The NFL played its 1st and only game in Maine 65 years ago

Hard Telling Not Knowing each week tries to answer your burning questions about why things are the way they are in Maine — specifically about Maine culture and history, both long ago and recent, large and small, important and silly. Send your questions to eburnham@bangordailynews.com .

For many Mainers, a trip to Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts to see the New England Patriots — or a trip to see any pro football game, for that matter —  would be a bucket list item. Tickets are expensive, food and drinks are expensive, and it requires a lot of planning. For football fanatics, however, it’s worth it.

For the first and only time 65 years ago, though, Mainers only had to travel within the state — in some cases just a few miles — to see a National Football League game. On Sept. 5, 1959, the New York Giants and the Green Bay Packers played an exhibition game at what is now known as Cameron Stadium in Bangor.

The game was organized as part of the city’s 125th anniversary celebration, a commemorative year that also saw the city install the Paul Bunyan statue at Bass Park. Gordon Clapp, one of the organizers of the event, told the Bangor Daily News in 2009 that it was, for many Maine football fans at the time, a kind of home game.

“The Giants were our home team back then, and we felt like it would be a coup to get them to come to Bangor, because this wasn’t a big city like Chicago or New York,” Clapp said in 2009. “I just remember how easy it seemed to get an event like this to come to a small town like Bangor, when today that would be impossible.”

Back then, the NFL was still in its early years. The first Super Bowl wouldn’t be held for another eight years. Most players were relative unknowns, without the multi-million dollar contracts and massive endorsement deals seen today.

New York Giants pro football star halfback Alex Webster takes time out from an afternoon workout at Doyle Field in Brewer to sign autographs for two lady fans, Carol Stebbins (standing) and Charlotte Mulherin, both of Bangor.

New York Giants halfback Frank Gifford (from right), rookie and former UM player Roger Ellis and quarterback Chuck Conerly discuss game plans at their practice session the day before the Giants played the Green Bay Packers in Bangor in September 1959.

Giants coach Jim Lee Howell talks to tackle Bob Schmidt on the side lines moments after coming off the field of play. Sept. 5, 1959 in Bangor, in the game against the Packers.

And yet the Giants-Packers game in Bangor was a historic one, not just for the fact that it was the only NFL game ever played in Maine, but also that it featured so many notable names in football history. They included players like Giants flanker-halfback Frank Gifford, Giants defensive tackle Rosey Grier, Packers fullback Jim Taylor, Packers offensive tackle Forrest Gregg and legendary coach Vince Lombardi, who in 1959 was in his first year coaching the Packers — after four seasons coaching with the Giants.

Both teams arrived the day prior to the game, flying into what was then known as Dow Air Force Base. They practiced on Sept. 4 at the football field at Dow, and signed autographs for fans hanging out watching the practice.

Pat Summerall, a longtime football announcer for CBS who in 1959 played for the Giants, told the BDN in 2009 that they stayed at the Penobscot Hotel on Exchange Street. Jerry Kramer, a lineman for the Packers, said that when they arrived at the field, both teams realized they were playing at a high school facility — a far cry from Yankee Stadium, where the Giants then played, and City Stadium, now known as Lambeau Field, where the Packers play to this day.

But no matter: between 12,000 and 13,000 people were estimated to have bought tickets for the game, which was held on an unseasonably hot and humid early September evening at what was then called Garland Street Field. One of the sponsors of the game was Ballantine Beer, which led to the matchup being unofficially dubbed the “Ballantine Bowl.” According to Clapp, Ballantine sold more beer in Maine that night than it ever had before.

The Giants won the game 14-0 , thanks to two touchdown runs by fullback Alex Webster. And with that, the NFL in Maine had its beginning, middle and end.

A player signs an autograph at Dow Air Force Base for a young football fan in Bangor, ahead of the 1959 Giants-Packers game.

Green Bay’s Vince Lombardi scratches his head as the Giants stopped his team on the Packers’ 40 in Bangor on Sept. 5, 1959. A year ago Lombardi was on the other side — with the Giants

This vintage poster advertised the Giants-Packers football game which took place on Garland Field September 5, 1959. Courtesy of Modern Screenprint

New York Giants players practice ahead of the Giants-Packers game in Bangor in 1959.

Football would change forever the following year, when the American Football League was founded to challenge the National Football League; the two leagues would officially merge in 1970, to form today’s NFL.

Football in New England specifically would also soon change, as less than three months after the Bangor game, the region would get its own team: the Boston Patriots, a founding member of the AFL, today known as the New England Patriots. They would quickly supplant the Giants as the region’s “home team.”

The Giants-Packers game was not the only pro sports game ever played in Bangor, however. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the Boston Celtics regularly played exhibition games in the Queen City, and even played a 1955 regular season game against the Syracuse Nationals at the then brand new Bangor Auditorium.

Today, with pro sports at all levels a multi-billion dollar industry, with teams playing at venues that can seat tens of thousands, the idea of two pro teams playing at a high school stadium in a small city in Maine seems utterly ridiculous. But for those who were at the Giants-Packers game in Bangor 65 years ago, it was an unforgettable — and unrepeatable —  experience.