Do You Believe In Miracles?

Last night, I got home, dead tired from a day that started with a 4:45 AM wake-up and a 6:30 flight. On top of that I didn't fall asleep the night before until 1 AM.

But then, I couldn't go to sleep. Why?

The Miracle on Ice was on ESPN Classic. And I got caught up in it once again.

You know, the American people have very few "I knew where I was when it happened" moments. In the last fifty years, there's very few. The Kennedy assassination. The moon landing. Nixon resigns. The Challenger explosion. The Berlin Wall falls. O.J. and the Bronco chase. 9/11.

And the Miracle on Ice.

In context, the Miracle is easily the least consequential event -- even compared to the O.J. imbroglio, the Miracle was just a hockey game, compared to a double-murder. Yet in a way, I'd guess that it had at least as much of an impact as any event on this list, in that the positive feeling that moment generated has resonated for more than twenty years and is viewed as the first shot of the closing stanza of the Cold War.

Before you laugh, stop for a moment and read the following bit from Oliver North...

The crowd in Lake Placid was on their feet. The chants of "U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A.," were so loud, they were shaking the Kremlin. Old Glory was flying high and proud. There was no malaise in that sleepy New York town. When the broadcast was played later that night, ABC's Al Michaels could barely contain his enthusiasm. "Do you believe in miracles," he shouted as the final seconds counted down and the Soviet giant was felled.

...The "Miracle on Ice" could be seen as a turning point for the nation. Less than a year later, Ronald Reagan would be in the White House and, under his leadership, the hostages came home, Soviet expansion was turned back in Afghanistan and Central America, and the malaise was lifted. It was Morning Again in America.

Brooks and his players illustrated a belief shared by Ronald Reagan: Leadership is the courage to defy the fatalism of the quitters and so-called "experts." From Plymouth Rock to the Moon, we are an intrepid people not made for defeat. The Soviet skaters learned that lesson on a rink in Lake Placid. Their political leaders learned it years later in a cottage in Reykjavik.

Today, one by one, George W. Bush is teaching that lesson to the Baathists, the Taliban and the Al Qaeda terrorists -- a lesson that he began at Ground Zero, standing on a pile of debris, surrounded by rescue workers chanting, "U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A."

Forget the geo-political implications for a second here. Focus on the chant -- how many times have you heard it over the years? Now, when was the first time you ever heard it?

For me, all of five years old at the time, that little arena in Lake Placid, seen on a 19'' TV screen, was the first place I ever heard that chant. But I don't think that's just true for people my age. Last night, during the special on Classic, one person claimed that that's where the chant really started.

I know this much -- it's a moment where people who had begun to doubt their country, especially after the turmoil of the 1960's and 1970's, remembered why they loved their home...

The line commonly associated with the Miracle On Ice is, “it gave the country a reason to feel good again.”

Could all this be media spin, a storyline conjured by reporters swept up in the moment and pundits trying to squeeze great meaning from an isolated event? To some extent, perhaps. But there is no doubt that Americans were touched deeply by a hockey team as never before. Following the victory over the Soviets, one woman told Sports Illustrated she had never seen so many American flags since the sixties, “And we were burning them then.” In the weeks to follow, the players received bags of mail. To this day, they hear stories that begin, “I remember where I was when…” The team captain, Mike Eruzione, remains in demand on the after-dinner speaking circuit.

I love the stories, like that line about the flags. My personal favorite is the one about the telegrams the players received before the game -- as one of the players noted, the popular sentiment was "Beat those Commie bastards." As this blogger at my favorite law school noted, people in a Lake Placid restaurant heard the score, stood up, and spontaneously broke into the National Anthem.

Take a look back at that list of moments above. Ask yourself how many of those moments were positive and really belonged to us, and you come up with two -- landing on the moon and winning a hockey game. One is historic by any measure, the other is historic only if you believe the hyperbole. But for once, the hyperbole is right. The moon landing and the hockey triumph reflect the best things about America -- our enduring spirit, our perseverence in the face of incredible odds, our ability to overcome challenges by working together as a team, and our overwhelming -- and justified -- pride in our accomplishments as a nation and as a people.

To me, I'll never be able to watch this game enough. I still get chills when Al Michaels says that line. And that's how it should be.

Thanks, guys, for giving a little kid his first real patriotic thrill 25 years ago. And thanks, once again, for making me sit up and enjoy it again last night.