Every year at this time, I turn the clock back. Not one hour, but decades. Baseball ends, the wind blows, the leaves fall, and I think back to when I was a teenage fan of the New York Giants -- the New York football Giants.

Sunday, as I watched the Giants dismantle the Eagles on the Turbo TV corner of my computer screen, I thought back to a fall 39 years ago. Our family was listening to the Giants beat the Eagles on the big console radio in our Connecticut living room because there was a 75-mile blackout of home games back then. At one point late in the second quarter, coach Allie Sherman sent his two best defensive backs, Erich Barnes and Jimmy Patton, into the game on offense. The exact details are lost to me now, but as I recall, Barnes caught a 62-yard touchdown pass from Y.A. Tittle to spark the Giants to victory. And my father and I were delirious.

Funny what your mind won't let you forget. The bomber-crew names of the Giants' Front Four: Andy Robustelli, Jim Katcavage, Dick Modzelewski, Rosey Grier. I can still see Homer Jones -- the prototype of Randy Moss -- streaking down the field on a post pattern. You may think of Joe Walton as a joke of a coach, but I remember him as the gritty, go-to tight end for the Giants. I once wrote Jim Lee Howell, the former head coach who became the general manager, to ask him what had become of Henry Schichtle, a one-time third-string quarterback (one game in 1964), and Mr. Howell wrote back, telling me Henry was doing well for the Giants' farm team in Bridgeport, Conn.

When Giant fans of a certain age get together, the topic invariably comes around to the Baby Bulls, the six young backs the '65 Giants had. The challenge is to name all of them: Tucker Frederickson, Steve Thurlow, Ernie Koy, Ernie Wheelwright, Chuck Mercein and the one most often forgotten, Smith Reed from Alcorn A&M. Thurlow was particularly dear to us -- the sister of a high school friend was the president of the Steve Thurlow Fan Club. He came up to the Capital District to speak and brought along Bill Swain, a linebacker on the Giants. Very classy guys, very smart. I found out then and there that jocks were not dumb.

Somewhere along the line, I lost that visceral connection to the Giants. They were bad for a long time, feckless and faceless, and by the time Bill Parcells cajoled them into greatness, I was a professional journalist, and objectivity had become my occupational hazard. But I got to thinking the other day, watching the 6-2 Giants with their new, retro NY helmets and their attractive cast of Collins, Strahan, Toomer and Barber, that I should've stuck with them all these years.

But you really can't reclaim the love that easily. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to ask Sherman about his radical move in that game against the Eagles, and he told me the darndest story that shows just how much the game has changed. "I'm sitting at my desk in Yankee Stadium," he recalled, "and Pete Sheehy, the clubhouse guy for both the Yankees and the Giants, is pushing a broom. I say, to no one in particular, 'I wish we had some speed.' Pete goes on sweeping and pipes up, 'You do.' I say, 'I do?' He says, 'Yeah -- on defense.' So I draw up the play where I send Barnes and Patton, our two fastest guys, into the game. After the game, which we win on Erich's touchdown, I tell the story to the press.

"Now it's Monday morning, and I'm back in the office. But my coffee isn't there. Pete always brought me my coffee. Never missed a day. So I ask around, a little worried about Pete. And they tell me, he couldn't come in that morning. He was on the Today Show, talking about how he won the game against the Eagles."

If Jim Fassel has a tale like that, I'm back in.

Steve Wulf is executive editor of ESPN The Magazine. Giants fans or coaches can e-mail him at steve.wulf@espnmag.com.