Posted on 06/09/2013 6:33:03 PM PDT by EQAndyBuzz
What are the top 10 sops moments of all time?
“The Catch” Willie Mays in Baseball, Dwight Clark in football, both in San Francisco.
1980 Miracle USA Olympic hockey team vs. Russians.
First 300 Homerun hitter/300 Base Stealer in history. Also first 400/400, first 500/500, and he beat Hank Aaron’s homerun record: Barry Bonds.
Immaculate Reception.
Roger Bannister first 4 minute mile.
Nadia Komenici getting the first of several perfect 10 scores in olympic gymnastics.
Okay, Secretariat.
Jackie Robinson being the first black professional athlete on a major league team.
Is aviation a sport? Lindbergh’s first solo flight across the Atlantic. Wright brothers first demo flight in 1908 — they originally got into gliding because “surely it is the king of sports”. First nonstop flight around the world by Dick Rutan. Montgolfier brothers first to rise in the air in hot air balloon. Recently, the first supersonic parachute jump.
Cal-Stanford game where the band comes out onto the field because they were so sure they won & one of them got smashed at the final part of the touchdown.
Crossover athletes are interesting, like Babe Didrickson, Bo Jackson, maybe even Arnold Schwarzenegger — first Mr. America (won more than once) to become a movie star then a guvernator.
Remember his campaign bowling game? We're supposed to think he was born and raised somewhere in the U.S.
So, so many classics ... but I can’t believe it’s been 124 posts (this one included) without anyone yet mentioning Doug Flutie’s Hail Mary.
http://espn.go.com/espn/espn25/story?page=moments/51
Kerri Strug fights off pain, helps U.S. win gold
ESPN rates it as #51, but it is higher in my mind.
Sure, it was a great play to win a game as the clock ran down. But there are dozens of those in NCAA and NFL football history (including playoff and bowl games), and none of them seem to get the kind of attention that Flutie's pass does.
I find it interesting that the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team's "Miracle on Ice" consitently makes its way to the top of so many of these "Greatest Sports Moment" lists -- and yet hockey is supposedly a second-tier sport when it comes to U.S. sports fans.
Even more interesting was a comment from Jim Craig (the starting goaltender on the 1980 U.S. team) in a book that was written about that team years later in the early 2000s. Craig tried to downplay the event a bit in the context of sports accomplishments, and said he didn't even think the "Miracle on Ice" was the greatest moment of the 1980 Winter Olympics. That honor, he said, belong to Eric Heiden's five gold medals in speed skating -- winning every speed skating event at the time. That will probably never happen again. It is the equivalent of having one track athlete win a gold medal in every track event from the 100-meter sprint to a 10,000-meter run.
It was very strange, because I just had the feeling that he would, too. When our son was 14 years old, his Mothers Day gift was a Kirk Gibson trading card encased in plastic. 24 years later, it’s still on her chest of drawers.
Yogi says he never said most of the things he said. I think Mr. Berra was trying to be gracious, in his own way. That event, captured in several pictures from several angles, epitomizes two of the greatest careers in baseball.
Speaking of 42, I love Branch Rickey’s response to Jackie Robinson, when asked “Mr. Rickey, why’d you do it?”, “Jackie, you made me love baseball again.” Rickey was a deeply religious man, and a deeply principled man. He was always disturbed by unfair way blacks had been treated by organized baseball, and late in life, he was happy to have an opportunity to do something about it.
April 15, 1947, Ebbets Field.
The beginning of the end of a great wrong, and like the 1936 Olympics, a moment when a sporting event quite literately transcended sports to signal a change in the way this country looked at itself.
The best QB who never won the SB and the greatest QB in the history of the NFL.
Yes, I do remember. And the thoughtful comment he made about bowling like a retard. What class huh? LOL! “IF” he ever played sports, you know he was the last guy picked for the team. Crap. Now he’s doing the picking.
In no particular order:
Carlton Fisk’s Game 6 HR waved fair
Immaculate reception
Miracle on ice
Thompson’s HR (The Giants win the pennant)
Mazeroski’s HR to win series
UNLV destroys Duke in NCAA final
Jack Morris’s 10-inning Game 7 win
Joey Kocur’s breakaway goal in Cup finals less than 6 months after being stuck playing for beers
Carl Hubbell strikes out 5 Hall of Famers in a row in the All Star game
and...you’re dead right...Secretariat!
Unfortunately, the one with him selling insurance with a duck will though.
Marino may have been the greatest passer in his youth, but he was one dimensional and nowhere near the greatest QB for his career. He was lucky to play for a coach who coddled him.
Dallas finally beating the Steelers in Super Bowl XXX.
Are you still thawing out?
I love big Red....actually own a chestnut 17.2 hand thoroughbred myself....tattoo lip and all
But number one for me as a boomer....
1980 USA HOCKEY GOLD
after that......
Kenny Roberts mastery of motorcycle flat track, superbike, USA grand Prix and Euro and world grand Prix late 70s and early 80s and a few years ago when King Kenny timed a best qualifier on a Yamaha TZ 750 TWO STROKE at aged 60 at the dirt Indy Mile.....most here have no idea what I’m talking about
Next
DiMaggio streak
Next
Wilt Chamberlains 100 point game
Next
Alabama over Miami in Sugar Bowl 1993....class over thugs
Next
Aryton Senna and Dale Earnhart killed respectively in F1 and NASCAR
Showed even guys who seemed invincible could die...sadly....just how dangerous
Just a few off the top of my head
Ted Turners repeated World Cup wins
Another big but obscure one.....huge really
Reinhold Messner’s nightime solo sans oxygen Everest summit...
That is a good one
I was driving on old US 80 tween Montgomery and Meridian listening on radio
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