Profiles of the Game: Really Good Stories from the Sports Pages

By Seth Levenstein

Tapping into the rich tradition and exceptional storytelling of the Associated Press, Profiles of the Game delivers an outstanding collection of sports reporting that will capture the attention of sports fans and non-fans alike. Culled from the archives, readers will experience original sports writing about people, events and newsworthy moments in sports history. Readers will get to experience the same stories their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents read in the sports pages years before them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483523934

Book preview

Index

INTRODUCTION

We lived a couple of miles from Shea Stadium in Queens, N.Y. in the 1960s. I was seven years old when we moved to New Jersey in September, 1969. The Mets and Jets were our teams. Still root for them to this day. I remember going to Jets and Mets games as a kid, seeing future hall of famers playing in their heyday. Broadway Joe was the man. We saw him play a few times. We also saw Willie Mays play one of his final games when he was finishing his career with the Mets. I would have loved to have seen him in his prime.

My father went to the World Series in 1969 and saw the Miracle Mets beat the Orioles. I feigned sickness so my mother would let me stay home from school in order to watch the game on TV. My father brought home the program from the game with Tommie Agee’s autograph. Wow! One of my favorite players had signed my dad’s World Series program.

About twenty five years later, my father told me he had forged Agee’s autograph because he wanted me to have something special. We still talk about that today, which of course is the part that is something special.

My father went to the Ali-Frazier fight at Madison Square Garden. He sat third row ringside near the VIPs in attendance.

When we visited my grandparents in Brooklyn, I remember watching the Mets on my grandfather’s black and white TV with him. Sometimes we would watch the Yankees. Adie, my grandmother on my mom’s side, would watch wrestling and roller derby with us. I know now they aren’t real sports but we were kids and that didn’t faze us at the time.

As season ticket holders for the Cosmos, we saw Pele play and were fortunate to attend his final game.

During the ’97 or ’98 baseball season, I attended a Mets game with a few friends. One friend worked for the team. He walked us through the press box where I met Mookie Wilson. The only thing I said to Mookie was, I know you would have beaten him to the bag if he fielded it cleanly, making reference to the grounder Mookie hit that went through Bill Buckner’s legs in the 1986 World Series. Mookie responded with an ear-to-ear smile and said, Maybe.

My father, brothers and I still talk with each other about the games we watch, the teams we follow and any plays or moments worth discussing. We still hold the same interest that we have always had. We have picked up some extra teams along the way, having collegiate alliances or other rooting reasons.

We are not unique when it comes to this. Fans across the globe will have their favorite teams and players they root for, talk about, cheer for and agonize over. They will have their moments and memories that are important to them and their families for myriad of reasons.

How many conversations have probably started with, In my day... or...yeah, he is good but you should have seen so-and-so...that was a great game, but you should have seen the game between... It would be nice if younger fans were able to enjoy the moments the older fans want to share. In some cases they can, but a large portion of the stories will remain just history without a second chance.

Not all sports stories are about a game or a play. One of my favorite moments in sports, which I was able to see the day it happened as part of the halftime show of a college football game I had been watching, was at senior day at the University of Nebraska. During the last home football game in 1990, each senior on the Cornhuskers football team was introduced to a crowd of around 76,000 devoted fans who applauded loudly for each player. Kenny Walker, who is deaf, would be named an All-American defensive lineman and the Big 8 Defensive Player of the Year in 1990, received an amazing ovation. When he ran onto the field, the crowd dressed in Nebraska red, were holding their hands in the air and clapping in sign language. It was an incredible sight to see. He responded by raising his arm into the air and signed I Love You, to the crowd.

Sports connect people while touching the human spirit. The following Associated Press story, written April 1, 1975, is a great example:

Normie Grevey tried, in his own way, to ease the pain he and his friends felt.

The 6-year-old brother of Kevin Grevey, the Kentucky forward who led the Wildcats with 34 points in their NCAA title game defeat to UCLA here Monday, suffered along with his friends.

His father, Norman, said the youngster cried when his older brother and the rest of the Wildcats were unable to capture a national championship.

Kevin held his tearful brother in his arms in the quiet dressing room and told him, Don’t worry Normie. You’ll be a player someday.

And so Normie tried to give his big friends some solace. He walked to the dressing room blackboard and scribbled:

I hop you wen nekst yeer.

CHAPTER ONE

PRAYERS WERE ANSWERED

Heart-Stabbing Finish

October 4, 1951

NEW YORK (AP) – In as heart-stabbing a finish as baseball ever saw, Bobby Thomson slammed a three-run homer into the left field stands with two mates aboard in the ninth inning to give the New York Giants a 5 to 4 victory over Brooklyn in the third and deciding game of their playoff for the National League pennant at the Polo Grounds yesterday.

The tremendous blow, one of the most valuable ever struck, came with one down in the final chapter to electrify a crowd of 34,320 which had been resigned to a Dodger victory minutes before.

Few madder scenes ever have been seen on the diamond than that put on by Manager Leo Durocher’s men as the Flying Scot trotted around the sacks behind Clint Hartung and Whitey Lockman after he had powdered the second pitch thrown by Ralph Branca, Dodger reliever.

The great blow climaxed the most spectacular pennant dash in the game and sent a club into the World Series which had been 13 ½ games out of first place on Aug. 11. Giant supporters will concede nothing to their series rivals, the Yankees, after what happened yesterday.

Until Thomson teed off to send the crowd into hysteria, the Giants never had been ahead in the ball game. They had tied the count at 1-1 briefly toward the end, but had promptly been reduced to the depths of despair as the Dodgers rallied for three runs in the top of the eighth and apparently put the decision beyond the question.

Going into the ninth, big Don Newcombe had shackled the Giants with four hits and poured his fast ones across with what looked like increasing effectiveness. Then Alvin Dark, shortstop and field captain of the new league champions, rapped the husky Negro for a scratch single off Gil Hodges’ glove at first.

When Don Mueller followed with a solid shot to left which sent Dark scampering to third, Manager Charlie Dressen had a talk with Newcombe, but decided to leave him in. His judgment seemed justified. Monte Irvin, the Giants most dangerous slugger, lifted a pop foul to Hodges.

That brought up the lefty-swinging Lockman, and he smashed a hard double off the left field barricade to bring Dark home and put the tying runs on the sacks. Mueller twisted his left ankle sliding into third and was carried out to the clubhouse on a stretcher. He passed Branca, victim of the Giants’ triumph in the first playoff game, as the latter came in to pitch to Thomson.

Thomson previously had collected two of the Giants’ four blows off Newcombe, one of them a double in the fifth. He had appeared in a fair way toward being the goat of the contest when after singling in the second behind a hit by Lockman, he had torn on to second only to find Lockman standing there and had been tossed out.

Also in Brooklyn’s big eighth the speedster from Staten Island had not been alert on a grounder by Andy Pafko to let a run in and help keep the rally alive.

In other words, Bobby had something to make up when he strode up and looked Branca in the eye. He let the first one, a strike, go by. On the next he swung from his boot tops, and from the crack of the bat there was never a doubt that the game was over and that the Giants had won their first flag since 1937. The ball disappeared almost on a line into the stands above the 315-foot mark.

By the time Thomson reached the plate every last one of his teammates was waiting for him in a body. Durocher, coaching at third, trotted in beside the hero of the hour. The players pounced on Bobby as though they meant to tear him apart. The parade to the clubhouse in center field was a triumphal procession.

Larry Jansen, the veteran right-hander who was being groomed to face the Yankees in today’s opener in the event of victory, worked the final inning against the Dodgers after Maglie had been lifted for a pinch-hitter in the eighth and received credit for his 22nd triumph of the year.

Before the histrionics of the closing innings came around, the contest had been a spine-tingling duel between Newcombe and Maglie. Both righties were in fine form and had the opposing batters more or less at their mercy.

The Dodgers scored right off the bat. Maglie, who usually has immaculate control, passed both Pee Wee Reese and Duke Snider after one was out, and Jackie Robinson slammed Reese home with a line single to left.

For the next five innings that looked like the biggest run in the world. Maglie tightened and retired the next 11 Brooks in order before Billy Cox beat out a bunt for his club’s second safety to open the fifth. A droopy single by Snider in the sixth and a more robust one by catcher Rube Walker in the seventh had provided the only other hits off Maglie when the Giants came up in their half of the seventh.

Irvin opened that frame with a double off the left field wall and slid safely into third ahead of Walker’s peg as Lockman laid down a sacrifice bunt. Thomson delivered him with a tremendous fly to Snider in center field to knot the contest and send Giants’ rooters into temporary ecstasy.

One was out when the Flock opened its big eighth with a single to right by Reese. Snider moved the shortstop to third with a similar blow to right, and then, with Robinson at bat, Maglie uncorked a wild pitch into the dirt on which Reese raced home with the tie breaker.

After Maglie had purposely given Robinson a fourth ball, Andy Pafko bounded one down to Thomson at third on which Snider would have been a dead pigeon at the plate, but Bobby let it squirt out of his hands and another run was in. An out later Cox delivered the third with a blast which went past Bobby’s glove and down the left field line.

A little sharper fielding might have had it. At least, the crowd seemed to have thought so, and it didn’t hesitate to burn Bobby’s ears. That was just one more thing on his mind when he went up there in the ninth. No player ever atoned more fully for his sins that Bobby did.

Storybook Finish

By Orlo Robertson

October 4, 1951

NEW YORK (AP) – Bobby Thomson, Scottish-born resident of Metropolitan New York, wrote a storybook finish to the spine-tingling National League pennant race yesterday and pandemonium broke loose in the Polo Grounds.

Never in history has Coogan’s Bluff, under which rests the home of the New York Giants, reverberated with such sound as followers of the new National League champions cut loose with all their vocal chords.

They had been quiet most of the day, especially after the Brooklyn Dodgers took a 4-1 lead in the eighth, but with a mighty roar that continued long afterwards they opened all their pent-up emotions as Thomson’s 32nd homer settled in the lower left field stands with two mates aboard.

It was a high fast one and a little inside, Thomson shouted above the din of the dressing room noise. I saw Branca (Ralph) let loose with his fast pitch and I was all set.

The Giants dressing room was such confusion that hardly anyone could get in a word.

But out of the backslapping, noise and general hullaboo came:

Never saw a greater finish, declared Ford Frick, new commissioner. And I have been watching games for more than thirty years.

There was only one note of sadness to the Giants’ first pennant since 1937. Don Mueller sprained his left ankle going into third on Whitey Lockman’s double.

Into the jam-packed, hot dressing room came Warren Giles, new president of the National League; Manager Charley Dressen of the Dodgers, Jackie Robinson, the Dodger second baseman, Walter O’Malley president of the Brooks, and scores of others high in baseball to heap their words of praise on a team that was considered out of the race less than two months ago.

I told you we’d finish one-two, Dressen said as he congratulated Leo Durocher. I was right only we were second.

Then in came Robinson to join his manager in wishing Durocher and the Giants well in their coming series.

I don’t feel sorry for myself, said Robinson, but I do feel bad that we let the Brooklyn fans down.

Somebody grabbed Durocher around the shoulder and yelled that he did a great job of masterminding in the ninth.

I sure did, said Durocher jokingly. It didn’t take much masterminding for those hits that set it up for Bobby.

Somebody else told Leo he had done a great job.

Not me, retorted Leo quickly. The men who did a great job are in the other room. We were lucky to win it.

Asked if he had said anything before the start of the Giants’ ninth, Durocher replied:

I told the boys we had three big outs left. You haven’t given up all year so don’t give up now. Let’s get some runs. And the reply, almost in a chorus was, ’We’ll get the Bums.’"

I knew I hit the ball hard but it started sinking very fast, said Thomson of his 32nd homer.

But when I saw it go into the stands I don’t think I touched the ground a single time the remainder of the way. I just floated around. It was that kind of a feeling.

You wouldn’t even have believed that finish if the script had been written in Hollywood, shouted everybody at somebody.

Eddie Brannick, Giants’ secretary, died a thousand deaths in his center field office overlooking the field as the Dodgers crossed the plate three times in the eighth. But he rallied quickly and had the bottles popping only minutes after the players swarmed into their quarters – howling like collegians after a football game.

It’ll be a long time before such a scene is repeated.

Walk Off

By Jack Hand

Associated Press Sports Writer

October 14, 1960

PITTSBURGH (AP) – Bill Mazeroski’s ninth inning home run gave delirious Pittsburgh its first world championship since 1925 with a 10-9 victory over the favored New York Yankees Thursday in a heart-stopping seventh World Series game.

Mazeroski leaped into the air and waved his plastic helmet as he rounded second base, and Pirate fans surged onto the field to greet their hero.

Plate umpire Bill Jackowski extended his arms wide to keep home plate open for the stocky second baseman from Wheeling, W.Va.

Hats skidded through the air and pennants waved gaily as men, women and children surged around the two dugouts to celebrate this triumph after 35 years of bitter frustration.

It was the third Pirate championship in five World Series and third defeat for Manager Casey Stengel in his 10 Series and probably his last year as manager of the New York Yankees.

The Pirates had come back with a big eighth inning to go ahead 9-7 with five runs, climaxed by catcher Hal Smith’s 3-run homer. Until then, the Yankees were riding high with a 7-4 edge.

New York tied it 9-9 in their half of the ninth, but that merely set the stage for Mazeroski’s heroics.

Happy faces among the crowd of 36,683 glowed when Pittsburgh knocked out Bob Turley and scored two in the first and two more in the second for an early 4-0 lead.

The Yanks routed Vern Law and continued to blast Elroy Face, the scrawny relief ace, with a three-run homer by Yogi Berra in a four-run sixth inning after Bill Skowron had hit a homer in the fifth.

Leading 5-4, the Yanks pushed over two more runs and the Pirates coming up for the eighth trailing 7-4.

Then came the fantastic accident that opened the gates to the surging five-run Pirate inning. Gino Cimoli opened the attack on Bobby Shantz, who had been pitching superb relief ball, when he dropped a pinch single into right.

Bill Virdon’s hard grounder took a crazy hop and hit shortstop Tony Kubek on the larynx. Down went Kubek as though he had been felled by a shot. He was taken to a hospital for examination while the Buc rally caught fire.

Dick Groat’s single knocked in one run and brought Jim Coates as a replacement for Shantz. A sacrifice, and outfield fly and Roberto Clemente’s single on a ball hit to Bill Skowron but one which Coates appeared slow covering first, narrowed the Yank lead to 7-6.

Up came Smith, who endeared himself to Pirate fans forever by hitting Coates’ 2-2 pitch over the left field wall, a drive of over 400 feet for three runs.

The Yanks started to maul Bob Friend, the third Pirate pitcher, in the top of the ninth.

Singles by Bobby Richardson and pinch hitter Dale Long ended Friend. Manager Danny Murtaugh brought in Harvey Haddix to face an array of left-handers.

Haddix made the dangerous Roger Maris foul out but Mickey Mantle singled to right center, scoring Richardson.

The Yanks tied the score with Gil McDougald, running for Long, scoring from third when Rocky Nelson took Yogi Berra’s smash, stepped on first for the out and then missed Mantle sliding back.

The scrappy Pirates, who had been no match for the Yankees in home runs and power in those wild scoring orgies of the second, third and sixth games, beat the New Yorkers at their own game Thursday with three big home runs. They had hit only one in the first six games. Skowron’s blast in the fifth was the Yank’s ninth of the Series.

It was a game of revolving heroes. First there was Nelson, the handy man on his 10th attempt to win a regular job in the majors. Then it was Vern Law who was rolling back the Yanks in their first four innings.

Then came Berra, who has played more Series games than any other, 68, with his 11th Series home run in the big Yankee rally in the sixth.

In the frantic eighth, a golden crown was being fashioned for Smith and his three-run homer that seemed to have won the day.

But in the end it was Mazeroski with the home run that meant about the difference between $9,000 and $6,000 for each Pirate.

For goats you had Coates who threw the home run ball to Smith in the eighth, Nelson who missed the tag on Mantle while the tying run scored from third, or Terry, who fed the pitch to Mazeroski.

But the city of Pittsburgh warmly enfolded the entire crew of scrappy Pirates to its hearts for this brilliant comeback from the 12-0 rout of Wednesday and the 10-0 beatings earlier in the Series.

One of the Greatest World Series Games

October 22, 1975

BOSTON (AP) – Carlton Fisk of the Red Sox, the biggest of all the heroes, said it best and no one disagreed: It’s got to be one of the greatest games played in World Series history.

You remember Don Larsen’s perfect game in 1956. Some remember Babe Ruth pitching and winning a six-hitter in 12 innings to give the Red Sox a 2-1 victory in 1916.

But years from now they’ll be talking about the sixth game of the 1975 World Series, in which Fisk hit the left-field foul pole with a 12th inning homer that gave the Red Sox a 7-6 victory and tied the classic at three victories apiece.

For baseball detractors, it was just a four-hour game that kept a lot of people up late and see-sawed back and forth.

For those who understand the game and enjoy it as part of Americana, it could not have been orchestrated better by Abner Doubleday; the guy they say invented it.

There were so many heroes. Fisk was the obvious one, but there was also Bernie Carbo, who hit the three-run homer in the eighth that tied the game and kept the Red Sox alive. It was the second pinch-hit homer in this series for Carbo, who contends that he should play regularly. After he tied a series record for pinch-hit homers, Red Sox manager Darrell Johnson was asked if Carbo might be in the lineup for the final game Wednesday night. We’ll talk about it, Johnson said.

There was the amazing Luis Tiant, who admits being 34 years old and is incensed if anyone doesn’t believe it. He shackled the Reds in the first two Sox victories and finally had to leave the sixth game in the eighth inning after Cesar Geronimo homered. He walked off to a standing ovation.

And what about Dwight Evans’ catch? Joe Morgan hit a long drive to right in the 11th, Cincinnati backup catcher Bill Plummer, who was in the bullpen, said he thought it was two to three rows deep in the seats. But somehow Sox outfielder Evans had it in his glove and managed to double Ken Griffey off first base in the end of the inning.

Or talk about Fred Lynn, the rookie outfielder who put the Red Sox ahead with a three-run homer in the first and literally knocked himself out in the fifth by ramming the centerfield wall trying to catch Griffey’s triple. Another standing ovation. An unbelievable try, even though it failed.

The Red’s George Foster in left – taking a ninth-inning fly ball off the bat of Lynn with the bases loaded and throwing straight to Johnny Bench to cut down Denny Doyle at home for the double play – worth the price of admission.

In the end, though, it boiled down to a Series record eight pitchers on the part of the Reds and one swing by Fisk. Millions watched it on television. But the one man watching it most closely was Fisk – standing stock at home plate.

I knew it had a hook on it when I hit it, he said. I knew it was either a foul ball or a homer. I just stayed to watch it. I didn’t want to miss that. I saw it hit the pole. Yes I did.

He won’t ever forget it. Neither will the 35,205 fans who jammed dusty old Fenway Park. It was one of the thrills that come along once in a great while in sports.

And once in a lifetime for Carlton Fisk.

Yanks’ Dent Crushes Sox

October 3, 1978

BOSTON (AP) – Few athletes work better under pressure than Reggie Jackson but coming through in the clutch was a new thrill for shortstop Bucky Dent of the New York Yankees.

Jackson, September’s annual baseball hero, shared the clubhouse spotlight with his bottom-of-the-batting-order teammate after the Yankees won the American League East baseball title with a 5-4 victory over the Boston Red Sox.

My ball had home run written all over it, said Jackson, whose solo shot in the eighth inning off Bob Stanley was the game-winner. I was just trying to relax and let my talent do the work. It’s a certain feeling you learn to have under pressure.

For Dent, the power-hitting under pressure was extraordinary. His three-run homer off starter Mike Torrez gave the Yankees a lead in the seventh inning they didn’t relinquish.

It was the biggest hit of my career, Dent said. I was just trying to hit the ball hard.

And the stocky infielder credited teammate Mickey Rivers for his sudden slugging.

Dent switched to a lighter bat for the playoff game but Rivers discovered in the seventh inning that the 32-ounce model Dent had used was chipped. After Dent fouled off a pitch that stung his foot, Rivers sent the batboy to the plate with an untarnished bat, and Dent stroked the next pitch into the left field screen.

Other Yankees, euphoric in the packed clubhouse, praised everyone from the Red Sox to God for their near-miraculous successful hounding of the Red Sox, who held a double-edged lead over most of the season.

Everybody thought it was over earlier this year, said manager Bob Lemon of the Yankees.

For me, it was a different season than anyone has ever had.

Lemon was fired by the Chicago White Sox and took over the Yankees from Billy Martin at midseason.

Don’t take anything away from Martin, said owner George Steinbrenner. We simply got well. We were a banged-up, sick team earlier this year. I’m just sorry the two teams with the best records in baseball had to be in the same division.

It’s a shame anyone had to lose, said reliever Rich Gossage, who saved Ron Guidry’s 25th victory. Getting the final two outs was a feeling you just can’t put into words. It was the greatest feeling in my whole life.

Gossage got Carl Yastrzemski to pop up and end the game with the winning run on base, and the beefy reliever said, I just went right after him with my fast ball. If I was going to lose, it would be on my best pitch.

Catch It Dwight

January 11, 1982

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – For one breathless moment, a moment none of the San Francisco 49ers will ever forget, time stood still at Candlestick Park Sunday.

In that moment, Dwight Clark hung three feet in the air, alone in the end zone, with the ball clasped in his hands like a golden treasure.

Freddie Solomon, the primary receiver on the play, was on the other side of the end zone where he had lured several Dallas defenders to free Clark. Solomon looked across to Clark and hollered, Catch it, Dwight, catch it.

Joe Montana, the 49ers quarterback, was running toward the right side of the field and couldn’t see the catch. But he heard the crowd and knew what he had done. He put the 49ers into Super Bowl XVI and clinched the first National Conference championship in San Francisco history with a 28-27 victory over the Cowboys.

Keith Fahnhorst, an offensive tackle who helped keep the fearsome Dallas front line away from Montana, looked up from a pile just in time to see Clark jump for the ball.

I wanted to get up to congratulate him, but I was paralyzed, Fahnhorst said. I’ve never been through something like this.

In that moment, nearly everyone in Candlestick Park seemed paralyzed. Only minutes before, 49ers fans watched Dallas surge ahead to a 27-21 lead. The final 91-yard drive that would culminate in a 28-27 victory seemed more a dream than a good bet.

Before the winning play, in the middle of the 49ers’ 91-yard march, the San Francisco defense paced the sidelines nervously.

We knew we were gonna win, but yeah, we were nervous, said defensive end Jim Stuckey, who shut off Dallas’ last effort by recovering a fumble. We were confident. But we needed to see it happen.

We knew we had a long way to go when we started that drive, but there was a feeling we could do it, said Montana. It was a feeling you could sense in the huddle and on the sidelines. We never lost confidence.

I’ve got a lot more respect for (quarterback) Joe Montana than I did before the game, said Dallas defensive tackle Randy White.

He made a helluva play at the end...you’ve got to give him credit. The 49ers deserved it, he added.

Rookie cornerback Everson Walls was one of the defenders on the play.

(Safety) Mike Downs had inside coverage and I had outside coverage, said Walls, who had two interceptions and a fumble recovery. I thought I was close enough to make the play, but it was a great catch by Clark.

They kept coming at me on that last touchdown drive, but I knew they would. That seemed to be their game plan. I made some good plays out there, but you’ve got to do that every down.

Quarterback Danny White said the Cowboys couldn’t throw from the shotgun formation during the end of the game because of the crowd noise.

It was a frustrating finish, White said. We came up just one point short and we’ve got to deal with it. I’d rather get beat by four touchdowns.

Safety Charlie Waters, playing his last game, said, The end was just like driving a car off the end of a cliff and waiting for it to land.

It’s hard to go out this way. This will be known as the game where the 49ers drove 91 yards on green cat litter to beat us.

The Candlestick Park field was covered with cat litter to soak up moisture due to the heavy rains during the week.

Dallas Coach Tom Landry said: We just didn’t make a play on them at the end when it counted. The 49ers have a good young team that hustled all year.

Defensive end Ed Too Tall Jones said: The 49ers didn’t just get lucky...they earned a Super Bowl berth. The last four teams in the playoffs deserve the Super Bowl if they win.

We’ve had a great year, Landry added. I don’t believe the 49ers are a better team than us but the game ended at the right time for them.

Dunk Slams Phi Slama Jama

By Hal Bock

AP Sports Writer

April 5, 1983

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – North Carolina State’s Heart Attack Wolfpack rule as college basketball’s national champions today, unlikely winners of a crown that had been all but conceded to Houston’s Phi Slama Jama skywalkers.

Beaten 54-52 in the NCAA finals Monday night, the men of the tallest fraternity in the land learned a couple of important facts of basketball life.

When you live by the dunk, sometimes you can die by the dunk, too. And you can also perish at the foul line, where soaring above the basket simply isn’t allowed.

The irony of it all was that N.C. State did Houston in with a dunk by Lorenzo Charles at the final buzzer after Phi Slama Jama failed Elementary Basketball 101: Foul Shooting.

State was a longshot in this tournament after a mediocre 10-loss season. But Coach Jimmy Valvano, a street-smart New Yorker who took his wise-cracking act to tobacco country, sold his kids a dream and saw them deliver it against the top-ranked Cougars.

It was not an easy victory, but little of what the Wolfpack did in the tournament was easy. Why should the title game have been any different?

So when Charles grabbed Dereck Whittenburg’s last-grasp air-ball and stuffed it through the basket for State’s winning points with one second remaining, it was almost routine for the Cardiac Pack.

That’s just the way it’s designed on the blackboard, deadpanned Whittenburg, who in three years of playing under Valvano has learned to place his tongue in his check every bit as well as his coach.

You think that’s a freak play? asked Valvano. It’s part of my Emergency Scoring Series, triple credenza play, unbalanced coach around left end.

It set off a wild celebration in the University of New Mexico’s Pit, where State eliminated first Georgia and then Houston to capture the second NCAA title in the school’s history.

It was a crown N.C. State almost didn’t have a chance to win. They were the longest shots to win this tournament since 1966 when tiny Texas Western upset No. 1 Kentucky in the championship game.

The Wolfpack struggled through a mediocre season and was a so-so 17-10 going into the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament. It was there that State beat North Carolina and Virginia on consecutive nights to win an automatic invitation to the NCAAs.

Then there were pulsating wins by two points in double overtime against Pepperdine, by one point over Nevada-Las Vegas and by two over Virginia again to reach the Final Four.

All the while, Valvano was selling a dream, telling his kids they were a team of destiny. And the Pack bought the idea.

They get tired of me talking about dreaming, Valvano said. But I’ve been dreaming about this for a long time, ever since I got into coaching.

All State had to do to make the dream come true was beat the No. 1 team in the country, a dunk-drunk squad riding the crest of 26 consecutive victories. Houston had put on a clinic destroying second-ranked Louisville in the semifinals and figured to destroy Valvano’s dream.

But it didn’t quite happen that way.

Our goal was not to give them a dunk, to make them beat us outside, Valvano said.

The Wolfpack scored the game’s first three baskets and for the first 15 minutes, Phi Slama Jama did not manage a single stuff shot as State’s dreamers charged into a lead on the fine inside work of 6-11 Thurl Bailey.

We played great, said Valvano. We were up 6-0 and it could have been 10-0.

Miami Shocks Nebraska

January 3, 1984

MIAMI (AP) – Four months of hard work and sweat came down to a two-point conversion for No. 1.

Success would have assured powerful Nebraska of its first national championship since 1971, but the Cornhuskers’ bid to be perfect may well have cost them the crown that’s been within their grasp twice in the past three years.

We were trying to win the game, Nebraska coach Tom Osborne said Monday night after fifth-ranked Miami foiled the Big Eight champion’s last-minute, two-point conversion attempt and came away from the golden anniversary Orange Bowl with a 31-30 victory.

I don’t think our players would have been satisfied to back into it (national championship) by kicking a point after touchdown, Osborne added. You can’t go for a national title that way. We wanted to win and remain unbeaten.

A tie with coach Howard Schnellenberger’s Hurricanes may have been all the Cornhuskers needed to become the first team since 1945 to hold on to No. 1 in the Associated Press rankings from the preseason to post bowl poll.

Now with No. 2 Texas falling to Georgia 10-9 in the Cotton Bowl, it appears Miami has the best bet of ousting the Cornhuskers from the top spot when the AP releases its final poll this evening.

Surely we should be No. 1, said Schnellenberger. Is there any question?

We’ll just have to leave it to the pollsters, said Osborne, whose team dropped a 22-15 decision to national champion Clemson in the 1982 Orange Bowl.

Miami redshirt quarterback Bernie Kosar passed for an Orange Bowl-record 300 yards and two touchdowns to pace the victory, the Hurricanes 11th straight since a season-opening 28-3 loss at Florida.

Nebraska, held to 459 yards offensively – nearly 100 below its per game average – overcame a 17-0 deficit and came within a point of wiping out a 31-17 Miami lead when Jeff Smith took a pitchout from Turner Gill and ran 24 yards for a touchdown on fourth-and-eight with 48 seconds remaining.

There will be some who’ll second guess Osborne’s decision to go for the two-point conversion and a victory, but not Schnellenberger.

I WASN’T surprised, he said. He (Osborne) knew he was going to do it. I knew he was going to do it. Everybody in the stands knew and everybody in Nebraska knew, added Schnellenberger. He’s a winner, a player’s coach and he did what those people would do.

Nebraska’s dream of an unbeaten season was shattered when Gill’s two-point conversion pass bounded off Smith’s hands in the end zone as Miami’s Kenny Calhoun defended.

The loss left the Cornhuskers with a 12-1 record, and Gill with an empty feeling.

I knew we could come back and score. I didn’t know if we could win, said the senior quarterback, who completed 16 of 30 passes for 172 yards. We just had to keep on going. It feels like we haven’t done anything all year long.

Kosar who hit 19 of 35 passes and was intercepted once, helped Miami to a 17-0 first-quarter lead, throwing touchdown passes of 2 and 22 yards to tight end Glenn Dennison and setting up Jeff Davis’ 45-yard field goal with pinpoint throwing.

Mike Rozier, Nebraska’s Heisman Trophy winner, rolled up impressive statistics, meanwhile, gaining 138 of his 147 yards in the first half.

But it was guard and Outland Trophy winner Dean Steinkuhler who ran for the Cornhuskers’ first touchdown on a trick play, sweeping left end after picking up Gill’s intentional fumble.

We had been told they might use that play, said Tony Fitzpatrick, Miami’s middle guard.

When he picked it up, he looked like Herschel Walker running out there.

Gill sneaked the final yard of a 10-play, 64-yard drive that enabled Nebraska to pull within three points by halftime.

We played really well early, said Schnellenberger, whose team ran its record to 25-2 in the Orange Bowl, its home field, over the past five seasons. I reminded them (at halftime) that we were still ahead 17-14 and that we won the first half.

We had to go back out, regain the momentum, move the football and win the second half, added Schnellenberger. We did that."

The Hurricanes regained control, scoring two touchdowns – on runs of 1 and 7 yards by Alonzo Highsmith and Albert Bentley respectively – in a five minute span of the third quarter.

The burst gave Miami a 31-17 lead that Nebraska sliced to seven points when Smith, who replaced Rozier when the Heisman winner left with an ankle injury late in the third period, scored the first of his two touchdowns.

NEBRASKA IS an exceptional football team, said Schnellenberger. Not just because they have fine players, but because they never quit. They keep coming after you.

But when you have Bernie Kosar playing like he did, an offensive line protecting and a defense that did just what I asked – not giving up the big play and making Nebraska earn everything they got...you give yourself a chance to win.

Many in the crowd of 72,549 remained in the stands for 90 minutes while players and coaches were introduced during a post-game pep rally. When Schnellenberger addressed the throng, the Hurricanes coach – who raised eyebrows in 1979 when he took the job and talked of winning a national championship – said: This team has accomplished a lot of things few thought was possible...It’ll be a long time before we know just how meaningful this game is.

Actually, the Hurricanes may learn tonight.

‘Hail Mary’

November 25, 1984

MIAMI (AP) -- With 28 seconds remaining and 10th-ranked Boston College trailing Miami by four points, Eagles coach Jack Bicknell prepared himself for what he felt was inevitable – defeat.

My kids had given so much and had still come up a little short, he began. I was already thinking about what I could tell them to get them prepared to play again next week.

Bicknell should have known better, when you’ve got Doug Flutie on the field, you don’t concede until time has expired.

He’s a winner, what more can I say, Bicknell said after the diminutive quarterback heaved a 48-yard ’Hail Mary’ touchdown pass to Gerald Phelan on the game’s last play to give Boston College a 47-45 victory over the 12th-ranked Hurricanes Friday.

I didn’t believe it until I saw the kids going nuts, he added. It was a miracle. I know it was, but we deserved it because we played well enough to be in a position to do it.

Flutie, a 5-foot-9 senior who’s considered the leading candidate for the Heisman Trophy, didn’t hurt his chances for the award that goes to the nation’s top collegiate player.

The triumph boosted Cotton Bowl-bound Boston College’s record to 8-2 with one regular-season game remaining against Holy Cross. Miami, headed for a Fiesta Bowl date against UCLA, dropped to 8-4.

Flutie passed for 472 yards and three touchdowns to outduel Miami’s Bernie Kosar, who threw for 447 yards and two touchdowns against a defense that yielded 655 yards of total offense.

It was just two teams hammering away, said Bicknell, whose team rolled up 627 yards of offense itself. Both quarterbacks are super. Both defenses struggled against very talented people and never really stopped them.

The lead in the nationally televised, see-saw battle changed hands five times in the fourth quarter and left a rain-drenched Orange Bowl crowd of 30,235 emotionally drained.

Melvin Bratton’s fourth touchdown of the game gave Miami a 45-41 lead with 28 seconds remaining, but Flutie never doubted his ability to bring the Eagles back.

With 28 seconds left, I knew we had at least four plays, said Flutie, who moved his team 80 yards in exactly that many plays. I figured, let’s get it out near midfield and put one up in the end zone.

Completions of 19 yards to Troy Stradford and 13 yards to Scott Gieselman gave Boston College a first down at the Miami 48. Flutie’s next pass fell incomplete and with six seconds left, Bicknell called for Flood Tip, the Eagles Hail Mary play.

The idea is to send three receivers down field, Bicknell said. If one of them can go up and catch the ball, fine. If not, he’s supposed to try to tip it to somebody else.

Flutie, who completed 34 of 46 passes, scrambled to his own 35 and let his desperation heave sail from the 38. Bicknell said he thought Miami’s secondary relaxed when they saw him dropping back.

They stopped, probably thinking Doug couldn’t throw it that far, Bicknell said. He can throw it as far as he has to. There was nothing left for us to do. It’s worked two out of three times we’ve used it.

Phelan got behind safety Darrell Fullington and made the game-winning catch as he tumbled backward just inside the end zone. Six other players – three from each team – leaped for the ball in vain.

I really don’t know what I was thinking, said Phelan, who had 11 receptions for 226 yards and two touchdowns. It (ball) came down and I figured if somebody doesn’t tip it, I’ll get it.

Kosar – a 6-5 sophomore who’s already thrown for nearly 6,000 career yards – completed 25 of 38 passes, including scoring strikes of 10 and eight yards