How long ago are we talking about when we are talking about Dec. 29, 1957?
Well, for starters, one of the most-heated matchups of the day took place at 8 p.m., when the “Ed Sullivan Show” on Ch. 2 featured special guests Red Buttons, John Wayne and Sophia Loren, while over on Ch. 4 the “Steve Allen Show” countered with Jerry Vale and Peter Ustinov.
The top movies were “Around the World in 80 Days” with Shirley MacLaine and David Niven, “Pal Joel” with Frank Sinatra and Rita Hayworth, and “The Sad Sack” with Jerry Lewis and Peter Lorrie. “April Love” by Pat Boone was the No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot Hundred. The Ford Skyline was the best-selling car.
In New York City, talks between the Transit Authority and the Transit Workers Union broke down and commuters braced for a crippling bus and subway strike that was barely averted two days later while still keeping the fare at 15 cents. In Washington, the federal budget was announced at a tidy $74 billion, which with inflation translates to $802.5 billon in 2023 dollars (the ’23 budget in actual dollars was merely $6.1 trillion).
And, oh yes: In Detroit, on the corner of Trumbull and Michigan Avenues, 55,263 people crowded old Briggs Stadium to watch their beloved Lions — three-point underdogs to the mighty Cleveland Browns — rise up and overwhelm the Clevelanders, 59-14.
Tobin Rote threw for 280 yards and four touchdowns, Hopalong Cassady rushed for 48 more while pulling down a 16-yard touchdown reception and the Lions held the Browns’ Jim Brown — winner of both the Rookie of the Year and the MVP — to just 69 yards on 20 carries, 29 of them coming on a scoring dash that pulled his team within 17-7, the closest they’d be all day.
“Lions: From ‘Uncoachables’ to ‘Untouchables’ ” roared the lead headline in the Detroit Free Press sports section the next morning, celebrating a team that had been left for dead at 5-4 the week before Thanksgiving then reeled off five straight wins, including a tie-breaker playoff in San Francisco three days before Christmas and this clincher, three days before the new year.
“It was a hot day for Detroit,” Cleveland coach Paul Brown sighed afterward, “and we were just plain cold.”
Of course, as the Motor City feted its heroes across the next few days, it would have been impossible for anyone to believe it if a football prophet had descended from on high and warned them of the tundra that would befall the city across the next 66 years.
The Lions, after all, were right up there alongside the Browns in the football firmament, winners now of three of the previous six championships. Hell, they’d won this one despite losing the greatest and most popular player in team history, quarterback Bobby Layne, when he broke his leg in three places at the bottom of a dog pile in Week 11, against these same Browns. Rote had rescued them that game, delivered them in this one.
And Detroit found itself high atop the NFL. And liked the view.
Yes. That was a long time ago. That was the last time the Lions played in a game to determine the champion of professional football. The nation liked Ike and swooned over Elvis. Queen Elizabeth was five years into her reign.
It fell apart quickly. The Lions went 4-7-1 in 1958, and they would make exactly one playoff appearance between 1957 and 1982 — and that was an ignominious 5-0 loss to the Cowboys in 1970. There would be just 12 playoff appearances between 1957 and 2023. There would be 23 seasons with double-digit losses and an 0-16 in 2008.
And now, Sunday, Detroit has a shot to get back to the Big Game for the first time since Tobin and Hopalong.
There have been sonnets written about some droughts in sports: the Red Sox, the White Sox, the Cubs. There have been colorful paeans penned about the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Jets and the Rangers and the Knicks, the Cleveland baseball team, Buffalo as a pro sports town. But the Lions’ stretch of sadness has always been a part of the ether outside of Michigan. It just seems the Lions have always been an afterthought.
Not Sunday afternoon.
“We have a chance,” their coach, Dan Campbell, who is flatly impossible not to root for, said this week, “to do something people will never forget.”
For a forgotten franchise, Sunday evening’s game against the 49ers for the right to play once more in a championship game … well, that’s more than something. That’s everything.