Miracle Work in Past, They Moved On in Life

Time marched backward Friday, to an era when it was our parents who had the gray hair and mortgages and the slacks with elastic waistbands, not us.

To a time when we were younger, more idealistic, less certain of where we were heading in life.

To a time when all things seemed possible--and for the members of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, the impossible was possible.

All 20 players who created the “Miracle on Ice” at Lake Placid nearly 22 years ago reunited Friday at the L.A. Convention Center for the first time since they visited the White House days after the gold-medal triumph that stunned the hockey world. Most had seen one another over the years in groups of three or four or 15. But they hadn’t been together as a team since 1980, when the youngest, Mike Ramsey, was 19, and the oldest, Buzz Schneider, was 25, and the world was theirs.

They’re all in their 40s now. Yet, though the reflection they see daily in the mirror is that of an adult, they see one another as the kids they were in 1980.

“It’s like going to your class reunion,” Dave Christian said, “and you’ve got a bunch of old people telling you they went to school with you.”

Despite the years and the receding hairlines--for those who had hair--they immediately fell into their old patterns as they gathered for a “game” on a mini-rink against a team of NHL alumni. Players who had been clowns in 1980 were the clowns Friday. Those who were quiet in 1980 were reticent Friday.

“Those things never change,” said Mark Wells, who has endured several back surgeries and other medical woes and played Friday against his doctors’ orders. “I played in the Olympics and won a gold medal, but you know what, being here at age 44, after kind of being an invalid the last 16, 18 years, this is bigger.”

It was big. It was a license for them to be kids again, to wallow in nostalgia for a few hours and be grateful they were all there, though perhaps thinner on top and thicker around the middle than they were in 1980.

“‘The Today Show’ had nine or 10 guys in New York and I saw them and said to my wife, ‘They look old,’ and she didn’t say anything,” Ramsey said. “Then I said, ‘Do we look that old?’ and she didn’t say anything.”

Mark Pavelich, notoriously reclusive and last seen by some of his teammates 15 years ago, emerged from the woods of northern Minnesota to be there. He drove 22 hours, showing up in khakis and hunting boots and vest as the pregame introductions began. Teammates were happily surprised to see him in the flesh.

“There are a lot of interesting things between here and northern Minnesota,” Mark Johnson said. “I wasn’t sure he’d get here.”

Why did he leave the fish and game and peace of the great north woods for this raucous reunion?

“It was just that time,” he said, in what, for him, amounts to a speech.

Never was more said in fewer words. As we approach another Olympics, it was just that time for them--and for me, a reporter who covered the 1980 U.S. Olympic team for New York Newsday--to enjoy the fact we’re all still alive and able to be together in the post-Sept. 11 world.

I hadn’t seen some of them for years. As a hockey writer for nearly two decades, I saw Christian, Johnson, Ramsey, Ken Morrow, Neal Broten and Jack O’Callahan as they went to solid NHL careers. But others, such as Schneider, Eric Strobel and Wells, remained, in my mind, as they looked on the pages of the 1980 team media guide I dug out of the closet the other day.

I gasped when I saw John Harrington, his brown hair still thick but decidedly gray. I gasped even louder when I saw O’Callahan, who had no hair at all. Team captain Mike Eruzione, who has made a living off Lake Placid, is heavy enough for his teammates to have joked about it.

“When they’re doing the introductions and they bring Mike out last,” their coach, Herb Brooks, recounted with glee, “O’Callahan says, ‘Eruzione, it looks like they’re introducing everyone by weight, so you know who’s gonna be last.’”

They were a team again, laughing and needling each other. And I was again allowed a peek at this wonderful bond that has survived time and distance and career turns good and bad.

The Lake Placid Games were the greatest hockey moment most of them enjoyed; it was certainly among the greatest upsets ever to unfold at the Olympics or in sports. The players became public property, in a way. Yet all handled it with uncommon grace and class.

“The moment was public property, not the team,” said Brooks, who will take his own nostalgia trip in a few weeks when he coaches the 2002 U.S. Olympic team at Salt Lake City. “These guys were mature guys. They’ve all been very successful. They’re doing different things and they’ve all made adjustments in their lives. They’re not narcissistic people. They don’t live off this. They’ve made the transition to everyday life and they’ve never been hung up on themselves.”

One player told me a year or two after Lake Placid he hoped he’d never be one of those former athletes who sat on a bar stool and told whoever would listen that he was on the 1980 hockey team, that he used to be somebody. He said he hoped he didn’t have to look back some day and realize he peaked when he was 22 or 24.

Judging by what they’ve made of themselves--bankers, financial advisors, an oral surgeon, two coaches--they’ve kept Lake Placid in its proper perspective. It was a wonderful time, one worth cherishing for something that can never happen again athletically or emotionally. But they’ve stayed open to greater possibilities in their lives and never felt their lives went downhill from there.

I hope I can say the same, that I’ve stayed open to the possibilities of wonders to come at Salt Lake City or Athens or Dodger Stadium or Staples Center. It was just that time. This is another.