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 Gino Marchetti didn’t see the end of the Greatest Game Ever Played, but at least he knows where the football from that game ended up. Marchetti was in the visitors’ locker room of Yankee Stadium when his buddy Alan Ameche crashed across the goal line on a -yard plunge to end the first overtime game in NFL history, the  championship game. Marchetti was there, instead of on the Baltimore sideline, because he had broken his right ankle stuffing New York Giant halfback Frank Gifford short of a first down on a controversial play in the fourth quarter. To this day Gifford contends he had the first down, but a recent review of the play with computer technology confirms that the referees had made the right call. The bottom line that day was that the Giants were forced to punt on fourth and inches from their own -yard line with just over two minutes left in the game. That was just enough time for Johnny Unitas to march the Colts from their own -yard line  yards to the Giants’ , where Steve Myhra kicked a -yard field goal to tie the game at  with seven seconds left, sending the game into overtime. Marchetti saw the tying drive and Myrha’s field goal. Although the Colts medical staff pleaded with Marchetti to retreat to the locker room, where his ankle could be properly treated, he was adamant about watching the game from his stretcher. “I played on so many bad teams that when I finally got to a game like that one, the world championship, I wanted to see the finish. When we tied the game, I was on a stretcher and nobody knew what was going to happen next.  The Greatest Game  So the word comes down that we are going to sudden death, and they start to take me to the locker room. “I stopped by the entrance to the locker room, and I made them put me down because I wanted to see the rest of the overtime. But the police came over and made them carry me inside. They were afraid because there were fans lining the field and if the game ended suddenly, they wouldn’t be able to get me off the field. “So I never got to see the overtime. . . . There was no closed circuit TV back then. Are you kidding me? I’m laying there and I hear all the yelling and cheering, but I had no idea what was going on. So finally [Colts linebacker] Bill Pellington comes running in and says, ‘Yeah, we’re the best! We’re the World Champions.’ So we all had our Cokes and celebrated.” What Marchetti missed was perhaps the most viewed play in the history of professional football. On third down, Unitas called the play known as power , and Ameche, with his head lowered and both arms smothering the football, barreled off the right tackle and into the end zone from  yard out with the game winner. Ameche benefited from perfectly executed blocking from the likes of wide receiver Lenny Moore, tight end Jim Mutscheller, and right tackle George Preas, and the game ended at the : mark of the overtime period. Marchetti has since viewed Ameche’s touchdown plunge and the scramble for the precious game-winning football many times over. “Alan gets into the end zone and instead of celebrating, he kind of nonchalantly shoves the football away from him,” Marchetti said. “Alan wasn’t a guy that wanted a lot of glory so he just kind of shoved it away. He was ready to just pick himself up and get off the field because by now, the fans were everywhere. “Of course, a fan picks the ball up and starts to get away with it, but our center, Buzz Nutter, took it back from him. It was the championship ball, and Buzz went right after the guy and got it back.” Nobody was happier than Marchetti that Nutter had the presence of mind to retrieve the football. And where is the ball now? “I know exactly where that ball is,” Marchetti continued his story. “The team voted me the ball, I guess because I broke my ankle, and of course I accepted. But I’m not what you would call a real big collector of things like that, so I gave it away. “I was voted into the Italian Hall of Fame in Chicago, and they asked me if I had...

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