Friday, January 31, 2014

How Long It's Been: Seattle Won a World Championship

The Seattle Seahawks will be playing the Denver Broncos on Sunday, at MetLife Stadium in the New Jersey -- not New York -- Meadowlands, in Super Bowl XLVIII (48).

The Seahawks have played since 1976, but have never won a title.

In fact, Seattle's record as a sports city is pretty pathetic. To wit:

* In 38 seasons of play, this is only the 2nd time the Seahawks have won a Conference Championship, only the 3rd time they've reached a Conference Championship Game (1983-84 in the AFC, 2005-06 and 2013-14 in the NFC), and until 2003 they'd made the Playoffs only 5 times. Even with those 2 trips to the Super Bowl, in those 38 seasons they've won a grand total of 11 Playoff games -- a little better than 1 every 4 years.

* The Seattle Mariners have played 37 seasons, and have reached 4 postseasons, winning 3 American League Western Division titles, and reaching 3 AL Championship Series. But they've never won a Pennant. Only 3 teams have ever had longer Pennant droughts: The 1901-44 St. Louis Browns, the 1919-1959 and 1959-2005 Chicago White Sox, and the 1945-present Chicago Cubs -- meaning that, if the M's conclude the 2022 season without winning the Pennant, they will have the longest drought in AL history.

* The Seattle SuperSonics played their last 29 seasons without winning an NBA Championship, a period in which they only won 1 Western Conference title and only made the Conference Finals 3 times. Then, in 2008, they were moved, to become the Oklahoma City Thunder.

* Seattle has never had a team in the National Hockey League. Nor did they have one in the World Hockey Association -- surprising, considering the WHA was looking for untapped NHL markets and Seattle was very much one, is very much a Northern city, and had a hockey history, long in the minors if distant in the majors. The Seattle Metropolitans played in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association from 1915 to 1924, winning that league 5 times, and in 1917 beating the Montreal Canadiens to become the first American-based team to win the Stanley Cup. The team folded with its league, and for 90 years Seattle hasn't had anything that could be called a "major league" hockey team. Since 1977, the Seattle Breakers began play in the Western Hockey League; in 1985, they became the Seattle Thunderbirds. But only once, in 1997, did they reach the WHL Finals, and they got swept.

* If you count soccer in North America as a "major league sport," the 1st version of the Seattle Sounders drew big crowds to the Kingdome (in fact, they opened it), but only once did they reach the North American Soccer League's title game, losing Soccer Bowl '77 to the New York Cosmos.  They had 2 legitimate excuses, though: The game was played at Civic Stadium (now Jeld-Wen Field), home of their arch-rivals, the Portland Timbers; and the Cosmos were loaded, with legends like Pele, Carlos Alberto, Franz Beckenbauer, Johan Neeskens and Giorgio Chinaglia.

* The new version of the Sounders won the Supporters' Shield, Major League Soccer's regular-season title, in 2011, and in 2009-11 won 3 straight U.S. Open Cups (the American equivalent of the FA Cup) and nearly made it 4. But they've never won the MLS Cup; as New York Red Bulls fans found out in 2013, MLS is the one league on the planet where finishing the season in first place overall doesn't make you "League Champions." So, in spite of their superb pre-Playoff play and having the best attendance in MLS, the Sounders haven't brought much glory to Washington State, either.

Indeed, in the entire history of major league sports in Seattle, they've won only 2 World Championships: The 1917 Stanley Cup, by the Metros; and the 1979 NBA Championship. In 1978 and '79, both seasons, the NBA Finals featured the Sonics against the Washington Bullets (now the Washington Wizards); the Bullets won in '78, the Sonics in '79.

That title happened on June 1, 1979, a 97-93 win for the Sonics over the Bullets at the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland.

That's 34 years and 4 months. How long has that been?

*

The Sonics were coached by Lenny Wilkens. The leading athletes in Seattle were Sonics stars Dennis Johnson, Gus Williams and Fred "Downtown" Brown; Hawks players Jim Zorn, Steve Largent, and, for that one season, former Minnesota Vikings legend Carl Eller; and Mariners players Ruppert Jones, Danny Meyer and Bruce Bochte.

At that point, the Houston Rockets, the Detroit Pistons, the Chicago Bulls, the San Antonio Spurs, the Miami Heat, the Dallas Mavericks, the San Francisco 49ers, the Denver Broncos, the New England Patriots, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the New Orleans Saints, the Philadelphia Phillies, the Kansas City Royals, the Minnesota Twins, the Toronto Blue Jays, the Braves since they moved to Atlanta, the Florida/Miami Marlins, the Arizona Diamondbacks, the team now known as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, the Giants since they moved to San Francisco, the New York Islanders, the Edmonton Oilers, the Calgary Flames, the Pittsburgh Penguins, the New Jersey Devils, the Quebec Nordiques/Colorado Avalanche franchise (unless you count the 1977 WHA title), the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Hartford Whalers/Carolina Hurricanes franchise (unless you count the 1973 WHA title), the Anaheim Ducks and the Los Angeles Kings had never won a World Championship.

The Rockets, the Pistons, the Bulls, the Spurs, the Heat, the Mavs, the Seahawks, the Niners, the Pats, the Bucs, the Saints, the Isles, the Oilers, the Flames, the Pens, the Devils, the Lightning, the Canes, the Ducks, the Kings, the Orlando Magic, the Utah Jazz, the Indiana Pacers (unless you count their 3 ABA titles), the New Jersey (now Brooklyn) Nets (unless you count the 1974 and '76 ABA titles), the Buffalo Bills (unless you count the 1964 and '65 AFL titles), the San Diego Chargers (unless you count the 1963 AFL title), the Atlanta Falcons, the Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans franchise (unless you count the 1960 and '61 AFL titles), the Carolina Panthers, the Royals, the Braves since they moved to Atlanta, the Jays, the Marlins, the D-backs, the Angels, the Milwaukee Brewers, the San Diego Padres, the Houston Astros, the Colorado Rockies, the Tampa Bay Rays, the Texas Rangers, the Minnesota North Stars/Dallas Stars franchise, the Vancouver Canucks, the Florida Panthers, the Washington Capitals and the new Ottawa Senators had never reached their sports' finals.

And the Magic, the Mavs, the Heat, both sets of Panthers, the Marlins, the Rockies, the D-backs, the Rays, the Lightning, the old Charlotte Hornets (now the New Orleans Pelicans), the new Charlotte Hornets (formerly the Bobcats), the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Memphis Grizzlies, the Toronto Raptors, the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Baltimore Ravens, the Houston Texans, the San Jose Sharks, the Nashville Predators, the new Winnipeg Jets (formerly the Atlanta Thrashers), the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Minnesota Wild didn't even exist yet.

As of Super Bowl XLVIII, those facts are no longer true.

The NBA of 1979 has often been retroactively described as being "in trouble." And then, the next season, came Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. This is nonsense, as the league already had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Julius "Dr. J" Erving.

The Los Angeles Clippers were still playing down the coast in San Diego, the Kings in Kansas City, and the Jazz were about to move from New Orleans (where their team name made sense) to Utah (where it doesn't). The New Jersey Nets were playing on the Rutgers campus, as the Meadowlands arena was just beginning construction. And while the Portland Trail Blazers and Milwaukee Bucks had both won NBA titles within the last 8 years, neither saw any problem playing in an arena with no more than 12,880 seats -- in the Bucks' case, only 10,938.

In the NFL, the Colts were still in Baltimore, the Cardinals were still in St. Louis, the Rams were still in Los Angeles, the Titans were still the Houston Oilers. In MLB, the Brewers were still in the AL, the Astros still in the National League, and the Washington Nationals were still the Montreal Expos.

The ideas of the NBA using international players, MLB using Asian natives, and the best players from Eastern Europe being allowed to leave for the NHL (unless they successfully defected, like the Stastny brothers) were far-fetched.

Not one player on the Seahawks' Super Bowl roster had yet been born; for the Broncos, only Peyton Manning, Champ Bailey and Paris Lenon had, and Quentin Jammer was about to be born. Current Seahawks coach Pete Carroll was the secondary coach at Ohio State University, while Broncos coach John Fox was a graduate assistant at San Diego State. Tom Brady was about to turn 2 years old. Eli Manning, Ben Roethlisberger and Aaron Rodgers hadn't been born yet.

Only the Green Bay Packers, Oakland Raiders, San Diego Chargers, Kansas City Chiefs, Buffalo Bills, New Orleans Saints and San Francisco 49ers played the 2013 NFL season in the same stadium in which they played in 1979; starting next season, you can drop the Niners from that list.

The only NBA teams playing in the same arena in which they played the 1978-79 season are the Knicks at Madison Square Garden, and the Golden State Warriors at the Oakland Coliseum Arena. The only NHL teams doing so are the Rangers at The Garden, the Islanders at the Nassau Coliseum, and the Edmonton Oilers at the Northlands Coliseum. The only MLB teams doing so are the Boston Red Sox, the Chicago Cubs, the Oakland Athletics, the Kansas City Royals, and both Los Angeles-area teams.

In addition to the Sonics, the defending World Champions were the Yankees, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Montreal Canadiens. Muhammad Ali had retired as Heavyweight Champion of the World, the WBC was recognizing Larry Holmes as Champion, while the WBA hadn't yet made up its mind, and the IBF didn't exist yet.

Since that last Seattle title, the Olympic Games have been held in America 3 times, Canada twice, and once each in Russia (and are about to be again), Yugoslavia (post-breakup, Sarajevo is in Bosnia), Korea, France, Spain, Norway, Japan, Australia, Greece, Italy, China and Britain.

In June 1979, the current head coach of the Seattle Seahawks, was defensive backs coach at Ohio State; and the current head coach of the team that had been the Seattle SuperSonics, now the Oklahoma City Thunder, Scott Brooks, was 14 years old.

Tom Coughlin of the Giants was Syracuse University's offensive coordinator, Terry Collins of the Mets was playing in the Pittsburgh Pirates' minor-league system, Mike Woodson of the Knicks was at Indiana University; Joe Girardi of the Yankees, Rex Ryan of the Jets and Alain Vigneault of the Rangers were in high school; Jack Capuano of the Islanders was in junior high school, Peter DeBoer of the Devils was 9, and Jason Kidd of the Nets was 6.

There were 26 Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The last Justice then on the Supreme Court who was still on it was John Paul Stevens, who served from 1975 to 2010.

The President of the United States was Jimmy Carter. Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, their wives, and the widows of Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were still alive.

Ronald Reagan was beginning his 3rd run for President, George H.W. Bush his 1st. Bill Clinton was in his 1st year as Governor of Arkansas. George W. Bush had recently lost his 1st run for public office, for Congressman from Texas. Barack Obama had just graduated high school, and Michelle Robinson was still in it. Joe Biden had just been elected to a 2nd term in the U.S. Senate from Delaware, and John Boehner was working for Nucite Sales, apparently believing the line in the movie The Graduate about the future being "plastics."

The Governor of New York was Hugh Carey, of New Jersey Brendan Byrne, and the State of Washington had one of the earliest women to be elected Governor without her husband having previously held the job, Dixy Lee Ray. The Mayor of New York City was Ed Koch, and of Seattle Charles Royer. He was in the 2nd of 12 years on the job, and is still alive.

There were still living veterans of the Spanish-American War, the Boer War, the Philippine Campaign and the Boxer Rebellion. Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin were the holders of the Nobel Peace Prize. The Pope was John Paul II. The current Pope, Francis, was then Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and was Provincial Superior of the Socity of Jesus (the Jesuits) in Argentina.

The Prime Minister of Canada was Pierre Trudeau, but had just led his Liberal Party to an election defeat, after winning 3 times. Just 3 days after the Sonics' title, Progressive Conservative Party Leader Joe Clark would be sworn in as Prime Minister. The next day would be his 40th birthday, making him the youngest person ever to be head of government in either Canada or America. But his government would quickly fall apart over a budget impasse, and early the next year, Trudeau would lead the Liberals back to victory, and serve another 4 years as Prime Minister, for a total of 15.

The monarch of Great Britain was Queen Elizabeth II -- that hasn't changed -- but Margaret Thatcher had just been elected Prime Minister. (Thatcher in Britain in May 1979, Clark in Canada the same month, Reagan in America in November 1980 -- a pattern, the difference being that Canada wised up a lot faster to the fact that conservatism doesn't work.)

There have since been 6 Presidents of the United States, 5 Prime Ministers of Britain and 3 Popes. 

England's FA Cup was won, 3 weeks earlier, by Arsenal, after blowing a 2-0 lead in the last 5 minutes against Manchester United, but Alan Sunderland's last-gap goal won the Cup for the North London club. The Football League had just been won by Liverpool, dethroning Nottingham Forest, which won the European Cup (now the UEFA Champions League) by beating Swedish club Malmo in the Final. They would win it again the next year, too, beating Hamburg in the Final, making them, to this day, the only team in all of Europe to win the European Cup more than it's won its domestic league.

Forest manager Brian Clough, after winning the League with Derby County in 1972 and failing spectacularly with Leeds United in 1974 before moving on to Forest (ironically, Derby's arch-rivals), had proved the point he made after that '72 title: "I wouldn't say I'm the best manager in the country, but I'm in the top one."

Among Clough's acquisitions that 1978-79 season was Birmingham City player Trevor Francis, the 1st player in the English league to be purchased for at least one million pounds. My, how times have changed.

Major books of 1979 included Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Jeffrey Archer's Kane and Abel, Barbara Taylor Bradford's A Woman of Substance, Stephen King's The Dead Zone, Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, William Styron's Sophie's Choice, and Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff. All were made into major motion pictures or TV-movies. So was Peter Shaffer's play about Mozart, Amadeus, which debuted in 1979.

George R.R. Martin got divorced from his 1st wife, and left his job as writer in residence at Clarke University and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, because he was tired of hard winters in Dubuque, Iowa -- perhaps inspiring some of his later books. J.K. Rowling was 14.

No one had yet heard of Hannibal Lecter, Celie Harris, Forrest Gump, Alex Cross, Harry Potter, Robert Langdon, Lisbeth Salander, Bella Swan or Katniss Everdeen.

New in theaters when the Sonics' won what remains, for the moment, Seattle's last title were Alien
and The Muppet Movie. One featured weird creatures. The other had Sigourney Weaver kicking ass, with her own barely covered. Francis Ford Coppola was about to premiere Apocalypse Now, his moving of Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness to the Vietnam War, and filming it nearly killed him and his star Martin Sheen, and made the jokes about Marlon Brando get worse.

Christopher Reeve had just begun playing Superman, Lynda Carter was about to wrap up playing Wonder Woman, and Lou Ferrigno was smashing as the Hulk, but the last live-action Batman was still Adam West, and Nicholas Hammond's recent Spider-Man and Reb Brown's Captain America were absolute bombs. Tom Baker was playing The Doctor. Mad Max had just premiered.

Moonraker was about to premiere. Despite all the jokes about it, it actually holds up better than most classic James Bond films. Roger Moore was 51, but still believable as an action hero. Making his 2nd appearance as Jaws, Richard Kiel made a fantastic villain's henchman-turned-hero. But that 2-minute laser battle in space toward the end will forever overshadow the rest of it.

In contrast, Gene Roddenberry was putting the finishing touches on Star Trek: The Motion Picture. People would say, "We waited 10 years for this?" Just as 2001: A Space Odyssey had helped kill the original series by showing just what special effects could do for a space film, Roddenberry learned the wrong lessons from it, doing long scenes with beautiful shots but no dialogue or plot. Also, Gene ripped himself off, redoing the episode "The Changeling." As a result of these things, it became known as Star Trek: The Motionless Picture, A Spock-alypse Now, and Where Nomad Has Gone Before.

No one had yet heard of Ash Williams, John Rambo, the Terminator, the Ghostbusters, Marty McFly, Robocop, John McClane, Jay & Silent Bob, or Austin Powers.

Just wrapping up their 1st seasons were the TV shows WKRP in Cincinnati, The White Shadow, The Dukes of Hazzard, Diff'rent Strokes, Taxi, Mork & Mindy, and the original version of Battlestar Galactica. Preparing for a fall debut were Hart to Hart, Benson, Trapper John, M.D., Knots Landing and The Facts of Life.

CBS' Match Game was on hiatus from May until September, so, no Brett Somers, no Charles Nelson Reilly, no Fannie Flagg, no Dumb Donald, no Old Man Periwinkle, and no horrible accents from host Gene Rayburn. (Richard Dawson had already quit to focus on hosting Family Feud.)

And 1979 was a disaster for NBC. They launched the super-campy, body-suited version of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, a lame attempt to capitalize on Star Wars and Star Trek that did no one, least of all the original character, any good, that show was still a gem compared to their disastrous Hello Larry, Brothers and Sisters, Turnabout, and, yes, Supertrain.

NBC was desperate enough to advertise these shows on what were then "independent stations": In New York, you could turn from WNBC-Channel 4 to WNEW-Channel 5 (now WNYW, Fox 5), and see a promo for Supertrain, an obvious Love Boat ripoff. Or Brothers and Sisters, not to be confused with the later ABC drama of the same title: This was a ripoff of Animal House, which ABC had tried to officially do, taking some of the actual actors from that film and making the ill-fated Delta House.

In 1979, NBC was so bad! (How bad was it?) It was so bad that, on one of the few NBC shows that was still successful, The Tonight Show, Johnny Carson suggested that the network should use the same method that the floundering Chrysler Corporation was using, with NBC sportscaster Joe Garagiola faking a smile throughout the commercials: Pay off viewers to accept a lousy product: "Watch Hello, Larry, get a check!" It would have been no use: Hello, Larry ran 38 episodes in 2 seasons; between them, Brothers and Sisters, Turnabout and Supertrain aired 28 episodes.

No one had yet heard of Sam Malone, He-Man, Goku, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Thundercats, Bart Simpson, Fox Mulder, Xena, Ash Ketchum, Jed Bartlet, Tony Soprano, Master Chief, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, Rick Grimes, Don Draper, Walter White or Richard Castle.

The day of the Sonics' title, Joy Division released their album Unknown Pleasures. The Number 1 song in America was "Hot Stuff" by Donna Summer. In the days before, The Who played their first concerts since the death of Keith Moon, with former Faces drummer Kenney Jones in his place, and Elton John played 8 concerts in the Soviet Union. In the days after, rock and roll pioneer Bill Haley made his last recordings, fellow rock pioneer Chuck Berry was sentenced to 4 months in prison on tax evasion charges, the first Sony Walkman went on sale in Japan, to be released in the U.S. a year later, the Bee Gees sold out Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, and, in an officially unrelated event but a totally welcome counterpoint, Disco Demolition Night (a.k.a. Disco Sucks Night) was held at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

"The World Series of Rock" was held at Cleveland Municipal Stadium (as opposed to the World Series of baseball, which was only held there once, in 1948), and Ted Nugent was one of the headliners. That's how long it's been since Nugent was relevant in music, unlike in politics, where he has never been relevant. Also on the bill were AC/DC, Thin Lizzy, rising bands Journey and the Scorpions. The headliner was Aerosmith, but after the concert, an argument developed among the soused, coked-out members, and lead guitarist Joe Perry quit. It would take 5 years and a lot of rehab for the original lineup to reunite.

Bob Dylan was about to release his 1st Christian album, Slow Train Coming. Michael Jackson was about to release Off the Wall, which would have insured that his solo career was a legend even if Thriller had never been recorded. None of the Beatles was doing much: 1979 was a quiet year for them. 1980 would not be.

Van Halen, Miami Sound Machine and Prince had released their earliest recordings. George Michael and Whitney Houston were 15 years old. Jennifer Lopez and Gwen Stefani were 9. Selena was 8. (Quintanilla, not Gomez: She wasn't born until 1992.) Shakira was 2. Pink, Christina Aguilera, Alicia Keys, Britney Spears, Katy Perry, and all the members of Desinty's Child had yet to be born.

Inflation was such that what $1.00 bought then, $3.39 would buy now. A U.S. postage stamp cost 15 cents, and a New York Subway ride 50 cents. The average price of a gallon of gas was 88 cents, a cup of coffee 83 cents, a McDonald's meal (Big Mac, fries, shake) $2.00, a movie ticket $2.42, a new car $6,848, and a new house $72,400. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed that day at 821.21.

The tallest building in the world was the Sears Tower in Chicago. There were desktop computers, but, as yet, no laptops. Mobile telephones existed, but they were as big as Army walkie-talkies. Automatic teller machines were still a relatively new thing, and many people had never seen one. The leading home video game system was the Atari VCS (later renamed the Atari 2600). There were heart transplants, liver transplants and lung transplants, and artificial kidneys, but no artificial hearts.

AIDS was around, but not yet discovered. "Chronic fatigue syndrome" was hardly known, and even more rarely were doctors, who hate to admit that they don't know something or can't cure something, willing to diagnose it. The birth control pill was long-established, but there was, as yet, no Viagra. NASA was still trying and failing to get the first space shuttle off the ground. A few weeks after the Sonics' title, Skylab fell out of orbit, broke up, and crashed into the ocean.

In the late Spring and early Summer of 1979, a civil war began in El Salvador, and power was democratically transferred to the first government made up of Rhodesia's black majority, which would later rename the country Zimbabwe and make democracy there a cruel joke, Robert Mugabe being no less brutal a dictator than his white predecessor Ian Smith. John Paul II visited his native Poland, becoming the 1st sitting Pope to visit a Communist country.

President Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed the SALT II treaty. A DC-10 crashed at O'Hare Airport in Chicago, killing 273 people, still the deadliest air disaster in American history. Former San Francisco Supervisor (what most cities call a Councilman) Dan White got a light sentence for killing fellow Board member Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone the preceding November, and the gay community rioted. McDonald's introduced the Happy Meal.

A. Philip Randolph, and Mary Pickford, and John Wayne died. So did baseball legend Duffy Lewis, and hockey legend Fred "Cyclone" Taylor. Rosario Dawson, and Andrea Pirlo, and LaDainian Tomlinson were born.

June 1, 1979. The Seattle SuperSonics won the NBA Championship, for the only time in their history. It remains the last World Championship won by any Seattle-based team.

Now, the Seattle Seahawks are 2 days away from playing in the Super Bowl. The Denver Broncos are currently favored by 2 1/2 points, in spite of the Hawks' vaunted defense. Can they win their city's 1st World Championship in nearly 35 years? Stay tuned.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

How Long It's Been: The Denver Broncos Reached a Super Bowl (Or the Atlanta Falcons, For That Matter)

I'll be doing this for their opponents, too -- not just the Seahawks, who are going into the game having never won a title, but for the entire city of Seattle.

It took the Denver Broncos 5 tries to get their 1st Super Bowl win. It took them only 1 more to get their 2nd. Back-to-back Super Bowls didn't erase the memory of their 4 losses, but it did mark them as 1 of 17 teams to win back-to-back NFL Championships... 13 separate teams to have done it... 12 current teams... and 7 teams in the Super Bowl era. (The 1997-98 Denver Broncos prevented the Green Bay Packers from doing it for a 4th time, a 2nd time in the Super Bowl era; only the 2003-04 New England Patriots have done it since.)

But then John Elway retired, and the Broncos hadn't been back since.

Until, upon Elway's recommendation, they signed Peyton Manning, who had been cut by the team for whom he had been the greatest player ever (since their move away from Johnny Unitas' Baltimore, anyway), the Indianapolis Colts, who had seen him miss an entire season with a neck injury and, panicking because of that injury and his age, took Andrew Luck with the 1st pick in the next year's NFL Draft.

It was a good result for the Colts, and Luck has done just fine in his 1st 2 seasons, and has made the Colts relevant again. A title could well be in his future.

It was an even better result for the Broncos, as, this coming Sunday, they will play in the Super Bowl for the 1st time since...

January 31, 1999, Super Bowl XXXIII (33), at the Miami Dolphins' stadium, whatever it was called that year. (I think that stadium has now had more names than the Dolphins have had trips to the Super Bowl, not counting years when they've hosted it.)

The defending champion Broncos, who went 14-2 in the regular season and came from behind at halftime to beat Bill Parcells' New York Jets in the AFC Championship Game, came in as 7 1/2-point favorites over the Atlanta Falcons, who had never reached a Super Bowl before -- and, like the Broncos until now, haven't since. No, not even with Michael Vick as their quarterback. (If you believe in karma, it's not that, unless we can prove he was already involved with dogfighting.)

Ironically, the Falcons' coach was Georgia native Dan Reeves, who had previously coached the Broncos to 3 of their Super Bowl defeats. In fact, as a player with the Dallas Cowboys, as an assistant coach with the Cowboys, and as a head coach, Reeves was involved with 11 NFL Championship Games or Super Bowls, from the 1966 to the 1998 season. That's a record, unless you count 1943 when George Halas, owner, head coach, and former player of the Chicago Bears, was away in the Navy during World War II, then it's 11 for him between 1932 and 1963. (He also played on the Bears when they won the 1921 title, before there were championship games.)

The Eugene Robinson prostitution scandal was a bit of a distraction for the Falcons, and Elway's pass to Rod Smith, which Robinson was unable to stop, was a big reason why the Broncos won, 34-19, making Elway the rare player, in any sport, who won a World Championship in his last game. But the Broncos would have won even without the distraction.

That's 15 years ago, as of tomorrow. How long has it been?

*

Needless to say, neither team has any players left from their 1998-99 season. Elway and Shannon Sharpe have been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and cases can also be made for the elections of Terrell Davis, Mark Schlereth and Steve Atwater. (One could also be made for that of Bill Romanowski, but do you really want to see him enshrined?)

None of the Falcons has yet made it, although it's possible that a Hall of Fame career for Jamal Anderson was short-circuited by injury, as has thus far been the case for Davis. The Falcons' Cornelius Bennett (a member of the Buffalo Bills' 4 straight Super Bowl teams) and Jessie Tuggle should also be considered.

UPDATE: Davis has since been elected.

At the time, the Patriots, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the New Orleans Saints, the Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans franchise, the Rams since they moved to St. Louis (though they had won a title in Los Angeles in 1951), the Baltimore Ravens since they moved from Cleveland, and he Colts since they moved to Indianapolis, had never won a Super Bowl. The Bucs, the Saints, the Ravens, the Oilers/Titans, the Colts since they moved to Indianapolis, the Carolina Panthers, the Seattle Seahawks, and the Cardinals since they moved to Arizona (though they had won titles in Chicago in 1925 and 1947) had never even been in one. In each of those cases, that is no longer true.

The Cleveland Browns were still on hiatus, between Art Modell moving them to Baltimore and the arrival of their expansion team. Houston was also on hiatus, between Bud Adams moving the Oilers to Tennessee and the expansion Texans arriving.

Half of the NFL's teams, 16 out of 32 (if you count the San Francisco 49ers, whose Levi's Stadium will open this coming fall), have since replaced the stadiums in which they played the 1998-99 season.

NFL trailblazers Sammy Baugh, Marion Motley and Johnny Unitas were still alive. Don Hutson, Sid Luckman and Doak Walker had died within the past 2 years.

Peyton Manning had just finished his rookie season with the Colts. Tom Brady was a backup quarterback at the University of Michigan, Drew Brees the starter at Purdue University, Ben Roethlisberger at Miami University of Ohio, and the aforementioned Michael Vick had just led Virginia Tech into the National Championship game, losing to Florida State. Troy Polamalu was a freshman at the University of Southern California.

Eli Manning, Aaron Rodgers and Larry Fitzgerald were in high school. Mark Sanchez and Adrian Peterson were in junior high school. Russell Wilson, Richard Sherman, Robert Griffin III and Andrew Luck were in elementary school. Johnny Manziel had just turned 7; Jameis Winston, 5. 

Tom Coughlin of the Giants was the head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars. Rex Ryan of the Jets was defensive line coach for the Ravens. Terry Collins of the Mets was the manager of the team then known as the Anaheim Angels. Mike Woodson of the Knicks was an assistant coach with the Milwaukee Bucks, John Tortorella of the Rangers with the team then known as the Phoenix Coyotes. Jack Capuano of the Islanders was coaching the minor-league Pee Dee Pride in South Carolina, Peter DeBoer the Plymouth Whalers in Massachusetts. Jason Kidd of the Nets was playing for the Phoenix Suns. Joe Girardi had lost his job as the Yankees' starting catcher to Jorge Posada.

In addition to the Broncos, defending World Champions were the Yankees (coming off their 125-50 season), the Chicago Bulls (who haven't won one since), and the Detroit Red Wings. The Heavyweight Championship of the World was divided between Evander Holyfield (WBA & IBF) and Lennox Lewis (WBC).

Since the Broncos and Falcons last appeared in a Super Bowl, the Olympic Games have been held in Australia, America, Greece, Italy, China, Canada and Great Britain, and are about to be held in Russia. The World Cup has since been held in Japan, Korea, Germany and South Africa, and is about to be held in Brazil.

The President of the United States was Bill Clinton, and he was in the middle of his impeachment trial in the Senate. He would be acquitted by majority vote on both counts, as there was no admissible evidence that he had committed any crimes. Former Presidents George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, their wives, and the widow of Lyndon Johnson, were still alive. (The Bushes and the Carters still are.) George W. Bush had just been re-elected Governor of Texas, and was preparing his 1st run for the Presidency. Barack Obama was in the State Senate in Illinois.

The Governor of New York was George Pataki, of New Jersey Christine Todd Whitman. Newly sworn in as Governors of the States involved in the Super Bowl in question were Bill Owens of Colorado and Nathan Deal of Georgia. Rudy Giuliani was Mayor of New York, Wellington Webb of Denver, and Bill Campbell of Atlanta.

Current Governor Andrew Cuomo was U.S. Secretary of Housing & Urban Development, with Bill de Blasio as one of his assistants. Chris Christie was back in private law practice after having lost a bid for re-election to the Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders.

Five Justices then on the U.S. Supreme Court are still on it now: Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. The idea that same-sex marriage would soon be legal in 1 State, let alone many or even all 50, was a bit ridiculous, as even "civil unions" were having trouble passing.

There were still surviving veterans of World War I, the Mexican Revolution, the Pancho Villa Expedition, the Buffalo Soldiers, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Easter Rising and the March On Rome. There were still living survivors of the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, the 1914 Ludlow Massacre, the builders of the Panama Canal, and the disasters that befell the General Slocum in 1904, the Titanic in 1912, the Lusitania and the Eastland in 1915, and the Britannic in 1916.

Northern Ireland peacemakers John Hume and David Trimble were the holders of the Nobel Peace Prize. The Pope was John Paul II. The current Pope, Francis, then Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was Archbishop of Buenos Aires -- not yet a Cardinal.

The Prime Minister of Canada was Jean Chretien. The monarch of Great Britain was Queen Elizabeth II (that hasn't changed), but the Prime Minister was Tony Blair. There have since been 3 Presidents of the United States, 3 Prime Ministers of Britain, and 3 Popes.

London club Arsenal were the holders of the Premier League title and the FA Cup (a.k.a. they had "done The Double"), but Manchester United were on their way to winning both and the European Champions League (the only time an English club has done the "European Treble"), coming from behind in stoppage time to beat German giants Bayern Munich, a highly symbolic victory considering the 1958 Munich Air Disaster that killed 8 Man United players and injured 2 others so badly that they never played again. The current holders of the Champions League's trophy, the European Cup, were Spain's Real Madrid, having beaten Italy's Juventus. France, led by Zinedine Zidane and also featuring a young Thierry Henry, had recently won the World Cup, defeating Brazil on home soil in the Final.

Major novels of 1999 included Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier, Timeline by Michael Crichton, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding, The Testament by John Grisham, Chocolat by Joanne Harris, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Boston Red Sox fan Stephen King, Harry Potter and the Prison of Azkaban (the 3rd book in the series) by J.K. Rowling, and Hannibal (chronologically, the most recent book in the series) by Thomas Harris. George R.R. Martin was working on A Storm of Swords (the 3rd book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series).

The films The Thin Red Line and She's All That premiered in January 1999, while the Mel Gibson film Payback premiered the week after that Super Bowl. Star Trek: Insurrection had premiered the month before, while Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough with Pierce Brosnan were on their way, but none of these would do its franchise much critical good.

The attempts to bring Superman and Batman back to the big screen were failing, and so the last men to play them remained Dean Cain (a Superman on TV) and George "This is why Superman works alone" Clooney, respectively. Paul McGann, in a one-shot deal, was the most recent man to play The Doctor.

Major TV shows that debuted in the 1998-99 season included Sports Night, Will & Grace, The King of Queens, Felicity, Becker, MTV's Total Request Live, and some shows that weren't set in New York City, like The Sopranos (okay, it was in North Jersey, and some of it happened in New York), Farscape (which didn't even take place on this planet), V.I.P. (which frequently seemed like it was on another planet), The Hughleys, Charmed, the disastrous The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer, and cartoons like Batman Beyond, The Powerpuff Girls, Jay Jay the Jet Plane, The Wild Thornberrys, Rolie Polie Olie, Ed, Edd n Eddy, Family Guy, Futurama, SpongeBob SquarePants, and the U.S. premiere of Pokémon.

No one had yet heard of Robert Langdon, Master Chief, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, Rick Grimes, Lisbeth Salander, Bella Swan, Don Draper, Katniss Everdeen, Walter White or Richard Castle.

Kourtney Kardashian was 19 years old, Kim 18, Khloe 14, Rob 11, Kendall 3 and Kylie 1. Of the Modern Family kids, Sarah Hyland was 8, and Ariel Winter, Rico Rodriguez and Nolan Gould were all less than a year old. From Game of Thrones: Richard Madden, Emilia Clarke and Kit Harington were 12, Rose Leslie was 11, Jack Gleeson was 6, Sophie Turner was 2 and Maisie Williams was 9 months old. Mark Harmon was starring on Chicago Hope, and Nathan Fillion was on Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place.

Britney Spears released her debut album, ...Baby One More Time, including the title track, which was now the Number 1 song in the country. Eminem's debut would follow the next month. Rod Stewart and Rachel Hunter split up. A&M Records and the German industrial band KMFDM disbanded. (Sadly, their initials did not stand for "Kill Mother-Fucking Depeche Mode. It stood for "Kein Mehrheit Für Die Mitleid," German for "No pity for the majority.")

For most of us, "Selena" still meant Quintanilla-Perez; "Demi" meant Moore; and "Kylie" meant Minogue. Christina Aguilera had debuted thanks to her song in the Disney cartoon Mulan, but the English-speaking world had not yet heard of Shakira, and Pink, Destiny's Child and Alicia Keys had yet to debut. Katy Perry was in high school. Lady Gaga was 12 years old, Rihanna 10, Taylor Swift 9, Louis Tomlinson 7, Zayn Malik 6; Ariana Grande, Liam Payne, Niall Horan and Harry Styles 5; and Justin Bieber 4. He wasn't yet a "Boyfriend," he was barely past being a "Baby."

Inflation was such that what $1.00 bought then, $1.42 would buy now. A U.S. postage stamp cost 33 cents, and a New York Subway ride $1.50. The average price of a gallon of gas was $1.22, a cup of coffee $1.90, a McDonald's meal (Big Mac, fries, shake) $5.69, a movie ticket $5.09, a new car $20,686, and a new house $189,100. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed the preceding Friday at 9,358.82.

At that point, the leading home video game system was the original Sony PlayStation. We did have the Internet, but not yet Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest. Nor the iPod, iPhone or iPad.

Mobile phones were now quite common, but they were still the flip-open kind, bringing to mind the communicators on the original Star Trek series -- except that show took place 300 years in the future, and the new "mobiles" were smaller. This was around the time that cellular phones began to be called "cell phones" more often, and were already becoming, in some cases, so annoying that New York Daily News writer Pete Hamill described them in his column as "yell phones."

A movie released the next year, Frequency, had a storyline where a 1999 New York police detective found his father's old ham radio set (sort of like the Internet for the middle of the 20th Century), and, through a sci-fi phenomenon, is able to talk to his father, a New York fireman in 1969, and warn him of his impending death in a fire. The Mets' '69 World Series win becomes a major plot point in the film.

Remembering his best friend complaining about not buying stock in Yahoo! when it was cheap, he uses the ham set to tell the 7-year-old version of that best friend to remember the word "Yahoo!" When (spoiler alert) the movie's happy ending happens, the cop is shown hitting a baseball that breaks the headlight of the best friend's car -- a Mercedes with a New York license plate reading YAHOO1. 

In early 1999, in addition to President Clinton's enemies embarrassing themselves more than him with the impeachment process, America's economy was booming like never before -- and, sadly, like never since. The single European currency went into effect. An earthquake killed over 1,000 people in the South American nation of Colombia.

Four days after Super Bowl XXXIII, Amadou Diallo, an unarmed black immigrant in The Bronx, was shot at 41 times, hit 19 times, by 4 New York cops. All of them were acquitted in a criminal trial. They should have all gone to prison, at the very least for criminally negligent homicide. None of them so much as lost their jobs for being lousy marksmen -- after all, they didn't just hit him 19 times, they missed him 23 times

In early 1999, King Hussein of Jordan, and Iris Murdoch, and Star Trek doctor DeForest Kelley died. There are not, as yet, very many famous people who were born in 1999, who would be turning 15 this year. Among them are Cameron Boyce and Karan Brar of the Disney Channel series Jessie, and singer Madison Beer. Elle Fanning (Dakota's sister) and Steve Irwin's daughter Bindi were born the year before.

January 31, 1999. The Denver Broncos beat the Atlanta Falcons in the Super Bowl. Neither has been back to the game since.

Now, the Broncos are back. The Falcons? Well, they were a dismal 4-12 this season, but the season before, they got all the way to the NFC Championship Game. So, who knows?

UPDATE: The Broncos lost to the Seattle Seahawks. Two years later, they returned to the Super Bowl, and beat the Carolina Panthers. The next year, the Falcons got back -- and wished they hadn't, performing by far the biggest choke-job in Super Bowl history against the New England Patriots.

Peter Vescey E-vesc-erates David Stern

Just saw this on Twitter, and although I almost never post about the NBA (and rarely did so even when the Nets were still in New Jersey), I had to mention it.

Peter Vescey, NBA honcho at the New York Post, did this:

With all due disrespect 2 Letterman's Top 10 things David Stern learned during his 30 years as commissioner, my 'staph' created its own list:

10. When in doubt, lock 'em out.

9. There are 71 ways to genuflect at the third-world shoes of Michael Jordan.

8. When it's a slow news day, fine Mark Cuban.

7. The Maloof brothers are not as annoying as Silna brothers. (The Maloofs own the Sacramento Kings. The Silnas owned the ABA's Spirits of St. Louis, and got paid off for not keeping their team going in the 1976 ABA-NBA merger with a percentage of NBA TV revenue, which is the NBA's equivalent of the deal the Mets have with Bobby Bonilla. On the other hand, speaking of the Mets, the Silnas did lose a lot of their money to Bernie Madoff.)

6. Donald Sterling has developed a tolerance to propofol.

5. Charles Barkley is a full-service idiot. (No, he's not, Peter. That comment was, as Charles would say, "Turrible.")

4. There are actually Hebrew words for "tats" and "posse." (Maybe, but the same Book of Leviticus that bans homosexual acts also bans tattoos in the very next chapter. Awkward for the guy who got a tattoo of that verse.)

3. How to have more people working on Christmas Day than the Vatican.

2. Baby mamas are people, too.

1. And the No. 1 thing David Stern learned during his 30 years as commissioner is...You can't rig enough lotteries to make the Knicks relevant.

*

Well, the Knicks will always be relevant. But it's been 40 years (nearly 41) since they won a title. Stern may have been able to fix things for Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, but never for the Knicks.

Unfortunately, he taught Gary Bettman too well.

*

UPDATE! As soon as I retweeted his #1, Vescey followed me on Twitter! Hot damn, that's a nice score.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Devils Disgrace in Da Bronx

Disgraceful. Da Devils were a Disgrace in Da Bronx.

I was so pumped for this game: The home of my favorite team in all of sports, hosting my 2nd-favorite team. And we were going to beat the team I hate the most!

In the immortal words of Jim Steinman (as sung by Bonnie Tyler), "Once upon a time, there was light in my life. Now, there's only love in the dark."

Rangers 7, Devils 3 at Yankee Stadium II. The Devils had a 3-1 lead with 3 minutes remaining in the 1st period, on 2 goals by Patrik Elias and 1 by Travis Zajac, and then they completely melted down.

Here's some of what I wrote on Facebook, while watching the game on television:

Still early but I like what I'm seeing. Devils taking the game to 'em, not taking any of their crap, converting 2 good chances.

End of the 1st period. Devils 3, Rangers 2. Acceptable for the moment, but we need more goals, and we need to give Marty more defensive support.

Ma, if you're watching this game, TURN IT OFF! You're jinxing us! (My mother infamously causes teams to lose. In her junior year at Belleville High School, she went to all their home games, and they lost them all. In her senior year, she went to no games, and they went 6-2-1.)

(In the 3rd period) My name is Michael Pacholek. I was in an accident, and I woke up in Giants Stadium on November 19, 1978.

If you're a Giants fan, you'll recognize the date. If you're a Devils fan, you'll understand completely. (This was a reference to the opening of the TV show Life On Mars, set in 1973, and to the football play known as "The Miracle at the Meadowlands."

(After the game) I'll have an Uncle Mike's Musings about the Devils Disgrace in Da Bronx later. But now, I'm sick of thinking about it. I'm going to see if I can recover my appetite. But the way this day is going, I'm not counting on whatever I eat tasting good.

(A little later) I wouldn't mind Ranger fans' monumental stupidity if it didn't come with overweening obnoxiousness. The problem is, a lot of them are also Yankee Fans, making them a lot smarter from April through October. But the Rangers have earned little of the arrogance that the Yankees have, and yet they take their summer team's arrogance and apply it to their winter team.

One title in 74 years... Even the hopeless Mets are on a better pace than that!

It would have been bad enough if the Devils had given a good effort and that lot across the Hudson had simply outplayed us. I would have hated it, but I would have understood it. That's sports, you know: Sometimes you don't lose, sometimes the other team just plain beats you.

That was not the case this time.


This was an unacceptable performance.

This was the biggest embarrassment at Yankee Stadium since Kevin Brown and Javier Vazquez made it so easy for the Red Sox to put their cheating to good use on October 20, 2004.

The Devils embarrassed all of us today, from Hoboken to Hackettstown, from High Point to Atlantic City, from Trenton to the Tunnels, from Route 94 to I-195, from Route 29 to the Palisades Parkway.

It was bad enough that it was against The Scum, that lot across the river. But for the last 43 minutes (at which point 3-1 Devils became 3-2 Devils), there was no effort at all.

Don't blame Martin Brodeur: He got no help from his defense. Blame such stiffs as "captain" Bryce Salvador, Eric Gelinas, Peter Harrold, Anton Volchenkov and Marek Zidlicky.

"That wasn't on Marty," Elias said. "We gave up way too many odd-man rushes."

Jaromir Jagr: "It wasn't his fault. We gave him 3 on 2s, 2 on 1s. Of course, I feel bad for him, but it wasn’t his fault."

Gelinas: "We were letting some odd-man rushes and making some bad decisions, me especially on one of the goals, and we can't make those mistakes. It wasn't a nice feeling seeing him leave the game. I felt bad for him."

Fair play to Gelinas, who, despite being a rookie, took more responsibility than Captain Salvador, who offered this weak effort: "You don’t want to him to have one of these games in an environment like this." Sure sounds like Salvador was blaming Marty.

A lot of "Devils fans" on Twitter did blame Marty, and demanded that he be pulled after 2 periods for Cory Schneider. Well, he was, and it didn't work.

You can also blame head coach Peter DeBoer, for messing with the forward lines, again. The Jazz Line -- Jaromir Jagr, Travis Zajac and Dainius Zubrus -- works well together. None of the others that DeBore has tried has. He doesn't know what the hell he's doing.

Can't blame the refs: They didn't change the outcome, although Derek Stepan holding Zajac's stick and then getting a bullshit penalty shot (on Schneider in the 3rd period) didn't help.

Can't blame the weather: Both teams played in the same conditions.

Can't blame the delay, of an hour and 10 minutes because of the glare of the sun: Both teams had to deal with that, too.

This was a team wobbling, and then going through the motions, not even coming close to giving enough of a damn. This game was lost, a lot more than it was won. The Rangers only had to expend a minimal amount of effort, because the Devils expended none. I can't credit them for the win because a college team could have beaten us today.

The Rangers still suck, which is a reflection on personality rather than performance. Today, we flat-out stunk.

If you're a Giants fan, you'll recognize the date: For the Devils, this was November 19, 1978. This was John McVay losing the plot, and Joe Pisarcik handing off the ball to Larry Csonka instead of just taking a knee and running out the clock, leading to a fumble that got returned for a touchdown by future Jets coach Herman Edwards, leading to a stunning game-winning touchdown by the Philadelphia Eagles, the Giants' biggest rivals (and I don't want to hear that the Dallas Cowboys are).

After that game, which Eagles fans call the Miracle at the Meadowlands (and Giant fans call nastier names), offensive coordinator Bob Gibson (no relation to the Baseball Hall-of-Famer of the same name) was fired the next day, and has never worked in football again; head coach McVay was fired after the season, and although he has worked in an NFL front office since, he has never coached at any level again; and Andy Robustelli, Hall of Fame defensive end and by that point the G-Men's director of operations, was also fired.

Ray Perkins was named head coach, with Bill Parcells as one of his assistants. George Young became general manager. When Perkins was offered the job at the University of Alabama, Parcells succeeded him. And the rest is history: Except for the Ray Handley interregnum, the Giants have usually been at least good, on occasion excellent, and nobody has ever again been taken seriously while laughing at them.

Speaking of things worth laughing at, unless you're a Jets fan. If you are one, you'll get this reference: Peter DeBoer is Rich Kotite on ice.

DeBoer should not have left The Stadium with a job. GM Lou Lamoriello should've given him a MetroCard, and told him to get back to Jersey on his own. Granted, he still would've had to pay $5.00 to get from New York's Penn Station to Newark's, but at least El Baldo (whom I've also called El Cheapo) would have paid for his $2.50 back to 33rd & 7th, which is more than he deserves.

Oh, wait, New York's Penn Station is under Madison Square Garden, home of the Rangers, and would be crawling with Ranger fans.

Yeah, well, DeBoer deserves to face their reactions, too. After all, it's not like Ranger fans have a history of being violent assholes, do they?

Uh... Yeah, there was some extracurricular activity in Yankee Stadium II today.

But you know what?

The Stadium was about 75 percent Devils fans.

The Scummers say we can't fill the Prudential: Today, we filled Yankee Stadium.

Devils fans can be proud. Devils players cannot.

We're still 3-1 against The Scum this season, and still in the hunt for a Playoff spot. But without significant changes being made, there would be little point in making it.

I would rather start all over with DeBoer and certain players going out, and miss the Playoffs, because then I would have hope that things will be better next season. As things stand now, the Devils don't deserve to make the Playoffs.

Some changes need to be made, starting at the top. DeBoer out.

*

Days until Arsenal play again: 2, Tuesday night (2:45 PM our time), away to South Coast club Southampton. Arsenal are top of the League, with 16 League matches to go. I am taking nothing for granted, but, this time, it sure looks like they're playing for more than just 4th place and qualification next season's UEFA Champions League. This past Friday night, Arsenal beat Coventry City, 4-0, to advance to the 5th Round of the FA Cup -- meaning that, on February 8 and 15, back-to-back Saturdays (unless the Cup match is moved, most likely to the next day if at all), Arsenal will be playing Liverpool, first in the League, then in the Cup.

Days until the Devils play again: 2, Tuesday night, 8:00 Eastern Time, away to the St. Louis Blues. We beat them 7-1 at the Prudential this past Tuesday. I don't think we're going to score 7 on them again.

Days until the U.S. national soccer team plays again: 6, this coming Saturday, at 5:00 PM (2:00 Pacific Time), a "friendly" (exhibition game) vs. the Republic of Korea (a.k.a. South Korea), at the StubHub Center (formerly the Home Depot Center) in Carson, California, home of the Los Angeles Galaxy and Chivas USA. We will also be traveling to the Ukraine for a friendly on March 5, and I suspect that there will be another tuneup match or two between the end of the European club season in May and the start of the World Cup in June.

Days until Super Bowl XLVIII at the Meadowlands: 7, a week from tonight, kickoff at around 6:25 PM.

Days until the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia: 12, on Friday, February 7.  Under 2 weeks.

Days until the Devils next play a local rival: 34, on Saturday afternoon, March 1, away to the New York Islanders. We play away to the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday night, March 11; home to the Rangers on Saturday night, March 22; away to the Islanders a week after that; and home to the Islanders on Friday night, April 11.

Days until the Red Bulls play again: 41, on Saturday, March 8, 7:30 PM, away to the Vancouver Whitecaps. Just 6 weeks.

Days until the next North London Derby between Arsenal and Tottenham: 48, a Premier League match, on Saturday, March 15, at White Hart Lane. Just 7 weeks. This follows (then) non-spending Arsenal humiliating Tottenham's £110 million of new spending in a 1-0 win in a Premier League match at the Emirates Stadium on September 1, and our half-injury-replacement side beating them 2-0 to knock them out of the FA Cup at the Emirates on January 3. And they thought they were better, that there was a "power shift in North London," and that we were "in a downward spiral." Now, they've fired another manager, while Arsene Wenger has Arsenal top of the League and still in the FA Cup and the Champions League. The Spuds never learn, do they?

Days until the Yankees play again: 67, on Tuesday, April 1, at 7:10 PM, away to the Houston Astros.  Under 10 weeks.

Days until the Yankees' home opener: 73, on Monday, April 7, at 1:00 PM (well, 1:07 or so), vs. the Baltimore Orioles.

Days until the next Yankees-Red Sox series begins: 76, on Thursday, April 10, at 7:00 PM (well, 7:07 or so), at Yankee Stadium II.

Days until the Red Bulls next play a "derby": 78, on Saturday, April 12, 2:30 PM, vs. D.C. United, at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington.

Days until the 2014 World Cup in Brazil: 138, on Thursday, June 12. Under 5 months.

Days until Rutgers plays football again: 216, on Saturday, August 30, away to Washington State, at whatever the Seattle Seahawks' stadium is going to end up being called next fall. A little over 7 months. Why we're playing "Wazzu" in the University of Washington's territory, I don't know. Maybe WSU, in the eastern part of the State in Pullman, wants to boost their recruiting in the Western part. Either way, it will be Rutgers' first game since losing the 2013 Pinstripe Bowl to Notre Dame at Yankee Stadium II, finishing the season at 6-7.

Days until East Brunswick High School plays football again: Unknown, as the schedule has yet to be released. Most likely, it will be on the 2nd Friday night in September. If so, that will be September 12, therefore 230 days. Under 8 months.

Days until Rutgers makes its Big Ten Conference debut: 231 days, on Saturday, September 13, time to be determined, against old enemy Penn State.

Days until the next East Brunswick vs. Old Bridge Thanksgiving game: 306, on Thursday morning, November 27, 10:00 AM. Just 10 months.

Days until the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: 954, on Friday, August 5, 2016. Under 3 years.

Top 10 Myths About the 1960s

Following up on the piece I did a few days ago, addressing myths of the 1950s, I move on to the next decade.

I also plan to do these for the 1970s and 1980s. Whether I do them for the 1990s and the 2000s remains to be seen.

Fifty years ago today, on January 25, 1964, a British music group hit Number 1 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100. The song was "I Want to Hold Your Hand," and the band was The Beatles.
A rare color photo of The Beatles's 1st appearance
on The Ed Sullivan Show, February 9, 1964

They weren't the first British band to achieve the feat: The Tornadoes had done so in November 1962, with an instrumental titled "Telstar," a tribute to the communications satellite that had recently been launched. But they couldn't sustain their success, and were quickly forgotten -- so quickly that band leader Joe Meek committed suicide in February 1967, just a little more than 4 years later.

In contrast, after The Beatles hit the top in January 1964, the world was never the same. It was a pop-culture milestone the likes of which Britney Spears, Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga could not possibly imagine.

The perception of decades isn't neat. The first half of the 1950s really felt like an extension of the 1940s. Really, in terms of feel and style, from things like music to architecture, "The Fifties" began on June 9, 1954, when Senator Joe McCarthy got smacked in those Congressional hearings; and ended on November 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was shot.

Then there was a bit of an interregnum. When The Beatles hit Number 1 on January 25, 1964, it more or less began "The Sixties," which ended on August 9, 1974, when President Richard Nixon resigned.

That began "The Seventies," which didn't really last that long. "The Eighties" began on November 4, 1980, when Ronald Reagan was elected President. They ended on November 3, 1992, when Bill Clinton was elected, starting "The Nineties." (You don't think of Nirvana as an "Eighties" band, do you?) "The Nineties" ended on November 7, 2000, when George W. Bush and his brother Jeb stole the Presidential election. (No, 9/11 didn't mark the change. After all, if Al Gore had been allowed to accept his rightful victory, there's a good chance his Administration would have been able to prevent it.)

And while we still haven't really reached a consensus on what the 2000-2009 decade should have been called, the election of Barack Obama on November 4, 2008 conveniently ended it. Now we're in "The Twenty-Tens," and, hopefully, they won't end with a stock market crash like "The Twenties," a Pearl Harbor-style attack like "The Thirties," or an assassination like "The Fifties."

*

The 1960s are a decade loaded with perhaps even more myth than the 1950s, because the Baby Boomers, the largest generation ever produced, people born in the late 1940s and the '50s, began to write their own mythology. Or, as Ray Manzarek (played by Kyle MacLachlan in Oliver Stone's only-partially-accurate 1991 film The Doors) put it as they were walking along Venice Beach in Los Angeles:

The world is about to explode, Jim.  People wanna fight or fuck, love or kill. (He points to the ocean behind them.) Vietnam is right out there, man. Sides are being chosen. Everything's gonna flame. The planet is screaming for change, Morrison. We've gotta make the myths!

And so they did. Some, better than others.

Top 10 Myths About the 1960s

1. The Sixties were a time of nonconformity. Have you ever looked at pictures from high school yearbooks from the 1960s? Even as late as 1969, students' hair wasn't much longer than The Beatles' was when they arrived in 1964. Nor were the clothes worn by most Americans as wild as seen on the hippies of Haight-Ashbury... or Greenwich Village, or Venice Beach, or Philadelphia's South Street, or Cambridge outside Boston.

I speak from, if not personal experience, then from personal research. I found some old yearbooks from my alma mater, East Brunswick High School. The school's dress code was dropped in 1970, and the change was immediate: Beatle-length hair became Hippie-length hair, dress shirts gave way to T-shirts, dress slacks to jeans, dress shoes to sneakers.

A few years before he died, but after Stone's movie, Manzarek wrote a memoir in which he said that the older generation wanted "Sixties fun" to be about hanging out with Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack, boozing, smoking, and "banging" women that they called "broads." In other words, guys in their 40s were now at a point where they were secure enough with money and fame that they no longer had to do what their parents wouldn't let them do in their teens and 20s.

Today, with the Rat Pack all dead and gone (unless you want to count Angie Dickinson and Shirley MacLaine, who are still alive as I type this), their kind of fun seems relatively harmless compared to the hellraising of rock stars of the Seventies and later, or the more recent excesses of Lindsay Lohan and Justin Bieber, who seem hell-bent on outdoing the nonsense of their parents' and grandparents' generations. Yeah, well, look where that got Amy Winehouse.

Yeah, the people who grew up in the 1930s and came of age in the 1940s figured, "Hey, we came through the Depression and World War II, and made something of ourselves. We've paid our dues. Our kids haven't done that yet, so they shouldn't be doing what we're doing, or worse. Never mind that we're being irresponsible, and not exactly role models: Do as we say, not as we do!"

Yeah, God forbid their own teenage and college-bound kids, now legally adults, do what they wanted! And you know what? A lot of those kids were afraid to break from conformity. For example, take a look at this picture.
A guy getting arrested by nasty-looking cops, with a big crowd looking on. That's Mario Savio, leader of the "Free Speech Movement" at the University of California's main campus in Berkeley, in late 1964. This was around his 22nd birthday, so he certainly qualified as one of the young people that other young people were looking up to at the time.

But his hair isn't especially long. (In fact, his hairline was already receding.) He's wearing a jacket, a dress shirt and a tie. He was an activist, but he was no hippie.

(Until 1966 or so, when people heard the word "hippie," they thought it meant "jazz musician," like in the 1963 hit by the Philadelphia girl group The Orlons: "Where do all the hippies meet? South Street, South Street." South Street, then as now, was Philly's "Greenwich Village.")

Savio later became a professor (though not at the college where he protested, unlike a few of the Columbia University protestors later in the decade), married twice, had a son with each wife, and developed heart trouble, which killed him in 1996, only 53 years old. He is best remembered for a speech he gave that month of December 1964:

There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears, and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

Savio sounded pretty radical. Even today, he sounds radical. But he sure didn't look radical.

Even as late as the Winter of 1967-68, the young people going to New Hampshire to try to win that State's first-in-the-nation Primary for Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota (no relation to Joe of Wisconsin), to protest President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Vietnam War, were so desperate to be seen as mainstream that they all got haircuts and wore suits, saying they had to "go clean for Gene." They were terrified about being seen, and defined, as hippies and/or radicals.

When McCarthy came close to actually beating LBJ in that Primary -- like Tet, a public relations victory if not a numerical one -- Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York got in the race. In contrast, his supporters had no qualms about being seen with long hair, work shirts, turtlenecks, or... gasp... sunglasses. (In 1963, the Senator's brother, JFK, had no problem being seen with sunglasses; in 1968, sunglasses meant "Black Panthers" to the Archie Bunkers of America.)

2. The Beatles were the good boys, and The Rolling Stones were the bad boys. Ha! What most of us didn't know at the time was, it was more like the other way around. When it came to being bad, in the early 1960s, before they became world-famous, The Beatles were smoking pot and popping pills and "shagging" Hamburg strippers. At that point, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were getting no closer to models than magazines, and thought heroin was for jazz musicians.
Sure, The Beatles sang "I Want to Hold Your Hand." Their manager, Brian Epstein, wouldn't have let them sing anything more controversial, or even avant-garde -- at least, not until he, much more than they (or, except for Brian Jones, The Stones), fell victim to drugs (prescription drugs, in his case). Brian also insisted that they wear the smart suits for which they are best remembered (far more than the Sgt. Pepper suits of 1967).

Even after they got big, when it came to being bad, The Stones weren't as naughty in private as The Beatles. At least, not for a while. Keith eventually embraced the lifestyle, but Mick was a poseur more than anything else. True, he was great at being a poseur -- until David Bowie blew him... out of the water in that regard. And on his baddest day, Mick may have been a jackass, but he wasn't as out-there as Keith, or Bowie, or the members of The Who, or (as the Sixties turned to the Seventies) Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath.
Left to right: Brian Jones, Bill Wyman, Keith Richards,
Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts. This picture makes Mick look like
the 4th-most important member of the band, and Keith like the lead singer.

3. Drugs were big. Let's get this clear fact out of the way: The most popular drug in the 1960s was alcohol, just as the Rat Packers hoped it would be. Indeed, while drugs were involved in their deaths, Judy Garland (hardly a rocker), Brian Jones of The Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Keith Moon of The Who would all die as a result of mixing downers with booze (itself a downer).
Sean Connery as Bond. James Bond:
"Vodka martini. Shaken, not stirred."

The 2nd-most-popular drug in the decade was tobacco. You know alcohol and tobacco were 1st & 2nd if you've watched Mad Men: A big storyline of the show was writing a commercial for Lucky Strike cigarettes. Cigarette advertising was banned from American TV in 1970, effective at the start of the next calendar year. While, at this writing, that show has half of its final season to go, the idea that most of the major characters, most of them smokers and some of them boozehounds, would still be alive in 2014 is ridiculous.
Jon Hamm as Don Draper

The 3rd-most popular drug of the 1960s, the biggest drug that entered public consciousness in the decade, was the birth-control pill. Suddenly, as some feminists have since observed, women could "have sex like men: Whenever we wanted, and with no responsibility."

By December 31, 1969, the kind of drugs that we associate with the Sixties were still little more than a rumor to most people. A 1969 poll showed that only 4 percent of Americans had tried marijuana. That's 1 out of every 25 people, hardly widespread. LSD? Its being outlawed in 1966 probably prevented it from becoming widespread.

4. Presidents of the Democratic Party started the Vietnam War. Conservatives like to blame JFK for sending so many "advisors" to Vietnam in 1961, '62 and '63, and LBJ for ramping the war up thereafter, especially after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, 1964, which pretty much gave him the power to do whatever he wanted in Vietnam.
"I knew from the start if I left the woman I really loved,
the Great Society, in order to fight that bitch of a war in Vietnam,
then I would lose everything at home, my hopes, my dreams."
-- quoted by Doris Kearns Goodwin in her biography of him

But it was Dwight D. Eisenhower who sent the first U.S. troops to Vietnam, in 1954. In that year, for the first time, American servicemen died there. And despite his Farewell Address' warning about "the military-industrial complex" on January 17, 1961, "Ike" supported U.S. involvement in Vietnam all the way until his death, 8 years later.

His Vice President, Richard Nixon, sure supported it. And when Tricky Dick ran again, as Joe McGinnis put it in his book The Selling of the President 1968, the Nixon campaign, and Republicans in general, didn't view the Vietnam War as bad because of senseless destruction with no end in sight. They viewed it as bad because it was ineffective.

That destruction was really unpopular, right? Well...
5. The Vietnam War was unpopular. It's a big stretch to say that the war was ever "popular." But even as late as the end of 1967 -- the year of the Human Be-In (January 14), the first big demonstrations against the war (April 15), Muhammad Ali refusing to be drafted (April 28), the Summer of Love, and the alleged "levitation of the Pentagon" (October 21) -- polls showed more people supporting the war (however unenthusiastically) than opposing it.

It wasn't until the Tet Offensive at the end of January 1968 that U.S. public opinion really turned against the war. Walter Cronkite, anchorman and managing editor (in other words, executive producer) of The CBS Evening News, went over there to see the aftermath of Tet, and, upon his return, showed the films he made there on his February 27, 1968 broadcast, and editorialized that we had to find a way out:

We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds...

For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. This summer's almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible escalation...

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy's intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations.

But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

Seeing this -- he had 3 TV sets installed in the Oval Office, so he could watch the evening news on CBS, NBC and ABC all at once -- LBJ told people, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." He was right: Considered in late 1967 an easy favorite to win a 2nd full term the following November, LBJ nearly lost the New Hampshire Primary to McCarthy on March 12, and then saw polls suggesting he would actually lose the Wisconsin Primary (which, to be fair, was right next-door to McCarthy's Minnesota) on April 2. (As it turned out, he did.)

LBJ got out of the race on March 31, saying he needed to concentrate on ending the war, not on getting himself re-elected. (Because he took office on November 22, 1963, more than halfway through JFK's term, the 22nd Amendment, limiting a President to 2 terms, even if he had served up to half of the previous President's term, meant that he was eligible to run again in 1968.) After that, unpledged slates of delegates, which would have gone to LBJ but instead ended up going to Vice President Hubert Humphrey (officially entering the race in April), started racking up delegates.

But among delegates that actually went to announced candidates in the primaries, a majority went to either McCarthy or RFK. A majority of Democrats wanted the war stopped, leading to the clashes at the Convention in Chicago, both in the streets and in the International Amphitheatre.

Except that Humphrey still won the nomination, even though he was not overtly opposed to the war. And when the election came on November 5, despite a late surge by Humphrey after his September 30 speech in Salt Lake City, a speech in which he chose to finally get out from under LBJ's thumb and became yet another peace candidate, he got only 42 percent of the vote.

This was because George Wallace, the segregationist once-and-future Governor of Alabama, was running a 3rd-party campaign. Between Nixon and Wallace, candidates who supported the war got 57 percent of the popular vote (a higher percentage than any single candidate has gotten since 1984), and 37 States worth 357 Electoral Votes (more than Barack Obama got in 2012, and more than George W. Bush got either time he ran).

Even as late as May 1970, there were "Hard Hat Demonstrations" in New York, in support of the war, and in support of the Ohio National Guardsmen who mowed down some demonstrators (and some innocent bystanders) at Kent State University. So even that late, there was still quite a bit of support for the war.
And on November 7, 1972, Nixon got 60 percent of the vote against Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, taking 49 out of 50 States for 523 Electoral Votes. Nixon said he was a peace candidate, but who was kidding who? Everyone knew that if you wanted someone who went out of his way to say he wanted the war over as soon as he got to work after the Inauguration, you voted for McGovern, not Nixon.

It could be argued that some of the war's opponents were duped by Nixon, and that some were so dispirited that they stayed home on Election Day. But as unpopular as the war was said to be, the guy who had been running it won by a lot more than he did when he ran 4 years earlier as the guy who had the know-how to stop it.

6. The protests stopped the war. The protests had absolutely no effect on the war. The Vietnam War, or at least the American role in it, was always going to end at a time chosen by a President of the United States. Johnson thought he'd achieved it at the end of October 1968, just in time to save Humphrey in the election. But it didn't happen.

(It appears that the Nixon campaign sent an envoy, Anna Chennault, to the Vietcong, to tell them that they could get a better deal with a potential President Nixon than with President Johnson or a potential President Humphrey. And they backed out of the deal LBJ thought he had. This was treason, extending a war for political gain. But LBJ never called Nixon out on it.)

Once Nixon took office, he could have ended the war anytime he wanted. And he did: In October 1972, he sent his National Security Adviser (then his de facto, later his actual, Secretary of State), Henry Kissinger, to tell the media, "Peace is at hand." This took away the biggest argument in McGovern's favor, and led to the Nixon landslide on November 7. Then came the Christmas bombing, and we all knew what many of us already suspected: Nixon and Kissinger were lying bastards.

Nixon took the Oath of Office for a 2nd term on January 20, 1973, and the war was still not over. He said he would end it. Well, 4 years later, he hadn't. In my opinion, this forfeited any claim he had to ending it, whenever it would have happened.

LBJ died 2 days later, on January 22 -- the same day that the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down, and the same day that George Foreman knocked out Joe Frazier to take the heavyweight title. The very next day, January 23, Nixon announced that a peace agreement had been reached, and the war was over.

His 2nd term was underway, meaning he no longer needed the war to use as a club against people's patriotism (see also: Bush, George H.W., ending a war with Iraq "too soon"; and Bush, George W., keeping a war with Iraq going and going and going because he wanted to win elections, Presidential and Congressional). And LBJ was dead, and thus unable (at least, on this plane of existence) to know that the war he (or, at least, the Democrats) "started" was over. So Nixon knew he could end the war, and get the credit. Cynical to the end.

7. Robert F. Kennedy would have won the 1968 Presidential election if he had lived. Let's put aside, for the purpose of this post, the argument that he would have ended the war shortly after his Inauguration, which would have prevented all the 1969-75 casualties on both sides, the wounded as well as the killed, not to mention the Kent State Massacre. And let's also put aside consideration of what other good RFK would have done had he won. This is not about his imagined Administration. This is about his imagined campaign.
Nixon won 301 Electoral Votes, to Humphrey's 191 and Wallace's 46. Here's Nixon's margin of victory in certain States:

California, 40 Electoral Votes: Won by 223,346 votes
Ohio, 26: 90,428
Illinois, 26: 134,960
New Jersey, 17: 61,261
Missouri, 12: 20,488
Wisconsin, 12: 61,193
Oregon, 6: 49,567
Alaska, 3: 2,189
Delaware, 3: 7,520
Nevada, 3: 12,590

Those were Nixon's margins over Humphrey, in a year when the Democrats were demoralized over the war, the assassinations of RFK and Martin Luther King, and the Convention shenanigans. Can you imagine how many Democrats would have come out to vote for a living RFK? Especially in heavily Catholic States like California, Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey, Wisconsin and Delaware?

A shift of 111,674 votes in California (it looks like a big number, but it would have been only 1.54 percent of the entire State vote) would have made it Nixon 261, Kennedy 231, Wallace 46 -- enough to deny Nixon a majority in the Electoral College, and throw the vote into the House of Representatives. Whether a House with a lot of Southern Democrats, knowing that Wallace couldn't win, would have elected Tricky Dick or the heavily pro-civil rights RFK is unknown.

But if there were also a shift of 45,215 in Ohio, and 67,481 in Illinois, that would have made it Kennedy 283, Nixon 209 -- and Bobby would have gotten the 270 that was needed to win, without winning a single State that Wallace actually took away from its then-usual place in the Democratic column. Those States were Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. Wallace also ended up with 1 EV from North Carolina, and siphoned enough votes to throw these States to Nixon: North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and possibly Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio and Oklahoma.

So if RFK had gotten the Democratic nomination, there's a very good chance that he would have beaten Nixon. All he had to do was live, and then get the Democratic nomination.

He would not have gotten the Democratic nomination. Through those "unpledged slates of delegates," LBJ was controlling the process for his preferred candidate, Humphrey. Even after Bobby won the California Primary, the delegate totals were Humphrey 561, Kennedy 393, McCarthy 258. When the roll call was made at the Convention, it was Humphrey 1,759, McCarthy 601, McGovern (a late entry, designed to win over RFK supporters) 146, last brother Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts (who wasn't running) 13, all others 88.

In order to win the nomination, a candidate had to win a majority of the delegates, 1,304. Bobby would have to have hung on to all 393 of his delegates, and won all of McGovern's 146 and all of Ted's 13, and still find 752 others.

McCarthy despised both Jack and Bobby Kennedy, and it is hard to imagine him releasing his delegates to Bobby -- especially since, as it turned out, he didn't endorse Humphrey until September, and then in only the most lukewarm fashion. If Bobby merely swayed 1 out of 5 McCarthy delegates, that would have been 120, giving him (in this scenario) 632 more to go. To get those, he would have had to get 36 percent of the delegates that ended up going to Humphrey. No chance.

Whether HHH would have taken RFK as his running mate, I don't know, although it would surely have made the difference, at least in the popular vote if not the Electoral. But Bobby would not have won the nomination.

There is one scenario in which the delegates could have fallen Bobby's way. Although he looked, both during the riots after Dr. King's assassination in early April and during the Convention proceedings in late August, like a tool of the Administration and the military-industrial complex, Richard J. Daley, Mayor of Chicago and host of the Convention, was actually opposed to the Vietnam War.

And, as America's best-known Irish-Catholic politician of the time not named Kennedy, he was a good friend of JFK, allegedly rigging the Cook County, and thus the Illinois, vote for him in 1960, although the evidence is hardly conclusive, and wouldn't have mattered in the Electoral Vote anyway. (When Illinois went for Nixon on Election Night 1968, Murray Kempton of the New York Post told his friends, but wouldn't put it in his column, "I guess Richard Daley couldn't steal the Presidency from the same man twice in one lifetime.")

If a living RFK had won Daley over, that might have won enough Catholic and/or labor-influenced delegates to swing from HHH to RFK, and win Bobby the nomination. Daley would have gone in the liberal imagination from villain to hero overnight.

And while LBJ hated RFK even more than Gene McCarthy did (though LBJ had come to admire JFK before his death, and got along well with Ted), like Alexander Hamilton throwing his 1800 support to Thomas Jefferson because he hated Aaron Burr more, LBJ and Daley would have gotten the Democratic Party united behind RFK, and Nixon never would have had a chance. Why, with LBJ leading the way, a lot of Southern Democrats might have even abandoned Wallace, and RFK might have won in a wipeout with over 400 EVs.

But that scenario is a longshot. Just as it's easy to forget, half a century after the fact, that JFK wasn't overwhelmingly popular on the morning of November 22, 1963, neither was RFK beloved beyond his core constituency on the morning of June 4, 1968.

8. The War On Poverty failed. On January 8, 1964, in his State of the Union Address, LBJ said, "This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America. I urge this Congress and all Americans to join with me in that effort." In 1980, running for President, Ronald Reagan said, "We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won."

The major features of the War On Poverty were the Economic Opportunity Act, which created the Job Corps and VISTA; the Food Stamp Act; the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; and the Social Security Act of 1965, which created Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor.

Results? In 1966, 15 percent of Americans were below the poverty line; in 2012, the figure was 15 percent. But that's based on figures from the Census Bureau, and they don't take measures such as the preceding, or the later Earned Income Tax Credit -- a Reagan idea, mind you -- into account

The poverty rate in 1963 was more like 32 percent. By 1979, just before Reagan, that great ignorer of the poor, began his successful campaign, it was down to 12 percent. By 2000, 7 percent. Think about it: In 37 years, the number of poor Americans was dropped from 1 out of every 3 to 1 out of every 14. In 2010, even after the 2 recessions caused by George W. Bush turning away from the Bill Clinton economic policies and toward tax rates well below the ones Reagan brought, it was back up to only 8 percent -- 1 out of every 12.

For the people brought out of poverty, the war sure wasn't lost. Indeed, while Nixon cut back some of LBJ's Great Society and War On Poverty programs, he expanded some, and left most alone. Nor did the Republican who followed him, Gerald Ford, cut back on them much. (And, foreign policy aside, Ford was noticeably more conservative than Nixon.) Even Reagan and the George Bushes didn't cut back much, although what they did cut back did hurt.

The War On Poverty was not lost, it was sabotaged. And we still won many victories in it. The results suggest we could do it again, if only the wealthiest 1 percent would pay their fair share in taxes. Don't tell me that they do: A man who makes $10 million a year can afford to lose $9.9 million of that, and still live very well.

Or, to put it in language that Reagan's acolytes will understand: We fought a Cold War against Communism, yet China, North Korea and Cuba are still Communist. Did we lose that war?

9. Woodstock was wonderful. Sure, it looked like a blast, if you saw the movie Woodstock (released on March 26, 1970, 7 months after the festival). Because that meant you didn't have to live through...

* The traffic jam, as bad as any as has ever hit the New York Tri-State Area. When Arlo Guthrie said, "The New York State Thruway's closed, man!" he wasn't kidding. The promoters expected around 150,000 people, and thought they had enough facilities, including the access roads, to handle that.

But, depending on whose figures you believe, anywhere from 300,000 (The New York Times on the day after) to 850,000 (cited by Richie Havens as a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show 25 years later) showed up. The best-known figure is 500,000, due to the line in Joni Mitchell's song, "By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong." The next week's issue of Rolling Stone had the headline, "Woodstock: 450,000," and that is usually cited as the most accurate number.

(By the way, Joni wasn't there. Neither was Bob Dylan, whose supposed presence was said to be the reason so many people came -- the reasoning being that he actually lived in the town of Woodstock, which refused to host the festival. By the time they finally got the permit from the Town of Bethel, the posters with the name "Woodstock" had already been printed.)

In the 1970 Census, Buffalo was listed as having 462,768 people. If there were more than that at Woodstock (which is certainly possible), that would have made the Festival the 2nd-largest "city" in the State of New York, behind only the City of New York. And since about 3 times as many people as expected showed up, they had problems with...

* The food situation. There wasn't enough. To this day, there are nearby store owners who say they made a fortune selling sandwiches and soda to people going to the festival.

* The hygiene situation. Anyone who's ever been to a sold-out football game and had to use the bathroom, and has been foolish enough to wait until halftime, understands why baseball has 9 innings instead of 2 halves or 4 quarters. It's bad enough when 60,000 people want to use the john at once, in  a building designed to hold that many.

Now imagine that, out of 500,000 people, at any one time, 1 percent need to relieve themselves. That's 5,000. I don't know how many port-a-potties they had, but imagine that it was 100. That's 1 contained hole in the ground for every 50 people. That's not enough.

And I don't think there were shower facilities there, and lots of people stayed for the full 3 days. (Given the traffic, they may not have had much choice.) And remember, this was the middle of August in New York State. Hot. So even if it hadn't rained, producing all that dinginess and mud, those 600 acres must've given off some serious fumes, above and beyond anything that was being smoked. This, of course, gave rise to the myth of "the dirty hippie," which is also greatly exaggerated, but, at Woodstock, was bad enough.

* The medical situation. I don't know how many "bad trips" or overdoses there were, although the legend of warning Woodstockers about "the brown acid" (LSD, possibly laced with PCP, a.k.a. "angel dust") has been well-documented. Out of the 500,000 or so people who were there, it's been said that 3 died: One from an overdose, one from appendicitis, and one fool who decided to sleep under a tractor on a hill, and you can guess the result.

Now, there were almost certainly more murders, overdoses, accidents, medical miscues and "deaths by misadventure" that weekend in New York City, with all the modern medical facilities available, including some of the most honored hospitals in the world. But the men running Woodstock were woefully underprepared in this regard.

Anywhere from 1 to 3 births were said to have happened there (although no one has ever found a documented "Woodstock Baby"), to say nothing of the conceptions that happened there, and the couples that met and had children later on, so the deaths are probably more than balanced out. But then, if there were births at Woodstock, those required medical attention, too.

* The weather situation. Yeah, it rained. That's no myth. At one point, somebody onstage got all those people to chant, "No rain! No rain! No rain! No rain!" That worked about as well as chanting, "One, two, three, four, we don't want your fuckin' war!" As in, not at all.

No, on August 15, 16, 17 and 18, 1969, Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel Woods, Sullivan County, New York, where the festival was held, was not the place to be. In contrast, the next year, when the documentary about the festival was released, a movie theater showing it was the place to be. There, the millions of people who have said they were there could have a far better experience than the half a million or so who actually were there.

I just found this out while putting this post together: Max Yasgur was actually something you would think the Woodstockers would have opposed: A businessman. Yes, he was a farmer, but he had the largest dairy farm in New York State's Sullivan County. He was also a registered Republican, hardly surprising for a man living in the Catskills. And his son, Sam Yasgur, was that oh-so-square profession, a lawyer. Good thing, too: He was the main negotiator between the festival promoters and his father, to secure the farm as a site. Max died in 1973, just 54 years old, but Sam is still alive, age 71, and is now the Sullivan County Attorney, having previously held that post for Westchester County. (UPDATE: Sam died in 2016, at 74.)

On the other hand, Max Yasgur, despite being a guy who grew up during the Great Depression and came of age during World War II, was a big believer in freedom of expression, and didn't like the way the hippies had been portrayed in the media to that point. He rented out his field because it had been a wet summer, and this made up the difference in the cost of the hay he didn't have available for his cows.

He also gave away the milk he was producing that weekend, and filled up his empty milk bottles with water, and had them distributed for free to the concertgoers. The Republican businessman was doing a full "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."

And on the final full day, Yasgur addressed the crowd, and said:

I'm a farmer. I don't know how to speak to twenty people at one time, let alone a crowd like this. But I think you people have proven something to the world. Not only to the Town of Bethel, or Sullivan County, or New York State. You've proven something to the world.

This is the largest group of people ever assembled in one place. We have had no idea that there would be this size group, and because of that you've had quite a few inconveniences as far as water, food, and so forth. Your producers have done a mammoth job to see that you're taken care of... They'd enjoy a vote of thanks.

But above that, the important thing that you've proven to the world is that a half a million kids — and I call you kids because I have children that are older than you are — a half million young people can get together and have three days of fun and music, and have nothing but fun and music, and I God bless you for it!

It probably wasn't the largest group of people ever assembled in one place -- I've heard that Mohandas Gandhi's funeral, in early 1948, had over 2 million people lining the streets, and some New York ticker-tape parades have topped that -- though Yasgur may not have known that. But he saw the point.

As far as I know, Yasgur's thoughts about the quality of the music were unrecorded. But, as Ray Charles once said in a commercial for Pioneer laserdisc players (laserdiscs were like album-sized 1980s forerunners of DVDs), "If the music don't sound good, who cares what the picture looks like?" (Both a reference to Ray's blindness and a valid point.) So how good was the music at Woodstock?

Supposedly, transcendent performances were given by several performers, including The Who, Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker, The Band, Sly & The Family Stone, and, closing the show as the sun rose on the 18th with a psychedelic "Star-Spangled Banner," Jimi Hendrix. And, I have to admit, they all sounded good on television, decades after the fact.

But Grace Slick of The Jefferson Airplane, Joe McDonald of Country Joe & The Fish, and John Sebastian of The Lovin' Spoonful all said it was the worst performance of their careers. Sebastian, by then split from The Spoonful, took the stage at Woodstock and sang one of my favorite songs ever, "Darling, Be Home Soon," but I have to agree with his self-assessment: He was terrible. He either was really, really stoned, or wanted people to think he was. Slick actually said that the music was better at Altamont, the festival held in the Bay Area that December, where even more went wrong.
(That's Sebastian, although I chose this photo more for the panorama of the crowd.)

Back to my usual forte, sports, especially baseball:

10. The Mets were more popular than the Yankees. This is a myth that Met fans, including many in the media, have been telling us pretty much since the Mets debuted in April 1962.

Here's the per-home-game attendance figures from 1961 (the year before the Mets debuted, included as a control) until 1969 (the last year of the decade, and the year of the Mets' "Miracle"):

Year Yankees Mets
1961 21,444 < Not applicable
1962 18,439 > 11,532
1963 16,260 > 13,335
1964 15,922 < 21,390
1965 14,982 < 21,832
1966 14,058 < 24,009
1967 15,454 < 19,327
1968 14,459 < 21,996
1969 13,185 < 26,856

Yankee attendance dropped by 3,000 a game when the Mets arrived. But, remember, '61 was also the year of the Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris home run chase, and that wasn't repeated in '62. Yankee attendance went down by 2,200 in '63. Why? Because Mantle missed 2 months of the season with an injury.

The year the Mets opened Shea, brand-new, with no support poles, a big parking lot, and not in a deteriorating neighborhood where poor minorities lived? Met attendance rose by 8,000, which is completely understandable. But Yankee attendance dropped only 338 per game. If Shea was so great, and the Mets were so much fun, shouldn't the Yankees' drop have been considerably greater?

Even the fall from a Pennant to 6th place in '65 only dropped the Yankees' attendance by less than 1,000. Yankee attendance actually went up from '66 to '67, and in '68 (the first winning season since '64, though hardly a contending one) was higher than it was in '66.

But then came a 1,300-fan drop in '69. Was that because the Mets won it all? No, it was because Mantle retired, taking away the Yanks' biggest drawing card. This was later matched in the Baltimore Orioles' attendance, which took a nosedive not when they stopped winning in 1998, but after 2001 when Cal Ripken retired.
But if you consider that the Mets brought the fans of the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers together, well, it stands to reason that they would have more fans. (This is hardly the case anymore.) So if you accept that 2 fan bases had been brought together to form 1, then there's a different chart (and not just because I'm not including the inapplicable 1961):

Year Yankees Mets
1962 18,439 > 5,766
1963 16,260 > 6,668
1964 15,922 > 10,695
1965 14,982 > 10,916
1966 14,058 > 12,005
1967 15,454 > 9,664
1968 14,459 > 11,998
1969 13,185 < 13,428

So, really, based on their own merit, and not on memories of the Boys of Summer, the Shot Heard 'Round the World and the Say Hey Kid, the Mets weren't really more popular than the Yankees until the end of the decade, their Miracle Year -- which was also Year 1 A.M, after Mickey.

True, a Met fan interested in philosophy, logic or semantics (surely, there must be a few) could say, "Well, the Yankees' popularity was based on Mantle, and the fact that they were always winning." There is a lot of truth to that. But if you accept that the Yankees were riding Mickey's coattails, you also have to accept that the Mets were riding the coattails of Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Willie Mays and Bobby Thomson.

We could have this debate of which post-1968 team was more popular, comparing the 1976-81 Yankees to the 1969 or 1986 Mets. But once you start looking at Yankee attendance figures from 1996 onward, it isn't even close.

Taking all these facts into consideration, it has to be said: Based on themselves, and not on memories of players who weren't even Mets (or, in the cases of Duke Snider and Gil Hodges, weren't Mets until they were old and injured), the Mets weren't more popular than the Yankees in the 1960s, until 1969. Maybe the Mets finally becoming, genuinely, more popular than the Yankees was the true "miracle."

I know I said I was doing a Top 10, and that's 10. But let me add one more sports-related myth from the 1960s:

11. Football overtook baseball in popularity. No, not in the Sixties, it didn't. A total of 27.2 million fans saw regular-season Major League Baseball games in calendar year 1969. The National Football League and the American Football League combined, in their last year as separate leagues, with 2 more teams (26 to 24), saw 8.9 million fans at their regular-season games in 1969.

True, this meant that an average of 49,000 fans saw each pro football game, while just 14,000 saw each MLB game. But consider that there's only 1 pro football game a week, while there's usually about 6 baseball games a week. Divide those 49,000 by 6, and now you've got an average of about 8,200 fans attending NFL or AFL games every day.

Even in 2013, over 74 million people saw MLB games -- about 30,464 per game. The NFL, with 2 more teams (32 to 30)? 34.6 million, about half as many -- but 135,136 per week, and thus 19,305 per day.

By that measure, pro football still isn't more popular than baseball. Baseball is still the National Pastime -- 30,464 divided by 19,305 makes baseball more popular by 58 percent!.

Oh, you want to talk about television ratings? Even in a bad year for the Yankees, with Derek Jeter injured for much of the season and the team winning "only" 85 games, YES Network games got 2.62 percent of the viewing audience. The Mets, in another awful year, got just 1.54 percent on SNY. The Giants? 15.3 -- but divide that by 6 (again, 6 baseball games a week, 1 football game a week), and it's 2.55, less than the Yankees! The Jets got 12.3, and that's 2.05, more than the Mets, but also noticeably less than the Yankees. Add it up, and it's 4.16 for New York baseball teams, 4.60 for New York football teams.

But let's go back to the 1960s. What were the major events in each sport in the decade?

Baseball: Bill Mazeroski's homer, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris chasing 61, Maury Wills reintroducing us to the stolen base, Sandy Koufax's no-hitters, Bob Gibson's pitching, Frank Robinson and Carl Yastrzemski winning Triple Crowns, Don Drysdale's 58 2/3rds consecutive scoreless innings,Denny McLain's 31-win season, and the great Pennant races of 1962, '64, '65 and '67.

Pro football: The dominance of the Green Bay Packers, the passing of Johnny Unitas, the running of Jim Brown and Gale Sayers, the Ice Bowl between the Packers and the Dallas Cowboys, and the rise of the AFL and its eventual culmination in the Super Bowl wins of the New York Jets and the Kansas City Chiefs.

Which sport's big events got talked about more then? Which ones get talked about more now?

Even in 1969, when Joe Namath guaranteed the Jets would win Super Bowl III, and did, and excited everyone, especially in the New York Tri-State Area, the Mets winning the World Series 9 months later was a bigger story.

And it remains so. TV shows (such as Everybody Loves Raymond) and movies (including Oh, God! and Frequency) have paid tribute to the '69 Mets. When was the last time a major pop culture item made reference to the '68 Jets, or even to Namath? The Odd Couple? The freakin' Brady Bunch?
The Jets' big upset was a moment that neatly fell into a specific time. The Mets' big upset was a moment for all time.

Because baseball was still bigger than football. And it still is.

*

I was born on December 18, 1969, in the last 2 weeks of the decade, the one remembered for The Beatles, Dylan, Vietnam, rising crime in the cities, race riots, growing suburbs, hippies, drugs, Woodstock, Broadway Joe Namath, the Miracle Mets, and now, in retrospect, Mad Men.

There's an old saying: "If you remember the Sixties, you weren't there." Well, I was there... barely. And I don't remember it.

I know that a lot of what we think we know about the 1960s simply isn't true, or is only partly true.

The people who lived through those times, even the ones who lied to us then, and even the ones who lie about those times now, but especially those who want the truth known, deserve to have the truth told.