First published: Feb. 24, 1980
Lake Placid, N.Y. -- Calm yourself. This doesn't mean the Russians have pulled out of Afghanistan and called Jimmy to say they're sorry. The hostages haven't been told to get packed for home. The oil crisis hasn't improved a gallon's worth. We still have inflation as fat as Blue Boy. (A seat to watch this event cost $67.20, unscalped.) But something of considerable international significance took place in the Olympic Arena at the vesper hour Friday evening.
The Americans beat the Russians in hockey. Not a National League team. Not the pros. They lost a series two out of three to these Soviets last year. The best of the NHL. The All-stars. Forget Bruce Jenner, who wore out his soles, then sold his soul. Forgive us, Eric Heiden. You're grand. But the greatest thing in American Olympics in many a year is the 1980 American hockey team.
Impossible, of course. American amateur hockey teams don't beat the Russians, who play 11 months to get one month off. But this "Our Gang" bunch of kids, downy cheeks barely familiar with the touch of the razor, some yet unpledged to a frat, not yet decided on an academic major, they turned international hockey upside down and inside out. The young shavers took the blackbeards.
The Russians hadn't lost a match in Olympic hockey since 1968 at Grenoble. It may turn out to be the first gold medal they haven't won since 1960 at Squaw Valley. There's another round yet in which that'll be determined as we approach the snuffing out of the torch Sunday night.
You must understand that the Olympic Games are not political. Forget the flags that were waved from the first icing of the puck until the team mobbed its goalie, Jim Craig -- who, they say, will sign with the Atlanta Flames ere this business is done. Forget the Ukrainians marching outside the arena in protest of the Kremlin they despise from afar. Forget the snarling banners that hung from the railing. Forget those willing to pay scalpers $200 to get in.
Of course the Olympics aren't political. Americans wanted to beat the hell out of the Russians because they don't like the personality of Juri Lebedev, Boris Mikhailov or Vladimir Krutov, whom they wouldn't know if they rode the same elevator with them. Americans wanted to beat the Russians because they're Russian.
Soften that a smidgen. They wanted to beat them because the Russians don't "play" at the game. They make a career of it. The lineup is the best of 265 million inhabitants of the largest nation in the world, 749,940 of them hockey players. They come from such mysterious affiliations as the Central Army Club, the Dynamo Society and Spartak. If they play well, they get an apartment 20 square feet larger, a new television and an automobile. What happens to them after they play, I don't know. Some of them seem to play forever.
Eight members of this team are over 30. The oldest, the captain, Mikhailov, is 35. Some are teachers. Some are military officers. The best are honored with the title, "USSR Merited Master of Sport."
Some of the Russians were playing in Olympic matches while most of the Americans were still playing peewee down at the rink, the days their mom could drive them. Most are still in college, or are just out. Their "old man" is Mike Eruzione, a grizzled 25, graduate of Boston U.
Exactly halfway through the third period, the score a tie to the amazement of all, especially the grim-faced rows of comrades sitting to my left. Eruzione came blowing down the ice, found the puck happily delivered to him off the sticks of Dave Silk and Dave Christian, whose father scored the goal that beat the Russians at Squaw Valley the last time the U.S. won a gold, and fired a line drive past Vladimir Myshkin, the Soviet goalie. Myshkin had replaced Vladislav Tretjak in the last second of the first period after the starter and recent star gave up his second goal, and presumably is on the train to Gorki.
Thus did the Americans assume the lead, and thus to their undying credit did they hold it to the end, not building a protective barricade around it, but by skating furiously trying to make it 5-3 instead of 4-3.
At the moment of Eruzione's goal, naturally the arena went instantly insane. (And literally, people were hanging from the rafters.) But in the press box the darndest thing happened.
Veterans of many an evening, an afternoon, even mornings at the routine pursuit of duty in press box or in the field, their emotional sacs barnacled with cynicism and their minds programmed for sardonic wit, sprang to their feet. Violating the self-imposed code of non-partisanship, they shouted with glee, clapped each other across the back, shook hands, thrust clinched fists into the charged air, and down parchment cheeks rutted with age in cases of some of the more moved, tears trickled in salty rivulets.
Some had seen everything from Larsen's perfect game in the World Series to Secretariat winning the Triple Crown, saw Ali in Zaire and Watson take Nicklaus down the stretch at Turnberry, and there hadn't been a wet eye in the crowd. But in this non-political event, against the team whose Summer Olympics will not be favored by America's presence, and in honor of those flags that waved throughout the stands, and this old land of ours, the Red, the White and the Blue, the purple mountain majesty and the rugged ocean shores, the non-partisan American press assumed the privilege of being partisan on this rare, historic occasion. And we don't give a damn who knows.
Not many days ago, the same Russians had played the same Americans an exhibition match in New York. The Russians hadn't just won. It was a rout, 10-3. How ever could these college kids have been expected to come back and win such a match as this?
"They were awed by New York, " said the not-altogether beloved American coach, Herb Brooks of the University of Minnesota. "They were busy looking at Madison Square Garden. Then when the great Russian players were being introduced, I saw our players applauding them. I knew we were in trouble."
It hadn't been an easy week for the Russians here. The Finns led them until the last five minutes and lost. Canada had a two-goal lead and lost. They faced the Americans with a much more polished approach to the game, skated with the skill that comes with experience, were superior stick-handlers, but in the final accounting of it all, had no urge to make 10,000 people -- in a building intended to accommodate 8,000 -- mad with delirium; and to let it be known around the world; even if it's only a war with sticks and pucks, if it's worth caring about, it's worth playing your hindside off to win it.
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