The Greatest Events in Sports

It has been 50 years since what has been labeled the greatest NFL game, the 1958 NFL championship game won by the Baltimore Colts over the New York Giants in sudden death in the first nationally televised football broadcast.

It has been argued that the game might not be the greatest NFL game, but perhaps the game with the greatest impact. Five decades and many spine-tingling games later the debate continues. In further commemoration, The Times has decided to put the greatest events in sports up for debate. Our list:

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AUTO RACING

Feb. 18, 1979: Daytona 500

NASCAR’s evolution from a largely Southeastern sport into the most popular form of American auto racing started at the Daytona 500 on Feb. 18, 1979, with a wild finish that captivated a nation being served its first live 500-mile stock car race on television.

On the last lap, Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison raced side by side for the lead down the backstretch and then hit each other, both slamming into the outside wall and out of contention. Richard Petty, more than a mile behind, raced past the wreckage to win.

The fireworks weren’t over. After Petty took the checkered flag, CBS’ Ken Squier announced “And there’s a fight!” The TV cameras swung to the infield, where Allison and his brother Bobby -- another driver who had stopped at the crash scene -- traded punches with Yarborough. Years later, Yarborough echoed the consensus in NASCAR when he said “that’s the race that turned this whole sport around.”

-- Jim Peltz

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MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL

Oct. 3, 1951: New York Giants 5, Brooklyn Dodgers 4

“The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!”

Russ Hodges hollered those words more than half a century ago, and the most famous call in baseball endures to this day. The bitter rivals tied atop the National League standings in the regular season, split the first two playoff games and played to a 1-1 tie through seven innings of the deciding third game, with the World Series awaiting the winner.

The game featured five future Hall of Famers, three for the Dodgers. Those three -- Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider and Jackie Robinson -- each scored in the eighth inning, as the Dodgers took a 4-1 lead. But, with one out in the bottom of the ninth, the Giants scored four times, the final three on what we would now call a “walk-off home run” by Bobby Thomson, against Ralph Branca.

They called it “the shot ‘heard round the world,” and the echoes linger to this day, in the grace of Thomson and Branca’s lasting friendship, in allegations 50 years later that the Giants stole the Dodgers’ signs, in Hodges’ legendary call and as an essential chapter in the rivalry that transplanted itself to California seven years later, establishing baseball as a truly national sport.

-- Bill Shaikin

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BOXING

June 22, 1938: Joe Louis defeats Max Schmeling by TKO in Yankee Stadium

Seventy years before this country elected a black president, Louis stood as a unifying symbol in the rematch against the German who had knocked him out two years earlier. Schmeling had been instructed by Adolf Hitler to “win for the fatherland,” and Franklin D. Roosevelt told Louis in a personal pre-fight meeting that “we need muscles like yours to beat Germany.”

More than 70,000 fans packed Yankee Stadium for a bout that essentially previewed World War II, with Germany on the brink of executing a European occupation and Holocaust. “There were still lynchings going on in the South, but Louis epitomized the feelings of blacks and whites,” legendary boxing writer Bert Sugar said. “Taking it out of the framework of popularity and financial success -- which it was -- it was still the most important boxing match ever sociologically.”

In his dressing room, Louis, the “Brown Bomber,” asked sportswriter Jimmy Cannon how long he thought the fight would last, said Sugar, and Cannon said four rounds. Louis responded by holding up his thumb, indicating one round. He knocked Schmeling down three times in the first two minutes, and referee Art Donovan (father of the “Greatest Game” Baltimore Colts player) stopped the bout 124 seconds after it started when Schmeling’s corner threw in the towel.

-- Lance Pugmire

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COLLEGE BASKETBALL

March 28, 1992, Philadelphia, NCAA Regional Finals:

Duke 104, Kentucky 103 (0T)

The most important college basketball game ever contested was in 1966, when Don Haskins’ all-black lineup at Texas Western in El Paso shocked Adolph Rupp’s all-white Kentucky team to win the national title. The game that broke broadcasting ground was Lew Alcindor’s UCLA versus Elvin Hayes’ Houston at the Astrodome in 1968. Best game in November: Gonzaga’s triple-overtime win over Michigan State at the 2005 Maui Invitational.

Greatest college basketball game of all time: March 28, 1992, Philadelphia, NCAA Regional Finals: Duke 104, Kentucky 103 (OT). Highlight you can’t see enough unless you receive mail in Kentucky: Grant Hill’s quarterback pass to Christian Laettner, who turns around and sticks a buzzer beater in bluegrass’ face. Gene Wojciechowski, who covered the game for the L.A. Times, later recounts in a book: “My goose bumps get goose bumps thinking about this game.”

-- Chris Dufresne

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SPORTS BROADCAST

Sept. 5, 1972: Jim McKay, Munich Olympics Massacre

Jim McKay’s 16 hours of live, unscripted coverage of the kidnapping and murder of 11 Israeli athletes who were taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists from the Olympic village in Munich was a precursor for the 24-hour, live news cycles of today.

“When I was a kid my father used to say our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized. Our worst fears have been realized tonight. They have now said there were 11 hostages; two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport tonight. They’re all gone.”

Those were McKay’s grave and graceful words after the tragic end of a crisis that proved sports were not a haven from the world’s evils.

-- Diane Pucin

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COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Jan. 4, 2006, Rose Bowl, BCS Championship: Texas 41, USC 38

Nowhere does history stipulate that the greatest game had to be filmed in black-and-white. What if it was played last week, or last year? What if it was played three years ago? Well, it was. People talk about Michigan State versus Notre Dame in 1966 or Texas versus Arkansas in 1969. Flutie to Phelan was phantastic back in 1984.

But nothing tops Texas 41, USC 38, on Jan. 4, 2006, in the Rose Bowl for the national title. The game featured two USC Heisman Trophy winners and one Texas quarterback who thought he should have won it: Vince Young. USC legacy stories were one button-push from being filed on deadline when Young miraculously rallied Texas from 12 points behind with 6:42 left to deny USC a third straight national title while ending the Trojans’ 34-game winning streak. Young’s eight-yard run on fourth-and-five with 19 seconds left proved to be the game-winner. Young accounted for a Rose Bowl-record 467 yards. Four players from that game became top-10 NFL picks in 2006. This game also probably saved the much-maligned BCS as we know it. Sorry about that.

-- Chris Dufresne

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GOLF

June 18, 1960: U.S. Open

Arnold Palmer, in 15th place and seven strokes off the lead heading into the final round of the U.S. Open at Cherry Hills in Colorado, drove the green on the par-four first hole, birdied six of his first seven holes and staged the largest single-day comeback in Open history. The runner-up, two strokes back, was the 20-year-old U.S. Amateur champion, Jack Nicklaus, who was paired with 47-year-old icon Ben Hogan, trying to win a record fifth Open. It was the convergence of golf’s future and past -- and the coronation of golf’s present.

TV coverage of the final round stretched into prime time in the East. Palmer, 30, had already won the 1958 and 1960 Masters, but this performance firmly established him not only as golf’s reigning superstar, but probably the preeminent sports figure of his time. Arnie’s Army had witnessed the kind of late charge that would become his trademark. His 65 was a record final round for a winner and helped take golf to a much higher level on the American sporting landscape.

-- Mike James

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HIGH SCHOOLS

Oct. 6, 2001: Concord De La Salle 29, Long Beach Poly 15

It was the first time matching No. 1 against No. 2 nationally in high school football. It started the era of high school sports teams traveling long distances to play big games on TV. The game produced two books. “One Great Game,” by Don Wallace, and “When the Game Stands Tall: the Story of the De La Salle Spartans and Football’s Longest Winning Streak,” by Neil Hayes.

An overflow crowd of 17,321 filled Long Beach Veterans Stadium. De La Salle, ranked No. 2 by USA Today, extended the nation’s longest winning streak to 117 games, led by running back Maurice Drew. Poly, ranked No. 1, had one of the most talented teams in Southland history, led by Hershel Dennis, Manuel Wright, Darnell Bing, Winston Justice and Marcedes Lewis.

-- Eric Sondheimer

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HORSE RACING

June 9, 1973: Secretariat wins Belmont to complete Triple Crown

Horse racing was in its heyday and a star such as Secretariat could only make things better.

Only five horses entered the Belmont, three of them sent to the gate by handlers who probably knew they were mostly thinking wishfully by taking on the dominant winner of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness. The horse with the only real chance was Sham, who hung tough for about three-quarters of a mile. Then Secretariat accelerated, Sham tired and the rest of the race could be defined by Sham’s name.

Secretariat won by 31 lengths, a record. His time for the mile and a half was 2 minutes 24 seconds, a record. The world of horse racing had its first Triple Crown champion in 25 years and would have two more in the next five -- Seattle Slew in ’77 and Affirmed in ’78.

The name Secretariat became synonymous with superstar, and people flocked to the tracks to patronize a sport that had one of those.

-- Bill Dwyre

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ICE HOCKEY

Feb. 22, 1980: U.S. Olympic team 4, USSR 3

The Big Red Machine was at its peak, dominating international hockey with the incomparable goaltending of Vladislav Tretiak, a core of well-drilled defensemen and forwards whose pinpoint passing defied belief. They were pros in all but name and Coach Herb Brooks’ college kids, though swift and young, were given no chance in a medal-round matchup that had strong political overtones because of tension between the two nations.

Jim Craig played the game of his life in goal for the U.S., Mark Johnson scored twice and Mike Eruzione had the winner with 10 minutes left in the third period, an upset that has since come to symbolize the ultimate triumph of an underdog. That victory -- which hugely overshadows the U.S. team’s triumph over Finland two days later in the gold-medal game -- championed the cause of American-born players, who were then a small minority in the NHL. It also opened the way for college-trained players to make significant impacts in the NHL.

-- Helene Elliott

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LOS ANGELES

July 28-Aug. 12, 1984: Summer Olympics

The Olympic movement was hanging onto a cliff ledge. Mexico City in ’68 had featured brutalized protesters and raised black fists. Israeli athletes had been kidnapped and murdered in Munich in ’72. Montreal overspent its unlimited budget and left a giant construction crane hanging overhead in the Olympic Stadium in ’76. In Moscow in ‘80, much of the non-communist world, especially the United States, boycotted in protest of a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

By 1979, when the bid for 1984 was contested, the only interested parties were Tehran and Los Angeles. The choice was easy and the resulting Summer Games, run by a disciplined visionary named Peter Ueberroth, not only delivered a smashing aesthetic success, but also delivered perhaps the first, and certainly the last, fiscally responsible Olympics.

When the final gold medal was handed out, Ueberroth had managed an Olympics of sponsorship, TV revenue and unprecedented ticket demand that produced $232.5 million in net profit.

Los Angeles, which is too big and spread out and unwieldy and diverse and distracted to embrace any one thing, embraced the Olympics like nothing before or since.

-- Bill Dwyre

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NBA

May 5, 1969: Boston 108, Lakers 106

The NBA Finals have had great moments, like Willis Reed dragging his numb leg out to face Wilt Chamberlain in 1970, and great shots, like Gar Heard’s moon ball in 1976, but the greatest game was Game 7, between the Jerry West-Elgin Baylor-Chamberlain Lakers and the 35-year-old Bill Russell’s Over-the-Hill Celtics in 1969.

It was the cruelest defeat of all for the Lakers, who were already 0-6 against the Celtics, the one in which owner Jack Kent Cooke penned balloons up in the Forum ceiling for the victory celebration, Chamberlain took himself out, Coach Butch Van Breda Kolff refused to put him back in, and Boston’s Don Nelson hit a key 15-footer that bounced off the back of the rim and somehow dropped into the basket. For the Celtics, it was the last of their 11 titles in Russell’s 13 seasons. For the Lakers, it was just agony as usual.

-- Mark Heisler

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OLYMPICS

1936: Jesse Owens in Summer Olympics

In searching for the ultimate Olympic experience, you have to go no further than perhaps the ultimate Olympic historian -- Bud Greenspan. His 1995 book, “100 Greatest Moments in Olympic History,” ranks Jesse Owens from 1936 in Berlin as No. 1.

There were actually four moments for Owens -- gold medal performances in the 100 meters, 200, long jump and 400 relay, an athletic feat that wouldn’t be duplicated until Carl Lewis won the same events in 1984.

But Owens had an added burden, competing as an African American in a time of intense racial discrimination in his home country and on German soil, where a Nazi government was attempting to cement a myth of Aryan supremacy. Only weeks before the opening ceremony, proponents of that ideology were emboldened by German boxer Max Schmeling’s defeat of Joe Louis, the most admired African American athlete of the time in the United States.

Owens overcame enormous pressure to emerge as the greatest Olympian of his time and beyond.

-- Randy Harvey

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SOCCER

May 25, 2005: UEFA Champions League final

Liverpool scored one of the greatest comebacks in sports history after falling behind favored AC Milan, 1-0, in the first minute and 3-0 by halftime.

Against Milan’s relentless defense, the lead seemed insurmountable, but Liverpool rallied with three goals in six incredible minutes in the second half.

The teams wrestled through overtime, still tied, bringing on a penalty-kick shootout.

Liverpool goalkeeper Jerzy Dudek made two saves, including the clincher against Andriy Shevchenko, and Liverpool, one of the most honored soccer teams in Europe, had pulled off its unlikeliest championship ever.

-- Mike Penner

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TENNIS

Sept. 9, 1968: Arthur Ashe defeats Tom Okker of the Netherlands, 14-12, 5-7, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3

Tennis had been almost solely a wealthy white person’s world. But Ashe, a skinny black player from Richmond, Va., and UCLA, opened a lot of eyes and future doors by winning the U.S. title the first time it had been open to the pros.

Eleven years before, a black woman, Althea Gibson, had done similarly by winning the U.S. Nationals. But the comparative strength of Ashe’s personality and the length of career -- he won 33 titles and two more majors in 11 years on the pro tour -- left many people viewing tennis as a sport for all, rather than a country-club outing.

Ashe was still an amateur when he won that title. Okker got the $14,000 first prize and Ashe got $28-a-day meal money.

Some 29 years later, when the U.S. Tennis Assn. got around to naming its current massive stadium in Flushing Meadow, it correctly named it for Ashe.

Interviewed years later about his ’68 title, Ashe noted, with perspective and overview typical of him, that no United States male player had won his country’s title since Tony Trabert in 1955. “That day,” he said, “it was more about being an American than being a black American.”

-- Bill Dwyre

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WOMEN

July 10, 1999: USA Wins World Cup

How could you mention the greatest women’s event and not have Billie Jean King in the same sentence?

Easy.

Bobby Riggs was on the other side of the net in their landmark tennis match in 1973.

The greatest women’s event -- only women on the field -- came on a sun-baked, inferno-like afternoon at the Rose Bowl on July 10, 1999. It was the final of the Women’s World Cup between the United States and China and there was no winner after 90 draining minutes on the soccer pitch nor after two 15-minute periods of overtime.

This one came down to penalty kicks and created one iconic moment for the ages: Brandi Chastain whipping off her jersey and swinging it over her head after her winning kick.

-- Lisa Dillman