Frozen Golden Moments

An alert reader in New Jersey emailed me this week and asked “Where’s the love? Nothing on the Olympics? I took you for a big ice-dancing guy.” Well, tbuck, this one’s for you…

I am an American. I absolutely adore baseball. Hot dogs – you bet. Apple pie – check. My very first car? A Chevy Camaro. Three speed stick on the floor. I loved that car. I’ve swelled with pride during the past two weeks as one dedicated American athlete after another has taken the podium to receive their hard-earned medal. So this may come as a shock to you:  I am rooting like hell for Canada to beat the U.S. of A. in tomorrow’s gold medal hockey game.

Are you still there? Anybody? Allow me to explain, and perhaps you’ll understand. Please climb aboard the Way-Back Machine with me, won’t you?

It was February 22, 1980 and I was eating dinner with Doc, Feesh and Kevin in our lavish rental home in the student slum section of Ithaca, NY. And by lavish I mean that almost all of the bedrooms had both heat AND insulation. I’m guessing that we were enjoying cube steaks, Rice a Roni and canned corn – a traditional Friday night feast. While my housemates were still formulating their plans for the evening, I knew exactly what was in store for me. To help cover college costs, I was doing a little bartending at the time and had drawn the short straw, schedule-wise. I had the dreaded 8 PM-to-close shift at the on-campus pub, thus ceding any hopes of memorable revelry to the rest of the boys.

The phone rang and Feesh reached over to answer. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No! You’re shitting me!! That’s amazing!!! OK, OK, yeah – thanks for calling me.”  We were intrigued.

“What was that?” asked Doc.

“I can’t tell you. I promised I’d keep it a secret.”

“How about if I do the dishes for you”, ventured Kevin, warming to the task of negotiation. Once a Poly Sci major, always a Poly Sci major.

“Deal”, blurted Feesh.

I became concerned about the security of the country should Feesh ever be captured behind enemy lines and subjected to hostile interrogation. Shrugging it off I asked “So what’s the big news?”

“We beat the Russians”.

Dead, stunned silence.

Keep in mind that this was 1980. Before the iPhone. Before the cell phone. Probably before the portable phone.  Cable television was in its infancy, and ESPN anchors were still wearing those hideous yellow blazers. And the Internet? At the time we were still only 11 years removed from the very first cryptic transmission over the highly experimental ARPANET – I believe it was “Steve Jobs – come here, I want you”.

OK, I made that Steve Jobs part up. But the point is that only 30 years ago, information moved at a comparative crawl. If it wasn’t breaking news on television or radio (back when the phrase “breaking news” actually carried some credibility) it was conveyed person to person. And even more difficult to wrap one’s brain around:  as was customary at the time, every media outlet actually honored ABC’s request to withhold the final score until after they had broadcast the hockey game on tape-delay in prime time.  

Only 8,500 people had actually witnessed the U. S. Olympic hockey team’s monumental upset of the Soviet Union that afternoon. It just so happened that a good friend of Feesh’s father had been in Lake Placid that day. So he knew. And then Feesh’s Dad knew. And now we knew. Hmmmm…What to do with this scoop?

We quickly came to the agreement that it would add a lot more spice to the evening if we did NOT tell anyone what we knew; instead just letting the night unfold and enjoying the reactions of those around us. We made a solemn pact to keep it to ourselves. In Vegas, the over/under on how long Feesh would last was 3 minutes after the opening faceoff.

I headed out to my shift at The Pub wondering how many people I would encounter that had received their own version of Feesh’s Dad’s call. To my surprise, I discovered that either nobody working with me that night had heard, or like me they were guarding the secret.

The game started on The Pub’s two televisions, strategically placed in opposite corners of the room. At first people paid only passing attention. It was a typically boisterous Friday night crowd, and the audio of the telecast was easily drowned out. But when the U.S. scored with one second left in the first period to tie the game at 2-2, people started to take notice. By the time the two teams took the ice for the second period, most people were tracking the game. When the U.S. drew even again 9 minutes into the third period, everyone in the bar was riveted. And I was having a ball. Watching a historic moment unfold in slow motion when you have the advance Cliff Notes in hand is a cool experience. To do it in the ebullient environment of an on-campus bar on a Friday night is truly remarkable.

In the hours that followed Al Michael’s “Do you believe in miracles? YES!” the vibe in the bar was off the charts. Anybody that was there that didn’t get lucky that night subsequently dedicated themselves to a painful evaluation of both hygiene and social skills.  When I left work and headed back downtown to check out some late after-parties I was stunned to find that virtually everyone was not only still up and out, but still in full adrenalin-fueled party mode. Pure energy. Everyone loved everyone. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! It’s not enough to say that I’ll never forget that night – it’s virtually etched in stone in the “fondest memories” lobe of the brain.

And that is why I am rooting for Canada to beat the U.S. tomorrow. As I’ve previously explained in this space, in big games I tend to root more for the fans of teams than I do for the actual teams. Over the past two weeks I’ve viewed the pure unadulterated yearning that Canadians have for that hockey gold medal. It is everything to them. And somewhere in Vancouver there is a guy who will be starting his bartending shift tomorrow evening as the Olympians take their warm-up skates. I want him to have the same unforgettable experience that I had – so that 30 years later he will get the same goose bumps that I do every time I see footage of The Miracle On Ice. What do you say – can you give a Sports Fan a pass on this one?

P.S. I took the under on Feesh and won – he spilled his guts before the first puck was dropped.