I post this for all those hockey fans out there, of course, but I also post it for David and Maria’s wee daughter, who is playing Al Michaels in a school-play version of Miracle on Ice. I so want to hear her little voice making that famous call!
“DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACLES?? YES!
That famous photograph of the team FREAKING OUT features, in the foreground, defenseman Jack O’Callahan, straddling defenseman Mike Ramsey (in the HBO documentary Do You Believe In Miracles? – Ramsey says, with a look on his face which brings a lump to my throat just mentioning it: “I’ll take that picture ……. to my grave with me.”) … with absolute MAYHEM behind them. Their joy is still infectious, so many years later.
Like most of us who were alive at that time, and at all aware of anything, I have vivid memories of the 1980 Winter Olympics, and of these college kids who came along and slayed the Russian dragon. I was particularly into the whole thing because of the Boston presence on the team. My family’s from Boston. There was a regional component to our triumph, as well as a national component.
I didn’t really get the context of it while it was happening – the Cold War context, and also the hockey context – just how huge a dynasty the Russians had, in terms of how they played the game, how they dominated international hockey, etc.
Keep an eye open for the documentary : “Do You Believe in Miracles” I own it, naturally, but I’m sure it is available otherwise. Even without the topic, which I love – it is one of my favorite documentaries ever made. I watch it so often that it’s embarrassing. But it NEVER. gets old.
Narrated beautifully and simply by Liev Schrieber – with interviews with Jim Craig, Herb Brooks, Jack O’Callahan, Craig Patrick, Eric Strobel, Dave Silk (who was my personal favorite, I admit it) – and many others – the documentary just GETS the big-ness of the event. It GETS the magnitude. I get goose-bumps watching it.
Herb Brooks said later, in a filmed interview with Kurt Russell, “The greatest sporting event of the 20th century, voted by Sports Illustrated, was not given to an individual – it was given to a team.”
That, to him, meant the most. And it is why he absented himself from the celebration on the ice. In the footage of that day, you can see him hurrying off into the darkness beneath the stadium, while his players go apeshit on the ice. It is THEIR moment, not his.
Al Michaels, the dude who made the famous “Do you believe in miracles?” call (which – when you listen to it – in the moment – AS the game is going on – you just can FEEL the emotion, the amazement – the guy is absolutely flipping out – it’s awesome). But anyway, he is also interviewed quite a bit in the documentary – and he said at one point, in terms of how the game happened at 5 pm on a Friday night – and the network made the unprecedented decision to tape it and then re-play it that night at 8 pm – because by that point, everybody wanted to see this match-up – He said, “And so on Friday, you had this bizarre circumstance of people filing into the arena for what was, essentially, a matinee. Little did any of those people know that they were about to witness one of the greatest sporting events of their lives.”
More posts on the Miracle on Ice here:
