Martin Gitlin - Powerful Moments in Sports: The Most Significant Sporting Events in American History

Powerful Moments
in Sports

The Most Significant Sporting Events in American History

Martin Gitlin

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gitlin, Marty, author.

Title: Powerful moments in sports : the most significant sporting events in American history / Martin Gitlin.

Description: Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016032523 (print) | LCCN 2016051404 (ebook) | ISBN 9781442264953 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781442264960 (electronic)

Subjects: LCSH: SportsUnited StatesHistory.

Classification: LCC GV583 .G565 2017 (print) | LCC GV583 (ebook) | DDC 796.0973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016032523

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

The ideal purpose of sports is to be a diversion, an outlet for fans to at least temporarily forget the very real concerns of their daily lives and lose themselves in the excitement of an event live or on television.

But quite often the world of sports transcends the desired intent and crosses over into the realm of social or political significance. Some of those instances have resulted in a mere hiccup on the American scene. Others have made a profound difference.

This book is all about the sporting events both on and off the fields of battle that have indeed brought about consequences beyond the outcomes of the games themselves. They have proven that sports can change the worldor at least our corner of it. Some have helped America live out its creed that all men are created equal. Others have pushed the nation toward a goal of gender equality. Others have changed individual sports to such a degree that they have transformed society. Still others have simply caused such an uproar that they thrust themselves for a short time into the national conversation.

A boast about a Super Bowl upset or rivalry between two basketball players or supposed curse on a baseball team might not qualify to some as earth-shattering, especially in comparison to landmark legislation that ensured equal funding and opportunity for female athletics throughout the country or a legendary and pressure-packed performance on the international stage that disproved Nazi racial theories. But one and all of the entries in this book have at least in a small way altered the American psyche or in a large way resulted in major changes in their particular sports.

One might legitimately claim, for instance, that the modern NFL was born when brash and flamboyant Jets quarterback Joe Namath boldly predicted that his team would defeat the vaunted Colts in Super Bowl III, then backed it up with perhaps the greatest upset in pro football history. And one might also argue with great merit that the individual battles between Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, which renewed the heated rivalry between the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics of a generation past, saved the NBA.

Not one entry here is solely about a single sporting event because no sporting event is played in a vacuum. The chapters that focus on one tremendous athletic accomplishment, such as the defeat of the Soviets by a previously rag-tag bunch of American college hockey players or the Bobby Thomson Shot Heard Round the World that gave the New York Giants the National League pennant over the archrival Brooklyn Dodgers, boast backstories and reverberations that earned them a place in this narrative. So great were those moments that they affected millions. The pain and suffering of Boston Red Sox fans, which became so acute that many of them blamed a long-standing curse, included many of them living their entire lives without experiencing the joy of celebrating a championship with their fellow townspeople.

Many books have been written about individual and noteworthy sporting events, including the ones listed here. They take the reader on the field or the court. Some go well beyond the shots or the hits or the passes that elevated that particular game to legendary status. They focus on individual combatants or teams in an attempt to widen the scope of the importance of the battle. This book is not about the player or team or game itself. It is about how the event, whether it was waged on the field of battle or among politicians or on the tennis court or in the boxing ring or in the English Channel, affected America and sometimes its place in the world.

This book is certain to motivate a thorough examination. Readers will inevitably disagree with the inclusion of some entries and absence of others. And thats great. No sportswriter can claim the definitive list of the most significant and powerful sporting events in American history because there can be no such thing. And though some of the ones that grace these pages are undeniable, others can admittedly be disputed and argued. So enjoy the book and let the debates begin.

Arnold (Chick) Gandil was not on his death bed in the summer of 1956. He could have taken his secrets to the grave, as had several of his co-conspirators in a plot to throw the World Series thirty-seven years earlier.

Gandil was a sixty-nine-year-old plumber in Oakland, California, who was on the verge of retirement, and he yearned to come clean. So the former first baseman spilled the beans to Sports Illustrated in an article published in mid-September. He detailed the Black Sox scandal of 1919 with cold precision and little emotion. To paraphrase stoic fictional cop Joe Friday from the legendary television series Dragnet, which was in the midst of its first run at the timejust the facts.

Specifics of the story as chronicled by Gandil have been questioned by researchers. But it remains the only account provided by a player involved in what at that time had been the darkest event in baseball history, rivaled only by the steroid era nearly a century later in the damage it caused to the image and credibility of the sport.

Gandil, however, would not have been human had he not been swayed by personal feelings in the narrative. For instance, he claimed the desire to allow the underdog Cincinnati Reds to win the title stemmed from a hatred of White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, whom he regarded at the stingiest tightwad in the sport. But, as Famous Trials website founder and University of MissouriKansas City law professor Douglas Linder pointed out in his study of the scandal, the Sox boasted the highest payroll in major league baseball at the time.