I went to a Winter Olympics in what was then Yugoslavia, one in an urban-cowboy corner of Canada, one in the breathtaking Savoie region of France, one in the breath-freezing Arctic Circle suburbs of Norway and one in some extremely cold mountains near the Sea of Japan.
But I missed the one right before all those.
The 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid, N.Y., went on without me. At the time, I could not have cared less, because I was considerably more consumed by matters of nationwide importance like DePaul basketball and whether to vote again for Jimmy Carter.
From friends who did go to Lake Placid, I was assured I was missing very little. Difficult working conditions, a logistical nightmare and 14 knee-knocking, heart-pounding mornings of watching grown men and women on sleds.
I could live without it.
Then one afternoon, a hockey game on TV caught everybody’s eye. I remember being in old Chicago Stadium, covering a Bulls game. This was back when the Bulls were every bit as bad as they are now, the difference being that they played in front of half-full houses.
A portable TV was on in an upper-level press box and most of us wanted to watch hockey, not basketball.
That part is vivid. The part that has remained hazy in my memory, however, lo these 24 years, is exactly which hockey game we were watching.
Because as with JFK’s assassination or the 9/11 attacks, those of us of certain generations are supposed to be able to recite chapter and verse exactly where we were and what we were doing–perhaps even what we were eating or wearing–when an event of great historic magnitude took place.
An event such as the USA-USSR “miracle” hockey game.
A common misconception has been that this game against the mighty Soviets was the game for the Olympic gold medal. It was not. It was a semifinal, qualifying Team USA to advance to a final-round faceoff with Finland.
Minds can play tricks on us, and it wasn’t until recently that I realized the game I saw on TV that day at Chicago Stadium was, in fact, the Finland game, not the more famous one. Do you believe in memory loss? Yes.
I was thinking about this while watching “Miracle,” the new motion picture about the young guys who gave America this uplifting triumph and that older guy, the late Herb Brooks, who coached them, played to perfection in the film by Kurt Russell.
Maybe you had to be there.
Oh, how I now wish I had been. Very few sporting events in America’s history have made the entire republic’s pride swell. Patriotism and jingoism long have co-existed at events like the Olympics, but usually it is an individual who waves the flag: A runner, a skater, a boxer, a swimmer.
Now and then a relay team will win a foot race or swim competition and inspire a chant of: “USA! USA!” But how often has your love of country been affected by a man running with a baton or a woman splashing along doing a breaststroke?
I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t make me bleed too much red, white and blue when four dudes ride a bobsled.
That hockey game, though . . . fact is, you did not need to be there.
It was an event TV actually enhanced, partly because of replays and close-ups of the fans in the stands, but mainly thanks to Al Michaels’ call of the action. He was alternately objective and excited, always lucid. And he was letter-perfect from start to finish, responsible for the audience’s excitement long before his classic closing line.
In case you don’t know or have forgotten, the world back then was no more at peace than it is today. A few months beyond this hockey victory, the U.S. would boycott the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, in protest of Soviet military activity in Afghanistan.
Lake Placid was a cold war on a rink. It was seen as a game between grown men (theirs) and boys (ours), true or not; professionals against amateurs, which indeed was true.
And rather than root for handsomely compensated jocks-for-hire who represent your city, this afforded you a chance to cheer for unpaid volunteers who represented your country, many of them for the sheer fun of it.
I remember how disgusted so many of us were in Nagano in 1998, when millionaires from the National Hockey League were granted permission to compete on our country’s behalf and represented us by trashing their Olympic Village facilities. That made us miss those 1980 guys more than ever.
Now they are back, in a wonderful film.
I am partial to true stories, as serious as “Raging Bull” or “Eight Men Out” or as sunny as “The Rookie” and “Seabiscuit,” when it comes to Hollywood’s dealings with sports.
This one is a keeper. Rare is the movie that not only gets it right, but makes you want to review it by raising a “We’re No. 1!” finger, not a thumb.
“Miracle” is one.
