Sports' Moon Moments

Yesterday we celebrated the 50th anniversary of arguably man's greatest achievement of the 20th Century.  The world stopped when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon.  It was one of the defining moments in human history, and Armstrong's perfect words, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," is one of the most recognizable quotes ever spoken.

In the world of sports, there are very few moments that can even compare to the moon landing.  The more I thought about it, the more I realized how few there actually are.  Then I realized why.  For all their power to unite, sports have a winner and a loser.  That's the entire point.  So, a moment that's memorable for one fan base is one the other team's fans would just as soon forget.

But...I did manage to find a few that transcend sports.  They're not the moon landing or Pearl Harbor or 9/11.  With the exception of one, they don't even compare to the overarching significance of those events.  But for sports fans, they're similar in the regard of you know exactly where you were and what you were doing as they were happening.

There is one sports moment that does rank up there with the moon landing and the Kennedy assassination as a defining moment in 20th Century American history.  That, of course, is Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier on April 15, 1947.  Blacks had been barred from playing Major League Baseball for more than half a century until Robinson made his debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers.  That moment went beyond baseball.

Robinson is one of the most significant figures in baseball history for a number of reasons, that being the biggest one.  It's hard for anyone today to even imagine what he had to endure, yet he handled it all with grace.  It's appropriate that we celebrate him every April 15 (even if the everyone wearing 42 thing drives me nuts!).  Because he deserves it for what he did and what that meant.

The only other sports moment that comes remotely close to the cultural significance of Robinson's debut is the Miracle On Ice.  Obviously the reasons are vastly different.  But a team of college kids beating the Soviet professionals on February 22, 1980 was the boost America needed at the time.  It was the middle of the Iran Hostage Crisis, gas prices were astronomical, and the U.S. had just announced it would boycott that year's Summer Olympics in Moscow.  Yet a hockey game in Upstate New York, if only for a day, made people feel good about being American again.

Everything else on this list will resonate with sports fans, although not nearly in the same way.  They're significant from a sporting perspective, but don't have that same cultural impact as Jackie Robinson's debut or the Miracle On Ice.  For sports fans, though, these are definitely "remember where you were" moments.

Hank Aaron's 715th home run.  Aaron entered the 1974 season one home run behind Babe Ruth on the all-time list.  He tied the record with a homer on Opening Day in Cincinnati, then broke baseball's most hallowed mark at home in Atlanta on April 8, 1974.  He ended with 755 and held the record for 33 years until Barry Bonds passed him in 2007.  And when Bonds hit his 756th, there was no fanfare at all.

Cal Ripken's 2,131st consecutive game.  If there's any longtime baseball record more well-known than Ruth's home run mark, it's Lou Gehrig's 2,130 consecutive games, a streak that only ended because Gehrig was dying of the disease that now bears his name.  Some thought that streak would never get touched, yet Ripken was on his way when the strike wiped out the final six weeks of the 1994 season.  When baseball returned in 1995, Ripken's streak continued (and helped bring people back to the game).  On September 6, 1995, the Orioles' game against the Angels became official and Ripken had passed Gehrig.  He'd play 500 more before voluntarily ending it at 2,632 in 1998.

Joe Namath's guarantee.  It was bold, brash, basically Joe Namath in a nutshell.  The NFL had won the first two Super Bowls, and nobody gave the Jets a chance against the dominant Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.  In the week leading up to the game, though, Namath was confident, telling reporters, "We'll win the game.  I guarantee it."  And on January 12, 1968, he delivered on that guarantee, as the Jets pulled the upset and validated the AFL.

Bob Beamon's world record.  I talk about it all the time.  I consider it the greatest single individual performance in both track & field and Olympic history.  On October 18, 1968 at the Mexico City Olympics, Beamon jumped into the stratosphere (not literally like the astronauts, but you get my point).  He broke the world record in the long jump by nearly two feet!  No one had ever jumped 28 feet, and he surpassed that mark entirely with a leap of 29'2 1/2.  It would stand as the world record for 23 years and is still the No. 2 mark all-time.

They aren't all good.  At the 1972 Summer Olympics, Palestinian terrorists broke into the Olympic Village and took 11 members of the Israeli team hostage.  The Munich Massacre ended with a shootout at an air field, where all of the hostages were killed.  September 5-6, 1972 represent the darkest two days in Olympic history (and there isn't even a close second).

Finally, we have another thing that transcended sports.  It actually marked the dawn of reality TV and 24-hour news.  I'm, of course, talking about the O.J. Simpson Chase on June 17, 1994.  The nation was transfixed as police chased his white Bronco down the Los Angeles Freeway.  And they would remain transfixed throughout his 1995 murder trial.  In fact, O.J. and this case still fascinate today (as evidence by the number of award-winning documentaries produced on the subject).  Our celebrity culture had officially arrived.

Are any of these transcendent moments in history like the moon landing?  Of course not!  Few things are.  What Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin achieved on July 20, 1969 is one of the most amazing feats ever accomplished by mankind.  Sports moments, even the significant ones, pale in comparison.