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Have You Ever Witnessed In-person a Historical Event?
Here’s mine. It’s June 1998 and my beloved Utah Jazz are one game from elimination in the NBA finals. We have a one-point lead and the ball with 30 seconds to go. The ball is passed to Karl Malone; but with less than 20 seconds to go, Michael Jordan sneaks in and strips the ball from Malone.
I lean over to my wife and say, “We are toast.” Jordan takes the ball down, jukes Bryon Russell left and nails “the shot” from the left arc. My seat position was down the court, directly behind Jordan. The shot was dead on line and nothing but net.
The Bulls win the title. And Jordan retired. I was going to be able to tell my grandchildren that I saw the great Jordan’s last NBA shot, a shot that won the Bulls another title. Then he came out of retirement for an entirely forgettable period with the Wizards.
Even so, I saw that shot in person. [Start the video below at about 2:45 and go to 4:25. Near the end you’ll see the shot exactly as I saw it.]
It still makes me sick to my stomach. Stockton and Malone are two of the greatest players never to win a title. And there’s only one reason they failed: it’s name is Michael Jordan.
Have you witnessed a great event? Tell us about it.
Published in General
Amen, brother.
That qualifies as a historical event (as long as it wasn’t Argentina).
The most famous thing I witnessed was probably several Panama Canal Treaty debates in the Senate. It was the first time I seriously questioned my high school socialism. I had lived in Panama, and I wondered how good an idea it was to give Omar Torrijos the Canal Zone.
That summer I went to what was a big deal at the time: the Stones did a small show at the Warner Theatre. It made me a confirmed Stones-hater.
Just missed the big 1974 Lima, Peru earthquake (magnitude ~8.1), by a month. We did get a 6+ precursor, but I slept through it :-).
June 19, 2006, Game 7 Stanley Cup Finals, RBC Center, Raleigh, NC. Carolina Hurricanes 3-Edmonton Oilers 1. Everybody stood up for the entire game. My ears rang for 3 days after that, but MAN IT WAS WORTH IT! Maybe we will get back there one day.
9/11. From very close. Too close.
I was there for the body wash thread. Does that count?
I participated in this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Sunday_for_Soviet_Jews
In fact, I actually met in-person with Sharansky about 2-3 days ahead of the event; I was co-chair of my undergrad Soviet Jewry Committee, one of whose members was an emigre (and a year behind me in undergrad) whose family had been very close with Sharansky before they got out of the USSR and he was sent to the Gulag, so (at this emigre/undergrad’s request) about 10 of us had the privilege of sitting quietly in a corner of the Hillel facility and talking with Sharansky — and mind you, he’d only just been released.
On a less happy note, I was in Israel when this happened:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Yitzhak_Rabin
That doesn’t strictly qualify as “witnessing,” but given how small and interconnected Israel is, in a certain sense it meets the standard.
Indeed, I happened to have just begun studying in a formal program in Israel (under the aegis of the Jewish Agency and the Ministry of Education), and the director at that time had been in the Sayeret Matkal commando unit which rescued the hijacked Sabena jet circa May 1972 (same incident/team which featured Bibi Netanyahu and Ehud Barak).
So, within 24 hours of the assassination, this director had me and the rest of the group in Jerusalem to meet with Rabin’s old comrade Uzi Narkiss. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzi_Narkiss)
I have been present for my entire life. What could be more historic?
One of Ricochet’s best moments. A great moment for me.
I think we got nearly 100 comments: all trying to explain why body wash is better than a plain old bar of soap. Being a cantankerous traditionalist, I’ve stuck with soap.
I wish I could say the same. I tend to go AWOL from time to time.
If have seen in person five very memorable sports events. In chronological order the first was Bill Mazeroski’s home run to beat the Yankees in 1960, Sugar Ray Robinson’s last fight, a loss to Joey Archer in 1965, the Pittsburgh Pipers win the first ABA Championship in 1968 !I was an eyewitness to Franco Harris making the Immaculate Reception in 1972 and lastly I saw Tony Dorsett have 303 yards rushing against Notre Dame in 1975.
There was that one time I was shot at over Iraq…
Robin Yount’s 3000th hit.
Trevor Hoffman’s 600th save.
Easter Sunday 1987 Milwaukee Brewers score 5 runs in the bottom of the 9th to win their 12th consecutive game to start the season. I’ve been to playoff games, World Series games, I’ve seen 4 home runs in a game by a player, 5 home runs in an inning by a team. I’ve seen one-hitters and 18 strikeouts in a game. That was still the single most exciting baseball game I’ve ever been to.
Woah! This makes my little story insignificant, especially the Mazeroski and Harris events.
Question: On the Immaculate Reception, did or did not the ball hit the ground?
He was in an airliner at 40,000 feet, and an Iraqi kid shot his bb gun at him.
100th year anniversary of the indy 500
Got deployed to Kosovo in the army (nearly caused an international incident with russia)
Started a bar clearing brawl in Germany
Met slave prostitutes in macedonia
Helped put the pluto space probe into space
Helped put other stuff into space
Closed an Army Base
Deactivated a Unit
and so forth.
My friend practically dragged me to a concert at The Electric Factory in Philadelphia. Seems this band The Who was playing. “They are just going to smash their guitars” I said. The last thing they had done was I Can See for Miles. No, he said, they are a great live band.
We had a way to get to the front of the stage via a side entrance, there were no seats. There were maybe 500 people there. I was sitting directly below Pete Townsend it was a stage about 3 feet high like a high school auditorium stage no guards or bouncers, they just weren’t that famous and it was a different time. They opened the show with the epic chord progression I had never heard before… Pinball Wizard. The album Tommy had not yet been released in the US.
I was living in Cairo, Egypt in 1979 and I travelled to Aswan 600 miles south without bringing my passport, not thinking I would need it. Checking into a hostel I found out how very wrong I was. Coincidentally, the Shah of Iran was scheduled to stop in Aswan the next day. I had to go to the local police station to ‘register’ (a bit scary) and I was placed under house arrest for the two days he was there as a precaution.
All my friends went to Woodstack and I didn’t.
Stay thirsty my friends.
9/11. I was across the street walking to WTC subway when American Flight 11 hit the North Tower. As ParisParamus says, too close.
PHCheese. Great list!
Move over Joe Flaherty, Cheese is my new Pittsburgh hero.
Chicago Blackhawks clinching the Stanley Cup in OT over the Flyers in 2010.
Billy Joel’s concert in Madison Square Garden New Year’s Eve 2000.
I didn’t see September 11th happen, but I could see the smoke rising from my front lawn.
Ok, it wasn’t me, but my Dad was in the Khobar towers when they were bombed – his room window was shattered by the blast. We fortunately didn’t hear about the bombings until Dad called to say that he was alright, so we didn’t worry.
-E
There probably was a foul, but there was no way the refs would call that kind of foul at that point in the game.
That’s why I called it a horrible No Call. A human error made by a referee who missed an obvious foul.
Could hear the helicopters from the OJ Simpson slow motion car chase, because they passed within a mile of my house. As for the chase itself, I watched it on TV.
Experienced the eerie silence in the L.A. basin due to the 1992 riot-related curfew. Nothing stranger than not hearing freeway noise.
Felt the 1994 Northridge quake.
Saw the Malibu fires (1996?) from a great distance.
Anyone who has lived in LA for the past twenty some years can say the same things, though.
Tubula Rasa, I watched Terry Bradshaw get hit and by the time I looked down field Franco had caught the ball. At first I didn’t realize he had it. Then the refs looked at each other and signaled a TD. Your guess is as good as mine. I was given the ticket because everyone thought the Steelers would lose. Those were good football days in the Bergh.
Casey, have I replaced Froggy Morris?
Chilly Billy
The closest I come to sports history is being at the game for a unassisted triple play by Troy Toluwitzki in 2007. Only 15 in MLB history, the moment passes by in about 20 seconds.