FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — You know how listening to a song can transport you at lightning speed to a specific place in your life? Just a few opening notes of a Tears for Fears song and you immediately want to turn the collar up on your polo shirt.
Sports is like that, too. Someone says the words “Super Bowl XXI” on the other side of a crowded room, a sports fan remembers where they were, what they were drinking and if the pizza were any good while they watched the Giants trounce the Broncos.
Not long ago, I wrote a column saying that after 40 years, maybe it was time for the 1972 Olympic basketball team to accept the silver medals that have been lying in a Swiss bank vault ever since the players refused to accept them after the famous botched ending of the Munich gold medal game with the USSR.
And the response was like nothing I’d ever seen. It was as if glasnost never had been hatched, The Wall never torn down, and shoes were being slammed on top of podiums again. Those who lived through that ’72 jobbing still feel bitterness, and a chilly Cold War fury. And that’s the people who watched it.
“It’s never entered my mind that we should take the silver medals,” says Kevin Joyce, the North Merrick native, Archbishop Molloy graduate and prominent member of that star-crossed team. “We feel we won the gold medal. And as all of us have found out in our travels after basketball, most of the people we encounter feel the same way.”
There is no animus to Joyce’s voice, just matter-of-fact reason. Two months ago, in Louisville, Ky., the members of that team gathered for a reunion, the first time all of them had been together since departing Munich.
They are bound by the memory of an intense Pearl Harbor training camp under coach Hank Iba (the outdoor gym they practiced on had been a staging area on Dec. 7, 1941, and blood spilled that day was preserved when it was varnished over) and by a terrible game-management decision that allowed the Russians three different attempts to win the game.
And in some ways they are now bound by the hope that 40 years later, a better solution exists than either changing their minds and accepting silver (which, it is clear, never will happen) or having to prolong their boycott. There has long been a movement to award duplicate golds to the Americans (similar to what happened in the Salt Lake City winter games in 2002, when Russian and Canadian figure skating teams received them after a judging controversy).
“We never wanted to take anything away from the Russians, and never wanted to disrespect them,” Joyce says. “There’s just a fair resolution to this that’s available.”
Outside of the players, the fiercest advocate for this is a native New Yorker named Donald “Taps” Gallagher, a graduate of St. Dominic’s high and St. John’s law, the co-author (with another New Yorker, Mike Brewster) of a splendid book on the ’72 team, “Stolen Glory.” The IOC has the power to award the duplicates, and Gallagher, who practices law in Chicago, believes there is a strong possibility they may finally accede after four decades to their shared foul-up along with FIBA, basketball’s ruling body.
Until then, as a token of their unity, Gallagher used the occasion of the Louisville reunion to present the players with replicas of the golds they should have won in ’72, with one stipulation.
“They can keep them until they get the real ones,” Gallagher says.
It is a switch the players gladly will make. As will anyone who still remembers what they were doing — and feeling — 40 years ago. And every time they’ve thought of it since.
Whack Back at Vac
Joan Mettler:
In the scheme of things for the Yankees, Alex Rodriguez scored more sitting on the bench than the entire team did during the ALCS.
Vac:
Is there any doubt left what A-Rod’s signature move — er, moment — as a Yankee is going to be …?
Rich Nutile: I was wondering when Alex Rodriguez sent an autographed ball to those women trying to get their numbers if he asked if they were right-handed. My guess is they are, which is why he struck out.
Vac: … No, I didn’t think so …
Bob Scotti: Alex Rodriguez had such a bad week, I hadn’t seen so much disrespect since Billy Batts told Tommy to go home and get his shine box.
Vac:
… and it sounds like poor Nick Swisher would tell you Billy Batts had it easier in the trunk of Henry’s car than Yankees players do at the Stadium.
@Johnny Jet: AMC should sue the Yankees for copyright infringement on “The Walking Dead.” This is unforgivable and The Boss would never stand for it.
@MikeVacc:
I’m pretty sure The Boss would’ve made the Yankees walk home from Detroit.
Vac’s Whacks
There are few sporting things more enjoyable than listening to Jon Sciambi call a baseball game on the radio, and whenever John Sterling decides the time is right to hang up his microphone, there is only one telephone call the Yankees need to make to find his ideal successor.
* Ah, so it seems Melo and STAT still have a ways to go before they make anyone forget the chemistry of Abbott & Costello. Unless we’re talking about Kurt Abbott and Brian Costello.
* My knowledge and appreciation for country music pretty much begins and ends with the 13 Willie Nelson songs on my iPod, but if you tell me Tami Taylor (or, better, Molly McMullen) is in, as Connie Britton is on “Nashville,” then so am I.
* It should be most interesting to see RG3 get a crack at playing against the varsity today.