Down to the Wire

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For sheer drama, I suppose it would be hard for any Super Bowl to top the one that was played in Atlanta 15 years ago today.

I'm old enough that I can admit that I saw at least portions of every Super Bowl that has been played so far. I've seen some dramatic games, and I've seen some blowouts. The Super Bowl that was played 15 years ago today was expected to be a blowout, but it turned out to be perhaps the most intense finish anyone has seen in nearly half a century of Super Bowls.

The St. Louis Rams were favored, perhaps not by typical blowout proportions (seven points) but certainly in the minds of most football followers. They scored more points that season than anyone else, averaging nearly 33 points per game. They had scored at least 30 points in seven of their last eight games, including their NFC playoff games. It was not unreasonable to believe that they could do it against the Tennessee Titans in Super Bowl XXXIV.

The Titans could score, too, but not as much. They averaged 24.5 points per game; they came in at just under that in each of their AFC playoff games.

So it was reasonable to conclude that the Rams would win the game. Just one problem. No one told the Titans.

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QB Kurt Warner passed for more than 400 yards, but he completed only 53% of his passes.

If Warner was frustrated, think about running back Marshall Faulk, who ran for nearly 1400 yards during the season but was held to a paltry 17 yards on 10 carries against Tennessee. Meanwhile, Eddie George of Tennessee ran for nearly 100 yards and scored two touchdowns in the second half.

Three Jeff Wilkins field goals gave the Rams a 9–0 lead at intermission, hardly what they were accustomed to. They added to their lead early in the second half when Warner threw a nine–yard touchdown pass to Torry Holt. Then George scored a touchdown in the final seconds of the third quarter, and the Titans went for two. They weren't successful so the Rams took a 16–6 lead into the fourth quarter.

George scored another touchdown, and the Titans trailed by three, 16–13. Then Tennessee held St. Louis to a three–and–out and drove to the Rams' 25, where Al Del Greco's 43–yard field goal tied the game.

But not for long. After the ensuing kickoff, Warner gave the audience what they came to see — a long scoring play. He connected with Isaac Bruce for a 73–yard touchdown, and the Rams led, 23–16, with just over two minutes to play.

At that point, I guess most of the people watching the game figured it was over. I know I did. But it wasn't. George and quarterback Steve McNair took the Titans from their 12–yard line to the Rams' 10. With the final seconds ticking off, McNair completed a pass to Kevin Dyson ...

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... who came up a yard short as the Rams' Mike Jones dragged him down and preserved the victory.

It was a fantastic finish to what had been a truly super Super Bowl.

Leapfrogging the Babe

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"A black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all–time baseball idol. ... And for the first time in a long time, that poker face in Aaron shows the tremendous strain and relief of what it must have been like to live with for the past several months."

Vin Scully
Dodgers broadcaster

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Jackie Robinson was long before my time.

I've heard stories about him. I've read books about him. I admire his accomplishments, and I would have to say that my generation's Jackie Robinson was Hank Aaron. They both broke barriers.

I guess few people realized it at first. When I was a child, it seemed that most people assumed Willie Mays would be the one to break Babe Ruth's career home run record. That was to be expected, I guess. Mays' major–league career began a couple of years before Aaron's, so Mays got off to an early statistical lead, but Aaron kept plodding along.

At some point, Aaron passed Mays. I don't know precisely when. But I do know that 40 years ago today, he passed the Babe, too.

Compared to some contemporary sports heroes, Aaron must seem hopelessly quaint. He never took steroids. He never resorted to bluster or bragging. In fact, my memory is that Aaron was very soft spoken. He let his accomplishments speak for themselves.

(Speaking of which, Aaron had a somewhat meager postseason record. He appeared in the World Series twice, winning it once, before he was 25. He also appeared in the National League Championship Series the first year that major league baseball was broken up into divisions. That was it.

(But he made the most of his opportunities, batting .362 and clubbing six home runs in 69 official postseason at–bats.)

I can only imagine the stress he must have been under in the offseason between the 1973 season and the 1974 season. You see, he came within one home run of tying the Babe's all–time mark in 1973, and he had to go through an entire offseason knowing that he only needed two more home runs to become the all–time home run king.

During those months, he was subjected to the most vile and hateful treatment imaginable. Threats were made against his life. Unsupported, slanderous rumors were spread about him and his family. At times, he must have wondered if it was worth it.

Jon Friedman writes in TIME that Aaron "got off easy" because he didn't have to contend with social media.

That's a debatable point, I think. It may not have been an as technologically advanced time, but, as Ben Nightengale writes in USA Today, "it was an often joyless and lonely pursuit" for Aaron.

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Still, he persevered — in spite of the threats and the glare of the public spotlight.

And on April 4, in the first game of the season, Aaron hit a three–run homer off Jack Billingham at Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium, tying Ruth. In hindsight, it is easy to presume that he was impatient to get the record chase behind him, but he did nothing in his other three at–bats that day.

The Braves were forced by the commissioner to play Aaron once more in Cincinnati; he went three for four but didn't break Ruth's record so the home run chase returned to Atlanta.

In 1974, NBC ordinarily did not broadcast a baseball game on Monday nights until summer, when the rest of the networks' schedules were in reruns, but NBC made special arrangements to televise Aaron's first home game of the season — and, hopefully, history as well.

Everything played out perfectly.

It might not have. Aaron hit only 20 home runs all year — his lowest output since his rookie season 20 years earlier — and he could have gone a couple of weeks before he hit another one. But NBC was fortunate.

Al Downing was on the mound for the Dodgers. The Braves trailed, 3–1, when Aaron came to bat in the bottom of the fourth. Third baseman Darrell Evans was on first following an error by Dodgers shortstop Bill Russell. Aaron drilled his record–setting home run and ignited a four–run inning that gave the Braves the lead — and, eventually, the win.

Aaron's parents came out to greet him at home plate as he rounded the bases. His mother held tightly to her son and refused, for the longest time, to let go. I heard later that she was afraid he would be shot; there had been threats made that he would be shot at home plate if he broke Ruth's record.

He wasn't shot, of course, but I don't think he got off easy.

It should be a much more relaxed atmosphere for Aaron at Turner Field tonight, though. A ceremony commemorating the 40th anniversary of his record–setting home run is planned before the start of the game. The first 45,000 fans will receive commemorative posters, and "[e]very 40th person to check–in will receive a $40 Racetrac giftcard."

And Aaron will be applauded and cheered by all tonight.

The Bombing in Olympic Park

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If it had happened a few years later, someone might have noticed something in time to make a difference. Lives might have been saved. Dozens of injuries might have been prevented.

But no one noticed. Well, one person apparently noticed — but I'll get back to that shortly.

Sometime in the earliest minutes of July 27, 1996, a 29–year–old man named Eric Rudolph placed a knapsack containing three pipe bombs beneath a bench in Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park, which was designed to serve as a kind of town square, a friendly gathering place, for the Summer Games.

Fifteen years ago tonight, several hundred people were in Centennial Olympic Park for a late–night concert. The atmosphere, as far as I can tell, was light and jovial — as it should have been. The '96 Games were already being hailed as a rousing success. American gymnast Kerri Strug had demonstrated the true spirit of Olympic competition only a few days earlier with her gutsy vault in the team all–around.

Then the bomb went off around 1:20 a.m. It killed a Georgia woman. A cameraman from Turkey suffered a fatal heart attack while running to cover the event. Hundreds were injured.

Meanwhile, Rudolph had disappeared into the Georgia night.

Rudolph spent many years on the FBI's notorious Most Wanted list, in part for the Centennial Olympic Park bombing but also for bombings he carried out at abortion clinics and a gay bar in the years after Olympic Park.

He was a fugitive from justice for several years — until he was finally taken into custody in 2003 and, per the conditions of a plea agreement, sentenced to four consecutive life terms in prison.

But it was more than two years after the Olympic Park bombing before the Department of Justice connected Rudolph, by that time a suspect in the other incidents, to that crime.

Initially, the focus of Olympic officials was on heightening security, and precautions were taken that were regarded by some as intrusive at the time — but would hardly raise an eyebrow today. Metal detectors were put in place at every entrance, and bags were searched. At a time when airport scans have been criticized for being too revealing, it all seems tame in hindsight.

But it wasn't enough. Investigators were eager to blame someone — anyone — and put to rest public fears. They settled on a scapegoat — with the help of the media.

The scapegoat was a fellow named Richard Jewell, a security guard. He discovered Rudolph's bomb before it went off, alerted authorities and helped evacuate the area. Because of his actions, many people undoubtedly avoided injury or death, and he was hailed as a hero.

But that quickly changed to what has been called a "trial by media." The Atlanta Journal–Constitution reported that the FBI was treating Jewell as a suspect. That was based primarily on the FBI's "lone bomber" profile of the probable culprit.

Whether that was largely correct or not is open to interpretation, but this much is certain — it focused the glare of the media spotlight on the wrong man.

It was suggested that Jewell was a failed law enforcement officer who planned the bombing precisely so he could find the bomb and be proclaimed a hero. He would be in demand as a security provider, the kind of on–the–ball guy that any company would like to have on its security detail.

He was never formally accused of anything, but his home was searched, his friends and co–workers were interrogated, and lawsuits were filed against him by victims of the Olympic Park bombing.

Personally, I was quite surprised by all that. I would have thought that people had learned their lesson about jumping to conclusions in the spring of 1995, when authorities initially suspected a Muslim man of blowing up the federal building in Oklahoma City — only to discover that the evidence pointed to a more likely suspect, a homegrown Christian boy named Timothy McVeigh.

But some people have never needed much encouragement to jump to conclusions. Sometimes all it takes is a clever summation from a crafty prosecutor. At other times, even less credible means have been sufficient to persuade the gullible.

Ironically, the only way Jewell was able to ease the pressure was to take — and pass with flying colors — a polygraph, which would not be admissible in a court of law because of its unreliability.

Nevertheless, the public bought it.

After he had been cleared, Jewell filed a series of lawsuits against those who had perpetuated the negative stories about him — especially NBC and the Journal–Constitution.

Among other things, he demanded apologies. That was for him. There was little, if any, financial gain; most of the money would be used to pay attorneys and the IRS. Jewell simply wanted his good name restored.

It was a costly lesson for the media outlets. NBC agreed to pay Jewell $500,000. CNN settled for an undisclosed amount.

The Journal–Constitution wound up not paying Jewell anything. The case against the paper lingered in the courts over the issue of whether newspapers can be compelled to reveal their sources. Ultimately, the case was dismissed in December 2007, four months after Jewell died at the age of 44.

Well, as I say, anti–terrorism security was still rather primitive in the mid–1990s. In spite of a lot of talk, I suspect that most Americans still believed what they had believed half a century earlier — before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor — that the vast Atlantic and Pacific Oceans protected them from anyone who might wish to do them harm.

The Oklahoma City bombing clearly received a lot of attention. So, too, did the first (but not nearly as dramatic) attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.

But, for whatever reason, Americans continued to believe that such events were isolated, that they didn't indicate an ongoing, even escalating, effort by extremists to harm Americans and disrupt American life.

And it would be more than five years — until September 11 — before Americans began to get serious about national security in a non–military sense.

If they had been as serious about security on this night 15 years ago as they became after September 11, a lot of things that happened might not have happened — the terrorist attacks in Africa, the attack on the USS Cole, not to mention the September 11 hijackings themselves.

And the bombing in Olympic Park.

True Grit

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The United States has hosted only two Summer Olympic Games since World War II.

The Olympic Games often produce great moments for the host country, and the Summer Games in America were no exceptions to that rule. Both were noteworthy in several sports — but they were especially so for America's female gymnasts.

In 1984, the Games came to Los Angeles, where Mary Lou Retton became the first American gymnast to earn a perfect score in Olympic competition. The fact that the gymnasts from Russia and the Eastern European nations, who had dominated the sport for many years, were not there did not seem to dampen American spirits at all.

And, in fact, Retton's perfect score was a significant individual achievement — even though it is lampooned a bit in a recent Dairy Queen commercial.

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But I'm inclined to think that what happened 15 years ago today in Atlanta was even more significant.

And I believe I would think that even if the United States had not won the team all–around competition for the first time.

On this day, the United States was on the brink of that achievement. Going into the final rotation, either the Russians or the Americans (also known as the "Magnificent Seven") could win. The Americans were on the vault and held the lead, but if they stumbled, the Russians were positioned to capture the gold.

And stumble certainly seemed to sum up what was happening to the Americans that evening.

Most of the other Americans landed their vaults but did not do so cleanly. One of Strug's teammates didn't even land one of her two attempts cleanly — and was awarded a poor score by Olympic standards.

Then it was Strug's turn — and the misfortune continued. She fell on her landing and was clearly in pain as she limped back to the start of the runway.

I've heard that Strug asked her coach, Bela Karolyi, if it was necessary for her to make a second attempt, and he told her that they needed her to do so — although, in fact, they really didn't. The Russians were competing in the floor exercise, and their last competitor turned in a poor performance.

It was so poor that, even with the scores that were awarded to Strug's teammate who failed to land both of her vaults and to Strug following her first attempt, the Americans would have won the competition.

But they couldn't have known that at the time because the final Russian gymnast had not started her floor exercise when Strug made her vaults.

So Strug, who had damaged her ankle on the first vault, persevered despite the pain.

It wasn't so obvious that she was hurt when she ran down the runway, but when she landed — practically on one foot although she did hold a two–footed landing just long enough to receive credit for it from the judges — it was clear to all who could see.

She collapsed on the mat as announcer John Tesh exclaimed, "Kerri Strug is hurt! She's hurt badly!"

But Strug had accomplished her goal. Her score mathematically secured the team gold medal.

However, her unselfishness cost her. Because of her injury, she was unable to compete in the individual all–around, for which she had qualified.

But, on this evening 15 years ago, a night that will always be remembered for the drama and true grit of one Olympian, that didn't matter.

There are several enduring images of that evening. One remembers, of course, the sight of Strug standing on one foot after her second vault, then taking a step or two and collapsing on the mat.

And then there was the sight of Karolyi carrying Strug, her left ankle wrapped in tape, to the podium to receive her medal with her teammates.

After the medals presentation, Strug was taken to a hospital, where it was determined that she had suffered a third–degree lateral sprain and tendon damage.

And, as I say, Strug was unable to compete in the individual all–around because of her injury — so she was replaced by Shannon Miller.

There is a certain irony to this. Miller, a five–time medalist in the 1992 Games, was considered the leader of the '96 team, and Dominique Moceanu, the girl who stumbled twice in the team vault, was regarded as one of the team's stars.

But Strug, who was probably seen more as a utility player before the Atlanta Games, is the one who is remembered. If she had not been hurt, she would have qualified over both Miller and Moceanu for the all–around competition because of their performances in the vault.

Miller is often said to be the United States' greatest gymnast, and that may well be true. She won more medals than anyone else, which is a convincing argument for the title of greatest individual gymnast.

But I'm not entirely sure that Miller was a team player.

Make no mistake about it. Miller did make her contribution to the team's all–around triumph. She was second in individual scoring when the team competition ended, but she struggled at times with a pulled hamstring and tendinitis in her left wrist when the individual competition got under way. She finished eighth.

Strug, on the other hand, was a team player who sacrificed her shot at individual Olympic glory and clinched Miller's final Olympic gold medal with her iconic vault.

Strug isn't in the news much anymore. She got married in 2010. For the most part, I think she has remained out of the public eye.

I don't know if Strug would have fared better than Miller if she had been able to compete in the individual all–around competition.

And, thanks to hindsight, I do know that it wasn't necessary for Strug to make that second vault.

But she demonstrated — in a way nothing else could — what the true Olympic spirit has always been about.