CANTON, Ohio — She has seen so much of the glory of the Giants, the championships and the Hall of Famers, not to mention how The Fumble and the dark years tortured her husband, Wellington, and oldest child John, and now Ann Mara, the feisty, classy widow of the great patriarch of the Giants, walked back into Fawcett Stadium to celebrate the Hall of Fame induction of Michael Strahan. She was asked what it was like having another New York Giant in the Hall of Fame.
“Nothing unusual about that,” Ann Mara told The Post with a Hall of Fame smile. “I expect one every year.”
John Mara laughed, and swelled with pride as he talked about the impact Strahan has to this day on his team.
“That’s a one-in-a-lifetime guy, a guy that makes other people better,” Mara said.
In his entertaining, heartfelt, 34-minute speech, Strahan thanked Wellington Mara for drafting him, thanked Bob Tisch for giving him rides to and from practice when he was a starry-eyed rookie on crutches.
“I am an absolutely improbable Hall of Famer. … I am an improbable football player,” Strahan said.
It was a night for all Giants to cherish, from the men who coached Strahan, such as his one-time nemesis Tom Coughlin, and Jim Fassel and John Fox, to a man who coached against him, Bill Parcells, when he tried unsuccessfully to get Jerry Jones back to a Super Bowl.
“You made me a better man, Coach Coughlin,” Strahan said, and Coughlin began applauding.
Parcells would have loved him.
“He was a very good player. And, he stood the test of time,” Parcells told The Post before Strahan was voted in last February.
It also was a night of celebration for Lawrence Taylor and Harry Carson and Eli Manning and all the Giants who played alongside Strahan.
“I’m still scared of you, Lawrence,” Strahan said, and LT was smiling a smile that seemed to stretch for 56 miles. He watched Taylor practice the way a pro is supposed to practice, and cracked him up when he added: “I also learned that it’s OK to sleep in meetings sometimes — even though you did it, all the time.”
Strahan teased Manning about his boyish poker face seated at his locker and said: “And with you, Eli, I’ve learned you don’t have to be outwardly excited to be internally combustible, to go out there and whip some people on a football field my friend, and you have done it.”
It also was a night of pride and joy for an old Giants Southwest scout named Jeremiah Davis, who fell in love with the gap-toothed kid from Texas Southern back in 1992.
“He stood out in the Senior Bowl,” Davis said. “A lot of guys get intimidated, they lose focus, but he came there with a plan. Some of those guys, they’ll melt. But he took a step up.”
Davis, who has been with the Giants for 27 years, was hired as a full-time scout in 1990. With the 36th pick of the 1993 draft, the Jets selected DE Coleman Rudolph from Georgia Tech. It left Strahan for the delighted Giants, picking 40th.
“I get drafted by the New York Freakin’ Giants,” Strahan said. “And not only by the Giants, I get drafted by Wellington Mara — the Duke.”
Strahan played one year with LT, who retired after the 1993 season. He is Davis’ first Hall of Famer, as much as he tries to share the credit with then-Player Personnel Director Tom Boisture, GM George Young and Wellington Mara.
“Once Lawrence was on the field, he was a different animal, and the same thing with Michael,” Davis said. “When it’s football time, the season’s here, he’s all in, as Tom Coughlin would always say to us.”
LT told the Giants website that Strahan could have played in any era. “The one thing I liked about Mike is every game he played, he got better and better and better,” Davis said. “And if you look at his career, his career was the same way.”
Jeremiah Davis never had been to the Hall of Fame. Until Saturday night, when he had a birds-eye seat next to GM Jerry Reese. When he got to live every scout’s dream.
Strahan vowed to Davis he would walk the talk and prove the doubters wrong. And Saturday night, this self-proclaimed mama’s boy closed the show and walked all the way into pro football immortality, so honored to walk in a Giant, and even Kelly Ripa, his Live With Kelly and Michael co-host (”My TV wife”) was in the house to witness it.
“This has been the best weekend of my life,” Strahan said.
Another Hall of Fame weekend for the New York Giants.
“The more Giants the better,” Parcells said.