MEMORIAL TO DAVID BERGER
D
avid Berger was an all-American boy. A gifted student athlete in high school in Ohio, he was a collegiate weightlifting champion at Tulane, then earned an MBA and a law degree. Realizing that he was unlikely to make the US Olympic team, he emigrated to Israel1 and qualified for the 1972 Games in Munich. Though he was eliminated from the light-heavyweight competition quickly,2 he stayed on to enjoy the Olympic experience.
And that was easy to do. The Germans had created a fun, relaxed atmosphere. Police were armed with bouquets of flowers to defuse tension; security was in the care of 2,000 unarmed men known as Olys, dressed in light blue suits. At one point night patrols were cut back because “nothing happens.”3
Then, around 4:30 in the morning on September 5, eight members of Black September, a Palestinian terrorist group, invaded the Israeli living quarters at 31 Connollystrasse. They went into apartment 1, where the coaches were, and then proceeded to invade apartment 3, which Berger was sharing with other weightlifters and wrestlers. Berger suggested in Hebrew that the team attack the intruders: “We have nothing to lose.”4 But one of the gunmen understood, and the opportunity was lost; all the men were herded into apartment 1. Two Israelis, Moshe Weinberg and Yossef Romano, resisted and were killed on the spot; two escaped. All told, the terrorists had captured nine Israelis. What they wanted, they told stunned authorities, was the release of 234 prisoners in Israel, as well as Germany’s most infamous terrorists, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof.
At first the athletic events went on as normal, in the hope that the situation would be resolved quickly. About 11 hours later, though, continuing what had been billed as the “Serene Games”5 became unconscionable, and the remaining events of the day were canceled. And so the athletes, like the rest of the world, watched the awful ending.
Israel had ruled out complying with the demands; the Germans had failed to budge the terrorists. The offers of money and even the German interior minister6 in exchange for the Israelis were turned down flat. After several extensions, the terrorists agreed to take the hostages to Cairo. The Germans had no intention of letting that happen.
At 10:35 pm,7 helicopters took everyone to the Fürstenfeldbruck military airport, about 15 miles away, where the security forces hoped to mount a rescue. But everything went wrong. The Germans did not have enough snipers, and the snipers did not have night-vision goggles or bulletproof vests. A slapdash ambush had to be scrapped when the police officers assigned to it walked off, refusing to participate in what they saw, with justification, as a suicide mission.8 The lighting was bad. Armored personnel carriers got stuck in traffic. Fundamentally, the Germans didn’t know what they were doing, and they refused the help of the Israelis, who did.
Shortly after midnight the terrorist in Berger’s helicopter opened fire on the hostages; Berger was wounded but not killed. Then the Palestinian tossed a hand grenade into the cockpit, killing Berger and his Israeli comrades.9 All nine hostages died in the ensuing two-hour firefight, as well as five terrorists and one German police officer. Three Palestinians were captured. All were back home by the end of the year, released in return for a hijacked Lufthansa airliner.
On the morning of September 6, a memorial service was held in the Olympic Stadium for the dead Israelis, and then the Games resumed. It was not an easy call to go on, but it was a defensible one. Stopping the Games would, in a way, honor the dead athletes, but it would also please those who sympathized with the terrorists. Resuming them could seem callous, but could also be seen as a sign of determination and a different way of honoring fellow Olympians.
The memorial itself was well attended and well done. Until, that is, IOC president Avery Brundage’s speech. He got off to a good start, mourning the Israeli victims in simple terms. But then he kept talking: “It is a sorrowful fact in our imperfect world that the greater and more important the Olympic Games become, the more they become the victim of economic, political, and now criminal pressure. The Games of the XXth Olympiad have been the target of two terrible attacks because we have lost the struggle against political repression in the case of Rhodesia.”10 To conflate his hobbyhorse of pure amateurism with Black September, or the banishment of Rhodesia with 11 dead Olympians—even for Brundage, it was an almost pathologically ill-judged moment.
The five dead assailants were flown to Libya, where their caskets were greeted with acclaim. At almost the same time, a US Air Force jet returned David Berger’s body to his parents; Ohio’s state flags flew at half-mast. This memorial is located outside Cleveland, not far from Berger’s childhood home. About 14 feet high and made of steel alloy,11 it shows the five Olympic rings broken by the tragedy. The rings rest on 11 segments, one for each dead Olympian.
The Olympics have never been particularly innocent. These festivals of sport can be glorious, but greed, cheating, and venality of all kinds have also been regular visitors. The tragedy of Munich, however, was of an entirely different order of evil, and the events of those 20 hours represent a profound loss. Today, every Olympics has to design and budget with security uppermost in mind. A spectacle intended to showcase international goodwill is now shaped in large part by the profound lack of it.
1972
SILVER MEDAL FROM THE US–USSR MEN’S BASKETBALL FINAL
F
or Americans, the 1972 US–Soviet basketball finals might be the most infamous controversy in Olympic history. It featured a game that was made in America (see 1891 entry on James Naismith) and was played against the Soviet Union in the teeth of the Cold War. Also, it was just so bizarre.
Team USA went undefeated in the first Olympic hoops tournament in 1936—James Naismith himself was in the stands—and never lost a game over the next 36 years. But starting in the 1950s, the Soviets had put enormous resources into international sport, seeing it as “one of the best and most comprehensible means of explaining to people the advantages which the socialist system has over capitalism,” in the words of one state-run publication.1 The Soviet hoops team had done well on a recent tour of the United States and had the advantage of having played together for years. The US coach, Hank Iba, who had also led the 1964 and 1968 teams, recognized that the gap between the United States and the rest of the world was closing.
The US teams had always been composed of college players; that had long been more than enough. But the 1972 team was young and inexperienced; it had played just 12 exhibition games together. Also, for various reasons, it was missing such elite college players as Julius Erving, David Thompson, and Bill Walton.2
Even so, the Americans made it through the preliminary rounds without too much trouble and met the Soviets on the night of September 9 for the gold medal. Iba had coached the team to play deliberate, slow-paced basketball. That had worked fine so far, but against a good team—and the Soviets were very good—it wasn’t effective. The Americans also shot poorly—only 33 percent for the game—and at halftime, they trailed 26–21. “We had young deers,” recalled a guard on the team, Tom Henderson. “We should have run them back to Russia.”3
With 6:07 left and the Soviets up eight, the American players decided to do just that. The Soviets mustered only one field goal the rest of the game against the pressing American defense. Meanwhile, the Americans chipped away. With 10 seconds left, and the Soviets up one, Doug Collins picked up a loose ball, drove to the basket, and got clobbered. Three seconds left, two free throws, one woozy point guard. He swished the first. As Collins began to shoot the second, a horn blew. The Soviets were trying to call a time-out.
This is the tricky bit; if the Soviets were late making the call, as it appeared at the time, then too bad. But it is also possible that the time-out device the seasoned Soviet coach used was not working, or that the scorekeepers missed his signal. At any rate, Collins drained the second shot. With three seconds left, then, the United States was ahead for the first time, 50–49.
And that’s when things got interesting. A Soviet player grabbed the ball and flung an inbounds pass. At midcourt, the Brazilian referee saw the Soviet coaches waving and jumping around in something like a panic. Confused, he stopped play. (The ref could have also called a technical, as several Soviet coaches were on the court, which is a nono.) The Soviets explained they had been trying to call a time-out, but the signal hadn’t got through; that’s why the buzzer had sounded right before the second free throw. Sorry, the ref decided, there had been no time-out. Play would continue, with one second left. Even that was something of a break. After all, if there was no time-out, play should not have been stopped.4 That point was now moot. The Soviets had the ball at midcourt with one second left. Simple enough.
Not so simple. William Jones, the head of the international basketball federation, entered the scene. He had been sitting in the stands and had no jurisdiction, any more than the commissioner of baseball decides safe or out calls in the World Series. No matter; Jones gestured that the time-out that may (or may not) have been called should have been granted and ordered the clock set to three seconds. Essentially, he ordered a doover from the time Collins made his second foul shot. The seconds in between vanished into the Olympic ether.
The Soviet passer, guarded closely by 6-foot-11 Tom McMillen, could only get the ball to the top of the key, and the desperation heave from there missed. The buzzer sounded, and the Americans celebrated. Not so fast. This time, the problem was that the scorekeeper had not reset the clock correctly. It is true that the clock was wrong; it is also true that the Soviets had made their play, and it failed. At this point, Iba was in a rage. He would not send his players out again, he stormed. Yes, you will, Jones told him—yes, Jones was back—or the game would be forfeited and the US team could be barred from international competition.5
So there were three seconds left—again. McMillen again defended against the inbound pass, but the referee made a gesture to back him off—although he was perfectly within his rights to stick right where he was. But McMillen didn’t want to risk a technical, so he moved almost to the foul line. That gave the Soviet passer much more room to maneuver. He lofted a pass—it is known in Russia as the “golden toss”—to Aleksandr Belov, who was parked in the paint, and Belov put it in. This time, the game really was over, 51–50 to the Soviets.
The United States appealed the decision—or rather, the several decisions—that had determined the outcome. The appeal failed, with Cuba, Hungary, and Poland forming the 3–2 majority. Captain Kenny Davis said the team voted unanimously against accepting a silver medal.6
The medal pictured here, then, is strictly symbolic—what the US team would have taken home had it chosen to. The members of the team have neither forgiven nor forgotten. Davis even made it a condition in his will that his heirs “never accept a silver medal.”7
The Soviets were and are unapologetic. “We unquestionably deserved the victory,” Alzhan Zharmukhamedov said in 1992.8 The Soviets have a case. Remember, they did lead for at least 39:57, and they simply played the game as it was called. But the Brazilian ref had it right when he later called the result “completely irregular and outside the rules of basketball”;9 he thought the Americans deserved the victory.10 Making time vanish, twice, is not part of the game.
The next time the US men’s basketball team lost a game was in 1988—to the Soviets again. This time, it was straightforward: The Soviets simply played better, and the Americans had to settle for bronze. With that result, the world had officially caught up, and the Olympics changed the terms of engagement, allowing National Basketball Association and other professionals to compete. That led to the famous “dream team” of 1992, which included Charles Barkley, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Karl Malone, David Robinson, and John Stockton. The dreamers won easily, by an average of almost 44 points. Though the United States won again in 1996 and 2000, it never got easier, and in 2004 the team lost three games on the way to a disappointing bronze. With a renewed sense of urgency and commitment, the United States returned to goldmedal form in 2008 and 2012.
But no one assumes a gold medal for Team USA anymore. With the globalization of the game, its dominance has diminished. And that’s not a bad thing. In fact, given the enthusiasm of America’s basketball missionaries to spread the game, going all the way back to the 1890s, one could even call that a different kind of victory.
1972
IMMACULATA MIGHTY MACS UNIFORM
M
ade of wool, worn with bloomers, and accessorized with a rope-like sash, these uniforms were considered hideous even in the early 1970s, when most fashion was hideous. Plus, they itched. But however old-fashioned their kit, the Immaculata College Mighty Macs were anything but quaint on the basketball court. They won the first three women’s national basketball championships (1972–1974), then went to two straight finals (in polyester skirts and tops) and a Final Four (in shorts).
It was a different time, and not just because today’s players don’t wear uniforms almost as old as they are.1 Elite hoopsters also don’t have to sell toothbrushes to raise money to get to the finals, as Immaculata did. And when a team repeats as champions, it gets a little more notice than the single paragraph the New York Times offered in 1973. (Most newspapers chose not to waste even that much ink on a bunch of girls.) The tunic in these photos, then, is not just an artifact; it is also a reminder of how far women’s sports has come.
That the first national champion came from a Catholic liberal arts college near Philly shouldn’t come as a surprise. Philadelphia had a dense network of single-sex parochial schools, almost all of which fielded hoops teams for both boys and girls. As early as the 1920s, nice Catholic girls were encouraged to play ball. In official games, they had to play the turgid, six-a-side, two-dribble, stay-in-your-zone game designed to “protect” them from exertion. But they also played the real thing in parks, recreation centers, and driveways, often against boys. Catholic parents might not have approved if their girls took to shot-putting or rugby, but they loved basketball. On Friday nights girls routinely played before packed houses, and the high-school championships sold out Penn’s famous Palestra arena.2
Immaculata benefited from this tradition. The small women’s school, run by the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM), had fielded varsity hoops teams since 1939. And that, too, is not surprising. Women’s schools were much more likely to field teams and to treat athletes with respect; they are the unsung heroes who kept college sports going. “We were encouraged to believe that anything was possible,” recalled the Macs nifty point guard, Marianne Crawford Stanley.3
The same could not be said of many, perhaps any, coed schools. When it came to sports, the men simply would not share the sandbox. Well into the 1970s, it was not unusual for them to hog 99 percent of the athletic budget.4 At the University of Washington, men’s sports got $1.3 million; the women’s, $18,000.5 At Arkansas, the calculation was simpler: $2.5 million for men, zero for women.6 Sports Illustrated estimated in 1973 that in the entire country, women accounted for fewer than 50 athletic scholarships—less than the number allotted to a single Division I football team.7 And then there were the small daily humiliations and inequities: not having a trainer, or being kicked out of the gym, or having to panhandle for travel money.8
Things began to improve in the early 1970s. In 1971, having been ignored by the National Collegiate Athletic Association forever, a group of female educators organized the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women in 1971. The AIAW ran on a tiny budget, but it did its best, and in 1972 it arranged the first national basketball championship;9 after regional qualifying rounds, there would be a 16-team final tournament at Illinois State.
The timing was fortuitous; the five-on-five game had become standard only a year earlier, after a research study confirmed that playing full court posed no health risks to women.10 Really. Immaculata’s Cathy Rush, hired as a part-time coach in 1970 for $450, seized the moment. At the time, the Macs didn’t even have a gym; their court had burned down, and the nuns were still raising money to replace it. But the Macs had some seriously good players, schooled on the Philly playgrounds. Also, the 22-year-old Rush was married to a National Basketball Association referee and conversant with the full-court game. She drilled her players in a fast-break offense and a trapping, tenacious defense.11
When the Macs made it through the regionals, the school was both delighted and dismayed: it didn’t have the cash to send them to Illinois. So the players sold toothbrushes to raise money;12 other clubs at the school chipped in what they could, and the college scraped together some cash, too. Even so, there was only enough to send eight players. They shared two rooms and washed their uniforms in the sink between games.13 The Macs were seeded fifteenth out of 16 teams. But they beat South Dakota State, Indiana State, and then top-seeded Mississippi College for Women to reach the finals—against their rival and neighbor, West Chester State. The Golden Rams had thumped the Macs, 70–38, two weeks earlier. But this time the Macs played a patient, sure-handed game, and won, 52–48. When they arrived home—a Catholic benefactor flew them back first class because they missed their original flight—almost the entire school was waiting for them at the airport.
After winning national titles again in 1973 and 1974, the little school with the big game became a phenomenon. The Macs were the first women’s college team to play internationally (in Australia, in 1974); the first to play in a nationally televised women’s game (against Maryland, in 1975); and the first to play at Madison Square Garden (against Queens, in 1975), drawing 12,000 spectators.
Much of the credit for Immaculata’s aura must go to the nuns. The president of the school in 1972, Sister Mary of Lourdes, a former Philly high school star herself, would shoot around with the Macs on occasion and always found a way to get the team what it needed. The old and sick nuns who lived in a home on campus had the games piped in. If the Macs were losing, an announcement would go out, “Sisters, the Mighty Macs are in trouble!” And they would take to their walkers and wheelchairs, and hustle as well as they could to the chapel.14
A cohort of nuns attended every game, clustered near the floor in their dark blue-and-white habits. They were not always images of serene grace. The father of one of the players handed out metal buckets and sticks, which the nuns would bang with such religious fervor that they were eventually banned (the buckets, not the nuns). The sisters didn’t trash talk, but they did visibly deploy their rosary beads, which might have been more intimidating. And they had game. A sportswriter was stunned during a tense moment when he heard a sister shout, “Watch the pick and roll!”15 The whole thing was irresistible.
And doomed. In 1972 a part of the education bill known as Title IX stated, in effect, that schools that took federal money had to accommodate the interests of all students, even those who lacked a Y chromosome. This didn’t mean spending had to be equal; it did mean that women had to get a fair share of time, money, and other kinds of support—something more than 1 percent, or zero.
Over time Title IX has evolved, due to legal challenges and new interpretations. In the process, it has become more complicated, and more controversial, than it needs to be. As written, the rule was not meant to impose quotas. But it is also true that the surest way to stay out of court is to keep a keen eye on the numbers. If a school has, say, 45 percent female students, and 45 percent of its athletes are also women, then compliance is assumed. As a federal judge put it in a landmark case regarding Brown University, “a university which does not wish to engage in extensive compliance analysis may stay on the sunny side of Title IX simply by maintaining gender parity between its student body and its athletic lineup.”16 As part of its settlement, Brown University was required to deviate no more than 3.5 percentage points between female students and female varsity athletes.17
The problem is that the use of such metrics has led to unintended consequences, in which the need for compliance has trumped equity and even common sense. In one famous example, in 2001 Marquette cut its wrestling team—which cost the school nothing, because it was funded by outside sources—in order to hew closer to the right gender proportionality.18 The action closed athletic opportunities for Marquette men while creating no new ones for women, a lose-lose situation that was not unique.19
These are real issues, but they are also narrow ones. Title IX is the single most important and positive thing that has ever happened to women’s sports in the United States. In 1970 there were only 16,000 female college athletes; by 2012, there were more than 200,000. The figures for high school are just as dramatic, from 294,015 girls playing sports in 1971 to almost 3.2 million in 2012.
In a larger sense, Title IX helped to make it socially acceptable for girls to be competitive and athletic—to take pride in their bodies for their function as well their looks. In 1932 Babe Didrikson Zaharias’s muscles were considered off-putting, even freakish. In 1999, when Brandi Chastain ripped off her shirt at the end of the 1999 World Cup (see entry) to reveal her stellar abs, her physique was celebrated.
While Title IX greatly accelerated the pace of change, it’s not as if women were waiting around for the men in Congress to give them permission to play. Even before Title IX, many were getting involved in sports, and the AIAW was working to raise the level of competition. Ironically, then, the NCAA, which fought against Title IX bitterly, ultimately benefited from it. The AIWA, which fought for Title IX, was destroyed by it. Once women’s sports gained traction, the NCAA became interested and put the squeeze on the AIAW, which was gone by 1982.
The women of the AIAW had been trying, sometimes awkwardly, to develop a different model of sports—more participatory, less exploitive, more student-centered, and run by and for women—that would not replicate the mistakes of the NCAA.20 They might not have succeeded. Still, it’s a shame they never got the chance.
Title IX also spelled the end of schools like Immaculata as national powers. In 1977 Cathy Rush retired with a career record of 149–15; in 1978 UCLA won the national championship, ushering in the era of big-school dominance. The nuns gave in. “We do not want an image of a sports college,”21 President Sister Marie Antoine said. Knowing it could not compete with bigger, richer universities, Immaculata wisely decided not to try. Today, the school competes in Division III. But the Macs are not forgotten. In 2008 Cathy Rush was elected to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, and Immaculata, as a team, joined her in 2014.
How good were the Mighty Macs? Well, they would certainly be creamed by any Division I program. Compared to today’s top teams, the Macs’ perimeter shooting was not as precise; their play was slower and less sophisticated. But forget the temptation to patronize these working-class Catholic girls in the funny tunics: the Macs were good. One player at the 1972 tournament recalled seeing the Macs for the first time and marveling at the skills of these “fast, sharp-eyed, hard-elbowed easterners.” That was Pat Summitt, who would go on to lead Tennessee’s women to eight national championships (see 1995/2009 entry).
A number of Macs stayed with the sport after graduation and helped it grow. Marianne Crawford Stanley coached Old Dominion to three national titles and also coached at the University of Southern California, the University of California/Berkeley, and in the Women’s National Basketball Association. Rene Muth Portland coached Penn State for 27 years. Teresa Shank Grentz, once described by Sports Illustrated as the “Bill Walton of the East,” coached the US national team to a bronze medal in the 1992 Olympics. One of her players was Muffet McGraw, now the women’s coach at Notre Dame. Tina Krah directs the women’s national championship tournament for the NCAA.
In her Hall of Fame induction speech, Cathy Rush recalled that she told her mother of her Immaculata teams, “These girls start with a prayer, and then play like hell.”22 The nuns would have approved.
1973
NAIL FROM SECRETARIAT’S SHOE
W
hen Secretariat came roaring down the stretch at the Belmont, Jack Nicklaus (see 1986 entry on the Masters) was watching the race at home. As the horse flew toward the finish, visibly exulting in the glory of his power, the two-legged golf legend found himself pounding the floor—and weeping.1 Secretariat that day was athletic perfection: form and function and will coming together to create a moment of pure beauty.
A foal is hope on four legs. When Secretariat was born on March 30, 1970, hopes were particularly high, as his sire and dam were both highly regarded. With his bright chestnut coat, deep chest, and well-formed knees and ankles, the colt impressed from the start. The farm log noted four months later, “You just have to like him.”2
Like many young males, though, Secretariat was temperamental and undisciplined. For a time, his nickname was “ol’ Hopalong” because he was fat, slow, and clumsy.3 (He was also known as Big Red.) When his groom, Eddie Sweat, first saw him, he was unimpressed: “Too pretty! Too big an’ fat.”4 And then one morning Secretariat decided to grow up. He went five furlongs in 57.6 seconds—an excellent time. “We have a race horse on our hands,” trainer Lucien Laurin told owner Penny Chenery.5
Imperious but playful, Secretariat drew people to him with a personality that seemed more than strictly equine. Once he nipped a reporter’s notebook from his hands with his teeth, then tossed it into his stall, as if to say, “Come and get it.”6 Another time, Secretariat took his groom’s rake and dragged it around his stall as if to clean it.7 Secretariat was extraordinary; he was not, however, a comedian. But what these stories speak to is that there was a presence, an ease of manner, even a playfulness that made people love Big Red, even as they were awed.
Coming off a phenomenal season in which he won seven of nine races as a two-year-old,8 there were high hopes for Secretariat as the 1973 racing season began. But two weeks before the Kentucky Derby, he came in a sluggish third at the Wood Memorial. Secretariat had just been syndicated for a record $6.1 million, but people began to have doubts about him. He had bad knees, went one rumor. His jockey, Ron Turcotte, wasn’t up to the task. The horse was moody—just like his sire.9
The Derby would tell. Secretariat broke poorly and was running last at the first furlong. Then he began to pick off the other horses. Running on the outside down the stretch, he accelerated. The other horses “were rolling,” Turcotte would recall. “We were flying.”10 Secretariat finished the 1¼-mile course in a record 1:59.4, two-and-a-half lengths ahead of Sham. Incredibly, Secretariat ran each quarter faster than the one before, meaning he was still accelerating at the end. As racing commentator Heywood Hale Broun put it: “Another quarter of [a] mile and he might have taken to the air and flown.”11
At the Preakness two weeks later, Secretariat broke last again. A few strides into the first turn, he veered to the outside and swept past the other five horses before the straight. Strategically, owner Penny Chenery would note, that went against all the books. But Secretariat had imposed his will, taking Turcotte along for the ride as he cruised to another course record.12 Sham again finished second.
Going into the Belmont, Secretariat was a full-blown star. Not only was he on the cover of Sports Illustrated, but he had pushed both Watergate and the Vietnam War off the covers of Time and Newsweek. He was one race away from being the first Triple Crown winner since Citation in 1948. But this, the smart money said, would be his toughest race.
The one knock on Big Red was that he was the son of Bold Ruler, who was known as a good sprinter who couldn’t win at the longer distances.13 At 1.5 miles, the Belmont was the longest of the Triple Crown races. Sham’s owners thought if he could stay close, he might be able to take advantage if Secretariat faltered.
Sham was a brave horse. He even had his head in front for a few seconds. But halfway through the race, Secretariat broke him. He covered the mile in 1:34.2, a time so fast that sportswriter William Nack, Secretariat’s muse, began furiously shouting at Turcotte, “You are going to kill the horse! You are going to lose the Triple Crown!” And still, Secretariat kept going, 1,155 pounds14 of perfect form to the end. He finished an incredible 31 lengths ahead. (Poor Sham finished last, 45 back.) “He was running because he loved it,” said Chenery. He was “glorying in his own ability.” It remains the greatest performance ever seen on a racetrack. Secretariat’s time of 2:24 smashed the track record by 2.6 seconds and still stands—as do his other Triple Crown marks.
Greatness happens when many things break correctly—or don’t break. If one of Secretariat’s shoes had come off or become damaged, he could not have shown his true colors. So every nail in every shoe mattered—like the one pictured here, which did its small but important job at Belmont.
Was Secretariat the greatest horse ever? There is certainly a case to be made for Man O’ War, who won 19 of 20 races in 1919 and 1920, a better record than Secretariat’s record of 16 wins, 3 seconds, 1 third, and 1 fourth. At his best, Citation would have given either of them a run for their money. But let’s give this one to Secretariat by a nose, if only because, with a few clicks on a keyboard, it is possible to call up his races, watch him fly—and feel a lump in the throat.15
1973
BILLIE JEAN KING’S DRESS AND BOBBY RIGGS’S JACKET FROM THE “BATTLE OF THE SEXES”
I
n 1973 Margaret Court had a great year, winning 18 of 25 tennis tournaments and 3 majors. But it is a year that must also evoke a wince. In what became known as the Mother’s Day Massacre, she played quite possibly the worst match of her life when she lost to Bobby Riggs in less than an hour, 6–2, 6–1.1
Riggs was a former Wimbledon champion and world number one. He was also a 55-year-old misogynist with a big mouth who had made what Court thought would be a nice little payday into a national event, played out on network television. The whole thing was humiliating for Court and embarrassing for women’s tennis. When Billie Jean King, 29, heard the result, her response was immediate: “Now I’m going to have to play him.”2
In July she and Riggs agreed to a best-of-five-set match to be played September 20 in Houston’s Astrodome for a stake of $100,000. Nine weeks of nonsense ensued, mostly due to Riggs. King had competitive tennis to play, and while she was not averse to helping stir up publicity, it was Riggs who hustled all over the country saying outrageous things and raking in cash.
He did everything but prepare for what was, after all, an athletic event as well as a spectacle. To beat Court, he had trained rigorously and spent hours analyzing her play.3 Facing King, he was too busy being a blowhard to bother. “There’s no way that broad can beat me,” he told friends the day before the match.4
King did not make that mistake. She respected Riggs and took a couple weeks off from the tour to prepare. Seeing how Riggs had dinked and lobbed Court to distraction, King practiced her overheads and decided to take something off her serve so that Riggs could not leverage her pace. She would pick on his backhand and extend points to wear him out.5
She also got in touch with tennis couturier Ted Tinling—make me a dress, she told him, a wonderful dress. With sequins (always appropriate for evening wear) and color.6 And she told Adidas she wanted blue suede shoes to match. She even agreed to enter the arena on a feather-bedecked palanquin manned by four toga-clad male college athletes. Riggs, dressed in the jacket (see above) of one of his sponsors, the Sugar Daddy candy, came in on a rickshaw pulled by six beauties in tight shirts that read “Bobby’s Bosom Buddies.”
The hushed civilities of Wimbledon this wasn’t.
There were more than 30,000 people in the Astrodome and maybe 50 million more watching on US television,7 plus satellite feeds to 36 countries. The betting had been huge, with Riggs the 5–2 favorite.8 Even King’s female colleagues on the tour bet against her.9
Fit and focused, King was primed to play. Riggs was not. He double-faulted to lose the first set and simply wilted as King hit crisp winners and moved him around the court. There was no gamesmanship or comedy. King won easily, 6–4, 6–3, 6–3. “She was too good,” Riggs confessed.10
The year after the Battle of the Sexes, King wrote that the match proved two things: a woman could beat a man, and tennis could be a big-time sport. By 2013 King was arguing that, with Title IX rules being debated and the tenor of the times, a loss would have set women’s rights back 50 years and ruined women’s self-esteem:11 “Two things came out of that match for women,” she said in a 2015 TED talk—“confidence [and] empowerment.”
Yes, the match mattered. It introduced many people to great female athleticism, boosted the women’s tour, and helped sustain the tennis boom of the 1970s. Men would have been insufferable had Riggs won. But little girls would not have hung up their cleats in shame if King had lost, any more than they did after Court’s poor performance. All the factors that were encouraging girls and women to get into the game would have continued. As for the idea that Title IX would have been jeopardized had King lost, the subject never came up in the voluminous coverage of the event.12 And confident women did not need a tennis match in the Astrodome to bolster their self-esteem.
In a way, the fame of the Battle of the Sexes obscures a fuller appreciation of Billie Jean King’s achievements. She is the most consequential female athlete in history and would have been so if she had never played Riggs.
In 1968, when open tennis began, the game was run by and for men. Women were lucky to be an afterthought, even given their obvious drawing power. When one tournament offered men more than eight times the winnings of women ($12,500 for the male winner, $1,500 for the female),13 King had had enough. She and eight others boycotted the tournament and set up their own event in Houston. The rebellion evolved into the Virginia Slims tour in 1971. A number of the top players, including Chris Evert and Evonne Goolagong, stayed with the US Lawn Tennis Association, which had history on its side, but had shown little commitment to the women. For a couple of years, then, there were two women’s tours, which was one too many.
The rebels worked hard to make the Slims tour a success, promoting it like mad and even taking tickets at the door; they usually stayed at the homes of local tennis buffs to save money.14 Today the financials look like rounding errors—a breakthrough moment came in late 1971 when an event offered total prize money of $40,000. But by doing it themselves, the women had proved that there was indeed a market for what they offered; prize money reached $775,000 in 1973, more than twice as much as in 1971.
No one did more than King to make this happen; no one could have. In 1973 the two tours consolidated—under the Slims banner. At the same time, the Women’s Tennis Association was formed to safeguard women’s interests. King, of course, was its first president.15 In short, King was the making of women’s pro tennis, and tennis led the formation of a new culture of sports for women. “Every woman tennis player, every woman athlete should thank her,” Chris Evert told ESPN.16 And since she apparently wasn’t busy enough, King established the Women’s Sports Foundation, which is still going, and womenSports magazine, which is not.
And let’s not forget that King was also a superb athlete, winner of 39 Grand Slam titles, 12 of them in singles. Deploying a powerful serve-and-volley game well suited to an era in which three of the four majors were on grass, she was one of the top players in the game for a decade, before balky knees ended her career. She was the first female athlete to earn more than $100,000 a year and the first to be a Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year, sharing the award with John Wooden in 1972.
More than anyone else, King shaped the future and the culture of the tour. For example, when the locker room was frosty to the emerging queen of tennis, Chris Evert, King laid down the law. Evert, she said, was going to be great for the sport. Woman up and be nice.17 It was a gesture that Evert never forgot.
King extended the same generosity to Riggs, the man she once dismissed as a “creep.”18 The two became friends, bonded by their big moment and a love of tennis. When Riggs died in 1995, King called him “a brother and a fellow champion.”19
In 2006 the National Tennis Center, home to the US Open, was renamed for King; three years later, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The woman who had once infuriated the tennis authorities so much that they threatened to banish her20 was now a pillar of the establishment.
1974
HANK AARON’S JERSEY
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hereas Babe Ruth traveled the country on a wave of adoration, Hank Aaron’s major league journey was more complex. Born in Mobile, Alabama, he played briefly in the Negro Leagues before the Boston Braves bought his contract. As one of the first African Americans to play in the South Atlantic League, the abuse he took was extreme.1 The only way out was up; he played brilliantly, and by 1954 he had made it to the big leagues, replacing Bobby Thomson—yes, that Bobby Thomson—in the outfield in Milwaukee (where the Braves had migrated in 1953).
Aaron loved Milwaukee—the feeling was mutual—and won his only World Series there in 1957. But from then on his teams were usually mediocre or worse. They reached the playoffs only once—and got skunked by the Miracle Mets of 1969. But year after year Aaron excelled. From 1957 through 1973 he averaged 38 home runs and 110 RBIs a year. In a career that overlapped with that of Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, who hit bigger home runs in bigger markets, quiet distinction like Aaron’s was overlooked.
One way to get a sense of Aaron as a player is to look at the voting for most valuable player. He only won once, in 1957, but he finished in the top dozen 15 times.2 And his fellow players appreciated his qualities. Curt Simmons, an excellent left-handed pitcher, once said of him, “Trying to sneak a pitch past Hank Aaron is like trying to sneak a sunrise past a rooster.” By the early 1970s the whole country had begun to notice, too. At the end of 1972 he had 673 home runs; at the end of 1973, that figure was up to 713. Babe Ruth’s record of 714 home runs, one of baseball’s most beloved, was about to fall.
For most people, that was fine, even exciting: records are made to be broken. For a vicious minority, though, it was unconscionable for a black man to break this one. Aaron suffered through months of abuse. One typical missive hoped “that youse get good and sick.”3 Another said: “Retire or Die!!!” His children had to be escorted to school.4 Aaron wasted little time in 1974 getting the thing over with; wearing this jersey, he hit number 714 on his second at-bat of the 1974 season and 715 four days later. But the experience took its toll. “The Ruth chase should have been the greatest period of my life,” he wrote, “and it was the worst.”5
Aaron ended his career with 755 home runs, replacing Ruth’s name at the top of the record book. But he didn’t erode Ruth’s legend. And the same can be said of Aaron. Even though his name is no longer at the top of the home-run table, the legend of Hammerin’ Hank is as powerful today—perhaps more so—as when he lofted number 715 into the Atlanta sky.
“I don’t want people to forget Babe Ruth,” Aaron once said. “I just want them to remember Henry Aaron.”
1974
NIKE WAFFLE TRAINER
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egend has it that Isaac Newton lit on the theory of gravity when an apple fell on his head. Alexander Fleming grew penicillin by accident, when he left a mold growing in his lab. The point? Serendipity and inspiration often go hand in hand. Or, in the case of Nike, from foot to foot. The single most important product in Nike’s history, the Waffle Trainer, shown below, was the result of one such moment.
In 1971 an obscure company named Blue Ribbon Sports (BRS) paid a local graphic artist $35 to create a logo: she came up with the now-ubiquitous Swoosh. It debuted a new brand name, Nike, named after the Greek goddess of victory. But the most important event for the company that year occurred over the breakfast table of Bill and Barbara Bowerman.
As the coach of the University of Oregon track team (see 1975 entry on Steve Prefontaine) and a cofounder of BRS, Bill Bowerman was constantly tinkering in his workshop, seeking to craft a sneaker with the perfect balance of weight, grip, support, and feel. Now he had something new to think about. Oregon had replaced its cinder track with a urethane one; this was better for athletes, but their spikes would destroy it. On that fateful morning, the bottom of the family’s 1930s waffle iron1 caught his attention. Something like the waffle nubs might grip the track, he thought, without ripping it up.
“So he got up from the table and went tearing into his lab and got two cans of whatever it is you pour together to make the urethane, and poured them into the waffle iron,” recalled Barbara Bowerman.2 Unfortunately, the goo stuck and he couldn’t pry the waffle iron open. But the idea stuck just as hard, and further experiments showed potential.
Phil Knight, a former middle distance runner at Oregon, was CEO, but Bowerman was the resident sage—wise enough to know what he didn’t know. He enlisted others to help improve the design, including an orthotist and an orthopedic surgeon.3 By 1972 the company was cutting waffle soles by hand, then attaching them to uppers. Nicknamed the “moon shoes” because the distinctive patterns they left looked like the imprints the astronauts were leaving in the lunar dust, these were a giant leap forward in shoe design.
A few athletes wore them at the Olympic Trials and liked them. Next, in 1973, was a limited edition Oregon Waffle, in which the waffle outsole was glued to a yellow-and-green upper. After further refinement, in 1974 Bowerman earned a patent to the design, which he described as “an athletic shoe suitable for use on artificial turf . . . the sole has short, multi-sided polygon-shaped studs which provide gripping edges that give greatly improved traction.”4 Later that year the Waffle Trainer hit the mass market.5
The shoes were light yet gripped any surface with assurance; they also had spring to them, lessening the pounding that is part of running. The timing was perfect. Millions of Americans were beginning to jog, and the Waffle Trainer was waiting for them. The company could barely keep up with demand. The first versions were red, with a white Swoosh, but Knight thought that the Waffle might do what no other sneaker had—become an item adults would wear all the time. So the company began making blue ones to go with blue jeans. Sales jumped again, and in 1978, Blue Ribbon Sports finally, and forever, became Nike.6 The Japanese and European brands that had previously dominated the market didn’t know what had hit them. With the Waffle Trainer, Nike was well and truly launched. In 1972 company revenues were less than $2 million; a decade later, they were approaching $700 million.7 By fiscal 2015 the company founded on a handshake, with Phil Knight and Bowerman each chipping in $500, had revenues of $30.6 billion.8
Bowerman’s eureka moment was critical in the making of Nike. He died in 1999, but is still very much a part of Nike’s culture. The company is located on Bowerman Drive, and one of Nike’s 11 maxims, taught to all new employees, is: “Remember the man.” The actual waffle iron was unearthed in 2010, when Bowerman family members were digging through an old rubbish dump near the workshop (see picture above). Barely recognizable as a kitchen implement, it is now on permanent display at Nike headquarters.
D
avid Berger was an all-American boy. A gifted student athlete in high school in Ohio, he was a collegiate weightlifting champion at Tulane, then earned an MBA and a law degree. Realizing that he was unlikely to make the US Olympic team, he emigrated to Israel1 and qualified for the 1972 Games in Munich. Though he was eliminated from the light-heavyweight competition quickly,2 he stayed on to enjoy the Olympic experience.
And that was easy to do. The Germans had created a fun, relaxed atmosphere. Police were armed with bouquets of flowers to defuse tension; security was in the care of 2,000 unarmed men known as Olys, dressed in light blue suits. At one point night patrols were cut back because “nothing happens.”3
Then, around 4:30 in the morning on September 5, eight members of Black September, a Palestinian terrorist group, invaded the Israeli living quarters at 31 Connollystrasse. They went into apartment 1, where the coaches were, and then proceeded to invade apartment 3, which Berger was sharing with other weightlifters and wrestlers. Berger suggested in Hebrew that the team attack the intruders: “We have nothing to lose.”4 But one of the gunmen understood, and the opportunity was lost; all the men were herded into apartment 1. Two Israelis, Moshe Weinberg and Yossef Romano, resisted and were killed on the spot; two escaped. All told, the terrorists had captured nine Israelis. What they wanted, they told stunned authorities, was the release of 234 prisoners in Israel, as well as Germany’s most infamous terrorists, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof.
At first the athletic events went on as normal, in the hope that the situation would be resolved quickly. About 11 hours later, though, continuing what had been billed as the “Serene Games”5 became unconscionable, and the remaining events of the day were canceled. And so the athletes, like the rest of the world, watched the awful ending.
Israel had ruled out complying with the demands; the Germans had failed to budge the terrorists. The offers of money and even the German interior minister6 in exchange for the Israelis were turned down flat. After several extensions, the terrorists agreed to take the hostages to Cairo. The Germans had no intention of letting that happen.
At 10:35 pm,7 helicopters took everyone to the Fürstenfeldbruck military airport, about 15 miles away, where the security forces hoped to mount a rescue. But everything went wrong. The Germans did not have enough snipers, and the snipers did not have night-vision goggles or bulletproof vests. A slapdash ambush had to be scrapped when the police officers assigned to it walked off, refusing to participate in what they saw, with justification, as a suicide mission.8 The lighting was bad. Armored personnel carriers got stuck in traffic. Fundamentally, the Germans didn’t know what they were doing, and they refused the help of the Israelis, who did.
Shortly after midnight the terrorist in Berger’s helicopter opened fire on the hostages; Berger was wounded but not killed. Then the Palestinian tossed a hand grenade into the cockpit, killing Berger and his Israeli comrades.9 All nine hostages died in the ensuing two-hour firefight, as well as five terrorists and one German police officer. Three Palestinians were captured. All were back home by the end of the year, released in return for a hijacked Lufthansa airliner.
On the morning of September 6, a memorial service was held in the Olympic Stadium for the dead Israelis, and then the Games resumed. It was not an easy call to go on, but it was a defensible one. Stopping the Games would, in a way, honor the dead athletes, but it would also please those who sympathized with the terrorists. Resuming them could seem callous, but could also be seen as a sign of determination and a different way of honoring fellow Olympians.
The memorial itself was well attended and well done. Until, that is, IOC president Avery Brundage’s speech. He got off to a good start, mourning the Israeli victims in simple terms. But then he kept talking: “It is a sorrowful fact in our imperfect world that the greater and more important the Olympic Games become, the more they become the victim of economic, political, and now criminal pressure. The Games of the XXth Olympiad have been the target of two terrible attacks because we have lost the struggle against political repression in the case of Rhodesia.”10 To conflate his hobbyhorse of pure amateurism with Black September, or the banishment of Rhodesia with 11 dead Olympians—even for Brundage, it was an almost pathologically ill-judged moment.
The five dead assailants were flown to Libya, where their caskets were greeted with acclaim. At almost the same time, a US Air Force jet returned David Berger’s body to his parents; Ohio’s state flags flew at half-mast. This memorial is located outside Cleveland, not far from Berger’s childhood home. About 14 feet high and made of steel alloy,11 it shows the five Olympic rings broken by the tragedy. The rings rest on 11 segments, one for each dead Olympian.
The Olympics have never been particularly innocent. These festivals of sport can be glorious, but greed, cheating, and venality of all kinds have also been regular visitors. The tragedy of Munich, however, was of an entirely different order of evil, and the events of those 20 hours represent a profound loss. Today, every Olympics has to design and budget with security uppermost in mind. A spectacle intended to showcase international goodwill is now shaped in large part by the profound lack of it.
1972
SILVER MEDAL FROM THE US–USSR MEN’S BASKETBALL FINAL
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or Americans, the 1972 US–Soviet basketball finals might be the most infamous controversy in Olympic history. It featured a game that was made in America (see 1891 entry on James Naismith) and was played against the Soviet Union in the teeth of the Cold War. Also, it was just so bizarre.
Team USA went undefeated in the first Olympic hoops tournament in 1936—James Naismith himself was in the stands—and never lost a game over the next 36 years. But starting in the 1950s, the Soviets had put enormous resources into international sport, seeing it as “one of the best and most comprehensible means of explaining to people the advantages which the socialist system has over capitalism,” in the words of one state-run publication.1 The Soviet hoops team had done well on a recent tour of the United States and had the advantage of having played together for years. The US coach, Hank Iba, who had also led the 1964 and 1968 teams, recognized that the gap between the United States and the rest of the world was closing.
The US teams had always been composed of college players; that had long been more than enough. But the 1972 team was young and inexperienced; it had played just 12 exhibition games together. Also, for various reasons, it was missing such elite college players as Julius Erving, David Thompson, and Bill Walton.2
Even so, the Americans made it through the preliminary rounds without too much trouble and met the Soviets on the night of September 9 for the gold medal. Iba had coached the team to play deliberate, slow-paced basketball. That had worked fine so far, but against a good team—and the Soviets were very good—it wasn’t effective. The Americans also shot poorly—only 33 percent for the game—and at halftime, they trailed 26–21. “We had young deers,” recalled a guard on the team, Tom Henderson. “We should have run them back to Russia.”3
With 6:07 left and the Soviets up eight, the American players decided to do just that. The Soviets mustered only one field goal the rest of the game against the pressing American defense. Meanwhile, the Americans chipped away. With 10 seconds left, and the Soviets up one, Doug Collins picked up a loose ball, drove to the basket, and got clobbered. Three seconds left, two free throws, one woozy point guard. He swished the first. As Collins began to shoot the second, a horn blew. The Soviets were trying to call a time-out.
This is the tricky bit; if the Soviets were late making the call, as it appeared at the time, then too bad. But it is also possible that the time-out device the seasoned Soviet coach used was not working, or that the scorekeepers missed his signal. At any rate, Collins drained the second shot. With three seconds left, then, the United States was ahead for the first time, 50–49.
And that’s when things got interesting. A Soviet player grabbed the ball and flung an inbounds pass. At midcourt, the Brazilian referee saw the Soviet coaches waving and jumping around in something like a panic. Confused, he stopped play. (The ref could have also called a technical, as several Soviet coaches were on the court, which is a nono.) The Soviets explained they had been trying to call a time-out, but the signal hadn’t got through; that’s why the buzzer had sounded right before the second free throw. Sorry, the ref decided, there had been no time-out. Play would continue, with one second left. Even that was something of a break. After all, if there was no time-out, play should not have been stopped.4 That point was now moot. The Soviets had the ball at midcourt with one second left. Simple enough.
Not so simple. William Jones, the head of the international basketball federation, entered the scene. He had been sitting in the stands and had no jurisdiction, any more than the commissioner of baseball decides safe or out calls in the World Series. No matter; Jones gestured that the time-out that may (or may not) have been called should have been granted and ordered the clock set to three seconds. Essentially, he ordered a doover from the time Collins made his second foul shot. The seconds in between vanished into the Olympic ether.
The Soviet passer, guarded closely by 6-foot-11 Tom McMillen, could only get the ball to the top of the key, and the desperation heave from there missed. The buzzer sounded, and the Americans celebrated. Not so fast. This time, the problem was that the scorekeeper had not reset the clock correctly. It is true that the clock was wrong; it is also true that the Soviets had made their play, and it failed. At this point, Iba was in a rage. He would not send his players out again, he stormed. Yes, you will, Jones told him—yes, Jones was back—or the game would be forfeited and the US team could be barred from international competition.5
So there were three seconds left—again. McMillen again defended against the inbound pass, but the referee made a gesture to back him off—although he was perfectly within his rights to stick right where he was. But McMillen didn’t want to risk a technical, so he moved almost to the foul line. That gave the Soviet passer much more room to maneuver. He lofted a pass—it is known in Russia as the “golden toss”—to Aleksandr Belov, who was parked in the paint, and Belov put it in. This time, the game really was over, 51–50 to the Soviets.
The United States appealed the decision—or rather, the several decisions—that had determined the outcome. The appeal failed, with Cuba, Hungary, and Poland forming the 3–2 majority. Captain Kenny Davis said the team voted unanimously against accepting a silver medal.6
The medal pictured here, then, is strictly symbolic—what the US team would have taken home had it chosen to. The members of the team have neither forgiven nor forgotten. Davis even made it a condition in his will that his heirs “never accept a silver medal.”7
The Soviets were and are unapologetic. “We unquestionably deserved the victory,” Alzhan Zharmukhamedov said in 1992.8 The Soviets have a case. Remember, they did lead for at least 39:57, and they simply played the game as it was called. But the Brazilian ref had it right when he later called the result “completely irregular and outside the rules of basketball”;9 he thought the Americans deserved the victory.10 Making time vanish, twice, is not part of the game.
The next time the US men’s basketball team lost a game was in 1988—to the Soviets again. This time, it was straightforward: The Soviets simply played better, and the Americans had to settle for bronze. With that result, the world had officially caught up, and the Olympics changed the terms of engagement, allowing National Basketball Association and other professionals to compete. That led to the famous “dream team” of 1992, which included Charles Barkley, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Karl Malone, David Robinson, and John Stockton. The dreamers won easily, by an average of almost 44 points. Though the United States won again in 1996 and 2000, it never got easier, and in 2004 the team lost three games on the way to a disappointing bronze. With a renewed sense of urgency and commitment, the United States returned to goldmedal form in 2008 and 2012.
But no one assumes a gold medal for Team USA anymore. With the globalization of the game, its dominance has diminished. And that’s not a bad thing. In fact, given the enthusiasm of America’s basketball missionaries to spread the game, going all the way back to the 1890s, one could even call that a different kind of victory.
1972
IMMACULATA MIGHTY MACS UNIFORM
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ade of wool, worn with bloomers, and accessorized with a rope-like sash, these uniforms were considered hideous even in the early 1970s, when most fashion was hideous. Plus, they itched. But however old-fashioned their kit, the Immaculata College Mighty Macs were anything but quaint on the basketball court. They won the first three women’s national basketball championships (1972–1974), then went to two straight finals (in polyester skirts and tops) and a Final Four (in shorts).
It was a different time, and not just because today’s players don’t wear uniforms almost as old as they are.1 Elite hoopsters also don’t have to sell toothbrushes to raise money to get to the finals, as Immaculata did. And when a team repeats as champions, it gets a little more notice than the single paragraph the New York Times offered in 1973. (Most newspapers chose not to waste even that much ink on a bunch of girls.) The tunic in these photos, then, is not just an artifact; it is also a reminder of how far women’s sports has come.
That the first national champion came from a Catholic liberal arts college near Philly shouldn’t come as a surprise. Philadelphia had a dense network of single-sex parochial schools, almost all of which fielded hoops teams for both boys and girls. As early as the 1920s, nice Catholic girls were encouraged to play ball. In official games, they had to play the turgid, six-a-side, two-dribble, stay-in-your-zone game designed to “protect” them from exertion. But they also played the real thing in parks, recreation centers, and driveways, often against boys. Catholic parents might not have approved if their girls took to shot-putting or rugby, but they loved basketball. On Friday nights girls routinely played before packed houses, and the high-school championships sold out Penn’s famous Palestra arena.2
Immaculata benefited from this tradition. The small women’s school, run by the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM), had fielded varsity hoops teams since 1939. And that, too, is not surprising. Women’s schools were much more likely to field teams and to treat athletes with respect; they are the unsung heroes who kept college sports going. “We were encouraged to believe that anything was possible,” recalled the Macs nifty point guard, Marianne Crawford Stanley.3
The same could not be said of many, perhaps any, coed schools. When it came to sports, the men simply would not share the sandbox. Well into the 1970s, it was not unusual for them to hog 99 percent of the athletic budget.4 At the University of Washington, men’s sports got $1.3 million; the women’s, $18,000.5 At Arkansas, the calculation was simpler: $2.5 million for men, zero for women.6 Sports Illustrated estimated in 1973 that in the entire country, women accounted for fewer than 50 athletic scholarships—less than the number allotted to a single Division I football team.7 And then there were the small daily humiliations and inequities: not having a trainer, or being kicked out of the gym, or having to panhandle for travel money.8
Things began to improve in the early 1970s. In 1971, having been ignored by the National Collegiate Athletic Association forever, a group of female educators organized the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women in 1971. The AIAW ran on a tiny budget, but it did its best, and in 1972 it arranged the first national basketball championship;9 after regional qualifying rounds, there would be a 16-team final tournament at Illinois State.
The timing was fortuitous; the five-on-five game had become standard only a year earlier, after a research study confirmed that playing full court posed no health risks to women.10 Really. Immaculata’s Cathy Rush, hired as a part-time coach in 1970 for $450, seized the moment. At the time, the Macs didn’t even have a gym; their court had burned down, and the nuns were still raising money to replace it. But the Macs had some seriously good players, schooled on the Philly playgrounds. Also, the 22-year-old Rush was married to a National Basketball Association referee and conversant with the full-court game. She drilled her players in a fast-break offense and a trapping, tenacious defense.11
When the Macs made it through the regionals, the school was both delighted and dismayed: it didn’t have the cash to send them to Illinois. So the players sold toothbrushes to raise money;12 other clubs at the school chipped in what they could, and the college scraped together some cash, too. Even so, there was only enough to send eight players. They shared two rooms and washed their uniforms in the sink between games.13 The Macs were seeded fifteenth out of 16 teams. But they beat South Dakota State, Indiana State, and then top-seeded Mississippi College for Women to reach the finals—against their rival and neighbor, West Chester State. The Golden Rams had thumped the Macs, 70–38, two weeks earlier. But this time the Macs played a patient, sure-handed game, and won, 52–48. When they arrived home—a Catholic benefactor flew them back first class because they missed their original flight—almost the entire school was waiting for them at the airport.
After winning national titles again in 1973 and 1974, the little school with the big game became a phenomenon. The Macs were the first women’s college team to play internationally (in Australia, in 1974); the first to play in a nationally televised women’s game (against Maryland, in 1975); and the first to play at Madison Square Garden (against Queens, in 1975), drawing 12,000 spectators.
Much of the credit for Immaculata’s aura must go to the nuns. The president of the school in 1972, Sister Mary of Lourdes, a former Philly high school star herself, would shoot around with the Macs on occasion and always found a way to get the team what it needed. The old and sick nuns who lived in a home on campus had the games piped in. If the Macs were losing, an announcement would go out, “Sisters, the Mighty Macs are in trouble!” And they would take to their walkers and wheelchairs, and hustle as well as they could to the chapel.14
A cohort of nuns attended every game, clustered near the floor in their dark blue-and-white habits. They were not always images of serene grace. The father of one of the players handed out metal buckets and sticks, which the nuns would bang with such religious fervor that they were eventually banned (the buckets, not the nuns). The sisters didn’t trash talk, but they did visibly deploy their rosary beads, which might have been more intimidating. And they had game. A sportswriter was stunned during a tense moment when he heard a sister shout, “Watch the pick and roll!”15 The whole thing was irresistible.
And doomed. In 1972 a part of the education bill known as Title IX stated, in effect, that schools that took federal money had to accommodate the interests of all students, even those who lacked a Y chromosome. This didn’t mean spending had to be equal; it did mean that women had to get a fair share of time, money, and other kinds of support—something more than 1 percent, or zero.
Over time Title IX has evolved, due to legal challenges and new interpretations. In the process, it has become more complicated, and more controversial, than it needs to be. As written, the rule was not meant to impose quotas. But it is also true that the surest way to stay out of court is to keep a keen eye on the numbers. If a school has, say, 45 percent female students, and 45 percent of its athletes are also women, then compliance is assumed. As a federal judge put it in a landmark case regarding Brown University, “a university which does not wish to engage in extensive compliance analysis may stay on the sunny side of Title IX simply by maintaining gender parity between its student body and its athletic lineup.”16 As part of its settlement, Brown University was required to deviate no more than 3.5 percentage points between female students and female varsity athletes.17
The problem is that the use of such metrics has led to unintended consequences, in which the need for compliance has trumped equity and even common sense. In one famous example, in 2001 Marquette cut its wrestling team—which cost the school nothing, because it was funded by outside sources—in order to hew closer to the right gender proportionality.18 The action closed athletic opportunities for Marquette men while creating no new ones for women, a lose-lose situation that was not unique.19
These are real issues, but they are also narrow ones. Title IX is the single most important and positive thing that has ever happened to women’s sports in the United States. In 1970 there were only 16,000 female college athletes; by 2012, there were more than 200,000. The figures for high school are just as dramatic, from 294,015 girls playing sports in 1971 to almost 3.2 million in 2012.
In a larger sense, Title IX helped to make it socially acceptable for girls to be competitive and athletic—to take pride in their bodies for their function as well their looks. In 1932 Babe Didrikson Zaharias’s muscles were considered off-putting, even freakish. In 1999, when Brandi Chastain ripped off her shirt at the end of the 1999 World Cup (see entry) to reveal her stellar abs, her physique was celebrated.
While Title IX greatly accelerated the pace of change, it’s not as if women were waiting around for the men in Congress to give them permission to play. Even before Title IX, many were getting involved in sports, and the AIAW was working to raise the level of competition. Ironically, then, the NCAA, which fought against Title IX bitterly, ultimately benefited from it. The AIWA, which fought for Title IX, was destroyed by it. Once women’s sports gained traction, the NCAA became interested and put the squeeze on the AIAW, which was gone by 1982.
The women of the AIAW had been trying, sometimes awkwardly, to develop a different model of sports—more participatory, less exploitive, more student-centered, and run by and for women—that would not replicate the mistakes of the NCAA.20 They might not have succeeded. Still, it’s a shame they never got the chance.
Title IX also spelled the end of schools like Immaculata as national powers. In 1977 Cathy Rush retired with a career record of 149–15; in 1978 UCLA won the national championship, ushering in the era of big-school dominance. The nuns gave in. “We do not want an image of a sports college,”21 President Sister Marie Antoine said. Knowing it could not compete with bigger, richer universities, Immaculata wisely decided not to try. Today, the school competes in Division III. But the Macs are not forgotten. In 2008 Cathy Rush was elected to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, and Immaculata, as a team, joined her in 2014.
How good were the Mighty Macs? Well, they would certainly be creamed by any Division I program. Compared to today’s top teams, the Macs’ perimeter shooting was not as precise; their play was slower and less sophisticated. But forget the temptation to patronize these working-class Catholic girls in the funny tunics: the Macs were good. One player at the 1972 tournament recalled seeing the Macs for the first time and marveling at the skills of these “fast, sharp-eyed, hard-elbowed easterners.” That was Pat Summitt, who would go on to lead Tennessee’s women to eight national championships (see 1995/2009 entry).
A number of Macs stayed with the sport after graduation and helped it grow. Marianne Crawford Stanley coached Old Dominion to three national titles and also coached at the University of Southern California, the University of California/Berkeley, and in the Women’s National Basketball Association. Rene Muth Portland coached Penn State for 27 years. Teresa Shank Grentz, once described by Sports Illustrated as the “Bill Walton of the East,” coached the US national team to a bronze medal in the 1992 Olympics. One of her players was Muffet McGraw, now the women’s coach at Notre Dame. Tina Krah directs the women’s national championship tournament for the NCAA.
In her Hall of Fame induction speech, Cathy Rush recalled that she told her mother of her Immaculata teams, “These girls start with a prayer, and then play like hell.”22 The nuns would have approved.
1973
NAIL FROM SECRETARIAT’S SHOE
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hen Secretariat came roaring down the stretch at the Belmont, Jack Nicklaus (see 1986 entry on the Masters) was watching the race at home. As the horse flew toward the finish, visibly exulting in the glory of his power, the two-legged golf legend found himself pounding the floor—and weeping.1 Secretariat that day was athletic perfection: form and function and will coming together to create a moment of pure beauty.
A foal is hope on four legs. When Secretariat was born on March 30, 1970, hopes were particularly high, as his sire and dam were both highly regarded. With his bright chestnut coat, deep chest, and well-formed knees and ankles, the colt impressed from the start. The farm log noted four months later, “You just have to like him.”2
Like many young males, though, Secretariat was temperamental and undisciplined. For a time, his nickname was “ol’ Hopalong” because he was fat, slow, and clumsy.3 (He was also known as Big Red.) When his groom, Eddie Sweat, first saw him, he was unimpressed: “Too pretty! Too big an’ fat.”4 And then one morning Secretariat decided to grow up. He went five furlongs in 57.6 seconds—an excellent time. “We have a race horse on our hands,” trainer Lucien Laurin told owner Penny Chenery.5
Imperious but playful, Secretariat drew people to him with a personality that seemed more than strictly equine. Once he nipped a reporter’s notebook from his hands with his teeth, then tossed it into his stall, as if to say, “Come and get it.”6 Another time, Secretariat took his groom’s rake and dragged it around his stall as if to clean it.7 Secretariat was extraordinary; he was not, however, a comedian. But what these stories speak to is that there was a presence, an ease of manner, even a playfulness that made people love Big Red, even as they were awed.
Coming off a phenomenal season in which he won seven of nine races as a two-year-old,8 there were high hopes for Secretariat as the 1973 racing season began. But two weeks before the Kentucky Derby, he came in a sluggish third at the Wood Memorial. Secretariat had just been syndicated for a record $6.1 million, but people began to have doubts about him. He had bad knees, went one rumor. His jockey, Ron Turcotte, wasn’t up to the task. The horse was moody—just like his sire.9
The Derby would tell. Secretariat broke poorly and was running last at the first furlong. Then he began to pick off the other horses. Running on the outside down the stretch, he accelerated. The other horses “were rolling,” Turcotte would recall. “We were flying.”10 Secretariat finished the 1¼-mile course in a record 1:59.4, two-and-a-half lengths ahead of Sham. Incredibly, Secretariat ran each quarter faster than the one before, meaning he was still accelerating at the end. As racing commentator Heywood Hale Broun put it: “Another quarter of [a] mile and he might have taken to the air and flown.”11
At the Preakness two weeks later, Secretariat broke last again. A few strides into the first turn, he veered to the outside and swept past the other five horses before the straight. Strategically, owner Penny Chenery would note, that went against all the books. But Secretariat had imposed his will, taking Turcotte along for the ride as he cruised to another course record.12 Sham again finished second.
Going into the Belmont, Secretariat was a full-blown star. Not only was he on the cover of Sports Illustrated, but he had pushed both Watergate and the Vietnam War off the covers of Time and Newsweek. He was one race away from being the first Triple Crown winner since Citation in 1948. But this, the smart money said, would be his toughest race.
The one knock on Big Red was that he was the son of Bold Ruler, who was known as a good sprinter who couldn’t win at the longer distances.13 At 1.5 miles, the Belmont was the longest of the Triple Crown races. Sham’s owners thought if he could stay close, he might be able to take advantage if Secretariat faltered.
Sham was a brave horse. He even had his head in front for a few seconds. But halfway through the race, Secretariat broke him. He covered the mile in 1:34.2, a time so fast that sportswriter William Nack, Secretariat’s muse, began furiously shouting at Turcotte, “You are going to kill the horse! You are going to lose the Triple Crown!” And still, Secretariat kept going, 1,155 pounds14 of perfect form to the end. He finished an incredible 31 lengths ahead. (Poor Sham finished last, 45 back.) “He was running because he loved it,” said Chenery. He was “glorying in his own ability.” It remains the greatest performance ever seen on a racetrack. Secretariat’s time of 2:24 smashed the track record by 2.6 seconds and still stands—as do his other Triple Crown marks.
Greatness happens when many things break correctly—or don’t break. If one of Secretariat’s shoes had come off or become damaged, he could not have shown his true colors. So every nail in every shoe mattered—like the one pictured here, which did its small but important job at Belmont.
Was Secretariat the greatest horse ever? There is certainly a case to be made for Man O’ War, who won 19 of 20 races in 1919 and 1920, a better record than Secretariat’s record of 16 wins, 3 seconds, 1 third, and 1 fourth. At his best, Citation would have given either of them a run for their money. But let’s give this one to Secretariat by a nose, if only because, with a few clicks on a keyboard, it is possible to call up his races, watch him fly—and feel a lump in the throat.15
1973
BILLIE JEAN KING’S DRESS AND BOBBY RIGGS’S JACKET FROM THE “BATTLE OF THE SEXES”
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n 1973 Margaret Court had a great year, winning 18 of 25 tennis tournaments and 3 majors. But it is a year that must also evoke a wince. In what became known as the Mother’s Day Massacre, she played quite possibly the worst match of her life when she lost to Bobby Riggs in less than an hour, 6–2, 6–1.1
Riggs was a former Wimbledon champion and world number one. He was also a 55-year-old misogynist with a big mouth who had made what Court thought would be a nice little payday into a national event, played out on network television. The whole thing was humiliating for Court and embarrassing for women’s tennis. When Billie Jean King, 29, heard the result, her response was immediate: “Now I’m going to have to play him.”2
In July she and Riggs agreed to a best-of-five-set match to be played September 20 in Houston’s Astrodome for a stake of $100,000. Nine weeks of nonsense ensued, mostly due to Riggs. King had competitive tennis to play, and while she was not averse to helping stir up publicity, it was Riggs who hustled all over the country saying outrageous things and raking in cash.
He did everything but prepare for what was, after all, an athletic event as well as a spectacle. To beat Court, he had trained rigorously and spent hours analyzing her play.3 Facing King, he was too busy being a blowhard to bother. “There’s no way that broad can beat me,” he told friends the day before the match.4
King did not make that mistake. She respected Riggs and took a couple weeks off from the tour to prepare. Seeing how Riggs had dinked and lobbed Court to distraction, King practiced her overheads and decided to take something off her serve so that Riggs could not leverage her pace. She would pick on his backhand and extend points to wear him out.5
She also got in touch with tennis couturier Ted Tinling—make me a dress, she told him, a wonderful dress. With sequins (always appropriate for evening wear) and color.6 And she told Adidas she wanted blue suede shoes to match. She even agreed to enter the arena on a feather-bedecked palanquin manned by four toga-clad male college athletes. Riggs, dressed in the jacket (see above) of one of his sponsors, the Sugar Daddy candy, came in on a rickshaw pulled by six beauties in tight shirts that read “Bobby’s Bosom Buddies.”
The hushed civilities of Wimbledon this wasn’t.
There were more than 30,000 people in the Astrodome and maybe 50 million more watching on US television,7 plus satellite feeds to 36 countries. The betting had been huge, with Riggs the 5–2 favorite.8 Even King’s female colleagues on the tour bet against her.9
Fit and focused, King was primed to play. Riggs was not. He double-faulted to lose the first set and simply wilted as King hit crisp winners and moved him around the court. There was no gamesmanship or comedy. King won easily, 6–4, 6–3, 6–3. “She was too good,” Riggs confessed.10
The year after the Battle of the Sexes, King wrote that the match proved two things: a woman could beat a man, and tennis could be a big-time sport. By 2013 King was arguing that, with Title IX rules being debated and the tenor of the times, a loss would have set women’s rights back 50 years and ruined women’s self-esteem:11 “Two things came out of that match for women,” she said in a 2015 TED talk—“confidence [and] empowerment.”
Yes, the match mattered. It introduced many people to great female athleticism, boosted the women’s tour, and helped sustain the tennis boom of the 1970s. Men would have been insufferable had Riggs won. But little girls would not have hung up their cleats in shame if King had lost, any more than they did after Court’s poor performance. All the factors that were encouraging girls and women to get into the game would have continued. As for the idea that Title IX would have been jeopardized had King lost, the subject never came up in the voluminous coverage of the event.12 And confident women did not need a tennis match in the Astrodome to bolster their self-esteem.
In a way, the fame of the Battle of the Sexes obscures a fuller appreciation of Billie Jean King’s achievements. She is the most consequential female athlete in history and would have been so if she had never played Riggs.
In 1968, when open tennis began, the game was run by and for men. Women were lucky to be an afterthought, even given their obvious drawing power. When one tournament offered men more than eight times the winnings of women ($12,500 for the male winner, $1,500 for the female),13 King had had enough. She and eight others boycotted the tournament and set up their own event in Houston. The rebellion evolved into the Virginia Slims tour in 1971. A number of the top players, including Chris Evert and Evonne Goolagong, stayed with the US Lawn Tennis Association, which had history on its side, but had shown little commitment to the women. For a couple of years, then, there were two women’s tours, which was one too many.
The rebels worked hard to make the Slims tour a success, promoting it like mad and even taking tickets at the door; they usually stayed at the homes of local tennis buffs to save money.14 Today the financials look like rounding errors—a breakthrough moment came in late 1971 when an event offered total prize money of $40,000. But by doing it themselves, the women had proved that there was indeed a market for what they offered; prize money reached $775,000 in 1973, more than twice as much as in 1971.
No one did more than King to make this happen; no one could have. In 1973 the two tours consolidated—under the Slims banner. At the same time, the Women’s Tennis Association was formed to safeguard women’s interests. King, of course, was its first president.15 In short, King was the making of women’s pro tennis, and tennis led the formation of a new culture of sports for women. “Every woman tennis player, every woman athlete should thank her,” Chris Evert told ESPN.16 And since she apparently wasn’t busy enough, King established the Women’s Sports Foundation, which is still going, and womenSports magazine, which is not.
And let’s not forget that King was also a superb athlete, winner of 39 Grand Slam titles, 12 of them in singles. Deploying a powerful serve-and-volley game well suited to an era in which three of the four majors were on grass, she was one of the top players in the game for a decade, before balky knees ended her career. She was the first female athlete to earn more than $100,000 a year and the first to be a Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year, sharing the award with John Wooden in 1972.
More than anyone else, King shaped the future and the culture of the tour. For example, when the locker room was frosty to the emerging queen of tennis, Chris Evert, King laid down the law. Evert, she said, was going to be great for the sport. Woman up and be nice.17 It was a gesture that Evert never forgot.
King extended the same generosity to Riggs, the man she once dismissed as a “creep.”18 The two became friends, bonded by their big moment and a love of tennis. When Riggs died in 1995, King called him “a brother and a fellow champion.”19
In 2006 the National Tennis Center, home to the US Open, was renamed for King; three years later, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The woman who had once infuriated the tennis authorities so much that they threatened to banish her20 was now a pillar of the establishment.
1974
HANK AARON’S JERSEY
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hereas Babe Ruth traveled the country on a wave of adoration, Hank Aaron’s major league journey was more complex. Born in Mobile, Alabama, he played briefly in the Negro Leagues before the Boston Braves bought his contract. As one of the first African Americans to play in the South Atlantic League, the abuse he took was extreme.1 The only way out was up; he played brilliantly, and by 1954 he had made it to the big leagues, replacing Bobby Thomson—yes, that Bobby Thomson—in the outfield in Milwaukee (where the Braves had migrated in 1953).
Aaron loved Milwaukee—the feeling was mutual—and won his only World Series there in 1957. But from then on his teams were usually mediocre or worse. They reached the playoffs only once—and got skunked by the Miracle Mets of 1969. But year after year Aaron excelled. From 1957 through 1973 he averaged 38 home runs and 110 RBIs a year. In a career that overlapped with that of Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, who hit bigger home runs in bigger markets, quiet distinction like Aaron’s was overlooked.
One way to get a sense of Aaron as a player is to look at the voting for most valuable player. He only won once, in 1957, but he finished in the top dozen 15 times.2 And his fellow players appreciated his qualities. Curt Simmons, an excellent left-handed pitcher, once said of him, “Trying to sneak a pitch past Hank Aaron is like trying to sneak a sunrise past a rooster.” By the early 1970s the whole country had begun to notice, too. At the end of 1972 he had 673 home runs; at the end of 1973, that figure was up to 713. Babe Ruth’s record of 714 home runs, one of baseball’s most beloved, was about to fall.
For most people, that was fine, even exciting: records are made to be broken. For a vicious minority, though, it was unconscionable for a black man to break this one. Aaron suffered through months of abuse. One typical missive hoped “that youse get good and sick.”3 Another said: “Retire or Die!!!” His children had to be escorted to school.4 Aaron wasted little time in 1974 getting the thing over with; wearing this jersey, he hit number 714 on his second at-bat of the 1974 season and 715 four days later. But the experience took its toll. “The Ruth chase should have been the greatest period of my life,” he wrote, “and it was the worst.”5
Aaron ended his career with 755 home runs, replacing Ruth’s name at the top of the record book. But he didn’t erode Ruth’s legend. And the same can be said of Aaron. Even though his name is no longer at the top of the home-run table, the legend of Hammerin’ Hank is as powerful today—perhaps more so—as when he lofted number 715 into the Atlanta sky.
“I don’t want people to forget Babe Ruth,” Aaron once said. “I just want them to remember Henry Aaron.”
1974
NIKE WAFFLE TRAINER
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egend has it that Isaac Newton lit on the theory of gravity when an apple fell on his head. Alexander Fleming grew penicillin by accident, when he left a mold growing in his lab. The point? Serendipity and inspiration often go hand in hand. Or, in the case of Nike, from foot to foot. The single most important product in Nike’s history, the Waffle Trainer, shown below, was the result of one such moment.
In 1971 an obscure company named Blue Ribbon Sports (BRS) paid a local graphic artist $35 to create a logo: she came up with the now-ubiquitous Swoosh. It debuted a new brand name, Nike, named after the Greek goddess of victory. But the most important event for the company that year occurred over the breakfast table of Bill and Barbara Bowerman.
As the coach of the University of Oregon track team (see 1975 entry on Steve Prefontaine) and a cofounder of BRS, Bill Bowerman was constantly tinkering in his workshop, seeking to craft a sneaker with the perfect balance of weight, grip, support, and feel. Now he had something new to think about. Oregon had replaced its cinder track with a urethane one; this was better for athletes, but their spikes would destroy it. On that fateful morning, the bottom of the family’s 1930s waffle iron1 caught his attention. Something like the waffle nubs might grip the track, he thought, without ripping it up.
“So he got up from the table and went tearing into his lab and got two cans of whatever it is you pour together to make the urethane, and poured them into the waffle iron,” recalled Barbara Bowerman.2 Unfortunately, the goo stuck and he couldn’t pry the waffle iron open. But the idea stuck just as hard, and further experiments showed potential.
Phil Knight, a former middle distance runner at Oregon, was CEO, but Bowerman was the resident sage—wise enough to know what he didn’t know. He enlisted others to help improve the design, including an orthotist and an orthopedic surgeon.3 By 1972 the company was cutting waffle soles by hand, then attaching them to uppers. Nicknamed the “moon shoes” because the distinctive patterns they left looked like the imprints the astronauts were leaving in the lunar dust, these were a giant leap forward in shoe design.
A few athletes wore them at the Olympic Trials and liked them. Next, in 1973, was a limited edition Oregon Waffle, in which the waffle outsole was glued to a yellow-and-green upper. After further refinement, in 1974 Bowerman earned a patent to the design, which he described as “an athletic shoe suitable for use on artificial turf . . . the sole has short, multi-sided polygon-shaped studs which provide gripping edges that give greatly improved traction.”4 Later that year the Waffle Trainer hit the mass market.5
The shoes were light yet gripped any surface with assurance; they also had spring to them, lessening the pounding that is part of running. The timing was perfect. Millions of Americans were beginning to jog, and the Waffle Trainer was waiting for them. The company could barely keep up with demand. The first versions were red, with a white Swoosh, but Knight thought that the Waffle might do what no other sneaker had—become an item adults would wear all the time. So the company began making blue ones to go with blue jeans. Sales jumped again, and in 1978, Blue Ribbon Sports finally, and forever, became Nike.6 The Japanese and European brands that had previously dominated the market didn’t know what had hit them. With the Waffle Trainer, Nike was well and truly launched. In 1972 company revenues were less than $2 million; a decade later, they were approaching $700 million.7 By fiscal 2015 the company founded on a handshake, with Phil Knight and Bowerman each chipping in $500, had revenues of $30.6 billion.8
Bowerman’s eureka moment was critical in the making of Nike. He died in 1999, but is still very much a part of Nike’s culture. The company is located on Bowerman Drive, and one of Nike’s 11 maxims, taught to all new employees, is: “Remember the man.” The actual waffle iron was unearthed in 2010, when Bowerman family members were digging through an old rubbish dump near the workshop (see picture above). Barely recognizable as a kitchen implement, it is now on permanent display at Nike headquarters.
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