GREAT SENSATIONS IN SPORTSA dozen events that I'll never forget
Memories Updated
Jan. 8, 2008Israel
I took the title from an antique two-volume history book that used to be lying around the house when I was younger, called Great Sensations In History, written in 1887. I thought that sums up the thrust of this, eight events I found sensational. Besides that "Great Moments In Sports" has been done to death, although they were that too.
I've chosen eight Great Sensations, and four others I could not ignore, so they get very Honorable Mention.
I'm 66 years old so obviously I go back into the mists of time. Of the 12 events, four are in the 1950s (counting the end of that decade) and three are in this century. There's a reason for that. In your youth following professional sports can be a major focus of your life and then in retirement you've got free time. In between it's one big hustle, work, run, jump, push, shove, pull, grab, produce, pressure, pressure, pressure, go go go, jobs, kids, and then of course the piece de resistance, the divorce proceeding. You catch what you can on the fly but paying attention to what other people are doing is not your main priority in life.
It works out that four of the events come from hockey, three from baseball, two from boxing, two from basketball, and one, thanks to Lance, from bicycling. Why no football, Canadian, where I was spawned, or American? We didn't play football where I'm from in the Maritimes and when I saw the Canadian game on TV, it just never interested me. I liked the American game, with the extra down, but they play on Sunday afternoon. That was family time, into the car and out we go. I never got hooked on it. And then we moved to Israel where what they call football is soccer, but except for an international game here and there that too never turned me on.
You can go direct to individual items.(Long) Maurice Richard, hockey. Yvon Durelle, boxing. Bill Mazeroski, baseball. Paul Henderson, hockey. Mike Rossman, boxing. Tim Raines, baseball. Mark Messier, hockey. Derrick Sharp, basketball.
(Short) Bobby Thompson, baseball. Ed Van Impe, hockey. Tim Duncan, basketball. Lance Armstrong, cycling.
As a kid I played hockey in the winter and baseball in the summer, and swam, in the river until the polio season, and then to the sea.
The highlight of my hockey career was a 20-minute fight with a team-mate who called me a "dirty Jew" and then hit me across the head with his stick. (No helmets then.) We were outdoors at a practice one night and alongside the rink were deep powdered snow drifts and we ended up rolling around and punching each other inside those in total darkness far from the dim lights at the rink. The fight lasted so long because the guys didn't know where we had disappeared to, and besides that fighting is a part of the game, so they left us alone for our private drill. My career as a rock 'em, sock 'em defenceman such as it wasn't ended in grade 9 when I tore out a cartilage in a knee which took two years to grow back in.
In baseball I was what you would call no-hit, no-field, no throw, but I managed to finagle a place in the lineup because of my ability to steal bases and rattle the opposing pitcher. That was the "dead foot" era, no one stole bases. But I had been inspired by stories I had read of the old-timers like Wee Willie Keeler and Ty Cobb. I had three ways of getting on base, the walk, the bunt, and the hit-by-pitch. That latter was my specialty. I'd stay alive at the plate, then step forward and insult the pitcher, crowd the plate, and sure enough, he'd throw at me. That was an automatic double, and oftentimes a triple. I was delighted when Maury Wills brought base-stealing back into prominence.
The only injury I suffered in sports occurred in a rugby game in high school. My knee had healed and I played on a seven-man squad in the school intramural championship, class against class. We were a grade 10 team (I was going around a second time in that grade), not expected to get very far, but we reached the semi-finals. Sudden death. As things had developed, because of my running ability, I had scored almost all our points, no one could catch me once I got space. There were a lot of thugs in our school, not a few of them in that grade 11 class we were slated to play. A few days before the game, the word came down, "if you show up for the game, you're going to the hospital." The whole school it seemed was talking about it. Intimidation is part of sports and I shrugged it off. The game started and an opponent on the far side broke away. I made a diagonal dash after him and after running half the field I caught him a few feet from the goal line. I went in low for the tackle as we were taught but instead of trying to avoid me, he turned and brought his knee hard up into my chest. I felt a sharp pain. They scored on the next play and everyone ran back up the field. I walked up with the ref, a Brit who limped probably from the war, and said, "I can't breath." He replied, "that's what you get for smoking."
I figured I had no choice, I couldn't walk away from the game or I'd be labelled a "chicken" after all the build-up. The game was more like a rumble than a sport, punches were exchanged on almost every stoppage. The guys were feeding me the ball as usual, and I was getting creamed because I could barely move. They routed us and after we made a post-game cheer, I turned to a player who had a rattletrap and asked him to get me to the hospital. It turned out it was only two cracked ribs. I was glad to hear it wasn't the smoking.
And I actually won something in sports, back to back city and district table tennis championships, first the under 18 class and then the under 20. Not bad for a fourth seed without a decent forehand slam who relied almost entirely on junk and positioning, and playing like a left-hander although I was right-handed, which threw off guys who had never played me that I met in the tournaments since they played me on my strong side thinking it was my weak side.
Those were my personal great sensations. Here are my top 12 choices in professional sports. There are eight relatively long entries and four shorter entries. Both are listed in chronological order.
1. RICHARD UNCONSCIOUS SCORES WINNER
Place: Montreal Forum. Date: April 8, 1952.
Event: Seventh game of the Stanley Cup semi-finals between the Montreal Canadiens and the Boston Bruins.
The most famous picture in hockey history
One of the blessings in growing up BTV, before there was television, was that listening to things on the radio developed your imagination. When you listened to a program, say, like "Boston Blackie," you were manufacturing the images of the show in your head as they went on. This was even easier for a hockey game because you had seen the pictures of most of the players and you knew what they looked like.
Maurice (The Rocket) Richard was my favorite player. His Montreal Canadiens would not become a powerhouse until a number of years later, and Richard, a left-shooting right winger, was their only star at that time. There is no question in my mind he was the greatest clutch player in hockey history and maybe in all athletics. His record of six overtime playoff winners still stands and they only had the potential of playing two post-season series in one year instead of the current four.
I listened to this game on a Boston station which we picked up in the Maritimes. They had a unique of reporting names. Bill Quackenbush was "Quack" and I can't begin to render how they mangled "Real Chevrefils."
Richard had a knack for the dramatic that you'd think could only have been scripted in Hollywood. He remains perhaps the only sports figure whose suspension caused a full-scale city riot, that was in Montreal in 1955. His most fantastic goal came in 1952 to give the Canadiens a seventh game semi-final victory over the Boston Bruins. Richard was blindsided by the hard-nose Leo Labine in the second period, bounced off Quackenbush, and hit the ice like a ton of bricks, unconscious, blood streaming from his head. The radio announcers feared that his neck had been broken. They later gave the impression that the doctors were trying to save his life at the hospital. In reality Richard woke up long enough in the dressing room to ask them not to take him to the hospital.
Sugar Jim Henry was the Boston goaltender; he suffered from two black eyes (no masks then), his nose having been broken in the previous game, but played magnificently, making one huge save after another. Late in the third period with the score tied 1-1 Richard appeared on the gangway to a huge cheer from the home crowd. He sat down at the far end of the bench and now he too had a black eye and squinted at the scoreboard but his vision were blurred. "Yeah it's still 1-1," a team-mate told him. He sat there as if in a stupor. "What's the score?" he asked again a few moments later.
Richard stepped on the ice with four minutes left. Habs' captain Butch Bouchard fed him the puck from behind his net. Richard skated up the ice, past one Bruin, another, another, then, shouted the announcer, "only Quack is back." He flew past Bill Quackenbush in all alone, score!!
(Did I hear it right? I was only a kid don't forget. Some on the web say that Chevrefils was the last man back. But he was a forward and Quack was the anchor of the defence. Maybe someone can clear it up.)
Richard would say later he didn't remember scoring the goal. Others said he didn't pass the puck when he could have because he couldn't see. When Richard went to the dressing-room after the game, he went into convulsive shock
Sugar Jim Henry died recently and one of the most famous pictures in sports became popping up on the net, which I've got here, Henry and Richard shaking hands after the game.
2. DURELLE ALMOST BEATS THE MONGOOSE
Place: Montreal Forum. Date: Dec. 10, 1958.
Event: Light-heavyweight championship of the world.
One of three first round knockdowns
On my side of the St. John River at that time we had a separate municipality not part of the main city, Saint John. There were two pharmacies in that town. The owners of both pharmacies dropped dead watching the Yvon Durelle-Archie Moore light heavyweight title fight. It was that exciting.
For those too young to remember, boxing was big in those days. There were only eight divisions, every kid who followed sports knew who the champions were and most of the top challengers as well. There was no confusion and multiple meaningless titles. The sport had a been a fixture for years on radio on Friday Night Fights, and the Durelle-Moore fight was the first on national TV in Canada as well as in the US.
The "Rocky" theme has become hackneyed over the years because of the success of the movie series about a fictional fighter. Yvon Durelle, the Fighting Fisherman, was a real-life "Rocky." One of 14 children in a nondescript coastal village in New Brunswick, he dropped out of school early and joined his family in lobster fishing. He also boxed to earn a bit of extra income. He never trained, never learned much about the finer points of self-defence, but he could take a punch, and he hit like a mule. He got to the point where the boxing world considered him a good trial horse, but he would surprise people, and win fights against some very stiff opposition. One night they put him up against a slick contender named Tony Anthony in Detroit. Anthony was being groomed for a title shot and Durelle was regarded as a stepping stone. The match was featured on Friday Night Fights. I heard it. By the end rounds the "stepping stone" had turned Anthony into a punching bag. They called it a draw, I guess trying to save Anthony's reputation. Durelle beat him bad.
That made him a contender and although he would lose the rematch to Anthony earned a title fight against the best light-heavyweight champion who ever lived Archie ("The Old Mongoose") Moore. Moore was 45 then, Durelle only 29. In his 27-year career Moore would score an incredible 141 knockouts. But this courageous man needed every ounce of his courage to survive the first round against Durelle. Yvon caught him flush on the jaw in the opening minutes, knocked him down, and if it had been anyone else surely out. He hammered him to the canvas twice more that round, but Moore somehow got up. Those watching the fight, in New Brunswick that meant the entire population, now waited for the inevitable, the big Durelle bomb that would send Moore to la-la land. He stalked Moore around the ring for five rounds and then he caught him again and down went Moore, but again he got up.
Now the inevitable did happen. Durelle got tired, and Moore finished him in the 11th round.
There would be a rematch and Durelle got some top-flight handlers for this one, but his moment had passed. Moore who had fought the best boxers in the sport for over 20 years, late in life paid Durelle the highest compliment possible. He said, “I had fought a lot of great punchers. And I could always handle them pretty well, but this guy — oh boy, he hit me harder than I’d ever been hit in my life.”
Thanks to the wonder of the web, you can watch that first round here on YouTube. He's also got the finish where Moore in a post-fight interview pays tribute to his opponent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27yYJMyihJw&feature=related
For reminiscences on the fight, go here.
http://www.eastsideboxing.com/news.php?p=1503&more=1
3. MAZEROSKI'S HR WINS CRAZY SERIES
Place: Forbes Field, Pittsburgh. Date: Oct. 13, 1960
Event: Seventh game of the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Maz is mobbed as he reaches home plate.
By the fall of 1960 I found myself in university. The World Series was a big betting event. It was the Pittsburgh Pirates vs New York Yankees.
The New York Yankees, even more so than now, were the pre-emptive powerhouse in baseball,. In the 11 years from 1949 to 1960 they had gone to the fall classic no fewer than nine times and won, not counting the last year, seven times. The Pirates, by sharp contrast, were the joke team of the 50s. Things did not get better when they brought in Branch Rickey as general manager, he who had gained fame by breaking the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers by fielding Jackie Robinson. He went with a youth movement but by 1958 it started to pay off, when they suddenly had became respectable. Two years later, the once woebegone Pirates were in the World Series, but up against the mighty Yankees. Baseball fans figured the Yanks would blow this team right off the field, and they did just that, three times. But you have to win four to attain the championship.
Neither of these teams were my favorites but I bet the Pirates because I am sucker for the underdog. They the won first game at home, 6-4, and then the Yanks went to work, 16-3 and 10-0. "You'll still betting Pirates?" I was asked. "Yeah, sure," I answered, why I don't know. Everyone wanted a piece of me.
The Bucs won 3-2 and 5-2 and then another blowout, 12-0. That set up the incredible seventh game as described by Sports Illustrated this way, "Climax piled upon climax with never an anticlimactic moment, it was unique. There are many who say it was the most exciting baseball game ever played. Some say it was the most exciting game that ever will be played." I'll you one thing. I don't recall anyone in the packed TV room I was in leaving to use the bathroom the whole time, that's how riveting the game was. The lead swung back and forth until the Yanks grabbed a "commanding" 7-4 lead in the top of the eighth. The Bucs scored five thanks to a bad hop to the throat of the shortstop The Yanks came back to tie it 9-9 in the ninth thanks to a mental lapse of the first baseman who held onto the ball instead of tagging the runner for a double play. Up stepped Mazeroski, the second baseman known as "the Glove." He had hit a home run to win game 1. Now he did it again, the only time a 7th game has been decided by a walk-on homer.
Later after I began to work and actually had to earn my money I never bet. I knew then how hard the green stuff was to come by. And I probably lost more than I won when I did place wagers as a kid. But at least on this one occasion I hit the jackpot.
4. HENDERSON SAVES THE FREE WORLD
Place: Palace of Sports, Moscow. Date: Sept. 28, 1972
Event: Last game of an eight game hockey series between Canada and the Soviet Union.
Henderson after the goal heard round the world
The year 1972. The Cold War at its height. Also the hypocrisy in all matters touching upon amateur sport. It wasn't easy to organize a series between the NHL pros and the "amateurs" of the Soviet Union. Finally they agreed on eight games, four in Canada, four in Moscow, autumn pre-season, amateur rules, and no overtime in case of a tie at the end of regulation play.
No one among the Canadian public knew anything about the Russians. So what? There was no cause for worry even without Bobby Orr, a magician on ice, then recovering from an injury; or Bobby Hull, with the howitzer shot, shunned because he had jumped from the NHL to the new WHA, the two best Canadian players.
The atmosphere before the series, at least in my part of Canada, was a carnival of smugness, disdain, complacency. It was going to be like the Harlem Globetrotters vs The Neighborhood Pickup Team, the result known in advance. The players, chosen from the 14 teams at that time, related to the game as to an all-star game, much show, little woe.
In those days private Soviet citizens did not voice their opinions, at least they were not heard abroad. But the official government spokesmen did not miss this golden opportunity to fill the Canadian media with their political propaganda. "The Soviet Union has the most advanced and efficient socio-political system in the world and therefore our country is the leader in very many fields and we will prove this in the hockey series." To which the ordinary Canadian citizen answered, "All that and they invented the telephone too."
Not long ago I talked with a Russian immigrant here in Israel and I asked him what they expected before the series. Years before Celine Dion, the NHL stars were the most famous Canadians in Russia. He said, "We knew of (Phil) Esposito, (Yvan) Cournoyer, (Ken) Dryden, and really all the big stars. For us they were bigger than life. We hoped our team would be competitive, perhaps back in Moscow they could steal a game or two. No more than that. That they could win the series, of that we didn't even dream."
Hockey is the fastest team sport in the world. Play flows like quicksilver. Forwards, there are three, stay on the ice for about 90 seconds, defencemen, there are two, somewhat longer, and they are changed. Hockey is the only game in which changes are made while the play goes on. There's heavy body contact all the time which causes outbursts of fighting, recognized as part of the game. Winter, as a Darwinian laboratory, makes people tough, fit to survive in the arenas of hockey. And someone not able at least to absorb blows, and better still, to give them, won't last long in the sport. As Conn Smythe put it,"If you can't beat them in the alley, you can't beat them on the ice." (The first sentence is the title of his biography.) So unlike other sports, up to the Russian series, no attempt had been made to develop such esoteric aspects as cerebral strategies, complex tactics, and choreography. Not necessary, it was thought, and moreover, impossible. The prescription followed by all was: speed, blows, improvisation, and there'll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover.
The Russians landed at Montreal, the Mecca of the sport.
During the latter part of the 50s and much of the 60s the Canadiens were the dominant team, winning championship after championship with a game based on non-stop high speed, Firewagon Hockey it was called. The sophisticated fans who populated the Forum looked upon anything less than a championship as a colossal failure and demanded excellence in every play in every minute.
The Russians announced their roster. In goal Vladislav Tretiak. Gales of laughter. Not that there is anything funny in the name in English or French. His age. Tretiak was all of 20. There was no such thing. Forwards at that age, yes, defencemen, yes. But children you don't let play with matches and children you don't put between the pipes in professional hockey. The heavy and accurate cannons of the NHL will turn the boy into Swiss cheese within 10 minutes, it was said. Apparently the Russians came to play under the white not the red flag.
Game 1. The Canadians stepped onto the ice and immediately scored twice. A nation winked, guffawed, opened another beer. Canadian scouts had only seen Tretiak play once. He let in eight goals that night. What they didn't know was that he was getting married the next day and his mind was elsewhere. Now he settled down and began making very good stops. But the excellent play didn't stop with Tretiak. And more. The Russians were doing something that was thought impossible. They were playing hockey like basketball. Complicated set plays. No one could recall seeing so many rink-length blind passes with someone to receive them, isolated, and with an open path to the net.
Their team played like a well oiled machine as if somewhere behind the Iron Curtain took human beings and forged them into one big robot. Very quickly the jaws of the robot began doing to the professionals what it had done times uncounted to the amateurs, chew them to pieces.
It had been thought that the Canadians would have a big advantage in speed; the Russians could accelerate to the sound barrier. And what players! It was plain Tretiak would be an all-star in the NHL and so too Vladimir Petrov, Boris Mikhailov, Valeri Kharlamov, Alexander Yakushev, and Yuri Liapkin. The advertisement said, Harlem Globetrotters vs The Neighborhood Pickup Team, and that's exactly what it was. Russia 7, Canada 3.
Rage from sea to shining sea. "National Disgrace." "Catastrophe." "Black Day For Canada" were some of the headlines. And what was said on the street the newspapers couldn't print. The players were castigated without mercy. They were: selfish, frauds, spoiled slackers who think only of their bank accounts and don't give a damn for their country. The boos that convulsed the Forum had hardly subsided when the scene switched to the Gardens in Toronto for the second game and they broke out again with the playing of the national anthem. The players made an effort and overcame the Russians in Toronto and tied them in Winnipeg but then the business collapsed again in Vancouver. The situation after four games at home: one win, two losses, one tie. The team had the good fortune of getting to the airport fast before those volatile Vancouver fans could find a place with enough sturdy trees suitable for a lynch party.
Learned commentators gave the Canadians no chance to get out of the mud in Moscow. Three reasons. 1. The Russians will play on a larger ice surface and that will enable them to implement their fancy manoeuvres without hindrance. 2. The amateur rules narrow the chances for body contact, the Canadians' strong suit, but the amateur referees act as if they have never heard that there is body contact in hockey. Now the Moscow crowd will pull the attention of the referees to every infraction real or imagined. The result, the Canadians will be playing shorthanded a lot. 3. The Canadian players are in a state of total demoralization.
Far from the fire and brimstone in Canada the players did some deep soul-searching. The players were in an iron furnace and in the heat of that furnace was forged a genuine team.
The Russians were that much better at home and overcome a 4-1 deficit to win 5-4. All they had to do was take one of the next three and they had the series. The Canadians rose to the challenge. They played with inspiration, determination, discipline, ignoring the pathetic mistakes of the so-called referees. Two prodigious victories with Paul Henderson scoring the winning goals. The situation? Three wins, three losses, one tie. All the marbles on the final game.
In the Cold War Canada's role was to stand on guard and the moment the Russians invaded via the North Pole, to react. But on this night the Canadian soldiers in the bunkers did not have their eyes on the radar screen but on the television like all patriots. They knew for certain that if a Soviet general ordered an all-out nuclear attack on America that night, the Russian soldiers would refuse to carry out the order. First the hockey game and only then Armageddon.
The action was breathtaking. Hockey is played in three 20-minute periods. Each whistle stops the clock and in this game started the spectators breathing again. But now as the second period ended the very life breath of the dominion seemed to be winding down too. Russia 5, Canada 3.
Twenty minutes to go.
The period started and Esposito scored. Ten minutes later. Cournoyer from Esposito. Tie.
The first 52 minutes was the best hockey you'll ever see in this world. Now the players took it up a level. Hockey not from this world. You'll never see the like of it again. As in the mythical battles of ancient days, a titanic struggle, second, second, inch inch, they flayed away at one other as if to each of their heads was held a cocked gun and a voice was whispering, "Victory or Death."
Last minute. Canada swarmed to the attack in the Russian zone. Cournoyer shot. Tretiak saved. Rebound. Esposito shot. Tretiak saved. Rebound. Henderson shot, point blank. Tretiak saved. Rebound. Henderson shot. Da, da Canada. Nyet, nyet, Soviet. Game over!! Jubilation, exaltation, celebration, and elation, throughout the nation. Felicitation, congratulation, exhilaration. A sensation!!
This series was by far the greatest sporting event of the last century and probably will never matched as long as there is life on earth because the same elements will never be in place again: two teams of athletes from two different worlds, one free and one totalitarian, who didn't know each other, with one side making the outcome a test of the two competing political systems and the other side belatedly accepting the challenge on that basis. The Soviets harassed the Canadians methodically in Moscow by diverting their food, calling them up in the middle of the night, dumping them in third-rate hotels. They tried to tilt the last game by putting in one of their stooges as a referee and he called two penalties in the first four minutes after Soviet players took dives. The goal judge refused to turn the red light on for the goal that tied the game 5-5 and when Alan Eagleson, the players' agent, ran through the crowd to protest, the police moved in to arrest him. Only the players rushing into the stands rescued him and compelled the judge to turn the light on. In the end Henderson scored the incredible goal and no one in Canada had any doubts, he had saved the free world.
http://www.hhof.com/html/s72sum.shtml
5. MIKE ROSSMAN INSPIRES A LITTLE GIRL
Place: New Orleans Superdome. Date: Sept. 15, 1978.
Event: Light-heavyweight championship of the world.
The Jewish guy showed how it's done
One day when we were still in Canada my oldest kid, a girl, then in grade 6, came home shaking in her shoes. I got it out of her that a girl at school, whom she described as the sister of the leader of the gang, threatened to bash her head in. This was no idle threat, she had beaten up a number of girls.
I told her if she didn't stand up to her, that girl would turn her into a floormat and walk all over her the rest of the year. My daughter knew nothing about fighting, her things were ballet and swimming. I calmed her by saying there is no problem here, because if you know the basics of fighting you can beat someone who knows nothing. I told her I'd show her the basics which my father, a street-fighting legend, showed me, and which I had applied successfully both in the alley and on the ice on numerous occasions.
(My father was so good that some investors wanted to send him when he was a teenager to Montreal to train to be a pro boxer. This was the dirty 30s and he was the sole support of a blind mother. He told them I cannot leave my mother alone.)
I took her into the basement, showed her how to hold her hands, move on her toes, move away from the power, throw a jab, straight rights, combinations, even how to bob and weave. I said the girl will throw round-houses, you can see them coming a mile away, and you can land five jabs before she knows what hit her.
I stressed to her over and over again. The most important thing in fighting is not to hit, but not to get hit. Concentrate on that.
Technically she was doing all right, but I could see she had no confidence. I said let's take a break and we'll watch some television. As fate would have it, as we sat down on came a light-heavyweight championship fight between Victor Galindez of Argentina and the challenger Mike Rossman, a Jew. I hadn't followed boxing much by that time but I knew Galindez was a brawler and a fighter of the first rank. How good I found out later. He hadn't been beaten in seven years spanning 44 bouts. I said to myself this is the worst thing that can happen, she's going to identify with this Rossman, and he's going to be taken out on a stretcher, and there goes any chance of my instilling confidence in her.
The fight starts and after a while she says, "Dad, the Jewish guy is fighting just the way you taught me."
"Yeah," I said, "but at that level it doesn't always work. There's more to it which I don't have time to show you."
She was transfixed by the fight. I didn't even want to look. I was pretending doing something else at the same time.
Amazingly Rossman hung in there, fought a great fight, stopped Galindez in the 13th round, and won the title.
We went back to the basement and she was smoking, brimming with confidence.
Next day the bully girl came at her in the school yard. She told me about it as she bounced into the house that afternoon.
"So?" I asked.
"I beat her, dad. Beat her bad. I did everything you told me."
"That's good. Now did you get hit?"
"I fought like Mike Rossman."
"That's good. But did you get hit?"
"Yeah, I got hit."
"You must have done something wrong."
"No I did everything you told me."
"You must have done something wrong."
"No, there was something you didn't tell me."
"What was that?"
"Girls pull hair. She got me by the hair and then she hit me a few times."
"What did you do?"
"I didn't know what to do. I finally managed to punch her a few times in the stomach."
"Well," I said. "The good thing is that she won't be bothering you again."
"That's or darn sure."
6. RAINES' RECORD THAT NEVER WAS
Place: National League. Date: 1981
Event: Tim Raines breaks into the Montreal Expos stealing at record pace, but was thrown out by the strike.
Raines made the 1981 Expos my dream team
I must be the only guy in existence who has followed baseball for 47 years and never had one of his teams go to the World Series. I’m talking of those who had different teams, not Chicago Cub fans. In a way it’s not surprising.
When I was eight, that was 1949, I decided to choose a favorite team. I looked at the standings and checked to see who came last, I don’t know why I chose the American League. There they were, the Washington Senators. Why the last place team? I guess it grew out my love for slapstick, Laurel and Hardy, the Three Stooges, guys who always messed up, but then somehow they came out on top in some way. Also if you start at the bottom, you got no place else to go but up.
The other kids in my town was mostly Red Sox fans, there were some for the Yankees, some for the Dodgers, but no one at all for the Senators. It always drew a laugh when I told them my favorite them. Still 1953 was a great year, Mickey Vernon won the batting title and Bob Porterfield won 22 games. Then some time later they signed a young phenom named Harmon Killebrew. I knew then we were on our way.
The team did start to play with some competence and then they were moved to Minnesota. What a kick in the head that was. I had to choose another team. My instincts took me straight to the Cubs. They were ready-made slapstick. No manager, but a committee of coaches, or some cockamanie system like that. But the 60s turned out to be a fabulous decade for the Cubs with the great Ernie Banks leading the way on the field and the Canadian Fergie Jenkins on the mound, the legendary Leo Durocher brought in finally as manager, and they actually made a run for the roses.
Then it happened. Montreal got a baseball team, the Expos. I drove to Montreal, sat in Jarry Park, saw the worst possible agglomeration of players make a botch of the game, and immediately climbed on the bandwagon. They didn’t become my dream team though until 12 years later when Tim Raines arrived as a rookie.
My favorite aspect in the game is base stealing, undoubtedly because that’s the only thing I could do well as a player. But unlike home run hitters, there aren’t that many great ones. It’s truly an art form. Raines in his rookie year before he was “slowed down” to only 70 steals a year possibly by substance abuse, was geared in 1981 to rewrite the record books, surpassing by far Lou Brock’s record then of 118. Who says so? Here’s a quote from before the season.
“Expos coach Steve Boros told the UPI that Raines would steal 150 bases that year. ‘I'm convinced of it,’ Boros said. ‘As the first-base coach for this club, I'm lucky enough to be closer than anybody else in the world to be watching the most exciting base stealer in the history of baseball. There's no other place I'd rather be.’”
Ron LeFlore had led the league in stolen bases for the Expos with 97 in 1980 then split. Absolutely loved LeFlore but you shouldn’t mention him in the same breath with the Raines of 1981. Exact statistics are hard to come by, but I know from memory that he was going at a pace of a stolen base per game by mid-May, that’s 30. Check it out, if possible. I used to be on the road a lot that year, often in northern New Brunswick, where the games were broadcast in French. I would have listened to the games in Sanskrit, I was determined to follow Raines game-game all the way to a record that would never be broken. The thing about young Raines is that you couldn’t throw him out. Even today his 84.7 success rate after a career that stretched to 2002 is the best in history. Then disaster struck. On June 12 there was a baseball strike. I think I followed that strike, at least for the first month, closer than I followed any pennant race. With every day I could see Raines shot at the record slipping away. They finally came back two months later. He got to play in 88 of the Expos’ 108 games that year and his stolen base total was a respectable 71. But the rendezvous with destiny had been missed.
Well life ain't fair, eh? The year 1981 was Raines' window of opportunity the same as 1998 was Mark McGwire's. Yet Raines just happened to arrive in the wrong year. There is a big debate whether Raines belongs in the Hall of Fame. Unlike it appears many others he didn't cheat. I don’t think cocaine has ever been demonstrated to be a performance enhancing drug -- on the contrary. His career totals compare favorably to Lou Brock's, which should be enough.
I did get to cheer for one World Series winner. It wasn't for me, though, it was for my dad. He was a big Detroit Tigers fan, even was hired by them to "bird dog" in our area and was given a business card with the Tiger crest on it and his name. He died too soon at age 53 in the spring of 1968 so he didn't live to see Denny McLain's 31 win season or his team reach their first fall classic since 1945. I stepped in as pinch-hitter. Win it for my dad, I cheered, as if someone could hear me. And they did.
Check out Raines' stastistics and overall career on the web and you decide, should hebe in the Hall of Fame? If you think so, you might be join forces with these people.
Place: Madison Square Garden, New York. Date: June 14, 1994
Event: The New York Rangers win the Stanley Cup.
Messier predicted victory then scored hat trick
I went to visit my sister in New York in the summer of 1964 and said to myself, I wouldn’t mind working here. I lined up a job with a newspaper in Hackensack and then showed up in the fall four days before the opening of the Rangers’ home opener. They assigned me to the night shift.
What happened next sounds like a script for an Adam Sandler comedy but I had never been in the states except for brief visits and I thought it was like Canada. Complete hayseed and not only that, Canuck hayseed. I went to my immediate superior after I had been there for two days and I said I request a day off the day after tomorrow.
“Why?” he asks.
“It’s the opening day.”
”Opening day of what?”
“The hockey season.”
“You just arrived and now you want a day off because it’s the opening day of the hockey season?”
“I’ve got a ticket to the Rangers’ game.”
“We don’t give a day off for the opening of the hockey season.”
“I got a ticket. You get a ticket for the opening day, there’s nothing bigger than that, is there?”
“Are you for real?”
“It’s hockey, eh? It’s not big down here?”
“Not really.”
“I got a ticket. I gotta go.”
At that point he just rolled his eyes and sent me back to work.
I wasn’t really going to see the Rangers but the other team, the Canadiens. I came very close to becoming a Ranger fan back in 1950 when I was choosing my team. They went to the finals as rank underdogs, vagabonds with no home rink, and still carried the mighty Red Wings into overtime in the seventh game. But three factors mitigated against that happening. If they had come out of the blocks flying the next year, I think I would have swung over, but they didn’t and even hired a hypnotist to persuade them play better but that didn’t work either. The second reason was that the two Canadian teams got the lion’s share of publicity, particularly the Maple Leafs who were a powerhouse and the Canadiens, who were still also-rans. So most of the kids were Leaf fans, some were for the Habs, a few were for the Bruins because we got their games on radio, and a few were for the Wings, because they were also a powerhouse. It was a social thing, you wore the sweater of your team when you went to the rink, and there were no Ranger sweaters around. Most important I was mesmerized by Maurice Richard, so the Habs it would be.
When Richard retired in 1960 I continued on a Hab fan through inertia, and they had become the greatest team in history, ripping off five cups in a row. But the passion was gone and I was ripe for a change when I took my place at the old Madison Square Garden. I’m there for about 10 minutes and two things struck me. These Rangers are the worst excuse for a hockey team I’ve ever seen and yet all around me were people looking at them with love in their eyes. It’s the same look you see when you go to a synagogue or church (I assume the latter, I haven’t been in many churches.) They believe in this team. They get nothing back, the team is incapable of giving anything back, yet they are there hoping, not for today, not for tomorrow, but someday. When I came in I sat among 15,000 people living in a dream, before I went out, there were already 15,001 such people. I had become one of them.
I saw as many games as I could while in the New York area when I had days off and then after less than a year I returned to Canada. But now I was a true blue Ranger fan. The team began to move up the ladder with the arrival of Emile (the Cat) Francis as GM, who brought a determination to win, and then expansion catapulted them from the bottom of the bunch to the middle. By the early 70s the Rangers had an excellent team and got to the finals in 1972 thanks to the work of Francis, fell back, and then again in 1979 due to Fred Shero’s smoke and mirrors. As for the cup, by 1993 it was 30 years since I had became a fan, and all I had to show for it was the same dream I started with.
In Israel during the 80s I could only follow hockey in English-language papers and foreign radio, so I knew what was going on without seeing any games. Then in the fall of 1993 cable TV arrived and a Russian station broadcast NHL games. I don’t understand a word of Russian but it wasn’t necessary I just had to brush up on who the players were on the various teams. The upshot was that I saw it all, captain Mark Messier promising a victory with the team down 3-2 to the Devils in the semi-finals, “Matteau, Matteau, Matteau” that got them to the finals, and then that incredible seventh game of the finals when the Canucks trailing by a goal mounted a furious third period attack and hit the post twice in the last seven minutes. As they brought out the cup, someone held up a sign which said it all for long-suffering Ranger fans, “Now I Can Die In Peace.”
8. IT'S NEVER OVER TILL IT'S OVER
Place: Yad Eliahu Stadium, Tel Aviv. Date: April 7, 2004
Event: Maccabi Tel Aviv vs Zalgiris Kaunas for the last berth in the Euroleague Final Four.
Derrick Sharp is Israel's miracle man
Until I came to Israel I never paid attention to pro basketball. The NBA games were never reported in the newspapers in our part of Canada, nor were the standings. Maybe there’d be a short item on who won the championship and that would be it.
In 1986 I was doing Reserve Army duty at some camp. We had finished the day’s work and many of us were just lounging around in the tents when I saw a stream of soldiers heading in one direction. “Where are they going?” I asked.
“Basketball game tonight on TV. Maccabi vs Milan.”
“What’s the level of the game here?”
“Go see for yourself.”
Nothing else to do so I went down to the TV room. Right away I recognized a player on Milan. That was Bob McAdoo. I knew him because I used to read The Sporting News and in order to get from the baseball to the hockey, you had to pass through the basketball. Many times there were big pictures of McAdoo and his name was in screaming headlines. I said to myself, if McAdoo is playing, even if he’s in a wheelchair, this basketball can’t be all that bad.
It was an exciting game, Maccabi squeaked it out, and I learned that there were games on TV every Thursday night during the season. I joined the throng and became a Maccabi fan.
Many people outside Israel think that all Israelis talk about is politics or foreign affairs. What Israeli men talk about in season is Maccabi. A lot of women too. Even though soccer is much bigger generally, no one ever wins anything. Maccabi is one of the perenniel contenders for the European basketball title. This was no small feat before the fall of the Iron Curtain since all the Russians and Yugoslavs who today would be starring in the NBA populated the some of the stronger teams outside Israel. Yet Maccabi won the title in 1977 and 1981 and went to the finals in 1980, 1987, 1988, and 1989.
The 90s were the dark ages. Big budgets, major investments in players, loaded with talent, but not one trip to the Final Four, which gets you a shot at the title. Maccabi fell into a routine of conventional, predictable, conservative basketball, and this always earned them a fast exit in the elimination rounds. The organization tried to avoid any hints of controversy and spokesmen comported themselves like like representatives of an effete establishment never needing to explain itself to the masses. Then coming up to 2000, it looked like Maccabi backers had given up on the quest to get back to the Final Four and would be satisfied with national titles. First they announced a drastic cut in budget and secondly they hired the wild maverick of Israeli basketball, Pini Gershon, to be the coach, and gave him a substandard roster. Pini represented everything that Maccabi had forgotten to be, innovative, unpredictable, creative, and most of all, he had a big mouth, the press loved him. Ask him a question, and you never knew what he’d say, and he could rattle off jokes like a stand-up comic. He had been the most successful coach in the Israel local league outside the Maccabi family for a long time and many of his mocking darts over the years had been aimed at the stuffed shirts at Maccabi. That’s why they waited so long to turn to him. They had to dine on a lot of crow first, kosher or not. But what else could do they do? They had tried everything and everyone and there was no one else left, unless they ran in a series of foreigners, to attempt to breathe some new life into the franchise. It was strange though to bring in Pini and expect him to accomplish something on the cheap. Maybe the Machiavellian idea was to set him up for embarrassment and thus disable the clamor of the fans for Pini, Pini, so they could get back to the business of failure as usual. We’ll never know.
Pini took his no-names to the Euroleague finals his first year 2000, first time Maccabi had been there in 11 years. He came back in 2001 with a good team and brought home the bacon, or whatever it is Jews bring home. Unfortunately in 2001 the Euroleague had split into two, so Pini’s title was from the Suproleague, which was just half a loaf. Still he showed them it was still possible to facilitate the cream rising to the top if you had some knowledge of the pasteurization process.
The Euroleague reconstituted itself in 2002 but Pini wouldn’t be there. His mouth had gotten him tossed completely out of organized basketball.
Derrick Sharp, a point guard only six feet tall out of South Florida, was recruited by Maccabi in 1997 from an obscure team in the lowly third division, a total unknown. He would be fourth string at best, maybe play a bit in local matches but not in the Euroleague. Ahead of him in the backcourt was Oded Katash, whom the Knicks would sign in 1998 but he never got there because of a lockout, Doron Sheffer, who played alongside Ray Allen at Connecticut and himself was the 20th pick overall in the NBA draft, and Guy Goodes, the veteran, as good as the other two.
Sharp gradually snuck up on everyone. He demonstrated an ability to completely shut down the best point guards of Europe when put opposite them. He was played more and more because of that, and then he proved that he could hit three pointers at a high success rate, and in the clutch as well. What made him popular among the fans was that he always displayed tremendous heart and competitive spirit. It didn’t matter what the score was. When Sharp was out there you saw a guy giving 110 per cent every second. He wasn’t much good at running the attack, so he settled in as the team’s super sub.
During 2002 with Pini on the sidelines, thanks to his work in the building the team the year before, Maccabi struggled back into the Final Four but that was it, and in 2003 they once again reverted to the status of abject failure. Then the Euroleague awarded Israel the right to host the Final Four in Tel Aviv in 2004. Pini was summoned back from the cold as the only hope Maccabi would have to reach the Final Four and play for the title before its home fans.
Pini, always court genius, sometimes court jester
What did Pini do to get himself kicked out of basketball? It was this comment, among a gathering of army officers. "Even among blacks there are different colors. There is dark black, and there is mocha. The mocha type are more clever, and the darker color usually come from the street. The ones whom are a bit more mixed in race, like Andrew Kennedy for example, you can see his status, his personality. The other black ones are truly idiots." (Andrew Kennedy, Virginia, played 12 years in the Israeli league.)
This was said at a private gathering months before and someone taped it. Anyone who knows Pini personally and that includes all the African-Americans and African-Europeans who played for him over 25 years knows full-well he is not a racist. He’s a joker and when he gets wound up he is liable to say anything for laughs, without meaning any of it. But the scandal became too grave and serious because the next question raised in the public is why the officers in a conscript army that has large numbers of African-Israelis in it didn’t speak up. Pini himself went before a parliamentiary committe and stated, “We were joking around. Things were said about all the players. I slipped here and there, from the stupidity, from the joking around.''
In 2004 Derrick Sharp, the man from nowhere, and Pini Gershon, the man who had been banned, together would achieve what has been called the Zalgiris Miracle. The achievement went far beyond basketball since Israel was two seconds away from the brink of a disaster that could have had long-term dire economic and diplomatic consequences.
Sharp, now the elder statesmen on Maccabi warmly welcomed Pini back, who after all had given him his opportunity to achieve stardom. Besides there were other fish to fry now, big fish. Israel had taken a horrendous battering in world media during the Intifada, the soccer authorities refused obstinately to allow international matches to be played in the country, big-name entertainers were avoiding the country, tourism had plummeted, and investors were shying away. A successful Final Four basketball tournament in Tel Aviv would prove to all and sundry that Israel was a safe venue with a society functioning normally with more than sufficient security. Having said that, the next problem that worried organizers was that if Maccabi did not get to the Final Four, who would show up to watch the games? Would there be enough fans to fill the stadium from the four teams that did make it, whether they be from Russia or Greece or Spain or Italy or Turkey or wherever, who would make the trip to a place they thought was a war zone. Israel could put on a great show but if the stadium were empty, it would be a pyrrhic victory. Only Pini could save the day and he was given the green light to put together the best team he could muster. Maccabi must get to the Final Four at all costs.
For the backcourt he landed the Lithuanian Sarunas Jasikevicius, who had led Barcelona to the title the year before. He brought back to the fold the clutch and capable American Anthony Parker. Up front he had probably the best centre in Europe in Nikola Vujcic, the Croatian, and alongside him he added Marceo Baston, another American and a solid rebounder. With the creative Israeli Tal Burstein joining them that would be the starting five supplemented by a talented supporting cast led by none other than Derrick Sharp.
There were just two catches to the grand scheme. First of all, Maccabi had to get to the Final Four, and no one was going to roll over for them. And secondly some of the national organizations that make up the Euroleague began a noisy, incessant, and noxious campaign to move the tournament out of Tel Aviv, claiming if the city was “unsafe” for soccer it was unsafe for basketball. The suspicion here was that because some like the Spaniards did protest too much, there was an element of anti-Semitism in all the caterwauling. So you had two parallel plot lines developing side by side and as the season came towards the finish line, neither had been resolved. The tension, as they say in the theatre world, was rising to a fever pitch. But no one foresaw the how dramatic the climax would be.
It worked out this way after a season of games and elimination games. Three teams went through, qualified. The fourth slot was still up in the air. By the quirk of the schedule the slot would go to the winner of the last game of the season between Maccabi, at home, and Zalgiris Kaunas, from Lithuania, led by their national hero, the unstoppable giant Arvydas Sabonis, playing in his farewell regular season game prior to retirement. There would be the usual 11,000 people jam-packed into Maccabi’s stadium and the entire nation watching on TV.
Zalgiris wrested the lead in the second half. Maccabi scratched and clawed, and hung in there. But time was running out. With Sabonis hitting on all cylinders, Zalgiris arrived at the final minute of play with a six-point lead. Sabonis fouled out, 29 points, nine rebounds. Some fans began to head to the door, others stood to applaud Sabonis to honor him for his herculean effort, his splendid career, and to recognize the reality, the Lithuanians had prevailed. Maccabi cut the lead to three, 91-94, with 2.2 seconds remaining but now a Zalgiris player with a 90 per cent foul-shooting average would take two free throws that everyone of sane mind saw as the final two nails in the coffin of Maccabi’s season. In the time-out Jasikevicius having fouled out as well went over to congratulate the coach of the Lithuanian team on his victory. Incredibly both foul shots were missed and incredibly the Zalgiris player who moved in to grab the rebound had moved too quickly. In the blink of an eye there was a glimmer of hope. The ball was handed to Maccabi under their net. But two “incrediblies” were not enough. It would take a third.
Yogi Berra, the iconic former catcher of the New York Yankees, had encapsulated the nature of sports in one sentence, "it's never over until it's over." Israelis had never heard of Yogi Berra but Derrick Sharp surely did. He played every game the same way, full tilt down to the last microsecond.
There were now two seconds on the clock. Here was the hand of Pini. Someone would have to try a “hail Mary” pass (or whatever the Jewish equivalent term is for that) and any other coach under those circumstances would logically have given the assignment to an American with some experience in American football. Pini tabbed the veteran captain, Gur Shelef, an Israeli, who had ridden the bench much of the year and poured out his bitterness and disgust at his treatment in the newspapers. Shelef looked way, way down court and let fly.
Derrick Sharp is a good three-point shooter but only when he can plant his feet. No time for that now. He leaped up, caught the ball. Sharp was in a crowd, out of his comfort zone. He spun, dribbled, and off balance whipped it at the basket. Swish. Buzzer. Game tied. Overtime.
Both teams were down to reserves mostly in the overtime, but there was no stopping Maccabi now. It was on to the Final Four. The only word sportswriters could find to sum up the victory in one word was "miracle." Those with a religious bent declared it could not have happened without divine intervention.
Normally teams that arrive at the Final Four feel the weight of tremendous pressure from their media, their fans, their owners, and this goes double for the championship game. But the Maccabi players, having strained under the tonnage of an entire nation’s realpolitik complexities they carried all season on their shoulders, no less, arrived at their first match loosey-goosey, almost giddy from having this pressure removed. Hey, now, it’s just a basketball game. Show time, baby. They absolutely demolished Skipper Bologna in the semi-finals 118-74 smashing a host of Final Four offensive records. Even facing formidable CSKA Moscow in the finals was just another day at the office, as they roared to the team’s first Euroleague title since 1981 with a 93-85 victory. This triggered one of the biggest celebrations in the history of the young embattled state.
Pini took Maccabi to another title in 2005, first time any team had won back-to-back for 20 years, and then got them to the finals again in 2006 where this time they fell short. Pini went off to a new challenge in Greece; Parker went to Toronto where he is a fixture; Jasikevicius married an Israeli girl, a former Miss World, went to Indiana where it didn’t work out and returned to Europe and got the biggest contact in Europe from a Greek team; Baston warms the bench in Toronto. Vujcic is now the cornerstone of a rebuilding Maccabi team.
A s for Sharp, he’s the captain of the team now. At 36 he no longer has the legs to shut down the best point guards of Europe. But despite his new status as living legend, he’s still out there every night giving 110 per cent. He wouldn’t know how to give less.
There are lots of videos out there where you can see the final seconds of the game. I've chosen this one from China because the quality is the best and they give you more leading up to the actual shot. The commentary is in Hebrew but the only alternative would be in Lithuanian if you could find it. The pictures are enough without words
http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8SIh89Vna4&feature=related
HONORABLE MENTION
There are four other events which are etched in my brain which I think deserve an honorable mention.
1. BOBBY THOMPSON. (Polo Grounds, New York, Oct. 3, 1951) The New York Giants made a tremendous come-from-behind run to catch the Brooklyn Dodgers on the last day of the 1951 season, winning 37 of their last 44 games. This forced a playoff to decide the pennant winner. My father’s team in the National League was the Giants and he had been swept up in the excitement all month. I was 10 years old and we listened to the deciding game together. Entering the last inning the Giants trailed 4-1. My father normally happy and upbeat looked very sad, even depressed. The Giants got a run back, two men on base, one out. Bobby Thompson coming up. My father said to me, if the Giants win this, I’ll give you two bucks. That was a king’s ransom. My allowance was 25 cents a week. Thompson connected with a three-run homer. Our whole household was suddenly happy and upbeat and I moved instantly into a higher tax bracket.
2. BROAD STREET BULLIES (The Spectrum, Philadelphia, Jan. 11, 1976) In the winter of 1976 the Soviet champion Red Army arrived to play the Stanley Cup champion. The Red Army warmed up on other NHL teams, winning over the Rangers 7-3 and the Bruins 5-2 and tying the Canadiens 3-3.
The moment of truth arrived. The Stanley Cup rested at the Spectrum, Broad Street, Philadelphia, the home of the Flyers. The Flyers were essentially a motorcycle gang on skates. They were known as the Broad Street Bullies. Opponents who entered the Spectrum immediately found themselves trapped at the lowest level of Dante's Inferno. The approach of the Flyers to the game was simple in the extreme. The puck is ours. Touch it and you're dead meat. Night after night of disorder and commotions. The Soviets tried to tell us that the Red Army players were simple soldiers playing for the glory of the motherland and not capitalist mercenaries; well here came the moment where they could put to use what they learned in hand-to-hand combat training.
Three national anthems and to the game. The Flyers began bashing and smashing -- their usual game -- any Russian who dared to set foot on the ice. The assaulting and battering was so intensive that 11 minutes into the game with their splendid star Kharlamov lying prone on the ice after a bonecrushing but clean open-ice hit by Ed Van Impe the Russian commissars hauled their players off the ice claiming that the game had no value as a sporting event. The Russian coach huffed that the Flyers were “animals.” After light refreshment in the dressing room league officials told the Soviets “no play no pay” presumably meaning for the whole eight-game tour of the Red Army and another team. Money talked even to the Commies and the team was ordered back after 17 minutes. No penalty was called on defenceman Impe, who some still regard as the best checker ever, for his levelling of Kharlamov but the Russians got a delay-of-the-game penalty for leaving the ice. The Flyers scored and went on to win easily 4-1.
We’ll never see the another team like the Broad Street Bullies because of the rule changes. The early changes made sense. “First man off the bench” did away with bench-clearing brawls and “third man in” did away with ganging up, of which the Bullies were past masters. New changes enacted under the current league regime seem to be the work of morons. The instigator rule gives a green light to cheapshot artists to wreak any havoc they want without having to be held accountable. Then there's "be nice in the last five minutes of the game or else" rule. What next? Anyone heard using a cuss word has to wash out his mouth in addition to getting a two-minute penalty? The referees would come armed with a dictionary of cuss words in 15 languages. I guess things aren’t going to change for the better until we get some real hockey people running the league again.
3. TIM DUNCAN. (San Antonio Spurs Stadium et al, spring 2003). I got a divorce in 1996 when my youngest, a boy, was 9. He went to live with his mother. Anyone who has gone through this knows that even though you get the kid for what works out to be several weeks a year, you miss so much sharing of experiences which you can never get back. Like me when I was his age he chose up his favorite teams and players in sports, in his case the four major US sports. I recognized the players in three of the sports, they were established stars. But then he kept telling me about this guy Tim Duncan, whom he said was going to be greatest of all time. I don’t really follow the NBA but Duncan’s team, the San Antonio Spurs, did win the 1999 championship. Around that time I got the Internet which he didn’t have so in our phone conversations he always wanted to know, in season, “what did Duncan do? what did Duncan do?” I finally told him, if this guy is as good as you say he is, then he’s got to win more than one championship, and I don’t see that happening. Early in 2003 when he was 15 l/2 my boy shows up at my door and says I’m coming to live with you, dad. It took me three months to get the imprimatur from the courts and stop worrying that I would be hauled off the hoosegow one night and charged with kidnapping. Meanwhile we had a lot of catching up to do. Came the spring and I’m watching the Stanley Cup playoffs and he’s watching these and also the NBA playoffs. I decided to join him, although I’d never really paid much attention to the NBA before. Every other night, or whatever it was, we were there together watching Duncan and the Spurs march through the Suns, the Lakers, the Mavericks, and the Nets en route to another championship. “What do you think now?” he asked at the end. “I really enjoyed sharing this experience with you. For that I have to thank Mr. Duncan,” I said. “Do you think he’s going to be the greatest of all time?” “He’s a complete player, that’s for sure, and no question about it, he’s a winner. But I’m by no means an expert in basketball.” “Who else is there?” “Well to start with there’s Bill Russell. But I think he has to win three championships before you can start rating him all-time.”
4. LANCE ARMSTRONG: (France, summer 2004) It takes a truly phenomenal athlete to hook you on a sport you never had a smidgen of interest in before. It sometimes occurs in the Olympics. I recall watching women’s gymnastics in 1976 just to see what Nadia Comeneci would do. But that’s for a short time frame and there’s nothing permanent. I wanted to see Lance Armstrong go for his sixth straight Tour de France cycling title in 2004 so I sat there day after day not knowing a pelaton from a shmelaton when I started. Before it was over I had acquired an appreciation for that gruelling sport and Lance’s accomplishment, which boggles the mind. I came back in 2005 and did it again. In 2006 he wasn’t there, I heard the word “steroids,” and they didn't have to say it twice. I’m out of here. Unfortunately this same controversy has gone a long way in killing my lifelong interest in baseball as well. If they want to call it Sports Entertainment like the wrestlers do, that’s fair. Sports has been different from other human endeavors in that everything is on the table, or supposed to be, no politics, no hanky panky, and it doesn’t matter your race, color, creed is, or making allowances for separate competitions for the sexes, everyone has an equal chance at the ring. Once they start dishing up competitions where one guy is cheating and one guy is playing it straight, it becomes the same as everything else. That’s why we have police to sort things out in the real world. If a sport ceases to be a refreshing transient escape from the real world, then it’s not worth wasting a plug nickel to buy a ticket to an event or 15 seconds of your time to watch it when you could be doing something useful with your life.
Bobby Thompson Ed Van Impe Tim Duncan Lance Armstrong
prole30 at yahoo.com
