Some enduring sports moments that reflect the American spirit | On Sports

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While researching this column about a handful of the most memorable moments in United States sports history, a theme emerged. Although we Americans have enjoyed the dominating performances of a Babe Ruth or a Michael Jordan or a Tiger Woods or a Secretariat on our fields, courts, rinks, and tracks of play, we’re even more passionate about the stories of underdogs overcoming the odds. The more daunting the challenges, the sweeter the results. We love longshots. Always have.

And that makes sense because our nation was founded as an underdog 250 years ago. It’s in our DNA. When the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776 the13 colonies were huge dark horses in their revolutionary showdown with Britain’s King George and a global empire on which the sun never set. The rest, as they say, is history.

In commemoration of the USA’s quarter millennium, I offer some sports moments that reflect the American spirit and are frozen in time.

MIRACLE ON ICE: Beset with stagflation, gas rationing, the Iran hostage situation, and a post-Watergate distrust of government, we experienced a national malaise at the start of the 1980s. But a rag-tag, overachieving amateur hockey team lifted our spirits with an upset for the ages. Mike Eruzione’s riveting goal helped the United States upset the mighty Soviet Union skating machine and win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. It was enough to make us believe in miracles.

JACKIE’S DEBUT:  By taking a bat to racism that manifested itself in epithets, death threats, fastballs to the head, and spikes to the shins, Jackie Robinson not only broke Major League Baseball’s color ban, but also laid the foundation for Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement. Robinson’s courageous journey began with his MLB debut on April 15, 1947 at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, and continues to this day, a half-century after his death.

I GUARANTEE IT: Representing the upstart, American Football League, the New York Jets entered Super Bowl III as 18-point underdogs to the established NFL’s Baltimore Colts. Brash Jets quarterback Joe Namath couldn’t care less about what the Wizards of Odds in Vegas thought. He publicly boasted his team would win, and he and his teammates pulled off the upset, catapulting football’s popularity to stratospheric levels.

PERFECTION: After being roughed up by the Brooklyn Dodgers in Game Two of the 1956 World Series, New York Yankees pitcher Don Larsen figured he would be banished to the bullpen for the rest of that Fall Classic. But manager Casey Stengel gave him another start in Game Five, and the journeyman pitcher who had lost 21 games two seasons earlier rewarded his boss’s hunch by tossing the only perfect game in Series history.

BATTLE OF THE SEXES: This landmark 1973 tennis match between 29-year-old women’s champion Billie Jean King and 55-year-old former men’s No. 1 player Bobby Riggs drew a Houston Astrodome crowd of 30,472 spectators and an estimated global television audience of 90 million, and is regarded as a watershed moment for gender equality in sports and society. King’s 6-4, 6-3, 6-3, straight sets victory coincided with the introduction of Title IX legislation that helped legitimize women’s athletics and create millions of opportunities for sports-minded females.

PANNING GOLD: Adolf Hitler viewed the 1936 Berlin Olympics as an opportunity to showcase his athletes alleged Aryan racial superiority. But African-American track star Jesse Owens debunked that myth by out-sprinting and out-leaping the Germans on his way to four gold medals. It was a resounding victory for the human race.

CURSED NO MORE: Asked about the Chicago Cubs interminable World Series title famine, Buffalo Bills coach and long-suffering Cubs fan Marv Levy joked: “Hey, anybody can have a bad century.” In 2016, Levy and his fellow Chicagoans finally had cause to celebrate when the Cubs snapped a 108-year-old championship drought, ending what was known as the “Curse of the Billy Goat.” A dozen years earlier, another tortured fan base had its day in the sun when the Boston Red Sox won it all to exorcise the “Curse of the Bambino.” And in 1955, Brooklyn Dodger fans finally experienced a championship, enabling them to permanently retire their “wait until next year” lamentation.

PARTING WORDS: The two most inspirational sports speeches were delivered by men who knew they were dying. On July 4, 1939, in front of a jam-packed crowd of 61,808 spectators at Yankee Stadium, Hall-of-Fame first baseman Lou Gehrig, who was suffering from a terminal disease known as ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), proclaimed he was “the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” Fifty-four years later, while in the final stages of cancer, NCAA basketball championship coach Jim Valvano delivered a poignant speech to a national television audience, telling viewers: “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.” Decades and hundreds of millions of research dollars later, Gehrig and Valvano’s legacies and words live on.

CARPE DIEM: Greece Athena High School basketball coach Jim Johnson was just trying to reward a student-manager with autism for his dedication to the program when he inserted Jason McElwain into a game on Feb. 15, 2006. Never in their wildest dreams did Johnson or the kid known as J-Mac think the shots he took would be heard – and seen – around the world. J-Mac scored 20 points in four minutes, and the video went viral, attracting the attention of President George W. Bush, Oprah Winfrey, Magic Johnson, Peyton Manning, and Hollywood producers. “God had a plan for me that night,’’ said J-Mac, a devout Christian. “It became about something much bigger than me.” A quarter-century later, the ripple effect continues as coaches and athletes with special needs follow Johnson and J-Mac’s lead.

DANDY BRANDI: Before taking the 1999 World Cup penalty kick that produced one of the most iconic celebration photos of all-time, Brandi Chastain’s coach instructed her to boot the ball with her left foot rather than her right. Though she had little experience taking penalty kicks that way, the left call proved to be the right one as Chastain drilled the game-winner into the net. Overcome with emotion, she ripped off her jersey and dropped to her knees. The photo of her wearing sports bra, shorts, and a euphoric visage was splashed on the cover of Sports Illustrated and seared in the memory banks of the 90,000 fans at the Rose Bowl and the 40 million television viewers worldwide. It would inspire a generation of girls to take up soccer.

JIM THORPE: The all-around athletic greatness of Native American Jim Thorpe was on full display at the 1912 Summer Olympics when he became the only athlete to win both the decathlon and pentathlon at the same games. Those two gold medals would be taken away from him after it was discovered he had played professional baseball, but, thanks to the relentless efforts of Penfield’s Robert Wheeler and his wife, Flo, the International Olympic Committee restored the medals in 1983. Thorpe spent a lifetime advocating for the rights of indigenous peoples, and also played a prominent role in the formation of the NFL.

BILLS COME DUE: Marv Levy said the odds of Buffalo erasing a 32-point third-quarter deficit were about the same as “winning the New York State lottery.” Well, on Jan. 3, 1993, the Bills won the lottery, storming back to top the Houston Oilers, 41-38, on Steve Christie’s winning kick in overtime. Frank Reich, who was playing in place of injured quarterback Jim Kelly, helped engineer what remains the biggest comeback in NFL post-season history, throwing four second-half touchdowns, including three to Andre Reed.

IRON MAN STREAK: Cal Ripken’s work ethic was on display in Rochester in 1981, during his final minor-league season with the Red Wings. He played in 114 consecutive games that spring and summer before being promoted to the Baltimore Orioles. He would go on to play in 2,632 consecutive games, obliterating the previous record of 2,130 established by Iron Horse Lou Gehrig. Ripken’s penchant for punching the clock every day resonated with fans. “I just believed whether you were a ballplayer or a factory worker or a newspaper reporter that you had an obligation to show up to work each and every day and give it your best even when you weren’t feeling your best,” he told me. “It wasn’t about the streak. It was about honor and responsibility to your job, and being a good teammate.”

Best-selling author and nationally honored journalist Scott Pitoniak is the Rochester Business Journal sports columnist.