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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.
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Just to make you jealous, TR, a friend of my husband’s gave him a basketball signed by all the members of that Jazz team! Too bad they used a fat marker and some of them aren’t that legible, but still….
Yes, I am jealous.
Discovery’s First Launch after the Challenger Accident
That’s a big event, and gets more significant with time, given that we no longer have a manned space program.
It was funny. The Classroom I was in in Florida just emptied when the a student said “it’s going up”.
Some of the people around me had seen Challenger die. There were tears.
I’ll never forget it.
It was such a pleasure to watch that again.
So few athletes have that thing and I feel so lucky to have grown up watching Jordan. It wasn’t that you thought he had a chance, it was that he would do it. Everyone knew it. Amazing. I’m jealous you saw it live.
I was in Pearl Harbor for the 50th anniversary. I was working at an Army hospital. I said hi to the president. I met hundreds of vets.
The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980. I was in the ash cloud, thick as flour, in Eastern Washington State.
I’ve been to two Bruins Stanley Cup playoff games. Great moments.
I was at the 2002 MLB all-star game that ended in a tie.
I stood on the steps of St Patrick’s Cathedral when Pope Benedict XVI visited New York.
Popes have visited a lot of places, of course. And I was probably the only person staying with the Legionnaries more in consideration of the priesthood than to see Pope Benedict (my favorite of the three who have served in my lifetime). But it was a memorable experience which many envy.
The funny thing is that I could never see and hear him simultaneously during the Mass. On the steps of the cathedral, I could hear him but not see him. Moving across the street, I could see him on a big screen but couldn’t hear him.
For a man who the liberal media liked to call the Church’s vicious rottweiler, he was incredibly soft-spoken. He’s as mild-mannered as Bob Newhart.
It almost made me believe in historical inevitability. The moment he stole the ball at least half the 20,000 people in the Delta Center knew were dead. And we were.
And he seems to have been as kind-hearted. Isn’t it amazing how the media can shape how we see someone, until we actually see them?
Would this count? I took part in protests that led to the downfall of a head of state.
I once had lunch with an apparently renowned woodcarver named Gordon Possien.
An old friend of the family owned a log cabin across from Possien’s in Pitken, Colorado. I helped him move a lot of stuff up there from Texas.
Possien’s “yard’ was full of awesome carvings, from hand-sized statuettes to giant stump carvings. Apparently, he was pretty reclusive and rarely invited people over. I forget how I got invited, but I had lunch with him and his wife in their cabin.
They might have been interested when they heard I was a songwriter. At one point, his wife gave me a photocopy of an autograph — Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, if I remember correctly.
Big country or small? If it’s in South America, then everyone has pretty much done the same thing. Right?
I wonder how that volcanic ash cloud compares to the ash cloud I experienced drifting up from Mexico’s forest fires many years ago. The volcanic cloud probably includes more microscopic glass and more poisonous particulates.
When the forest fire cloud hit Texas, one couldn’t be outside for more than a few minutes at a time. The air was oppressive to both the eyes and the lungs. Awful experience.
I’m not sure if this counts, but we’re in a church group with James Foley’s aunt and her husband. We were praying for his safe return about a year before I knew what ISIS was.
By population, top 15.
It’s true enough that ouster by popular protest occurs with some frequency in certain parts of the world, but you said “historical event”, TR. You didn’t say rare historical event, although you did say “great”. Over-thinker that I am, I’m still working out the tension between the citizens’ right of resistance and the rule of law.
I saw a stand-up comic who said he always roots for the Utah Jazz to win the NBA championship. Picturing the Jazz winning the title, he said, “Could you imagine the party in Salt Lake City? They’d probably stay up till…10 o’clock!”
Love me some Jerry Garcia
This was a very important kind of witnessing.
JORDAN PUSHED OFF!!! The worst no call in the history of the NBA. Haven’t really witnessed a major historical event live. Hopefully it will happen to me one day and I’ll be the central figure.
(1). Historic only in Yankee and Red Sox circles. I was in the upper deck of old Yankee Stadium with my kids and my lovely bride for Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS…the game Aaron Boone ended with a walk off home run in extra innings.
Its too bad Boone got hurt in the off season. I was looking forward to hearing him announced at Fenway Park, like “Bucky F. Dent” before him, as “Aaron F. Boone”
Who knew both guys shared a middle name. Felix? Fred? Frank maybe?
(2). NYC 9/11
2 things all Jazz fans in the deepest reaches of their soul knew would happen but were praying they wouldn’t.
Karl Malone wouldn’t shrink in the biggest moment of the game.
Michael Jordan wouldn’t come up big in the biggest moment of the game.
Unfortunately both were inevitable and no Jazz fan was surprised.
Does my birth count?
Nope, nothing quite as important as all of that. I did fly down to Denver for Todd Helton’s last homestand before retirement. So that was certainly a highlight of my baseball watching career.
There’s still time…
Good. Which reminds me of an old joke they tell about the Mormon Tabernacle Choir when it goes on tour. The desk clerk in their hotel laments, “They come with the Ten Commandments and a ten dollar bill, and don’t break either one of them while they’re here.”
Can you document your presence?