They were, in so many ways, the last princes of the city — those Giants of the late 1950s and early 1960s who ferociously took on all NFL comers each Sunday at Yankee Stadium then relived it all later on at Toots Shor’s or some of the other fashionable watering holes in Fun City. They played in The Bronx, but they ruled Manhattan.
And they became folk heroes.
The roster of idols was deep and it was colorful, and often only needed nicknames or surnames for instant identification. Giff. Chuckin’ Charlie. Rosey. Rote. Robustelli.
And in the very middle of all of it was Robert Lee Huff Sr. — even he was never sure how he became “Sam” along the way — who was the one that inspired 65,000 devotees every Sunday to roar “Deeee-fense! Deeee-fense!!!” from his place in the middle of the linebacking corps.
Huff died at 87 on Saturday in Winchester, Va., after a long fight with dementia. His place in NFL history is secure. His place in Giants history is forever.
“Sometimes you wonder if football players are as tough as they seem,” Allie Sherman, Huff’s second head coach with the Giants, said a few years before his own death in 2015. “With Sam there was never any question about that. He was tougher than leather. He enjoyed contact. He enjoyed everything about playing football. He was a football player.”
Later, Sherman and Huff became archenemies. But there was a time when they made the most beautiful football music together, a symphony that rang out from Yankee Stadium on Sunday afternoons and lifted the NFL to the very top of the American sporting pantheon.
The Giants didn’t win as many championships as the Packers or the Colts. They still ruled pro football. And Huff, wearing his eminent No. 70 blue jersey, was the king of kings.
From 1956 — Huff’s rookie year — through 1963, the Giants played in the NFL Championship Game six times in eight years, winning the title in ’56. The fact they never added a bookend title didn’t bother their legion of fiercely loyal fans, whose devotion to the team was non-negotiable and unconditional. And Huff was among the most revered.
In 1959 Huff was featured on the cover of Time magazine under the headline “A Man’s Game.” A year later, he was the subject of a CBS documentary titled “The Violent World of Sam Huff,” and his legend, legacy and reputation were cast in iron for the ages.
“Sam was one of the greatest Giants of all time,” Giants co-owner John Mara said in a statement. “He was the heart and soul of our defense in his era.”
After Sherman took over for Jim Lee Howell, he led the Giants to the title game in 1961, ’62 and ’63, losing all three times — twice to the Packers and once to the Bears. Huff was actually spared the Giants’ bottoming-out that followed — the team went 2-10-2 in 1964, the first of 17 straight seasons out of the playoffs — when he was traded to Washington after the 1963 season. But Huff was devastated leaving the team and the city, and never forgave Sherman for what he believed was his prime role in exiling him to Washington.
In 1966, Huff exacted his revenge during a 72-41 Redskins win over the Giants at D.C. Stadium, either encouraging or overruling coach Otto Graham (depending on whose story you believe), calling out Charlie Gogolak to kick a field goal at the end of garbage time, which allowed Washington to hang 70 on his arch-enemy.
“That’s when [Giants-Washington] became a rivalry,” Huff told The Post’s Brian Costello in 2005, 39 years later, still unapologetic and still angry. “It was between me and Allie Sherman. I took an oath that I would never quit until I got him fired. That game was my anger coming out at the way the whole thing happened.”
That was just one reason why Giants fans loved him to the end: He was one of them, and remained one of them, even after broadcasting Washington games for nearly 40 years. He had to be dragged kicking, screaming, cursing and punching away from New York even as the Giants became an enormous tire fire in the late 1960s.
“I have a long memory,” said Huff, who was born in Edna Gas, W.Va., grew up in a coal-mine camp and played collegiately at West Virginia but found his star in New York — it was his eight years as a Giant that served as his primary résumé for his Hall of Fame induction in 1982.
He took his place with football immortals that day. But he’d already earned his spots among forever Giants long before.