It had been a few months since the New York Yankees’ second consecutive World Series championship celebration. For baseball’s most successful franchise, the 1962 triumph was a milestone. It was the Yankees’ 20th title, all of them coming in less than four decades, beginning with the team’s first in 1923.

By 1962, Green Bay Packers head coach Vince Lombardi had already proven himself to be a savior, rescuing the franchise from ruin and winning his first championship in 1961. During his time in Green Bay, he won thrilling games and championship trophies at the stadium that would come to be named Lambeau Field in August 1965, following the death of team founder Curly Lambeau two months earlier. The Packers’ triumph in subzero temperatures in the 1967 NFL championship game at Lambeau Field -- famously known as the Ice Bowl -- remains one of the most iconic in football lore. But Lombardi’s most pivotal win, the one that secured a title for his most dominant team in Green Bay and cemented a dynasty, took place at the original Yankee Stadium.

Whether it was a nod to his Big Apple roots or a confidence-boosting prediction to his players and the football world that his team was going to do exactly what the Yankees had -- win back-to-back championships in ’61 and ’62 -- Lombardi instructed Green Bay equipment manager Gerald “Dad” Braisher to hang a sign in the team’s locker room:

Home of the Green Bay Packers. “The Yankees of Football.”

The sign was installed during the week that the 13-1 Packers took on the New York Giants in the NFL championship game in the Bronx, where Lombardi already had a lifetime of football memories.  

“That photo has always intrigued me,” team historian Cliff Christl said from a conference room at Lambeau Field in May. “Putting that sign up before the 1962 championship game, [Lombardi] is being presumptuous. The Yankees won in 1961 and 1962, and he was a firm believer in instilling confidence in his players. He would beat them down, but he thought that the most important thing was to field a confident team, with the specter of fear involved. He wanted his players to believe that they were on the best team in football and that they needed to win their matchups in order to remain on that team.

“There is a parallel there with the Packers and the Yankees. I believe that he put it up because he wanted to repeat in 1962 like the Yankees had done. At the same time, the Packers had won more NFL titles than any team at that point, and the Yankees had won the most World Series in baseball history. That may have been part of his thinking. Or did he just put it up because of his fondness for New York and for the Yankees?”

The truth behind why Lombardi posted such a boastful sign may include all of the reasons Christl explained, but what is much more documented is how the coach felt about returning home, bringing his Packers into Yankee Stadium to face a Giants team with which he had so much history.

“I don’t think there’s any question that during the nine years he was in Green Bay, Lombardi never lost his fondness for New York,” Christl said. “He would have much rather been in New York all nine years, other than for what he was hired to do here. As far as his daily life, he would have much rather been in New York.”

On a 25-degree day in the Bronx, the Packers -- ranked No. 1 in the league in offense and defense -- helped the legendary coach achieve what many close to him regard as his most gratifying victory. Green Bay’s 16-7 win over the Giants in the 1962 NFL title game not only capped off a historically dominant season, but it also gave the coach the sweetest homecoming imaginable.

“I can only imagine that the satisfaction he got out of winning a championship back at Yankee Stadium was as much as he ever got from any of the championships he won,” Christl said. “I think that more than the Ice Bowl victory or the Super Bowls, that was his most satisfying win because it was at Yankee Stadium. I think that game also laid the groundwork for that whole period to be viewed as a dynasty. He’s the only coach that won five NFL titles in seven years; no other NFL coach has won five in a decade.”

***

Sixty years later, there are just a few cars on the streets of downtown Green Bay during a typical Monday evening rush hour. The sidewalks in front of the city’s many landmarks are equally quiet. 

The heart of the city features a multi-dimensional tribute to the football team that has resided in the NFL’s most rural area since 1919. It includes statues of some of the greatest players and coaches in the team’s history. It also serves as the starting point for the Packers Heritage Trail, a project that takes fans to places where football history was made in Wisconsin.

Hotel Northland is located only a few hundred yards from the tribute area, and it is one of the locations that has been denoted as a Packers historical site. The clock behind the hotel’s front desk is purposely set 15 minutes fast. It’s on “Lombardi Time” -- the coach insisted on his players being early to meetings and practices. The first words of Lombardi’s legacy in Green Bay were written in Hotel Northland. 

Six days after taking the job in 1959, Lombardi was introduced as head coach of the Packers during a press conference at the hotel. In the Crystal Ballroom overlooking the quiet downtown, Lombardi told reporters that he had never been involved with a losing team in his life and that he didn’t intend to start now. Without the approval of the team’s executive committee -- a group that ran the publicly owned team -- Lombardi also told the press that he would be answering to no one; he gave himself full authority over the struggling organization. 

The circumstances that surrounded Lombardi’s hiring made those brash statements even more stunning. The Brooklyn, New York, native and son of Italian immigrants was hired to take over the Packers after finding himself on the short end of several head coaching candidacies. In Green Bay, at a time when the world seemed a lot larger, Lombardi was an unknown man hired to save a once-dominant franchise. 

A few miles along the Fox River from the Hotel Northland is where Lombardi’s days began before the sun came up and ended well after nightfall. Lombardi’s former home, a red brick ranch house that he and his wife moved into with their children during the coach’s first season with the Packers, sits on Sunset Circle in Green Bay, about 5 miles from Lambeau Field. 

In nine seasons with Green Bay, Lombardi led the Packers to five championships, including wins in the first two Super Bowls in NFL history, while amassing an 89-29 record. According to those closest to Lombardi, along with his most astute biographers, the intensely focused coach celebrated just about all of his victories in a downstairs recreation room in the house on Sunset Circle.

“That’s when he relaxed a little bit,” said his son, Vince Lombardi Jr., from his home in Washington state this summer. “Those Sunday night get-togethers were really the only time he let himself celebrate with his closest friends. He liked the bar he had down there. It was perfect for those parties. He would have a few cocktails; he was the life of the party.”

The road on which the house sits leads to a waterfront park and a trail along the Fox River. The view from Sunset Park extends far beyond the water, and a few miles into the distance, Lambeau Field, the legendary stadium that has been the Packers’ home since 1957, can be seen. 

Lambeau Field is, in many ways, football heaven. It is also one of the most unique venues in professional sports. Situated in an otherwise sleepy residential area, the 81,441-seat stadium, featuring a dark green metal exterior with brick columns, is mostly surrounded by one-story houses and fields where fans park on game days. 

“This is a special place,” Packers director of public affairs Aaron Popkey said from Lambeau Field in May. “People embrace home-game weekends because there is a different kind of energy here. If you’re out and about, you can feel that energy, from the people who live here and from those who come into town as early as Thursday to experience it.”

Named after the Packers’ founder, who also became their first legendary coach, the venue was originally named City Stadium. Today, it not only includes a museum where a replica of Lombardi’s office is on display, but there are also 14-foot-high statues of Lombardi and Lambeau outside the stadium. 

On the Lambeau Field sideline, Lombardi, who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971, not only won most of the games he coached; he also won the biggest tilts. The Packers’ victory over the New York Giants in the 1961 NFL title game in Green Bay had added significance for Lombardi; it not only gave him his first championship as a head coach, but it also came against the team he had been with as an assistant coach for five seasons.

The success continued in years to come. In 1967, Lombardi led the Packers to a 21-17 victory over the Dallas Cowboys on a minus-13-degree afternoon in Green Bay. The Ice Bowl secured a second consecutive Super Bowl berth for the Packers and also marked Lombardi’s final game in Green Bay as the Packers’ coach. 

“I consider the Ice Bowl to be the most significant game in Green Bay,” Christl said. “It represents everything we are known for; the Frozen Tundra, the climax of the Lombardi era.”

Two weeks after that New Year’s Eve classic, Lombardi coached his last game with the Packers, defeating the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl II at another iconic venue, the Miami Orange Bowl.

The Super Bowl trophy was later renamed after Lombardi, and that had as much to do with the coach’s popularity among fans as his success on the sideline.

“So many fans who come to Green Bay talk about how their families got interested in football because of how great Lombardi’s teams were,” Popkey said. “Historians generally point to the Lombardi era as a game-changer for professional football, and as much as his success went into the decision to name the trophy after him, so too did his impact.”

***

About 750 miles southeast of Lambeau Field, The House That Ruth Built stood for more than eight decades. It was there that Lombardi played in five games as a member of Fordham University’s powerhouse teams in the 1930s. Four of those games came against the school’s archrival, New York University.

Lombardi, who anchored Fordham’s famed “Seven Blocks of Granite” offensive line, helped push the team to victories over NYU in 1933, 1934 and 1935. In the final game of Lombardi’s collegiate career, Fordham fell to NYU at Yankee Stadium, 7-6. The loss snapped the school’s unbeaten record in 1936, although it did finish with two ties.

“Fordham didn’t play a lot of home games at Yankee Stadium,” Lombardi Jr. said. “But when they did, especially when my dad was there, they were the biggest games. Regardless of whether Fordham won or lost, I remember my dad remarking on how significant those games were.”

More than a decade after his final game at Fordham, and after years spent teaching and coaching at St. Cecilia High School in Englewood, New Jersey, Lombardi returned to Fordham’s football program as an assistant coach. Then in 1949, he was hired by the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he served as an assistant to Red Blaik, one of the most brilliant college coaches in history. 

During Lombardi’s five seasons on West Point’s coaching staff, his team played two games at Yankee Stadium, a 27-6 victory over Michigan in 1950 and a 28-6 loss to Southern Cal in 1951.

After West Point, Lombardi was hired by the New York Giants in 1954. Serving as the team’s de facto offensive coordinator, Lombardi quickly made an impression on his players. During each of the team’s first two seasons with Lombardi running the offense, the Giants finished third in the NFL’s six-team Eastern Conference. 

Then in 1956, after sharing the Polo Grounds with the baseball team of the same name since their inception in 1925, the Giants moved across the East River to Yankee Stadium. That same season, New York’s football team, led by head coach Jim Lee Howell, won the NFL championship in a rout of the Chicago Bears at Yankee Stadium.

That victory was memorable for Lombardi and the Giants’ faithful, but it in no way matched the drama that would take place two years later on the corner of 161st Street and River Avenue. 

In Lombardi’s final game on the Giants’ coaching staff, his team took on the Baltimore Colts in the 1958 NFL championship game. The Giants fell behind, 14-3, before taking a three-point lead early in the fourth quarter. Hall of Fame quarterback Johnny Unitas famously marched the Colts downfield, where Steve Myhra’s field goal with seven seconds left forced sudden-death overtime. Unitas then led Baltimore on a game-winning drive that captivated not only the 64,185 fans in the Bronx that day, but also millions who were watching on TV. 

That game had a profound impact on the growth of the NFL, catapulting it toward becoming the most popular league in the country, and the 1958 title game became known as “The Greatest Game Ever Played.” For Lombardi, the loss was bitter, but he never lost sight of what it meant to be involved in that historic event.

“He appreciated how important that day was,” Lombardi Jr. said. “He talked about how many all-time great players were on the field that day. There were Hall of Fame players, Hall of Fame coaches, All-Pros and legends all over the field. He was proud to have coached in that game, and the fact that it took place at Yankee Stadium only made it more important for him.”

While Lombardi and the New York Giants were celebrating the team’s rise in the 1950s, the Packers, once the class of the NFL, had fallen on hard times, on and off the Frozen Tundra. 

Under the stewardship of Lambeau, the Packers won six championships between 1929 and 1944. But during the 1950s, five coaches ran the show before Lombardi took over, and none posted a winning record. In the season before Lombardi’s arrival, the team went 1-10-1.

There were more desirable jobs that Lombardi got passed up for; many suspected it was because of widespread bias in the United States against Italian Americans at the time. The opportunity to lead the Giants didn’t work out for other reasons, mainly because the club had a head coach in Howell whose record was consistently impressive. 

The stars seemed to align perfectly for Lombardi to end up in northeast Wisconsin, 100 miles from Milwaukee, in 1959, and to coach a team owned by citizens of the community.

“There were a lot of people here who wanted the Packers to hire Curly Lambeau again,” said Christl, whose career as a sports journalist for the Green Bay Press-Gazette and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel spanned 36 years prior to his current tenure with the team. “The Packers first offered the job to Forest Evashevski, who led Iowa to two Rose Bowl victories, but he turned it down. It took the team six weeks to finally complete the search, and they talked to a lot of people during that time.

“A lot of influential people were told that Tom Hearden, a seasoned college coach, was going to get the job after the 1957 season, but he suffered a stroke just prior to when he was expected to get the Packers job. Several journalists wrote that if he hadn’t had a stroke, Lombardi never would have gotten the job two years later. The belief was that if Hearden had been able to take the job, he would have been successful, simply because he had been a winner everywhere else he had been. The same could not have been said for Scooter McClean, who ended up getting the Packers job in ’58, winning only one game and then getting fired.”

While the team’s win-loss record was a source of embarrassment, its struggle to stay in business was far more troubling.  

“The Packers were perpetually on their deathbed,” said Christl, a native of nearby De Pere, located about 5 miles from Green Bay. “There were so many near-death situations prior to that. Near the end of Lambeau’s last season in 1949, the Packers had to play an intrasquad game to raise enough money to finish the season. They could have folded then. They held their third stock sale, where they reached out to the fans. They got a pretty good war chest from that, but then came more losing seasons. They were again in jeopardy of folding, not only because of their record but also because their stadium was inadequate. It was pretty much a wooden high school stadium that seated 25,000 people.”

Despite the team’s on-field failures, a referendum was passed in 1956 to build a public football stadium fit for an NFL team. City Stadium, later renamed after Lambeau, opened in 1957, and according to Christl, the new stadium, along with an infusion of TV money, brought some stability to the organization.

“Everyone felt that this franchise was now assured of surviving,” Christl said. “Then came 1-10-1, and the organization was in a mess. So, again, I don’t know if they were back on their deathbed, but they were in deep trouble. Going into ’59, they had to get their next head coaching hire right.”

Even if the rest of the world didn’t know whether Lombardi was the guy who could save the Packers, the 46-year-old coach was determined -- and supremely confident -- that he would turn them into champions.

“Vince Lombardi came in and things turned around overnight,” Christl said. “By 1961, this stadium was sold out on a season-ticket basis for the first time. Lombardi was the savior. If they had hired someone else who failed again, there’s reason to wonder if the franchise would have survived.

“He was perfect for the job. Not only did he guarantee that the franchise would survive, but he turned it into the envy of football. He attracted thousands of new fans from small towns across America, who at that time were able to watch games on television. Now, the Packers became their favorite team.”

The Packers’ immediate success came in the form of a 7-5 record in Lombardi’s first season of 1959. Lombardi then led the team to an 8-4 record and a berth in the NFL championship game in 1960. 

“He didn’t turn things around in three years; he did it in one,” Christl said. “They had a tough stretch in the middle of the season in 1959, but they might have otherwise gone all the way that year. And, in 1960, when they played the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFL championship game, they had a good chance to win.”

When Lombardi’s team took the field in the 1961 title game against the Giants, the coach from New York was more confident than ever. 

“My dad had great respect for (then-Giants owner) Wellington Mara,” Lombardi Jr. said. “They were good friends, going all the way back to their days together at Fordham. But when they met up for dinner the night before the championship game in Green Bay, my dad told him in no uncertain terms that the Packers were going to come out with a decisive win.”

Lombardi was true to his word, leading the Packers to a 37-0 victory.

***

As a result of failing health that would lead to his death in 1970 from colon cancer, Lombardi left the Packers after the 1967 season. But his presence is still felt throughout sports and especially in Green Bay.

Under much different circumstances than Lombardi’s visit to the Bronx in 1962, the Packers’ current head coach, Matt LaFleur, came to Yankee Stadium this June. While taking in batting practice with his family, LaFleur, who has guided the Packers to back-to-back NFC championship games in his first three seasons with the team, spoke about Lombardi’s lasting impact in Green Bay. 

“It brings chills to your body when you think about a guy who is as iconic as Vince Lombardi,” LaFleur said from the field. “To know that you have the same responsibilities that he once had, that you coach in the same stadium as him, that’s special. The Packers are an iconic franchise, one of the most iconic in all of sports.”

That same morning, LaFleur learned of the sign that Lombardi put up in the Packers’ locker 
room before his 1962 trip to
Yankee Stadium. 

“That’s pretty cool,” LaFleur said. “The traditions that both teams have are similar. All of the iconic players, coaches and managers who have been with these two teams are incredible. So, I can certainly understand why that sign makes sense.”

Current NFL coaches not only dedicate their working lives to the pursuit of the special piece of hardware that bears Lombardi’s name, but they also aspire to lead their teams the way he once did. 

In Green Bay, Lombardi’s legacy is celebrated in every way. Lambeau Field is located on Lombardi Avenue. His name adorns the stadium’s façade, above the 50-yard line on the home sideline. There’s also that statue of him outside the stadium, which just like Lombardi himself, is larger than life. 

But 750 miles away, at the corner of 161st Street and River Avenue, so much of Lombardi’s history was written.