Football Giant Y. A. Tittle was the most magical and unlikely quarterback hero of the 1960s - the old man performing miracles in a young man game - as he lifted a mediocre New York Giants team to championship level and earned his place in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Dianne Tittle de Laet, an accomplished poet and harpist - who also happens to be the daughter of Y. A. Tittle - has written a life of the man that, unlike any other football book, is at its heart a father/daughter story.

Assembled in the manner of a scrapbook of memories, family lore, and photographs, Giants & Heroes follows Y. A. through his youth in East Texas, his college days at LSU, and a professional career in which he shattered passing records while playing for the Baltimore Colts, the San Francisco 49ers, and the Giants. As a girl, de Laet was consumed by a passion for the ancient Greeks, their poetry, music, and values, and had little interest in her father's "work". It was only later in life, when she herself became the mother of a teenage football player, that she began to think about the game's mysteries and came to appreciate the courage and special finesse which made her father - "Y. A." - a sports icon. Her journey into the past is at once a rediscovery of a long-gone era - when NFL quarterbacks called their own plays and, during the off-season, sold insurance door-to-door to make ends meet - and a daughter's intimate of her father....

Dianne Tittle de Laet is a poet and harpist. She lives with her husband in Menlo Park, Calif. This is her first published book.