Art Auction to Benefit Great Oaks Village and Heart of Florida United Way

FRAMED PHOTO OF Y.A. TITTLE SPORTS MEMORABILIA

The Fallen Giant

SIZE: 17.5" x 21.25"

DONATED BY:  Andrew (Andy) Jones

Yelberton Abraham Tittle (born October 24, 1926), better known as Y. A. Tittle, is a former football quarterback in the National Football League and All-America Football Conference who played for the Baltimore Colts, San Francisco 49ers, and the New York Giants.

Sunday, September 20, 1964 was the 31st anniversary to the day that the Pittsburgh Steelers played their first-ever football game.  Ironically, Those same New York Giants who christened the Steelers back in 1933 were in Pitt Stadium on this day to play the Steelers.  The Steelers had revenge on their minds.  The Giants had knocked Pittsburgh out of the NFL de facto Final Four the previous year on the last day of the season.

By the second quarter the Giants had stormed to a 14-0 lead and were looking like the defending Eastern Division Champions.  New York had the ball deep in their own territory when Quarterback Y.A. Tittle dropped back to pass.  John Baker, Pittsburgh's 6-7, 280-pound defensive end, had a clean shot at Tittle and took advantage of it.  Baker drilled the entire right side of Tittle's body as he was throwing and in the process knocked Tittle's helmet off, cracked his sternum, pulled his rib-cage muscles and caused a concussion.

The ball floated aimlessly into the arms of Steelers' tackle Chuck Hinton, who waltzed into the end zone from eight yards out.  That play turned the game around, a game which the Steelers would come back to win 27-24.  As the Steelers were celebrating their defensive touchdown, a battered and bruised Tittle was kneeling in the end zone, helmet off and blood trickling down from his famously-bald head.  Morris Berman, a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette photographer, then captured the essence of what was virtually the end of Tittle's brilliant 17-year Hall of Fame career.