Baseball Renaissance

30 years ago tonight, the Miracle on Ice occurred. I was a sports-fan kid enthralled by the action on our little TV. The same chills roll up my neck even now as I hear that glorious crowd celebrating outside and chanting USA, USA, USA.

The above clip features “Rizzo” performing Coach Brooks’ pregame speech. Stellar job, kid.

Wikipedia describes the finish as follows:

…This goal gave the US a 4–3 lead, its first of the game, with exactly 10 minutes left.

The Russians attacked furiously. Moments after Eruzione’s goal, Maltzev fired off a shot which ricocheted off the right goal pos t. As the minutes wound down, Brooks kept repeating “Play your game. Play your game. ” Instead of going into a defensive crouch, the United States continued to play offense, even getting off a few more shots on goal.

The Soviets began to shoot wildly, and Starikov admitted that “we were panicking”. As the clocked ticked down below a minute the Soviets got the puck back into the American zone, and Mikhailov passed to Petrov, who shot wide. The Soviets never pulled Myshkin for an extra attacker, much to the disbelief of the Americans. Starikov later explained that “We never did six-on-five”, not even in practice because “Tikhonov just didn’t believe in it. Craig kicked away a Petrov slap shot with 33 seconds left. Kharlamov fired the puck back in as the clock ticked below 20 seconds. A wild scramble for the puck ensued, ending when Johnson found it and passed to Morrow.

As the US team tried to clear the zone (move the puck over the blue line, which they did with seven seconds remaining), the crowd began to count down the seconds left. Sportscaster Al Michaels, who was calling the game on ABC along with former Montreal Canadiens goalie Ken Dryden, picked up on the countdown in his broadcast, and delivered his famous call:

“Eleven seconds, you’ve got ten seconds, the countdown going on right now! Morrow, up to Silk. Five seconds left in the game. Do you believe in miracles? YES!”

As his team ran all over the ice in celebration, Herb Brooks sprinted back to the locker room, locked himself inside a toilet stall, and cried.

For its March 3, 1980 issue, Sports Illustrated ran a cover with just a photograph by Heinz Kluetmeier, making it the first cover in the magazine’s history without any accompanying caption or headline. Kluetmeir said, “It didn’t need (any cover language). Everyone in America knew what happened.”

Damn straight he cried. Sports matter. Play right.

Here is part of the game call by Curt Chaplin of ABC Radio:

Here is the TV broadcast at the triumphant close:

USA. USA. USA.

Lane Kiffin, upon taking the job of University of Tennessee head football coach December 1, 2008:

“That’s the promise I’m giving you.”

He’s already gone back to USC.  I wonder what tomorrow’s press conference will sound like.  He sure knows the drill.

Kudos to Bob Ley for patiently and politely exploring Mark McGwire’s contradictions, lies, and persistent denial.

While I consider Mark McGwire’s ducking underneath injury and standing on natural ability to be out of place here, I so appreciate his honesty about steroid use.  It is well past time to clean this house.

Baseball needs this.  Baseball deserves this.

I respect the emotion.  I believe the regret.

I blame Bud Selig.  I blame Don Fehr.  These men architected the pathetic debacle that is the Steroids Era of Major League Baseball.  The rampant cheating, the inflated numbers, the tainted records, the illegitimate outcomes — it is all their fault.  They did this.

I am grateful to Tony LaRussa and the St. Louis Cardinals for hiring Mark McGwire as hitting coach, which has undoubtedly led to this tough moment, which is undoubtedly required for the game to move definitively past this period, which the game most definitely will.

As a fan, I hope that no player that ever cheated in this regard is allowed in the Hall.  They do not belong.  Even if it means that twenty years of baseball are left out, so be it.  Keep the cheaters out.

Regardless, I deeply appreciate McGwire for admitting his mistakes at long last.  I do also credit him for not lying to Congress about his behavior.

“When the fall is all that’s left, it matters a great deal.” Come on, Baseball.  Dig it out.

On January 4, 2006, Coach Mack Brown addressed his Texas Longhorns squad after they triumphed in one of the most exciting victories in college-football history:

I don’t want this to be the best thing that’s ever happened in your life.  When you’re 54, I don’t want you to say ‘Winning a football game is the best thing that ever happened in my life.’  You’ll have it, and you’ll be a champion for the rest of your life.  You make sure that’s one of the best sports things in your life, but you promise me, if you’ve got enough about you to win a national championship, you’ve got enough about you to be a great citizen and a great role model, a great father and a great leader in your family, and that’s what we’re looking for when you get out of here.  That’s what we want.

Way to go, Mack.

As a kid, I was a tremendous sports fan.  Far and away my favorite teams were then and are now the Texas Rangers and the Texas Longhorns.  I have never had any expectation of the Rangers winning a title, that eventuality seeming so out of the realm.  The Longhorns, though, simply belong in the national-football mix, and yet my youth coincided with a serious dry spell.

Coach Royal guided championships in 1963, 1969, and 1970, the year I was born.  Then came the drought.

Among many vivid Longhorn experiences during those days, I attended the 1984 Cotton Bowl to see then 11-0, #2 Texas combat the Georgia Bulldogs.  With #1 Nebraska facing #5 Miami in the Orange Bowl that night, we had a solid shot.

The atmosphere was electric, the game hard fought.  We looked good right up until we fumbled a punt with about four minutes left, gave up the go-ahead score three plays later, and lost the dream.  Georgia won 10 to 9.  Crusher.

The Hurricanes upset the Cornhuskers, and, helped also by #3 Iowa’s Rose-Bowl loss, vaulted to the top of the polls, capturing their first national championship.  Miami.  Nightmare.

The Longhorns and their fans experienced hope becoming disappointment from that cold day in January 1984 all the way up to the Rose Bowl in January 2006.  That game is legend.

Within that first sweet minute after the final horn, I turned to my girlfriend and said, “I know you don’t understand it, and I recognize that life will unfold with all its major events and big stuff, but all that stuff is a given; that stuff’s going to happen either way; and I am telling you that as of right now my life is a better life for the rest of my life because of what Vince Young and Mack Brown and those Longhorns did for us tonight.  Amidst all the big stuff good and bad, I’ll be a little bit happier than I would have been otherwise because of what just happened.  The Longhorns won a national championship, and I saw it, and they can’t take that away from us ever.”

I’ve dialed way back on sports fandom since then, but I still believe that.

I also believe I’d like to see us win another.  Let’s go, boys.

Hook ‘em Horns.  Texas Fight.

I truly, truly love the game of baseball.  This man played it very, very well.

Congratulations, Randy Johnson, on a truly wonderful career: 303 wins; 4,875 Ks; surely first-ballot HOF.  Helluva pitcher, helluva player.  Thanks.

Nice shot, kid.