Miracle at Madison Square Garden
- Mike Dickey
- 12 minutes ago
- 2 min read
"Never give up! Failure and rejection are only the first step to succeeding."
-Jim Valvano
The talk of the country this morning is the miraculous comeback of the Knicks last night in Game 4 of the NBA Finals. Down by 29, they came roaring back to win with a tip-in with 1.5 seconds remaining in the game.
It was the greatest comeback, from the greatest deficit, in the history of the NBA playoffs.
Conjecture around the virtual water cooler is that Taylor Swift's courtside attendance removed the jinx left behind when DJT attended the prior game.
Of course, I was asleep when the miracle happened. Peg doesn't care for basketball, and she's working this week which means turning in early. Plus, let's face it, my pattern of fandom is to turn off the television when my team is getting whacked, based on the magical thinking that perhaps my bad juju is directly affecting play.
I missed the other great sports moment in my life for pretty much the same reason.
It was October 1992, and the Braves were playing the Pirates in Game 7 of the NLCS. I've loved the Braves since I was five, growing up with Hank Aaron and Ralph Garr and Phil Niekro. They were pretty much always terrible until, in the early '90s, things started going right. They made the playoffs in '91, going from last place in their division to first. Expectations in '92 were high, but the Pirates held one of the best postseason records in baseball leading up to the '92 NLCS.
So it was no surprise that the series was a nailbiter, going all the way to a seventh game at the now-demolished Fulton County Stadium. The Pirates, behind the phenomenal Doug Drabek, carried a 2-0 lead into the ninth. Your author went to bed, too distraught over the Braves' poor showing to see the final out.
This, my friends, was a mistake.
In a play simple known in sports lore as "the Slide", catcher Sid Bream (formerly a Pirate) rounded third and gimped toward home on his two bad knees, sliding under the tag to carry the Braves to a 3-2 victory and a trip to the World Series.
Of course, if I'd stayed up for the finale the Braves would have lost. That's how it works, eh?
The Knicks and Spurs meet again for Game 5 in San Antonio on Saturday. If the Knickerbockers win, it'll be their first championship since Richard Nixon was president (maybe having a criminal Republican in the Oval Office is their magic talisman). I probably won't watch--I don't want to jinx what is becoming America's Team.
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