By By Stan Torgerson / guest columnist
May 24, 2004
I'm having a birthday this week. Don't ask which one. Too many. But among the gifts received was the book, "And the Crowd Goes Wild."
It's a compilation of the highlight moments of 57 of the most celebrated sporting events in history and the thrills of last-minute heroics, underdog victories or the crowning moments of a champion's career. With the book come two CDs containing the actual broadcasts of those moments. They range from a 1932 interview with Babe Ruth following the World Series game in which he called his shot to Brandi Chastain's excitement scoring the game-winning kick as the United States women won the 1999 World Cup. In between, there are such moments as Michael Jordan's last-second shot to win the NBA championship in 1998, Jack Nicklaus winning the Masters at age 46 in 1986, Magic Johnson versus Larry Bird in the 1979 NCAA championship game, Joe Namath and the underdog Jets winning Super Bowl III in 1969 and more much more.
It's something every sports fan should own but won't, not with a cover price of $49.95. One of my "doing better than average" friends gave it to me.
But reading it and listening to the historic actual broadcasts made me realize that sports memories are completely dependent on the age of the person who attended the game, listened on the radio or watched on television.
I'm old enough to remember every event in the book except Babe Ruth, of course. But I likewise know, because I asked around, that to mention the names Bobby Thomson, Wilma Rudolph, Bill Mazeroski, Willis Reed, Carlton Fisk, Bjorn Borg, even someone as recent as Carl Lewis gets a great big, "Who's he (she)? Never heard of him (or her)," from the under-30-year-old crowd.
Try it yourself, you baby boomers. Toss out a few names of the immortal SEC football players you remember so well and see the reaction people like Alabama's E.J. Junior, Ole Miss' John Forcade, even Ray Guy from Southern Miss, the greatest punter of all time.
How about such SEC basketball greats as the Rebel's Elston Turner, Durand Macklin from LSU, Chauncey Robinson of Mississippi State or Dale Ellis, a Tennessee great? They were All-SEC in their days, each and every one, but the majority of today's players and in-college fans have never heard of them.
My baseball memory goes back to Ted Lyons of the White Sox, Big Poison and Little Poison, the Waner brothers of Pittsburgh. To mention shortstop Luis Aparicio from the White Sox will get you a look even though he's in the Hall of Fame.
Who is Gordon Johncock? Just a nobody to today's NASCAR fans, even though he won the Indianapolis 500 in 1982 when it was the greatest race in the land.
Most of those mentioned above date back only 25 years or less. Go back to 1936, when Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the Olympics held in Berlin in front of Adolf Hitler, and you not only will get a blank look about Owens, more than a few will say, "Who's this Hitler guy?"
That's why there's no greater thrill for a former athlete than to be told he or she is remembered. The thrill is even greater when the person doing the remembering quotes a specific game or score.
I haven't broadcast an SEC game in 20 years. But it is always exciting when someone tells me they grew up listening to my broadcasts and then recalls a play or a few words of description that have stayed with them for all these years.
A few years ago there were enough of those trips down Memory Lane that I went back through my own collection of tapes and put together a cassette I call simply, "Ole Miss Highlights 1968-1984."
I've got a big box of those old broadcasts, and some day I plan to inventory them and see what's there. There are a lot of daddys out there who have told their kids about what it was like when they were playing college football or basketball and who have told me they would love to have a tape of a game or two in which they participated.
They won't be in a $50 book, but I'm certain that to the people who played in those games or remember them from their youth, they're more priceless than that.