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Giants finally get parade they deserved

Joe Gergen

February 5, 2008

The final drive of the football season will be longer than the 83 yards the Giants traveled in the waning minutes of Super Bowl XLII. It is expected to attract many multiples of the 71,101 witnesses to the 17-14 victory over the New England Patriots in Glendale, Ariz. Not only does it mark the team's first appearance in the metropolitan area in 2008 but it represents an unprecedented honor for the second-oldest professional sports franchise associated with the city.

A ticker-tape parade through the Canyon of Heroes has become almost commonplace for championship teams representing New York. The Yankees have been peppered with paper products on seven occasions, including four times in the last five years of the 20th Century. The Mets got the treatment three times, the first (optimistically) before they had played a single game in New York. For the Rangers, the skyscraper fallout conferred the lifting of a 54-year old curse.

You could argue that the Giants deserved earlier recognition. Of course, they had company. The Jets didn't receive a heroes' welcome after their astonishing triumph in Super Bowl III and the Knicks weren't invited to ride up Broadway to City Hall following their NBA titles in 1970 and 1973. But the Giants were a special case. They had claimed four NFL championships while playing at the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium before they were lured to the Meadowlands with the promise of a permanent home field.

By the time they regained the top rung of their sport with a victory in Super Bowl XXI, they were headquartered in New Jersey. That irked New York Mayor Ed Koch, who had no interest in spending city money on what he called a "foreign" team. He finally conceded only after American Express offered to underwrite the costs of a police presence and a sanitation detail, at which time the offended Mara family declined and staged its own party at Giants Stadium.

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The team and the city continued to be separated by more than the Hudson River even after the Giants won Super Bowl XXV. But the fate of New York franchises took a turn for the better in the 1990s and the desire for celebrations had a prominent advocate in Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a pennant-waving fan. During his administration, the Rangers were glorified once and the Yankees became October regulars, the last time in 2000.

The ritual harkens back to the arrival of the Statue of Liberty and its placement in New York harbor in 1886 and its list of honorees include presidents, war heroes, explorers (Admiral Byrd was cited three times), aviators (famously among them Charles Lindbergh), astronauts, foreign dignitaries and a lone pianist, Van Cliburn.

The first sportsman to be feted was golfer Bobby Jones in 1926 - he would be honored again in 1930 - followed by the likes of Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel, Olympic superstar Jesse Owens, tennis' Althea Gibson and Olympic skater Carol Heiss, a local girl from Ozone Park.

But Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio, as well as others who turned the Yankees into a brand name for excellence, never rode in a motorcade through lower Manhattan. The Bronx Bombers weren't even the first baseball team to provide citizens with an excuse for littering. The honor befell the New York Giants after they swept the Cleveland Indians in the 1954 World Series.

The Yankees finally were accorded New York's signature curtain call in April 1961, six months after they lost the 1960 World Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates. They earned a return engagement the following year after dispatching the Cincinnati Reds in the 1961 Fall Classic.

To the people who cheer them today, the Football Giants will always be of New York. So this is more than an appreciation for a job well done during five weeks on the road. Consider it a homecoming.

Over the years

New York City ticker tape parades over the years have recognized individuals and accomplishments, including:

Charles A. Lindbergh's first solo flight across the Atlantic, 1927.

Richard E. Byrd's first Antarctic expedition and flight over the South Pole, 1930.

Amelia Earhart's solo transatlantic flight - the first by a woman - in 1932.

New York Giants National League baseball champions, 1954.

John H. Glenn Jr., the first American to orbit the earth, 1962.

Apollo 11 astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins for the first manned moon landing, 1969.

New York Mets World Series champions, 1969 and 1986.

Pope John Paul II, 1979.