Live Television
I watch hardly any live television: I don’t like commercials, I hate waiting for plays to be reviewed, and I detest most political rants. I Tevo live football games, watch something else I have previously taped for 60-90 minutes, then start the game and skip the interruptions and half time. I finish the game with the rest of you.
So, it is surprising to me the number of unexpected and sudden events that I have seen live. I saw Challenger explode, Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald, and the second plane plow into the World Trade Center. All on live television. (I have no idea why I was watching a TV feed from a Dallas parking garage when they were moving a suspect to a different jail, but there I was.) I turned on the Masters one year just as Tiger Woods chipped onto a green from a fairly deep depression on the right of the screen. The cup was at the top of the screen and he miss hit the chip so badly that it flew to the bottom of the screen. As the ball kept slowly moving and the announcer said something like, “here it comes”, I got oriented enough to realize the green sloped from the bottom to top of my picture and Tiger hadn’t missed the chip nearly as badly as I had initially supposed. It has become one of the most iconic chips in golf history, certainly televised golf: the ball getting closer and closer to the cup, Tiger and his caddy creeping forward in anticipation, the ball hanging on the edge with the Nike logo perfectly positioned, then falling in to roars by the announcer and the Patrons.
There are other events, like JetBlue flight 292 that landed with the wheel locked sideways amid sparks and smoke, that are still brought up in some conversation or another and I marvel that I just happened to be watching live that one time. TopTenzNet, a video blog, has a list of their top ten shocking live TV moments, and I saw four of them, though I don’t count things like Hurricane Katrina because it wasn’t “sudden”.
But the one that I think of the most, the one that inspires me every time I think of it, happened back in the 1960s during the Cold War at a track meet between the USA and the USSR. I have tried to look up the details, but it happened more than half a century ago and before the internet. My memory allows that there were several countries represented—some from Iron Curtain countries and maybe Canada and Great Britain. It was either the 4 X 100-meter or 4 X 200-meter relay and the United Stated was losing, badly. Then Wilma Rudolph got the baton.
Wilma Rudolph had been behind before. She was a poor black female living in the South (Tennessee). She was born prematurely weighing only 4.5 pounds, the twentieth of her father’s twenty-two children by two wives. Those were just inconveniences compared to the polio. Her left side was paralyzed almost totally and her leg was twisted, resulting in braces and long therapy sessions. The prognosis wasn’t good and the Rudolphs weren’t given much hope.
“The doctor said I would never walk again. My mother said I would. I believed my mother.” she would remember. One day, to the medical staff’s amazement, she took off the brace and walked out.
So, there she was, years later, on live TV, representing the USA in a relay, with another obstacle to overcome. As she came around the curve in the final leg of the 4 X 200, and I admit my memory may have this a little off—it could have been the third runner actually running the curve if it was the 4 X 100—due to the curve it was hard to tell just how far behind she was, but it was several meters. (Having to make up ground wasn’t unusual for her. In the 1960 Olympic games 4 X 100-meter relay she was behind two runners when she got the baton for the anchor leg. When she crossed the finish line her team had a world record.)
She started passing runners like they were photographers standing on the track to get closeups. The finish wasn’t close. I’m sure someone, somewhere has made up that much ground in so little time against world class competition in an important race, but I’ve never seen it. I am still amazed.
Some people I know, taking advantage of a sure thing, bought 500 $2 win tickets at the Kentucky Derby on Honest Pleasure—the odds-on favorite in 1976 to win horse racing’s Triple Crown. The Idea was to do the same at the Preakness and Belmont races, then mount the winning tickets in Triple Crown Plaques complete with a picture of the horse in a winner’s circle with the winner’s flower garland, smiles all around, etc.
They were sure to make a lot of money selling the one-of-a-kind plaques. The problem was that Bold Forbes won the 1976 Kentucky Derby (and the Belmont). Honest Pleasure was second by half a length at Kentucky and didn’t get a call after that.
I have one of their $2 win tickets in my wallet to this day, and when I get tempted by some can’t miss get-rich-quick or at least double your money scheme, I get it out and remind myself there are no sure things.
But, as happens more often, when the odds are long and there is no encouragement by the people who should know; when I’m behind through no fault of my own; I think about Wilma Rudolph with a baton in her hand coming off the curve in a long-ago track meet, running past the competition, and the polio, and the other disadvantages that she would not let become excuses. I ask myself, “Who are you listening to? What are you believing?” I don’t always make a winning comeback, but I certainly don’t quit.
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