with an overtime victory against the Giants at Yankee Stadium. (Robert Riger Living Trust)