1969
GAME BALL FROM SUPER BOWL III
A
fter an act of Congress and several brutal negotiating sessions, in 1966 the long-established National Football League came to terms with the upstart American Football League, founded in 1960 (see 1959 entry on Lamar Hunt). The details, the two sides agreed, would be worked out, and the rivals would be one big happy family by the 1970 season. That was the idea, anyway.
There were just two problems. The first was that the respective owners didn’t like each other. The AFL owners were men who had tried to get into football, but had been rejected; this stung their egos, which were large. The NFL owners had little respect for the nouveau AFL, which played a glitzier game and had an edgier feel altogether than the crew-cut, meat-and-potatoes ethos of the senior circuit.
The other problem was the perception that the AFL was distinctly inferior. While the leagues didn’t play each other during the regular season, in the first two Super Bowls the AFL’s Kansas City Chiefs and Oakland Raiders both lost badly to the Green Bay Packers (by scores of 35–10 and 33–14, respectively). This was not looking like a merger of equals.
That was the conventional wisdom, and it was repeated so often that it passed for truth. The AFL probably did not have the depth of the NFL, but it had excellent players and teams, and the overall gap was closing; this was no minor league. The New York Jets exemplified the AFL’s ability to develop talent; only six of their players had any NFL time. But perceptions matter, particularly when an institution is on the cusp of remaking itself, as football was. If the third Super Bowl was another blowout, mused commissioner Pete Rozelle (see 1960 entry on him), it might be necessary to rethink not just the championship game but also the entire structure of the league. It wouldn’t be tenable to field one division that was clearly superior to the other.1
A blowout was expected. The Colts had gone 13–1 and outscored their opponents by 258 points. The Jets had gone 11–3 and were not nearly as dominant against a weaker schedule. Their defense had given up almost twice as many points as the Colts, who happened to have the game’s best offense. Though Colts legend Johnny Unitas (see 1958 entry) had missed the season, his substitute, Earl Morrall, had won the NFL’s MVP award. The cold-eyed analysts in Las Vegas made the Colts a 19.5 point favorite, 7–1 on a straight win-lose bet.2
The Jets didn’t see it that way. Head coach Weeb Ewbank had been the coach of the Colts during the “greatest game” in 1958, and he knew what a championship team looked and felt like. From his perspective, quarterback Joe Namath was playing as well as anyone,3 and so was the defense. The players had spent hours watching film of the Colts and were not all that impressed. They saw a team that was old, stodgy, and blitz-happy. The Jets ate blitzers for breakfast. And they had their own MVP in “Broadway Joe” Namath, who had signed a big contract with the Jets out of Alabama and took to New York nightlife like a natural. Namath shared his teammates’ confidence. A few days before the game, he boasted, “The Jets will win Sunday. I guarantee it.”4 Now regarded as a Very Important Phrase in NFL history, at the time it was ignored, because it was so absurd.5 “We believed what we heard,” Colts tight end John Mackey would recall ruefully, “that the NFL couldn’t lose to an AFL team.”6
But of course they did. The Jets won authoritatively, 16–7. There wasn’t any Broadway in Namath’s performance, just intelligence and cool judgment (17 for 28 passing for 206 yards and no interceptions). The offensive line kept his uniform clean. Calling audibles frequently, he sliced and diced the Colts defense with the clinical dispassion of a surgeon; the ball pictured here was the instrument of his work. The Jets defense picked Morrall off four times. An injured Unitas came in during the second half, but it was the same story.
The NFL executives were distraught and incredulous. But Rozelle, who was as taken aback as anyone, was quick to see the bigger picture. “Don’t worry,” he said, “this may be the best thing that ever happened to the game.”7
It was. The Jets victory changed perceptions of the AFL and made reaching the final decisions on how to structure the game much easier than they would have been. After a series of all-night bargaining sessions, the Baltimore, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh owners agreed to join the American Football Conference in the realigned league. If the Jets had lost badly, such a deal might have been untenable—and Joe Namath would never have become a legend.
1970
BOBBY ORR’S KNEE BRACE
I
n the most famous image in pro hockey, Bobby Orr is flying, almost perfectly parallel to the ice, his arms extended in a swan dive. He has just scored the winning goal in overtime to bring the Stanley Cup to the Boston Bruins for the first time in 29 years. The team unveiled a bronze statue of that frozen moment on May 10, 2010, the fortieth anniversary of what is known as “The Goal.”
No one has had more influence on hockey, both on and off the ice, than Bobby Orr. As a scrawny boy, Orr learned to use speed and guile to maneuver his way on the ice. He signed a pro contract with the Bruins at age 141 and made the National Hockey League four years later. Boston needed him badly; the team had missed the playoffs seven straight years and had been proclaiming Orr the franchise’s savior since before he could drive. He started well, winning the Rookie of the Year in 1967 for a bad Bruins team and performing brilliantly the next two years as the team improved.
In 1969–1970 the 22-year-old Orr, and the Bruins, put it all together. He notched 33 goals and 87 assists to become only the second man to break the 100-point mark. He also became the only man ever to be named best defensive player (for the second of eight straight times), most valuable player, highest scorer, and postseason MVP in the same year. Orr is still the only defenseman to lead the league in scoring, and he did it twice.
Orr’s play and presence—by this time, he was endorsing everything from snowmobiles to soap2—made him the first hockey player to become a superstar in the United States. Even Boston’s strippers showed their appreciation, imitating on their bodies the single strip of black tape Orr used on his stick. The decorative motif was known as the “Bobby Orr.”3
The Bruins also won the Cup in 1972, but lost in the finals in 1974. Orr’s last great season was 1974–1975, when he broke his own record for scoring by a defenseman. But his knees were already scarred by multiple operations; he was wearing the brace pictured on the following page when he scored The Goal. After two miserable seasons in Chicago, where he played only 26 games, he retired in 1978, at age 30. The Hockey Hall of Fame waived the usual three-year waiting period to induct him in 1979.
On the ice, Orr redefined his position; no less an authority than the great Gordie Howe would say, “He changed the game of hockey forever.”4 Orr was the first defenseman to become an offensive force, electrifying crowds with his end-to-end rushes and then using his speed and anticipation to get back into position. In 1970–1971 he set the single-season record for “plus-minus” rating (goal differential while on the ice), proof that his offensive brilliance did not come at the expense of his defensive responsibilities. His style opened up the game. Play became more fluid now that the defenseman was part of the action, not parked behind the blue line.
Orr had a modest, small-town Canadian demeanor. He was always uncomfortable with the golden-boy persona thrust on him—a reputation, he knew, that would do him no good with the hard men of the NHL. In an era when even practices were notably rough, Orr proved his cred quickly. Goalies loved him for blocking shots however he could, and teammates valued his ability as a fighter. “Oh, boy, this guy would fight,” remembered hockey journalist Red Fisher.5 “They tested him the first year. They didn’t test him in year two.”
Off the ice, Orr was the first NHL player to use an agent to negotiate his contract. Rookies of that era were lucky to get $10,000 a year and a handshake.6 Lawyer Alan Eagleson negotiated something like four times that figure, making Orr one of the game’s highest paid players before he had skated a single line—and changing the economics of the NHL forever.7 Veterans like Gordie Howe took notice and demanded more money. The following year, Eagleson started the first successful NHL players’ union.
There was, of course, a conflict of interest in Eagleson’s status as both an agent (for as many as 150 players)8 and the head of the union. But it also made him the most powerful man in hockey. Power corrupted him, and he defended himself with a rudeness and vulgarity that came to disgust his star attraction.9 In 1980 Orr publicly broke with the man he used to refer to as a brother10 for catastrophic financial mismanagement. The worst? That would be Eagleson telling Orr in 1976 that the Bruins didn’t want him anymore; in fact, the owners were offering him an 18.6 percent stake in the team.11
In the early 1990s the truth came out: Eagleson had mishandled the players’ pension and disability funds.12 Eventually convicted on related criminal charges in both Canada and the United States, he was fined, imprisoned, disbarred, and disgraced.13 The Bernie Madoff of hockey, Eagleson had used his standing as Orr’s friend and manager to put himself in a position to damage the lives and futures of those he was supposed to be protecting. “Shame on him,” was Orr’s verdict. “Just, shame on him.”14
1970
YELLOW BLAZER FROM MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL
B
eing a loser can be liberating, and in the late 1960s ABC was the biggest loser on American TV. The advantage of that position, though, was that it could take more risks. And it got the chance of a generation when NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle (see 1960 entry) pitched the idea of a regularly scheduled prime-time game.
It was not an easy sell. Since the end of the Friday night fights in 1959,1 sports had only occasionally been seen after dinner; Rozelle had managed to shoehorn in a handful of prime-time games on a one-off basis, with middling results.2 He was sure there was a market. Under the terms of the NFL’s antitrust agreement with Congress, the league could not show games on Friday night. Saturday was for college; Sunday was already full of games, and midweek was out because players needed to recover. That left Monday.
CBS wasn’t interested. “What?” cried one aghast executive. “Pre-empt Doris Day?”3 NBC had a good thing going with Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In; also, Johnny Carson had not been amused when his show was delayed by a game that ran long.4 NBC was not going to mess with Johnny.
That left ABC. Its president of sports, Roone Arledge, saw all kinds of possibilities. Other executives saw only problems. Women wouldn’t watch; the affiliates wouldn’t like their evening newscasts interrupted; most fans wouldn’t have a rooting interest; and so forth. Fine, Rozelle said, Howard Hughes’s new sports network would take it. That got ABC’s attention, and with great reluctance, it paid $8.6 million for Monday night rights for the 1970 season.5
With that, Arledge took charge. He saw, before anyone else, that sports were not just about the game, but also about the people who played it and those who watched it. He wanted to show emotions as well as the score, and he wanted to bring a less reverent sensibility. “Sport is a business, not a religion, and there is no sacred way things must be done,” he said.6 “The games aren’t played in Westminster Abbey.”7
With Monday Night Football (MNF), Arledge had a template to test his vision. Again, ABC’s low status was helpful. Because it didn’t have any other football games, it could put all its energy into this one. ABC threw everything at it: slow motion, split screens, instant replay, handheld cameras, sideline mikes, closeups, and graphics.8 The network deployed nine cameras, compared to the more typical four or five, and two production units, one exclusively for replays.
Arledge wanted MNF to be interesting, and that meant the people calling the games had to be. With that in mind, he hired Howard Cosell, who was already known as one of the more provocative voices in sports. To provide contrast, he hired Don Meredith, the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback (see 1967 entry on the Ice Bowl), who did a nice line in cornpone. Veteran sportscaster Keith Jackson would do the play-by-play. It was the first time there had been three announcers in the booth.
Jackson was a capable professional, but it was the Cosell-Meredith dynamic that defined the show. Cosell was pedantic; Meredith punctured him with down-home darts. Cosell was ponderous; Meredith was funny. Referring to a receiver with the fabulous name of Fair Hooker, Meredith mused, “Fair Hooker—I haven’t met one yet.”
Right from the beginning, it worked. The first game, on September 21, 1970, between the Jets and the Cleveland Browns earned a stellar 34 percent share.9 Meredith won an Emmy for his work. The following year, Frank Gifford (right) replaced Jackson; he, Cosell, and Meredith, made MNF a national phenomenon. Movie theaters reported that sales slumped on Monday nights; bars began to offer customers a chance to throw bricks at a television featuring Cosell’s face.10
Football was already America’s favorite sport when MNF debuted, but the show helped to bring it to a new level, expanding the football audience. The show also proved that the appetite for sports was much bigger than anyone had thought and not as rigidly defined by traditional schedules. The year after MNF debuted, the World Series had its first prime-time game, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament followed a year later. Between 1975 and 1981 network sports coverage increased by a third, and new cable stations added many more hours.11 In 1979 ESPN launched; it was by no means certain there was a market for 24-hour sports at the time, but given the post–MNF sports boomlet, the idea was credible enough to attract backers.
Even when the personnel changed, MNF kept going. Meredith left in 1973 for NBC, then came back for a four-year stint in 1977. Cosell left in 1983. Arledge began devoting more of his time to ABC News in 1977, where he also made important contributions, including starting Nightline. Even so, Arledge, who died in 2002, seven years after Cosell, is best remembered as the most important person in the development of television sports (sorry, Howard). As for Monday Night Football, the voices in the booth keep changing, but the games go on and on. And the money gets bigger and bigger. The most recent deal, signed with ESPN in 2011, called for about $15.2 billion over eight years.12
1971
GOLF CLUB USED ON THE MOON
G
ive Bob Hope an assist. The comedian was taking a tour of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and as he bounced on the moon walk simulator, he clung to his driver for balance. Hope’s tour guide, Alan Shepard, had an epiphany: “I have to find a way to hit a ball on the moon.”1 Shepard, the first American in space in 1961, was one of the only men on Earth for whom such a thought was not sheer fantasy. He was scheduled to ride Apollo 14 to the moon in February 1971.
Very discreetly, Shepard brought an expandable instrument designed for collecting moon samples to a golf pro, who fitted a number 6 club head to it.2 Voila: the first moon club. After nine hours on the lunar surface, moments before leaving the moon forever, Shepard took out his unique 6-iron and a couple of balls. Swinging one-handed, he shanked his first shot. On Earth Shepard was a duffer, and even on the moon, the first rule of golf technique holds true: keep your head down. “That looked like a slice to me, Al,” chirped a NASA critic. Addressing the second ball, Shepard hit it nicely, sending it perhaps 200 yards.3 At the time, the astronaut described it as going “miles and miles and miles,” thus uttering the first and so far last golf lie from space.4 To the end of his life, when he looked at the moon, Shepard would muse, “I wonder where my golf ball is.”5
1971
PING-PONG DIPLOMACY SOUVENIR PADDLES
M
odern China has never pretended that sports are separate from politics: Mao Zedong’s first published essay was about how sports could help to build a new China.1 The Beijing Olympics in 2008 were an assertion of China’s rising status on the world stage. And in one of the most iconic moments of the Cold War, China chose a sporting event to make a political statement of enormous consequence. In 1971 Mao invited the American Ping-Pong team to visit the mainland.
Beijing was a Ping-Pong power. The men had won the world title in 1961 and 1963; the women joined them as champions in 1965. Upon the team’s return, China’s top leaders hosted a party in honor of these symbols of the nation. But this status was not to last. During the Cultural Revolution, which Mao (a keen player, by the way) launched in 1966, denunciation and terror replaced Ping-Pong as the national sport, and China skipped the world championships in 1967 and 1969. By 1971, with the worst of the Cultural Revolution chaos over, China was beginning to consider how it could reengage with the world, a consideration made more acute by its recent border conflict with the Soviet Union. Being friendless in a dangerous world was increasingly unappealing.
In the United States—which was not a global Ping-Pong power—President Richard Nixon was also eager to change the status quo; there had been no American diplomatic mission in China since 1949. In 1970 both countries made approaches to each other of such exquisite subtlety that neither recognized them for what they were.
That was the context for one of the major questions the Chinese leadership was considering in early 1971. Should the national team go to the world Ping-Pong championships in April, to be held in Nagoya, Japan? Premier Zhou Enlai favored the idea, but the only opinion that really mattered was Mao’s. He eventually agreed. Before the players left, though, they were given strict guidance. If they had to play the Americans, no shaking hands. No talking with them first. No exchange of flags. Report back three times a day.2
The Chinese players performed and behaved impeccably in Nagoya, even chanting quotations from Mao to psych themselves up before playing.3 But they found it difficult to stay away from the Americans, who kept trying to introduce themselves. At a reception, the leader of the Chinese delegation found himself sitting next to his American counterpart, who promptly angled for an invitation to visit. On a sightseeing tour, players from the two countries were thrown together; again, the Americans said they would love to come. All of this was reported back to Beijing. The US players were just hoping for a fun trip. Beijing saw something more serious at play: a signal from the White House. That put a different spin on matters. On reflection, though, China decided it wasn’t the right time to invite Americans, even innocents like these.4
Then on April 4 one of the American players, Glenn Cowan, jumped on the Chinese team bus—whether inadvertently or mischievously is not clear. But it was certainly a surprise to the Chinese, who were stunned. Three-time world champion Zhuang Zedong broke the silent tableau. Gesturing to the long-haired American—Cowan liked to see himself as a hippie—Zhuang gave him an embroidered silk banner. When the bus stopped, journalists noticed Cowan; he explained what happened and had a picture taken with Zhuang. The incident got enormous coverage, most of it positive. Zhou and Mao, however, were still cautious.
And then one evening Mao woke up—literally. He had been intrigued by the coverage of the bus episode, and on the evening of April 6 he awakened and murmured to his attendant to tell the Foreign Ministry to invite the American team. The situation was awkward. For one thing, Mao had given instructions not to act on anything he said while under the influence of sleeping pills. For another, the tournament ended the next day. Mao drifted off, and when he realized the attendant hadn’t moved, became irritated. He affirmed that yes, he wanted the team to come.5 The message got through, and Nixon was quick to give the players the go-ahead.
Three days later they landed in Beijing—the first American group since 1949. The unexpectedness of the visit made it a global sensation. Gracious hosts, the Chinese teams even managed to lose a game or two to the deeply inferior American players.6 They met Zhou, went to the Great Wall, and saw a revolutionary ballet. Every step of their trip was exhaustively chronicled, and when the team returned home, they were hailed as heroes.
The members of the American team could not have been better ambassadors—for Beijing. They reported happy peasants, productive collective farms, freedom of movement, and a sense of unity and content. Maoism, said one player, was “beautiful.”7
All of this would have been surprising to the people of China—not least to the table tennis team, which had been devastated by the Cultural Revolution. Accused of following the capitalist road, espionage, anti-Maoism, and trophyism, they had been sent to the countryside, along with hundreds of other athletes, to cut wheat, build aqueducts, and read Mao’s Little Red Book.8
Zhuang, for example (the man who had greeted Cowan), had been jailed, beaten, and exiled; not heard from for three years, he was feared dead. The coach of the national team, Fu Qifang, was driven to suicide, and the same was said of the country’s first world champion, Rong Guotan, though he might have been beaten to death. Even as the American players were touring China, many leaders of the National Sports Commission were literally up to their elbows in muck, hauling manure in rural Shanxi.9
The US Ping-Pong players would not be the last visitors to see and hear only what China wished them to. But their positive impressions, however erroneous, helped to change the way Americans saw China. During their trip Nixon lifted trade sanctions and travel restrictions, to little opposition, and in the immediate aftermath, for the first time, polls found that a majority of Americans favored admitting the mainland to the United Nations,10 which occurred in October. In February 1972 Nixon visited China. Three months after that, the Chinese Ping-Pong team came to the United States, the first official delegation from the People’s Republic since 1949. With capitalist vigor, the free market produced all kinds of mementoes, such as these commemorative paddles. From now on, the two nations would negotiate business in the normal back-and-forth of international relations.
The United States and China would have figured out a way to connect; the world’s most populous country and the world’s most powerful one could not ignore each other forever. But as a way to break the ice, Ping-Pong worked beautifully: it was a nonthreatening, and to Americans, somewhat amusing little diversion that they didn’t mind the Chinese being much better at. However unlikely, Ping-Pong truly did help break China’s diplomatic isolation and by doing so, changed global geopolitics.
At a human level, though, there was also tragedy—one taking a particularly Chinese form, and the other characteristically American. Zhuang Zedong became a political symbol and aligned himself with Jiang Qing, the widely despised wife of Mao, and with her allies, the “Gang of Four,” who were blamed for many of the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Zhuang enthusiastically led denunciation meetings, including against his former teammates; he also attacked both Zhou and future leader Deng Xiaoping as toadies to foreign powers. When Mao died in September 1976, the political winds shifted. The Gang of Four was arrested, and so was Zhuang. He was himself denounced, then spent four years in solitary confinement, followed by a stint in Shanxi as a street sweeper. Allowed to return to Beijing in 1984, he taught at a sports school and then started a Ping-Pong club in 2005.11 He died in 2013, full of history and regrets.
Glenn Cowen’s downfall was distinctly capitalist. He believed his role in Ping-Pong diplomacy would bring him fame and fortune. When that didn’t happen, he was unmoored and began to suffer mental health and drug problems. Every April, around the anniversary of his visit to China, he would break down. Eventually, Cowan was reduced to hustling for paddle-tennis games and living in his car on Venice Beach. He died of heart disease in 2004, a man long broken.
GAME BALL FROM SUPER BOWL III
A
fter an act of Congress and several brutal negotiating sessions, in 1966 the long-established National Football League came to terms with the upstart American Football League, founded in 1960 (see 1959 entry on Lamar Hunt). The details, the two sides agreed, would be worked out, and the rivals would be one big happy family by the 1970 season. That was the idea, anyway.
There were just two problems. The first was that the respective owners didn’t like each other. The AFL owners were men who had tried to get into football, but had been rejected; this stung their egos, which were large. The NFL owners had little respect for the nouveau AFL, which played a glitzier game and had an edgier feel altogether than the crew-cut, meat-and-potatoes ethos of the senior circuit.
The other problem was the perception that the AFL was distinctly inferior. While the leagues didn’t play each other during the regular season, in the first two Super Bowls the AFL’s Kansas City Chiefs and Oakland Raiders both lost badly to the Green Bay Packers (by scores of 35–10 and 33–14, respectively). This was not looking like a merger of equals.
That was the conventional wisdom, and it was repeated so often that it passed for truth. The AFL probably did not have the depth of the NFL, but it had excellent players and teams, and the overall gap was closing; this was no minor league. The New York Jets exemplified the AFL’s ability to develop talent; only six of their players had any NFL time. But perceptions matter, particularly when an institution is on the cusp of remaking itself, as football was. If the third Super Bowl was another blowout, mused commissioner Pete Rozelle (see 1960 entry on him), it might be necessary to rethink not just the championship game but also the entire structure of the league. It wouldn’t be tenable to field one division that was clearly superior to the other.1
A blowout was expected. The Colts had gone 13–1 and outscored their opponents by 258 points. The Jets had gone 11–3 and were not nearly as dominant against a weaker schedule. Their defense had given up almost twice as many points as the Colts, who happened to have the game’s best offense. Though Colts legend Johnny Unitas (see 1958 entry) had missed the season, his substitute, Earl Morrall, had won the NFL’s MVP award. The cold-eyed analysts in Las Vegas made the Colts a 19.5 point favorite, 7–1 on a straight win-lose bet.2
The Jets didn’t see it that way. Head coach Weeb Ewbank had been the coach of the Colts during the “greatest game” in 1958, and he knew what a championship team looked and felt like. From his perspective, quarterback Joe Namath was playing as well as anyone,3 and so was the defense. The players had spent hours watching film of the Colts and were not all that impressed. They saw a team that was old, stodgy, and blitz-happy. The Jets ate blitzers for breakfast. And they had their own MVP in “Broadway Joe” Namath, who had signed a big contract with the Jets out of Alabama and took to New York nightlife like a natural. Namath shared his teammates’ confidence. A few days before the game, he boasted, “The Jets will win Sunday. I guarantee it.”4 Now regarded as a Very Important Phrase in NFL history, at the time it was ignored, because it was so absurd.5 “We believed what we heard,” Colts tight end John Mackey would recall ruefully, “that the NFL couldn’t lose to an AFL team.”6
But of course they did. The Jets won authoritatively, 16–7. There wasn’t any Broadway in Namath’s performance, just intelligence and cool judgment (17 for 28 passing for 206 yards and no interceptions). The offensive line kept his uniform clean. Calling audibles frequently, he sliced and diced the Colts defense with the clinical dispassion of a surgeon; the ball pictured here was the instrument of his work. The Jets defense picked Morrall off four times. An injured Unitas came in during the second half, but it was the same story.
The NFL executives were distraught and incredulous. But Rozelle, who was as taken aback as anyone, was quick to see the bigger picture. “Don’t worry,” he said, “this may be the best thing that ever happened to the game.”7
It was. The Jets victory changed perceptions of the AFL and made reaching the final decisions on how to structure the game much easier than they would have been. After a series of all-night bargaining sessions, the Baltimore, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh owners agreed to join the American Football Conference in the realigned league. If the Jets had lost badly, such a deal might have been untenable—and Joe Namath would never have become a legend.
1970
BOBBY ORR’S KNEE BRACE
I
n the most famous image in pro hockey, Bobby Orr is flying, almost perfectly parallel to the ice, his arms extended in a swan dive. He has just scored the winning goal in overtime to bring the Stanley Cup to the Boston Bruins for the first time in 29 years. The team unveiled a bronze statue of that frozen moment on May 10, 2010, the fortieth anniversary of what is known as “The Goal.”
No one has had more influence on hockey, both on and off the ice, than Bobby Orr. As a scrawny boy, Orr learned to use speed and guile to maneuver his way on the ice. He signed a pro contract with the Bruins at age 141 and made the National Hockey League four years later. Boston needed him badly; the team had missed the playoffs seven straight years and had been proclaiming Orr the franchise’s savior since before he could drive. He started well, winning the Rookie of the Year in 1967 for a bad Bruins team and performing brilliantly the next two years as the team improved.
In 1969–1970 the 22-year-old Orr, and the Bruins, put it all together. He notched 33 goals and 87 assists to become only the second man to break the 100-point mark. He also became the only man ever to be named best defensive player (for the second of eight straight times), most valuable player, highest scorer, and postseason MVP in the same year. Orr is still the only defenseman to lead the league in scoring, and he did it twice.
Orr’s play and presence—by this time, he was endorsing everything from snowmobiles to soap2—made him the first hockey player to become a superstar in the United States. Even Boston’s strippers showed their appreciation, imitating on their bodies the single strip of black tape Orr used on his stick. The decorative motif was known as the “Bobby Orr.”3
The Bruins also won the Cup in 1972, but lost in the finals in 1974. Orr’s last great season was 1974–1975, when he broke his own record for scoring by a defenseman. But his knees were already scarred by multiple operations; he was wearing the brace pictured on the following page when he scored The Goal. After two miserable seasons in Chicago, where he played only 26 games, he retired in 1978, at age 30. The Hockey Hall of Fame waived the usual three-year waiting period to induct him in 1979.
On the ice, Orr redefined his position; no less an authority than the great Gordie Howe would say, “He changed the game of hockey forever.”4 Orr was the first defenseman to become an offensive force, electrifying crowds with his end-to-end rushes and then using his speed and anticipation to get back into position. In 1970–1971 he set the single-season record for “plus-minus” rating (goal differential while on the ice), proof that his offensive brilliance did not come at the expense of his defensive responsibilities. His style opened up the game. Play became more fluid now that the defenseman was part of the action, not parked behind the blue line.
Orr had a modest, small-town Canadian demeanor. He was always uncomfortable with the golden-boy persona thrust on him—a reputation, he knew, that would do him no good with the hard men of the NHL. In an era when even practices were notably rough, Orr proved his cred quickly. Goalies loved him for blocking shots however he could, and teammates valued his ability as a fighter. “Oh, boy, this guy would fight,” remembered hockey journalist Red Fisher.5 “They tested him the first year. They didn’t test him in year two.”
Off the ice, Orr was the first NHL player to use an agent to negotiate his contract. Rookies of that era were lucky to get $10,000 a year and a handshake.6 Lawyer Alan Eagleson negotiated something like four times that figure, making Orr one of the game’s highest paid players before he had skated a single line—and changing the economics of the NHL forever.7 Veterans like Gordie Howe took notice and demanded more money. The following year, Eagleson started the first successful NHL players’ union.
There was, of course, a conflict of interest in Eagleson’s status as both an agent (for as many as 150 players)8 and the head of the union. But it also made him the most powerful man in hockey. Power corrupted him, and he defended himself with a rudeness and vulgarity that came to disgust his star attraction.9 In 1980 Orr publicly broke with the man he used to refer to as a brother10 for catastrophic financial mismanagement. The worst? That would be Eagleson telling Orr in 1976 that the Bruins didn’t want him anymore; in fact, the owners were offering him an 18.6 percent stake in the team.11
In the early 1990s the truth came out: Eagleson had mishandled the players’ pension and disability funds.12 Eventually convicted on related criminal charges in both Canada and the United States, he was fined, imprisoned, disbarred, and disgraced.13 The Bernie Madoff of hockey, Eagleson had used his standing as Orr’s friend and manager to put himself in a position to damage the lives and futures of those he was supposed to be protecting. “Shame on him,” was Orr’s verdict. “Just, shame on him.”14
1970
YELLOW BLAZER FROM MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL
B
eing a loser can be liberating, and in the late 1960s ABC was the biggest loser on American TV. The advantage of that position, though, was that it could take more risks. And it got the chance of a generation when NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle (see 1960 entry) pitched the idea of a regularly scheduled prime-time game.
It was not an easy sell. Since the end of the Friday night fights in 1959,1 sports had only occasionally been seen after dinner; Rozelle had managed to shoehorn in a handful of prime-time games on a one-off basis, with middling results.2 He was sure there was a market. Under the terms of the NFL’s antitrust agreement with Congress, the league could not show games on Friday night. Saturday was for college; Sunday was already full of games, and midweek was out because players needed to recover. That left Monday.
CBS wasn’t interested. “What?” cried one aghast executive. “Pre-empt Doris Day?”3 NBC had a good thing going with Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In; also, Johnny Carson had not been amused when his show was delayed by a game that ran long.4 NBC was not going to mess with Johnny.
That left ABC. Its president of sports, Roone Arledge, saw all kinds of possibilities. Other executives saw only problems. Women wouldn’t watch; the affiliates wouldn’t like their evening newscasts interrupted; most fans wouldn’t have a rooting interest; and so forth. Fine, Rozelle said, Howard Hughes’s new sports network would take it. That got ABC’s attention, and with great reluctance, it paid $8.6 million for Monday night rights for the 1970 season.5
With that, Arledge took charge. He saw, before anyone else, that sports were not just about the game, but also about the people who played it and those who watched it. He wanted to show emotions as well as the score, and he wanted to bring a less reverent sensibility. “Sport is a business, not a religion, and there is no sacred way things must be done,” he said.6 “The games aren’t played in Westminster Abbey.”7
With Monday Night Football (MNF), Arledge had a template to test his vision. Again, ABC’s low status was helpful. Because it didn’t have any other football games, it could put all its energy into this one. ABC threw everything at it: slow motion, split screens, instant replay, handheld cameras, sideline mikes, closeups, and graphics.8 The network deployed nine cameras, compared to the more typical four or five, and two production units, one exclusively for replays.
Arledge wanted MNF to be interesting, and that meant the people calling the games had to be. With that in mind, he hired Howard Cosell, who was already known as one of the more provocative voices in sports. To provide contrast, he hired Don Meredith, the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback (see 1967 entry on the Ice Bowl), who did a nice line in cornpone. Veteran sportscaster Keith Jackson would do the play-by-play. It was the first time there had been three announcers in the booth.
Jackson was a capable professional, but it was the Cosell-Meredith dynamic that defined the show. Cosell was pedantic; Meredith punctured him with down-home darts. Cosell was ponderous; Meredith was funny. Referring to a receiver with the fabulous name of Fair Hooker, Meredith mused, “Fair Hooker—I haven’t met one yet.”
Right from the beginning, it worked. The first game, on September 21, 1970, between the Jets and the Cleveland Browns earned a stellar 34 percent share.9 Meredith won an Emmy for his work. The following year, Frank Gifford (right) replaced Jackson; he, Cosell, and Meredith, made MNF a national phenomenon. Movie theaters reported that sales slumped on Monday nights; bars began to offer customers a chance to throw bricks at a television featuring Cosell’s face.10
Football was already America’s favorite sport when MNF debuted, but the show helped to bring it to a new level, expanding the football audience. The show also proved that the appetite for sports was much bigger than anyone had thought and not as rigidly defined by traditional schedules. The year after MNF debuted, the World Series had its first prime-time game, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament followed a year later. Between 1975 and 1981 network sports coverage increased by a third, and new cable stations added many more hours.11 In 1979 ESPN launched; it was by no means certain there was a market for 24-hour sports at the time, but given the post–MNF sports boomlet, the idea was credible enough to attract backers.
Even when the personnel changed, MNF kept going. Meredith left in 1973 for NBC, then came back for a four-year stint in 1977. Cosell left in 1983. Arledge began devoting more of his time to ABC News in 1977, where he also made important contributions, including starting Nightline. Even so, Arledge, who died in 2002, seven years after Cosell, is best remembered as the most important person in the development of television sports (sorry, Howard). As for Monday Night Football, the voices in the booth keep changing, but the games go on and on. And the money gets bigger and bigger. The most recent deal, signed with ESPN in 2011, called for about $15.2 billion over eight years.12
1971
GOLF CLUB USED ON THE MOON
G
ive Bob Hope an assist. The comedian was taking a tour of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and as he bounced on the moon walk simulator, he clung to his driver for balance. Hope’s tour guide, Alan Shepard, had an epiphany: “I have to find a way to hit a ball on the moon.”1 Shepard, the first American in space in 1961, was one of the only men on Earth for whom such a thought was not sheer fantasy. He was scheduled to ride Apollo 14 to the moon in February 1971.
Very discreetly, Shepard brought an expandable instrument designed for collecting moon samples to a golf pro, who fitted a number 6 club head to it.2 Voila: the first moon club. After nine hours on the lunar surface, moments before leaving the moon forever, Shepard took out his unique 6-iron and a couple of balls. Swinging one-handed, he shanked his first shot. On Earth Shepard was a duffer, and even on the moon, the first rule of golf technique holds true: keep your head down. “That looked like a slice to me, Al,” chirped a NASA critic. Addressing the second ball, Shepard hit it nicely, sending it perhaps 200 yards.3 At the time, the astronaut described it as going “miles and miles and miles,” thus uttering the first and so far last golf lie from space.4 To the end of his life, when he looked at the moon, Shepard would muse, “I wonder where my golf ball is.”5
1971
PING-PONG DIPLOMACY SOUVENIR PADDLES
M
odern China has never pretended that sports are separate from politics: Mao Zedong’s first published essay was about how sports could help to build a new China.1 The Beijing Olympics in 2008 were an assertion of China’s rising status on the world stage. And in one of the most iconic moments of the Cold War, China chose a sporting event to make a political statement of enormous consequence. In 1971 Mao invited the American Ping-Pong team to visit the mainland.
Beijing was a Ping-Pong power. The men had won the world title in 1961 and 1963; the women joined them as champions in 1965. Upon the team’s return, China’s top leaders hosted a party in honor of these symbols of the nation. But this status was not to last. During the Cultural Revolution, which Mao (a keen player, by the way) launched in 1966, denunciation and terror replaced Ping-Pong as the national sport, and China skipped the world championships in 1967 and 1969. By 1971, with the worst of the Cultural Revolution chaos over, China was beginning to consider how it could reengage with the world, a consideration made more acute by its recent border conflict with the Soviet Union. Being friendless in a dangerous world was increasingly unappealing.
In the United States—which was not a global Ping-Pong power—President Richard Nixon was also eager to change the status quo; there had been no American diplomatic mission in China since 1949. In 1970 both countries made approaches to each other of such exquisite subtlety that neither recognized them for what they were.
That was the context for one of the major questions the Chinese leadership was considering in early 1971. Should the national team go to the world Ping-Pong championships in April, to be held in Nagoya, Japan? Premier Zhou Enlai favored the idea, but the only opinion that really mattered was Mao’s. He eventually agreed. Before the players left, though, they were given strict guidance. If they had to play the Americans, no shaking hands. No talking with them first. No exchange of flags. Report back three times a day.2
The Chinese players performed and behaved impeccably in Nagoya, even chanting quotations from Mao to psych themselves up before playing.3 But they found it difficult to stay away from the Americans, who kept trying to introduce themselves. At a reception, the leader of the Chinese delegation found himself sitting next to his American counterpart, who promptly angled for an invitation to visit. On a sightseeing tour, players from the two countries were thrown together; again, the Americans said they would love to come. All of this was reported back to Beijing. The US players were just hoping for a fun trip. Beijing saw something more serious at play: a signal from the White House. That put a different spin on matters. On reflection, though, China decided it wasn’t the right time to invite Americans, even innocents like these.4
Then on April 4 one of the American players, Glenn Cowan, jumped on the Chinese team bus—whether inadvertently or mischievously is not clear. But it was certainly a surprise to the Chinese, who were stunned. Three-time world champion Zhuang Zedong broke the silent tableau. Gesturing to the long-haired American—Cowan liked to see himself as a hippie—Zhuang gave him an embroidered silk banner. When the bus stopped, journalists noticed Cowan; he explained what happened and had a picture taken with Zhuang. The incident got enormous coverage, most of it positive. Zhou and Mao, however, were still cautious.
And then one evening Mao woke up—literally. He had been intrigued by the coverage of the bus episode, and on the evening of April 6 he awakened and murmured to his attendant to tell the Foreign Ministry to invite the American team. The situation was awkward. For one thing, Mao had given instructions not to act on anything he said while under the influence of sleeping pills. For another, the tournament ended the next day. Mao drifted off, and when he realized the attendant hadn’t moved, became irritated. He affirmed that yes, he wanted the team to come.5 The message got through, and Nixon was quick to give the players the go-ahead.
Three days later they landed in Beijing—the first American group since 1949. The unexpectedness of the visit made it a global sensation. Gracious hosts, the Chinese teams even managed to lose a game or two to the deeply inferior American players.6 They met Zhou, went to the Great Wall, and saw a revolutionary ballet. Every step of their trip was exhaustively chronicled, and when the team returned home, they were hailed as heroes.
The members of the American team could not have been better ambassadors—for Beijing. They reported happy peasants, productive collective farms, freedom of movement, and a sense of unity and content. Maoism, said one player, was “beautiful.”7
All of this would have been surprising to the people of China—not least to the table tennis team, which had been devastated by the Cultural Revolution. Accused of following the capitalist road, espionage, anti-Maoism, and trophyism, they had been sent to the countryside, along with hundreds of other athletes, to cut wheat, build aqueducts, and read Mao’s Little Red Book.8
Zhuang, for example (the man who had greeted Cowan), had been jailed, beaten, and exiled; not heard from for three years, he was feared dead. The coach of the national team, Fu Qifang, was driven to suicide, and the same was said of the country’s first world champion, Rong Guotan, though he might have been beaten to death. Even as the American players were touring China, many leaders of the National Sports Commission were literally up to their elbows in muck, hauling manure in rural Shanxi.9
The US Ping-Pong players would not be the last visitors to see and hear only what China wished them to. But their positive impressions, however erroneous, helped to change the way Americans saw China. During their trip Nixon lifted trade sanctions and travel restrictions, to little opposition, and in the immediate aftermath, for the first time, polls found that a majority of Americans favored admitting the mainland to the United Nations,10 which occurred in October. In February 1972 Nixon visited China. Three months after that, the Chinese Ping-Pong team came to the United States, the first official delegation from the People’s Republic since 1949. With capitalist vigor, the free market produced all kinds of mementoes, such as these commemorative paddles. From now on, the two nations would negotiate business in the normal back-and-forth of international relations.
The United States and China would have figured out a way to connect; the world’s most populous country and the world’s most powerful one could not ignore each other forever. But as a way to break the ice, Ping-Pong worked beautifully: it was a nonthreatening, and to Americans, somewhat amusing little diversion that they didn’t mind the Chinese being much better at. However unlikely, Ping-Pong truly did help break China’s diplomatic isolation and by doing so, changed global geopolitics.
At a human level, though, there was also tragedy—one taking a particularly Chinese form, and the other characteristically American. Zhuang Zedong became a political symbol and aligned himself with Jiang Qing, the widely despised wife of Mao, and with her allies, the “Gang of Four,” who were blamed for many of the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Zhuang enthusiastically led denunciation meetings, including against his former teammates; he also attacked both Zhou and future leader Deng Xiaoping as toadies to foreign powers. When Mao died in September 1976, the political winds shifted. The Gang of Four was arrested, and so was Zhuang. He was himself denounced, then spent four years in solitary confinement, followed by a stint in Shanxi as a street sweeper. Allowed to return to Beijing in 1984, he taught at a sports school and then started a Ping-Pong club in 2005.11 He died in 2013, full of history and regrets.
Glenn Cowen’s downfall was distinctly capitalist. He believed his role in Ping-Pong diplomacy would bring him fame and fortune. When that didn’t happen, he was unmoored and began to suffer mental health and drug problems. Every April, around the anniversary of his visit to China, he would break down. Eventually, Cowan was reduced to hustling for paddle-tennis games and living in his car on Venice Beach. He died of heart disease in 2004, a man long broken.
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