Can't think of any single event that stands out.
With 3 Super Bowls for the the Patriots this decade, 2 World Series for the Red Sox, and one for the Celtics, how do you pick one? I can't say one beats the other.
Maybe Boston University winning the National Championship in hockey last year with 2 goals in the last couple of minutes (yes, I went to BU)
With 3 Super Bowls for the the Patriots this decade, 2 World Series for the Red Sox, and one for the Celtics, how do you pick one? I can't say one beats the other.
Maybe Boston University winning the National Championship in hockey last year with 2 goals in the last couple of minutes (yes, I went to BU)
I was only four years old when this happened, and I'm not as much of a hockey fan as I once was...but I think my hands-down answer to this question has to be the Miracle on Ice. Herb Brooks tried to downplay it, but it was way more than just a hockey game, and the outcome made waves that were felt way beyond the sports world.
I've been fortunate enough to attend sporting events all over the world. World Cup matches are probably the most intense things I've ever seen in person since fans of both sides live and die with every twist and turn, but it's probably still nowhere near the same level of intensity as the MOI was. The inside of that arena had to be absolutely electric when the US took the lead in the third period, and the jubilation after waiting out the last few minutes of that game...? I can't imagine one single person who attended that game will ever forget it.
I've been fortunate enough to attend sporting events all over the world. World Cup matches are probably the most intense things I've ever seen in person since fans of both sides live and die with every twist and turn, but it's probably still nowhere near the same level of intensity as the MOI was. The inside of that arena had to be absolutely electric when the US took the lead in the third period, and the jubilation after waiting out the last few minutes of that game...? I can't imagine one single person who attended that game will ever forget it.
For 50 Yrs Easy
2nd Johansson/Patterson fight, whem Floyd KO'd him!!
Make it 60, also easy, 1951 WS "Gints W The Pennant" "Giants Win the Pennant", etc. Bobby T's HR heard you know where. I was in the lobby of the De Gingue Hotel, @ Harmon AFB, Nfld, listening on AF Radio. HUGE Giants fan and my then X Father in Law was a Dodger, made it all the better. The little prick. Soo many more. That Belmont is a good one too.<><>
2nd Johansson/Patterson fight, whem Floyd KO'd him!!
Make it 60, also easy, 1951 WS "Gints W The Pennant" "Giants Win the Pennant", etc. Bobby T's HR heard you know where. I was in the lobby of the De Gingue Hotel, @ Harmon AFB, Nfld, listening on AF Radio. HUGE Giants fan and my then X Father in Law was a Dodger, made it all the better. The little prick. Soo many more. That Belmont is a good one too.<><>
A tad more than 50 years ago - "The Shot Heard Round The World".
The "Shot Heard 'Round the World" is the term given to the walk-off home run hit by New York Giants outfielder Bobby Thomson off Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca at the Polo Grounds to win the National League pennant at 3:58 p.m. EST on October 3, 1951.
As a result of the "shot" (baseball slang for "home run" or any hard-hit ball), the Giants won the game 5–4, defeating the Dodgers in their pennant playoff series, two games to one. It is referred as one of the most famous episodes in Major League Baseball history, and possibly one of the greatest moments in sports history.
Bobby Thomson takes Ralph Branca deep to
win the 1951 NL Pennant in the bottom of the 9th
at The Polo Grounds of game three.
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-----------------------------------------------------
A close second: Jack Nicklaus wins the 1986 Masters at the age of 46.
His Birdie on the 17th hole gave him his first lead at The Masters in 11 years.
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It was the greatest Sunday in the history of golf, the greatest moment forged by the greatest golfer in the greatest tournament the sport has to offer.
The year was 1986, and you already know the hero then and forever was 46-year-old Jack Nicklaus, the tournament the Masters, the venue Augusta National. But as often as that miraculous win has been recounted and celebrated, it’s worth looking at again, not as much because it was so great, but because it was so unexpected. Not even Nicklaus himself thought he could win until he was well into the final nine holes on the final day of a tournament that somebody else would surely win.
Until then, the will and focus behind his success had been obscured by the brilliance of his talents. But this wasn’t about brilliance anymore. It was about true greatness, the kind so very, very few have ever shown in any sport in any age, a greatness that arose not from sheer skill, but from the very fabric and essence of the man.
Greg Norman was the leader, a young man from Down Under of astonishing talent who hadn’t yet tasted the final-round tragedies that would define his career. Fighting with him for the lead was a group taken straight out of golf’s Hall of Fame — Seve Ballesteros, Tom Kite, Nick Price, Tom Watson, Bernhard Langer. Four strokes back in ninth place, was the old guy, Nicklaus, his son, Jackie, on his bag, his wife in the gallery, and his putting stroke playing hide-and-seek — mostly hide — with him.
You can’t put pressure on the greatest of athletes. As any of them will tell you, no matter what you expect of them, it’s not as much as what they expect of themselves.
It’s that way for Tiger Woods, just as it had been for Lance Armstrong and Michael Jordan and Muhammad Ali and all the others who have earned the right to be called the best of the best. It had been that way, too, for Jack Nicklaus.
But by the spring of 1986, when the azaleas and magnolias were in blossom in Augusta, Georgia, that wasn’t the cases anymore. He was still the Golden Bear, but the gold was tinged with the russet hues of sunset. Once the greatest golfer anyone had ever seen, he was six years removed from his 17th major championship and four years away from being eligible for the Senior Tour.
He had won, by his own recollection, just a few thousand dollars that year and was neither driving nor putting well. He’d missed three cuts in seven tournaments and had withdrawn from a fourth. And if you were 159th on the money list that spring, you were still ahead of Jack Nicklaus.
His game was in such eclipse, neither he nor anyone else who converged on the cathedral of golf that April expected him to challenge for the Masters championship. After a first-round 74, there was no reason to think this year would be any different than the previous couple of years, when his marvelous game deserted him.
Nicklaus had first won the Masters in 1962. He had been 22 years old then, a pudgy kid with a big swing who would rip the crown off the King of golf, Arnold Palmer, and keep it as his own for the next 18 years. He would win four more times at Augusta National, and add five PGA, four U.S. Open and three British Open titles, for his 17 majors, the most in history.
He won the final two, the U.S. Open and PGA, in 1980, at the age of 40. And then the big victories stopped and the talent that made everyone who had seen him in his prime was there only in flashes, but never consistent enough to carry him to an 18th major.
Even then, Nicklaus talked about how he was never going to be a ceremonial golfer, the old champ touring the course for old times sake but with no chance of winning. He said, as Tiger Woods does now, that he’d play as long as he felt he could still win, and no longer.
So somewhere deep down inside, Nicklaus thought he still had the skills in 1986. He just didn’t know if and when he’d find them when it truly mattered. He certainly had no reason to expect he would find it on that April day in 1986.
If he were an athlete in a team sport, the writers would have been telling him to quit because he was tarnishing the memory of his brilliant youth with the reality of a mediocre middle age. But it’s different in golf, whose fans will cheer an old hero forever, happy just to see him walking to the 18th green with a putter in his hand, bathed in the roar of the crowd.
And it’s always possible that the old hero will catch lightning in a bottle, just one more time. Usually, though, it’s in an early round of a big tournament that the old-timers reach back into their history to conjure up something special. If they make the cut, they’re too drained by Saturday to be able to sustain it.
Nicklaus did it in reverse, putting up a bad round, then an OK round and then a 69 on Saturday. It was good, but only good enough for ninth place. Four groups full of young men in their primes were teeing off behind him.
He finished the front nine even, and even then there was no reason to think he’d do anything worth remembering other than take that final nostalgic walk up the final fairway.
Nicklaus birdied the ninth — still nothing to get excited about. He followed with birdies on 10 and 11. For the first time he started to think he had a chance, and that’s when he bogeyed the meanest little par three in golf, the 12th.
And then, magic. A birdie on the par-five 13th, par on 14 and an eagle on 15 that brought a roar out of the staid Augusta crowd that people who were there swear has never been heard before or since.
He damned near aced the par-three 16 and made another birdie. Another primal roar that lifted Jack and grabbed at the throats of those behind him. Finally, an impossible birdie putt from 12 feet on 17 — the one they show on the highlight reels — and Augusta National literally shook with cheers.
Ballesteros promptly drowned his second shot on 15 and disappeared, as did everyone else but Norman, who, by the time Nicklaus had made par on 18, hugged his son and caddie, Jackie, and walked off with a one-stroke lead and a 35-30, 65, actually shot himself into a tie with one hole to play.
The Bear didn’t even go to the driving range to get ready for a playoff, but watched on television while Norman did what he would become famous for doing — whacked his approach on 18 into the gallery, hit a miserable chip, and two-putted for bogey and second place.
That was it. The greatest golfer the world has ever seen somehow shot 30 on the back nine at Augusta and beat them all.
Article from NBCSports.com
I would have loved to be at either event...
wil.
The "Shot Heard 'Round the World" is the term given to the walk-off home run hit by New York Giants outfielder Bobby Thomson off Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca at the Polo Grounds to win the National League pennant at 3:58 p.m. EST on October 3, 1951.
As a result of the "shot" (baseball slang for "home run" or any hard-hit ball), the Giants won the game 5–4, defeating the Dodgers in their pennant playoff series, two games to one. It is referred as one of the most famous episodes in Major League Baseball history, and possibly one of the greatest moments in sports history.
Bobby Thomson takes Ralph Branca deep to
win the 1951 NL Pennant in the bottom of the 9th
at The Polo Grounds of game three.
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-----------------------------------------------------
A close second: Jack Nicklaus wins the 1986 Masters at the age of 46.
His Birdie on the 17th hole gave him his first lead at The Masters in 11 years.
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It was the greatest Sunday in the history of golf, the greatest moment forged by the greatest golfer in the greatest tournament the sport has to offer.
The year was 1986, and you already know the hero then and forever was 46-year-old Jack Nicklaus, the tournament the Masters, the venue Augusta National. But as often as that miraculous win has been recounted and celebrated, it’s worth looking at again, not as much because it was so great, but because it was so unexpected. Not even Nicklaus himself thought he could win until he was well into the final nine holes on the final day of a tournament that somebody else would surely win.
Until then, the will and focus behind his success had been obscured by the brilliance of his talents. But this wasn’t about brilliance anymore. It was about true greatness, the kind so very, very few have ever shown in any sport in any age, a greatness that arose not from sheer skill, but from the very fabric and essence of the man.
Greg Norman was the leader, a young man from Down Under of astonishing talent who hadn’t yet tasted the final-round tragedies that would define his career. Fighting with him for the lead was a group taken straight out of golf’s Hall of Fame — Seve Ballesteros, Tom Kite, Nick Price, Tom Watson, Bernhard Langer. Four strokes back in ninth place, was the old guy, Nicklaus, his son, Jackie, on his bag, his wife in the gallery, and his putting stroke playing hide-and-seek — mostly hide — with him.
You can’t put pressure on the greatest of athletes. As any of them will tell you, no matter what you expect of them, it’s not as much as what they expect of themselves.
It’s that way for Tiger Woods, just as it had been for Lance Armstrong and Michael Jordan and Muhammad Ali and all the others who have earned the right to be called the best of the best. It had been that way, too, for Jack Nicklaus.
But by the spring of 1986, when the azaleas and magnolias were in blossom in Augusta, Georgia, that wasn’t the cases anymore. He was still the Golden Bear, but the gold was tinged with the russet hues of sunset. Once the greatest golfer anyone had ever seen, he was six years removed from his 17th major championship and four years away from being eligible for the Senior Tour.
He had won, by his own recollection, just a few thousand dollars that year and was neither driving nor putting well. He’d missed three cuts in seven tournaments and had withdrawn from a fourth. And if you were 159th on the money list that spring, you were still ahead of Jack Nicklaus.
His game was in such eclipse, neither he nor anyone else who converged on the cathedral of golf that April expected him to challenge for the Masters championship. After a first-round 74, there was no reason to think this year would be any different than the previous couple of years, when his marvelous game deserted him.
Nicklaus had first won the Masters in 1962. He had been 22 years old then, a pudgy kid with a big swing who would rip the crown off the King of golf, Arnold Palmer, and keep it as his own for the next 18 years. He would win four more times at Augusta National, and add five PGA, four U.S. Open and three British Open titles, for his 17 majors, the most in history.
He won the final two, the U.S. Open and PGA, in 1980, at the age of 40. And then the big victories stopped and the talent that made everyone who had seen him in his prime was there only in flashes, but never consistent enough to carry him to an 18th major.
Even then, Nicklaus talked about how he was never going to be a ceremonial golfer, the old champ touring the course for old times sake but with no chance of winning. He said, as Tiger Woods does now, that he’d play as long as he felt he could still win, and no longer.
So somewhere deep down inside, Nicklaus thought he still had the skills in 1986. He just didn’t know if and when he’d find them when it truly mattered. He certainly had no reason to expect he would find it on that April day in 1986.
If he were an athlete in a team sport, the writers would have been telling him to quit because he was tarnishing the memory of his brilliant youth with the reality of a mediocre middle age. But it’s different in golf, whose fans will cheer an old hero forever, happy just to see him walking to the 18th green with a putter in his hand, bathed in the roar of the crowd.
And it’s always possible that the old hero will catch lightning in a bottle, just one more time. Usually, though, it’s in an early round of a big tournament that the old-timers reach back into their history to conjure up something special. If they make the cut, they’re too drained by Saturday to be able to sustain it.
Nicklaus did it in reverse, putting up a bad round, then an OK round and then a 69 on Saturday. It was good, but only good enough for ninth place. Four groups full of young men in their primes were teeing off behind him.
He finished the front nine even, and even then there was no reason to think he’d do anything worth remembering other than take that final nostalgic walk up the final fairway.
Nicklaus birdied the ninth — still nothing to get excited about. He followed with birdies on 10 and 11. For the first time he started to think he had a chance, and that’s when he bogeyed the meanest little par three in golf, the 12th.
And then, magic. A birdie on the par-five 13th, par on 14 and an eagle on 15 that brought a roar out of the staid Augusta crowd that people who were there swear has never been heard before or since.
He damned near aced the par-three 16 and made another birdie. Another primal roar that lifted Jack and grabbed at the throats of those behind him. Finally, an impossible birdie putt from 12 feet on 17 — the one they show on the highlight reels — and Augusta National literally shook with cheers.
Ballesteros promptly drowned his second shot on 15 and disappeared, as did everyone else but Norman, who, by the time Nicklaus had made par on 18, hugged his son and caddie, Jackie, and walked off with a one-stroke lead and a 35-30, 65, actually shot himself into a tie with one hole to play.
The Bear didn’t even go to the driving range to get ready for a playoff, but watched on television while Norman did what he would become famous for doing — whacked his approach on 18 into the gallery, hit a miserable chip, and two-putted for bogey and second place.
That was it. The greatest golfer the world has ever seen somehow shot 30 on the back nine at Augusta and beat them all.
Article from NBCSports.com
I would have loved to be at either event...
wil.
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Some great events I have been to off the top of my head. 1) 1986 Masters 2) 1971 OU-Nebraska(sat with Skip Bayless) 3) 2003-Roger Clemens 300th win(in the rain). Also, 1988 Final Four OU loss to Kansas(Kemper Arena-Kansas City), and many OU bowl games(good and bad). However, I wasn't at Boise St-OU, which seems like one that is on a lot of lists.
