GOLDEN MEMORIES: HOW SPORTS DEFINE YOU

Golden memories, the ones that stand the test of time, reveal you who you are.

Remember when you hit the homer that won the game in extra innings?

When you picked up a fumble and ran ninety-nine yards for the score?

Or when you drained a half court shot to win in overtime?

Sure you do, but was it you or someone else?

For true golden memories that last a lifetime, it needs to be you in the hero role.

Otherwise, you won’t remember.

Go ahead and disagree, but take an easy quiz: name as many Olympic sites as you can, sports fan.

If you are a former Olympian, you remember one better than any others. Because that was YOUR Olympic Games.

From what I’ve heard being part of the Olympics is very memorable.

But those kind of events are reserved for a very specific group. Let’s call them maniacs.

What else would you call people so committed that they lose sleep worrying about someone a world away training harder than them.

So, there’s the maniacs, then the rest of us.

Golden Memories Of Sports

Dick Fosbury winning Olympic gold by flying over the high jump bar backwards in 1968 was one of the freakiest things I’ve seen.

That he was an Oregon State guy makes it all the better.

During the same Mexico City Olympics, Bob Beamon launched a new world record in the broad jump.

Back then my guy was a man named Ralph Boston. He was a big deal in 1960 after breaking Jesse Owens long jump record.

“Suddenly people recognized me,” Boston told the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and Museum in 2012. “Before that night nobody outside of Laurel, Mississippi, knew who I was and the people in Laurel knew me as Hawkeye Boston, not Ralph Boston.”

One month later at the Rome 1960 Games, Boston struck Olympic gold, with a winning jump of 26 feet 7 ½ inches to edge countryman Bo Roberson by one centimeter.

“That was a day that I guess ‘changed my life’ is a good phrase. Appropriate,” Boston said 50 years later. “You think about how a life has changed and how life changed and how things have happened since then.”

Golden Memories On The Podium

If you’ve never been on the top step of a podium, then you missed a good view.

My podium picture at the top is unusual for a few reasons.

First, I was the only one showered and cleaned up.

After wrestling tournaments everyone looks like a wreck. And they ought to after wading through the bracket.

Not me, though. Why? Because I was in the stands watching the finals with my Dad.

Back in those days, the state Greco-Roman tournament ended with a round robin of three where the top guys all wrestled one another for the championship.

2

I came to this 1973 tournament at 190 pounds.

A year earlier I came in at 165 pounds after cutting weight like an idiot.

I got worked for being too weak.

This year I won a district championship and the honor of representing District 5 in the high school state meet. At 191 lbs.

I choked and lost two matches and got eliminated.

But I did have a good seat for the finals to watch titans clash.

The guy in second place in the top image was one of the titans at the high school meet.

He took second there to a kid who would go on to win many national championships in college.

Either of them would have mopped the mat with me. As an incoming district champ to the state meet I had a good seeding.

Losing to a couple of scrubs was tough, but I was not worthy of being a scrub on that day.

It’s still one of my golden memories from watching two grown men doing battle in a manly fashion.

First place went to the bruiser, but he looked beat up. Second place went to the guy who beat him up, but not quite enough.

Who got third? Third is pretty darn good, but no one remembers except the athlete and their circle. That’s their golden memory, or bronze memory.

3

I showed up for the meet in pretty good shape, but not good enough to win my first match.

My guy tried to pin me after I fell on my back, which happens if you throw flat.

He pounced on me like a cheetah, and I quit. I lost two matches in high school state, now I’m losing my first match.

The only conclusion I could draw was I was a loser. Now a quitter.

A loser with experience losing. And I was good with it. At least I wouldn’t have to face the wild looking guy who’d beat up one of the toughest wrestlers Oregon has seen.

(The toughest tough guy jumped to heavyweight for this tournament.)

The mistake my opponent made, a guy who looked like he could chew steel and spit nails, whose next stop in life after high school was the United States Marine Corps where he’d be one of the proud, one of the few; his mistake was trying to smother me with his gut instead of pin me.

As a good sportsman I follow good sportsmanship. Smothering me instead of pinning was bad sportsmanship. Like I needed to panic and tap out?

I may have been a loser, but I grew up with brothers. If brothers know one thing, it’s revenge. And I was the second born, in the middle of two two brothers and a younger sister.

If brothers couldn’t choke me out, neither would this guy.

History of Golden Memories

In my first ever wrestling tournament I was pinning a guy on the JV mat when he said he couldn’t breath.

That was the day I learned that if a guy says he can’t breath, then he’s breathing.

But I said a few things as a fifteen year old, got disqualified, and banned from the building for the rest of the tournament.

Two years later, in what might be my second to last wrestling match of my life, I couldn’t breath. And I couldn’t even say the words. To make it worse, my opponent looked like he was having fun.

I snapped a little.

I didn’t care if I got disqualified and tossed from the meet. The only thing that mattered was not getting pinned by some strutting jarhead wannabe.

So I flopped around, grabbed what was handy, got warned not to grab, and grabbed again with an extra twist.

At the end I lost by decision to a guy who looked primed for the top spot on the 190 pound podium.

I looked like a guy who vowed never to beat himself again. I changed my style, my approach.

The next opponent was the angry looking kid on the second step of the podium.

2

He came out looking for an easy match against someone on a losing streak. His coach had scouted me and yelled advice.

I though, ‘Keep talking, because I’m not the same wrestler I was an hour ago.’

I proved it by putting him on his back with the biggest thump on the mat I’d ever heard.

With his head and arm locked in my vice grip, he arched off the mat and we started over.

This was a strong guy.

We danced around and I put him on his back again, but this time in the center of the mat. He fought like a wild man and I cinched him up with every arch. I think we made one complete circle before the ref slapped the pin.

In the first round.

I don’t know who was more stunned, him or me.

For his next match he beat the guy who’d just beaten me. He beat everyone else.

So did I.

3

And that’s why I was in the stands with my Dad watching the other 190 pounders wrestle for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place.

I didn’t tell him what was going on right away.

Dad: Aren’t those the guys in your weight class?

Me: Yes they are. Good looking bunch. Tough guys, don’t you think?

Dad: It’s Greco. Everybody’d better be tough. What are you doing?

Me: Me?

Dad: They’re wrestling for a state championship down there.

Me: Everybody is wrestling for a state championship except the 190 lb. bracket.

Dad: Why is that?

Me: Because that champ has already been decided.

Dad: Who is it?

During the early medal ceremony I excused myself, went to the dressing room and put on my warm-ups over my clothes.

When they called 190 to the podium I waved to my Dad.

The second place guy knew he deserved better. They always deserve better.

And they get better.

Do you get better, too? I’m listening.