Sports Biblio Digest, 2.23.20: The Miracle On Ice, 40 Years Later
News, Views and Reviews About Sports Books, History and Culture
Also In This Issue: Alex Ovechkin; Rob Manfred Under Fire; Roger Angell; Satchel Paige; Manchester City’s Penance; RB Leipzig’s Great Leap Forward; Palestinian-Israeli Soccer; Kobe Bryant’s Catholic Faith; The Back Roads to March Madness; Remembering Mickey Wright and Tony Fernandez
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For Americans of a certain age, the question brings back to vivid memory one of the more unforgettable sporting achievements in the country's history:
Where were you for The Miracle on Ice?
On Feb. 22, 1980, the United States Olympic hockey team—mostly current and recent college players who’d been thrown together only a few months before—faced off in the medal round against the more experienced and heavily-favored Soviet Union in Lake Placid, N.Y.
Even without the spectre of the Cold War hanging over the Olympic Center in the tiny Adirondacks mountain village, this game was David vs. Goliath writ large.
These were the years before National Hockey League players were permitted to play, although the Soviet team, with an assortment of Red Army veterans, was most certainly professionalized.
From the time the Soviet Union joined the Olympics in the early 1950s, ice hockey was one of the sports it dominated the most, with five gold medals and a bronze (at 1960 in Squaw Valley, in a similar upset by an upstart U.S. team also on American soil, albeit on a much smaller stage).
The Soviets also won 20 consecutive world championships from 1954-90, almost up until the Communist regime was toppled.
They took to Lake Placid some of their legends: Valeri Kharlamov, Boris Mikhailov and Vladislav Tretiak, regarded as the best goalie in the world.
Who were the Americans? Since they were amateurs, nobody in the NHL. Leonard Shapiro of The Washington Post called them “a ragtag mélange of peach-fuzz kids and knockaround minor leaguers.” But coach Herb Brooks’ nobodies wrote themselves into Olympic and American sports history with a stunning 4-3 win in the semifinals.
As many remembrances noted this week, the game was not on live television in the U.S., after starting at 5 p.m. New York time at the Soviets’ insistence, so it wouldn’t be in the middle of the night back home.
ABC opted to show the game on tape delay in prime time, and in the introduction to that airing, host Jim McKay refused to divulge the result. He acknowledged many viewers knew the score, but he wasn’t going to play the role of a spoiler.
Where was I? In college, attending a basketball game in a small town in the Deep South, not exactly hockey country, but like many around me eagerly awaiting news from Lake Placid.
At some point, our school’s radio play-by-play man commandeered the public-address microphone and blurted out what had happened, and the basketball game faded into the background.
It was bedlam in the bleachers, about a game contested on ice hundreds of miles away.
I don’t remember much more than that, other than watching the U.S. down Finland less than 48 hours later to win the gold medal. It was anticlimactic, and I’m not sure when I saw a replay of the Soviet Union game.
But Al Michaels’ unforgettable “Do You Believe In Miracles?” resonates today, like few other calls in my lifetime.
U.S. captain Mike Eruzione, who never played in the NHL, says he never thought of that feat as a miracle. Two players who just missed making the team recalled this week the disappointment at hearing the news, and the equally wrenching pain of watching the gold medal celebrations (they didn’t watch the game against the Soviets).
The unlikely event made a big and enduring television star out of Michaels, who had called hockey only once before, and since then has been known for his work on NFL games:
“This was a gigantic, gigantic upset, and so that’s why the word miraculous came into my brain, and I said what I said. But that had everything to do with what an incredible moment this is, and not something that I ever thought would live in posterity.”
Gerald Eskenazi of The New York Times recalls how he had to press his publisher to let him go to Lake Placid, and the logistical and equipment challenges he faced once he got there:
“In the tiny balcony space called the ‘press box’ there was no room for our newfangled computer. The thing, a Teleram, was in the basement. I was to type my story on my Olivetti portable typewriter, and bring the copy downstairs to be transmitted.”
In Lake Placid today, the memories live on for those who were there, and the arena is now named after the deceased Brooks. It plays host to a college hockey tournament and similar competitions.
Much of this feels so quaint and innocent now, especially since a few months later U.S. President Jimmy Carter banned American athletes from taking part in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.
Ugly, raw-knuckled politics shook jubilant Americans out of their cocoon. We didn’t get to enjoy that moment for very long. The Soviets and most of the Eastern Bloc retaliated four years later by boycotting the Los Angeles Olympics. The 1988 Games were the last for the Soviet Union, and the NHL would soon become globalized, with European- and American-born stars crashing a Canadian-dominated league.
I’m not sure that was necessarily a better time than today in American society. The Miracle on Ice came at a time when Americans were reeling from recession and the humiliating Iran hostage crisis. For a few nights in the dead of winter, some 20-somethings on skates performed some magic that casts an indelible spell to this day.
A Few Good Reads
Alex Ovechkin’s 700th career NHL goal this week made him just the eighth player to reach that mark, and immediately set up the possibility of surpassing Wayne Gretzky’s record 894 goals. Ovechkin’s 42 goals this year are third in the league, but at the age of 34, he’d ideally have to keep up a 50-goal or so pace and not endure any long-term injuries to have a shot;
I had heard about this story, but didn’t know much more than that: In 1968, the Atlanta Braves signed Satchel Paige at the age of 58, so he could qualify for a Major League Baseball pension. He had been turned down by 19 other teams, and while he never played for the Braves, he did lend a hand in helping out the team’s young pitchers when called upon;
Major League Baseball players blistered commissioner Rob Manfred en masse from their spring training venues this week as fallout from the Astros sign-stealing scandal continues. While former Red Sox great David Ortiz called former Astros pitcher Mike Fiers “a snitch” for blowing the whistle, Manfred’s handling of the matter is drawing increasing fire. Jose Canseco wants him booted, and that was before Manfred called the World Series trophy a “piece of metal;”
The Dodgers’ Justin Turner followed Trevor Bauer’s ripsnorter last week with even more accusations that the commissioner is tolerating what many players are repeatedly calling cheating, and Nick Markakis of the Braves suggested that every Astros’ player involved in the sign-stealing “needs a beating;”
Others scoffed at Manfred’s warning for opposing pitchers not to throw at Astros’ batters, but Boston Herald columnist Tom Keegan says let vigilante justice rule. At The Atlantic, Rick Reilly writes he’s never seen athletes so mad in his 40 years as a sportswriter, and he agrees with them;
One more about the Astros, from eminent Princeton historian Sean Wilentz—who’s been highly critical recently of The New York Times for its recent magazine project on American slavery—who invokes Shoeless Joe Jackson and Kenesaw Mountain Landis in his appraisal of today's scandal;
I wish Roger Angell were still writing baseball, and would love for him to weigh in on the Astros. Now 99, he was interviewed recently at his familiar haunt, The New Yorker, talking baseball and his varied writing career, mostly reminiscing about family and life at the magazine;
Manchester City meets Real Madrid Wednesday in the knockout stages of the European Champions League, but there’s a huge cloud hanging over the reigning English Premier League champions. They’ve been banned from European play for the next two seasons and fined 30 million Euros for violating UEFA’s Financial Fair Play guidelines, designed to avoid super-wealthy impulse buying and promote long-term investment. The details were revealed by the German magazine Der Spiegel as part of its continuing “Football Leaks” reporting about shady soccer club financing;
At The Guardian, David Conn offers more details about how the Man City story unfolded, and the club’s appealing the ruling with implications for Premier League leaders Liverpool. But writing again on Saturday, Conn argues that FFP is working, as demonstrated by Liverpool’s restoration on the bottom line as well as the top of the table. Another perspective is that despite FFP, the competitive imbalance in European soccer is greater than ever, and the sport may be irreparably broken as a result;
More background on Football Leaks in this May 2019 piece by Sam Knight at The New Yorker, who writes of more document dumps than Edward Snowden and the Panama Papers;
Born into existence only a decade ago, RB Leipzig is threatening to become the first team located in the former East Germany to win a Bundesliga title. After blanking Tottenham Hotspur in the European Champions League this week, Leipzig thrashed Schalke 5-0 Saturday to remain just a point behind Bayern Munich. Bankrolled by the energy drink conglomerate Red Bull, the club is certainly the beneficiary of plenty of financial resources, but it also worked its way up through lower leagues to reach a place where only a handful of former East German clubs have gone in the three decades since national reunification;
A memorial service will take place Monday at the Staples Center in Los Angeles for Kobe Bryant, and mourners will include his former Lakers teammate Shaquille O’Neal, who admits he’s still “hurting.” Earlier this month, Tom Hoffarth and Steve Lowery penned this look at how devout a Roman Catholic Bryant had become, and why his faith wasn’t a surprise to those people who knew him best, especially those in his non-NBA life;
Steve Moore, the men’s basketball coach at the non-scholarship College of Wooster in Ohio, is retiring at the end of the season, after 33 years there and nearly 800 wins overall, the second-most in NCAA Division III history. More memorable are the stories from former players about how a fierce competitor and mentor became a loyal friend in their days after college;
The University of St. Thomas in St. Paul was booted from its all-Minnesota Division III athletic conference for being too good at many sports, and is looking to make an unprecedented move to Division I with an offer from the Summit League. It’s a dicey proposition, given the greater expenses involved, and a more-far flung conference that stretches to Colorado and Oklahoma. The biggest issue is how the changes will affect its excellent football program.
Sports Book News
My favorite time of the sports season is just about here: The overlap between the start of the baseball season and March Madness. John Feinstein is back for another college basketball book, “The Back Roads to March,” due out March 3 from Doubleday. He chronicles the lesser-known schools, coaches, players and gyms during the 2018 season.
At The Washington Post, Feinstein breaks down one of the current season’s biggest upsets, Stephen F. Austin shocking Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium, and the very good season the Lumberjacks have been compiling since then. The new book by the way, will be No. 37 (including kids’ books) for Feinstein, who is interviewed here at The Midday 180 this week about college hoops and the Astros, among other topics;
The latest New Books in Sports podcast guest is novelist, playwright and screenwriter Nicholas Blincoe, author of the 2019 book “More Noble Than War,” a history of Palestinian-Israeli soccer dating back more than a century.
Passings
Mickey Wright, 85, was revered for the elegance of her golf swing as much as her 82 professional victories—second only to the 88 won by Kathy Whitworth, her great rival and friend. Wright, who semi-retired prematurely due to the heavy burden she carried for women’s golf, maintained her privacy after that, but never considered herself a recluse.
She was the only woman to hold all four major championships at the same time, and won 13 majors (the same number as Bobby Jones; only Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Patty Berg have more). Wright also was an often exacting observer of those who followed in her formidable footsteps on the LPGA Tour.
As Wright told Sports Illustrated’s Michael Bamberger: "It's interesing, I never talk with non-golfers about golf. Only other pros who have been there seem to know what it's all about."
More on Mickey Wright, in this 2017 Golf World interview; and from the Sports Illustrated Vault, Nov. 23, 1964, “When Mickey Wright Did Nothing Wrong,” an account of her then-LPGA record round of 62 at The Tall City Open in Midland, Texas;
Tony Fernandez, 57, was a five-time All-Star shortstop who helped the Toronto Blue Jays defend their World Series championship in 1993, when he was traded back to the only franchise outside the United States with a title. He remains the Blue Jays' all-time hits leader (1,583), won four Gold Gloves, and remained an influential figure in his native Dominican Republic, where he died this week after a battle with kidney disease.
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The Sports Biblio Digest is an e-mail newsletter delivered on Sunday. You can subscribe here and search the archives. This is Digest issue No. 195, published Feb. 23, 2020.
I’d love to hear what you think about the Digest, and Sports Biblio. Send feedback, suggestions, book recommendations, review copies, newsletter items and interview requests to Wendy Parker at sportsbiblio@gmail.com.