The Unknown Story of the the Greatest Sports Moment of the 20th Century—The 1980 Miracle On Ice

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Play responsibly. Terms and conditions apply. See website for details at highthenumberfivecasino.com. High Five Casino. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. It's known as the greatest sports moment of the 20th century, but no matter how familiar you are with the story of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team's Lake Placid Miracle on Ice, you will soon see that this event seems even more unlikely now than it felt decades ago. We're about to do what we always strive to do with our storytelling here at Our American Stories.

Add new details to our hearts familiar pictures. Let's take a listen. It was more than a hockey game. It was us against them. It was freedom versus communism.

Nobody gave us a hope in Halloween. It was a sliver of the Cold War played out on a sheet of ice. Here you have a bunch of fresh-faced college kids taking on the big bad Soviet bear in the United States, in the Olympics. The confluence of events was so extraordinary it can never happen again. Nobody paid attention to what Americans said in the world anymore. Our hostages had been taken and we couldn't get them back. The Red Army went into Afghanistan.

We couldn't get them out. It might have been the all-time low point for American public self-esteem. Who knew that these kids would become the vehicle for making people feel excited and proud again to wave a flag. It was a miracle.

David slew Goliath. It was the greatest sports moment of the 20th century. No one could know how important one game could possibly be to a nation that seemed to be losing its way. Certainly not in 1979, when a weary America heard from its embattled leader who told us we were a nation in crisis. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national world. President Carter was seen as an expression of the American self-doubt and the lack of self-confidence of the mid-70s.

Here's Vice President under Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale. Our public support was eroding our public support. We were in a very difficult time.

We were in a very difficult time. In the 20 years since winning the gold medal at the 1960 Olympics, American teams had become increasingly unable to compete with the dominant Europeans, especially the Soviet Union, whose players were amateurs in name only. The goal was to avoid being embarrassed at home, so in July of 1979, the best amateur players in the country were invited to try out for the 1980 Olympic team. They invited us all to Colorado Springs and they divided us up into four teams, basically Eastern guys, Michigan guys, Minnesota guys, and an at-large team.

Over the course of 10 days in Colorado Springs, those four teams played a round robin. It was a nerve-wracking situation. It was a pressure-packed situation, and as that tournament went on, it was being evaluated by Herb Brooks.

Minnesota native Herb Brooks never went to charm school. He was abrasive and intense. He was also the best college hockey coach in the country at the University of Minnesota. People were a little afraid of him.

He had always been considered kind of an outsider, had his own way of thinking, his own way of doing things. And he already had a history with the Olympic team. As a University of Minnesota player, Brooks thought he had made the team in 1960.

He was even in the team picture. But at the last minute, coach Jack Riley added a new player to the roster, and someone had to go. The someone was Herb Brooks, cut just one day before the team left for the games. A crushed Herb Brooks immediately called his father to vent. That left unfinished business in Herb Brooks's life. He had something to prove. He was on a mission. A mission to shake American hockey out of its slumber.

First, Brooks had to trim the roster from 80 to 26. Behind the Iron Curtain, the Soviets were the best hockey team in the world, perhaps the strongest ever assembled. And everybody knew it. Vladislav Trediak grew up outside Moscow and became immersed in the Soviet's communist sports machine at a young age. He developed into perhaps the greatest goaltender to ever play, and starred on the Soviet national team for over 15 years. By 1980, Boris Mikhailov was already a 10-year veteran of the Soviet national team, and the most recognizable face in international hockey.

Here's Boris Mikhailov. Sport was tied with politics, and any victory had big political undertones, especially during the Olympic Games when the general secretary and everybody else was worried about how we would represent our country. Our task was only to play first. They were government-sponsored magicians on ice. The goal was to win for the motherland and to show the world that Karl Marx had it right. They played hockey the way we played basketball, with the same kind of control of the puck, the same kind of intricate offensive patterns, and of course the presence and goal of Tretiak.

How could you beat him? And you've been listening to the story of the miracle on ice. It was more than hockey, it was us against them, college kids against the big bad Soviet bear. And then of course you hear about Herb Brooks, who was cut one day before the 1960 Olympics.

This just propelled his engine to succeed. When we come back, more of the story of the miracle on ice here on Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories. Every day we set out to tell the stories of Americans past and present, from small towns to big cities, and from all walks of life doing extraordinary things. But we truly can't do this show without you.

Our shows are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and make a donation to keep the stories coming. That's OurAmericanStories.com. The following is a high five moment from Hi5Casino.com. I won!

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Hi5Casino! And we continue with Our American Stories and the story of the 1980 Olympics and the miracle on ice. And the question, how could we beat the Soviets? Let's pick up where we last left off. Back in the US, Herb Brooks had been contemplating that same question for years.

After all, how many times does one have to get hit with the same hammer and sickle before they learn? We also need to change the way we play the game. North American hockey had forever been a very linear, dump and chase style of hockey.

Unlike the Soviets and Europeans, who played an artistic, very free flowing system, built on finesse, speed, conditioning and overlapping movements. Most of all, team chemistry. Brooks was calling for a revolution in American hockey. I tried to develop a team that would throw their game right back at me.

But first, Brooks would have to get his players to start thinking as a team, which wouldn't be easy. The rivalry between the University of Minnesota and Boston University was one of the fiercest in all of college hockey. And regional tensions between many of the new teammates ran high. As much as I was a Boston hockey player and I had pride in my roots as a Boston hockey player, I had an enemy. And my enemy was the University of Minnesota. The Boston guys, we thought we were pretty savvy. And there were guys that didn't lock their doors or left their wallets out in plain sight. We thought, you know, these guys are a bunch of hicks from the cow pastures. I wanted to blur the boundaries of our country, build a we and an us in ourselves as opposed to an I, me, myself. Our spirit was going to be a big asset.

And you can't have that type of thing if you have pockets of individuals and there's not those team building exercises throughout the year. To fill the most important role, Brooks picked 22-year-old Boston University goaltender, Jim Craig, the man who would backstop history. You know, people I speak to say Craig's game has been off since his mom died. They were seeing when his game was on.

Craig was recovering from the recent death of his mother, Margaret, to cancer. Starting in August of 79, Brooks began employing his main team building exercise. To bond them as a team, his players needed one common enemy. I'll be your coach. Him.

I'll be your friend. I remember when he told us, I'll be your coach, but I won't be your friend. And I'm like, boy, this is going to be a long year. He quoted in the paper that I had a million dollar set of legs and a ten cent fart for a brain. He'd give you that glare and that look and it's like, oh my God, what did I do wrong now? One of the first things Herb told his assistant coach, Craig Patrick, was, I'm going to be tough on them and you are going to have to be the one who keeps everyone together.

It was an elaborate and flawlessly constructed game of good cop, bad cop. He would later call it his loneliest year in hockey. Here's Coach Brooks. A lot of these guys being college All-Americans, they were never pushed like that, never pulled. And I wasn't trying to put greatness into anybody.

I was trying to pull it out, pull it out way up here. And I don't like coaches that try to put it in because they think they've got all the answers, but you've got to believe in them, have high standards, hug them and pull it out. And my favorite coach, John Witten, right here, I think he would concur with that. As September arrived, it was time to start playing against future Olympic competition. So Brooks took the team to Europe for a series of exhibition games. Before a game against Norway, a team they would have to face at the Olympics, he issued a challenge. I said, guys, we're going to have to play the Norwegians in qualifications. So we do it tonight. We send a message right now. But playing flat and uninspired hockey, the U.S. can only muster a 3-3 tie against a team they should have trounced. Brooks was furious. You guys don't want to work during a game?

No problem. We'll work now. Goal line. He's standing there with his suit on and he makes us all get behind the net and on the goal line.

He starts blowing his whistle. And we did what are called gurbies, which are blue line back, red line back, far blue line back, all the way down and back. Think you can win on talent alone?

Gentlemen, you don't have enough talent to win on talent alone. Again. Two or three of those would be tiring.

Blue line back, red line back, blue line back, down and back. Ten or twelve of them would be excessive. You better think about something else each and every one of you. When you pull on that jersey, you represent yourself and your teammates.

And a name on the front is a hell of a lot more important than the one on the back. Get that through your head. Again.

When we did them for about 45 minutes to an hour, the rink attendant turned the lights off on us and we still skated in the dark. He's screaming at us, booming voice around this empty arena. How about it, Silky, you going to be the first one to quit on me? It was pretty intense.

The message went out right then. They're not going to play the game like that and disgrace their abilities or our collective efforts. That moment probably had more to do with us gelling as a team, feeling like we were a group, a family. We looked at each other and said, you know, basically he can do anything he wants to us. He's not going to break us. The following night, the teams played again.

The United States won 9-0. But there were still six cuts to be made and Brooks was making it clear that no one was safe, not even the team captain. Here's team captain, Mike Eruzione. Two weeks before the Olympic Games, he calls me and he's going to cut me from the team. You're not good enough. You shouldn't be here. I never should have taken you.

I'm going to send you back. Don't think I won't do it. He might just do this.

I'm like, wow. The word got down that Eruzione's job was in jeopardy. Everyone said, if he'll cut the captain, where do I stand?

Which is exactly what Brooks wanted. Timmy. What's he doing here? Do you guys know who he is? Turning the screws even tighter, he brought in new players for tryouts just weeks before the Olympics, provoking the same fear in his players that Brooks himself experienced in 1960 when he was cut from the Olympic team at the last minute.

But this was a new generation of player and they'd had enough. Here's defenseman Jack O'Callaghan. And I said, you know Herb, I don't think you should do it. I think it's wrong.

We're going to Lake Placidon in a week. I mean, stop it. Get rid of these guys and let us get serious about this. And I was looking for that moment where their cohesiveness and strength of association was such a strong bond.

And then I would just cut to court. And that was the moment. Brooks sent the late additions back home. He trimmed the roster to 20 and kept his captain. Twelve Olympic team members were from Minnesota, four were from Boston, and two apiece were from Wisconsin and Michigan. But just days before the Olympics, the Americans had one more test to take. On February 9th, 1980, at Madison Square Garden in New York City, they skated onto the ice to play an exhibition game just three days before the start of the Olympics. But to their opponents on this night, it wasn't just an exhibition. The Soviets had just recently embarrassed the NHL All-Stars, the best of the best, defeating them six to nothing. But before the game, Brooks told his team to go out and have fun.

Have fun? Brooks himself later described the Garden game as a ploy. He said, what could possibly be gained by playing the Soviets tough and waking them up? We got crushed, and we thought, these guys are in another world. They just kicked us around that rink. The goals they scored, you could have filmed them. They were so beautiful. They were like robots. When they scored a goal, they never smiled.

I don't think I ever saw them smile. We were all ready to stand up and applaud them because we didn't see anything like that before. The guy's hitting our boat. You see that goal?

You see his move? We were spectators. I looked up at the scoreboard. It said 10 to 3.

It might as well have said 20 to nothing. 10-3 made it sound closer than it was. It was no contest. There couldn't have been a greater low point given the preparation and the work that we had put in.

It was very demoralizing. And you've been listening to the story of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team's Lake Placid, New York, Miracle on Ice story. And my goodness, what Brooks did to get inside these guys' heads to play as a team and play so far above. Their collective talents. And he tried to get them to play Soviet-style hockey, not American hockey. And to bring these regional competitors together is one. The hatred runs deep between Minnesota hockey and Boston hockey.

And then you get to the particular colleges. And then, of course, hearing Brooks' voice. You think you can win on talent alone? He admonishes them.

You don't have enough talent to win on talent alone, he says. When we come back, how coach Brooks molds these guys into a team capable of beating the world's greatest hockey machine. Here on Our American Stories. Roku has what you need to make your college home away from home feel more like your own. Make your dorm the place to be with Roku TV. Or bring a Roku streaming stick to easily access all your favorite free and premium content like iHeartRadio. Stream your favorite playlist with the Roku vibe-setting smart light strips to sync your music to millions of colors and make your dorm feel more like you. Make your dorm the place to be with Roku TV's streaming players and smart lights.

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Let's pick up where we last left off. As each team left New York City and headed five and a half hours north to Lake Placid, their future seemed clear. Here's ABC's 1980 Olympic hockey announcer, Al Michaels. Anybody who left Madison Square Garden that day thought to themselves, the Soviets will win every game in the Olympics, take home the gold medal, and never be challenged. And the US, all you knew is that when it came time to face the big bear, they had no chance. As discouraging as the loss to the Soviets was, it was not something on the minds of Americans. Throughout 1979, as the hockey team was preparing to compete in the Olympics, Americans at large were also competing with the harsh realities of everyday life.

Here again is Michael Rizzioni. Look at the economy. Look how much money we're paying for gas. Inflation was absolutely ridiculous. People just didn't feel good about the United States. A lot of people wondered where we were headed. And then, in November, just when things seemed like they couldn't get any worse, This is NBC Nightly News.

Begin with Jessica Savage. Good evening. The American Embassy in Tehran is in the hands of Muslim students tonight. Spurred on by an anti-American speech by the Ayatollah Khomeini, they stormed the embassy and took dozens of American hostages.

In December, it would get even worse. Day 54 in Iran, and while there has been no significant change in the hostage situation, there has been a major development in the country next door to Iran, Afghanistan. During the last three days, more than 5,000 Soviet combat troops have been airlifted into Kabul.

Up to another 50,000 Soviet troops have massed along Afghanistan's northern border. It's very important for the world to realize how serious a threat the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is. The Cold War was getting colder by the day, and with the Soviets on American soil, they were encouraged to see the American press blaming America for the world's woes. Newspapers were full of articles like, blaming America for everything. So an attitude for the entire Olympic team, let's show them who we are, let's show them who are the greatest, let's show them who are the strongest, and let's show them on their soil.

The Winter Olympics began on February 12, 1980. No one was expecting a showdown between the Americans and the Soviets, not even the team captain. Here again is Micah Ruzioni. I know you guys are really facing a Herculean task here.

It's like sending you into the lion's cage. Do you feel like that? Yes, we do.

You've got to be realistic about things. We're a young team. We're the youngest Olympic hockey team ever.

If you had to pick us, I think we'd probably be picked fifth. The Soviets blew out their first two opponents with a combined score of 33-4. The seventh-seeded Americans opened against the heavily favored Sweden and trailed 2-1 late in the final third period.

Here again is Al Michaels. I remember the U.S. had several opportunities to tie the game, and you just got the feeling, and of course as the clock ticks down and now you're under a minute, well, it's not to be. Brooks is pulling goalie Jim Craig for an extra skater to try to tie it up. With only 41 seconds to go, Brooks pulled goalie Jim Craig, which allowed him to put an extra skater on the ice.

But in return, it also left the American net empty. It was a desperate move for a desperate team. Fighting for control of the puck with 29 seconds to play. Baker on it!

Go, Baker! I was just trying to get it on net, and I couldn't believe it when it went in. And look at that scene on the ice! You can always wonder, if Billy doesn't score, what happens to the hockey team?

Well, Billy did score. And the Americans in the key game in the first round tie it up. That was the biggest goal of the Olympics because if the Americans lose that game, they're virtually out of contention before the Olympic Games start. Two days later, the Americans faced Czechoslovakia, underdogs again, in a game they had to win. Many people said that the Czechs were considered the second best team in the world and the only team that had a chance to beat the Soviets.

Well, we pretty much dominated the Czechs. That's it! He scores! The Snider scores! Perry makes the Snider, and it's 6-2!

This is incredible! I've got to put this in perspective. Czechoslovakia, far and away, the second best team coming in. There's no question the Soviets are the best.

The Czechs second best, and the Americans lead 6-2. Then late in the third period, as the Americans were skating to a 7-3 Valentine's Day Massacre victory against the second best team in the world, Mark Johnson, the team's star player, was knocked to the ice from a cheap shot by a Czech player. As Johnson lay in the middle of the ice, Americans watching on television were introduced to Herb Brooks, up close and personal. It looks like Perry right down your throat, Trey.

Oh, look at that. Perry got stuck right in your throat. Herb Brooks, in what should be a glorious moment, would be upset. If you're going to do something to our guy, I'm going to take this stick and I'm going to stuff it down your throat. People were ready to hear that kind of thing. He would not have sat back and let the Ayatollah stomp all over the U.S. while holding a bunch of hostages. I think that was one of the moments where a lot of people in this country said, hey, we've got a pretty good little story taking place here. We have these fresh-faced kids, got to keep an eye on these guys, and look at this coach.

I mean, he's right there backing his players. So everybody's starting to look ahead to this prospective matchup against the Soviets, but before that you have three other games. Norway figured to be the easiest of the games, and it was. Kavalich who gets it back to Self who scores. David Self from Point Kavalich. Then you had Romania. Preston, he scores.

He's Preston. And they won that game. Germany presented a little bit of a problem, though, on Wednesday night, the last game prior to going into the medal round.

Germany leads 2-0. So wait a second, what's going on here? You don't want this bump in the road.

You don't want it now. And the U.S. is able to come from behind and beat Germany. So they did all of the things they had to do. But then, of course, you had the specter of the Soviets just looming there. Seemingly no one, certainly not a bunch of college kids, could stop them from winning the gold medal. Herb Brooks, after all, wasn't coaching a dream team. He was coaching a team full of dreamers.

There's a big difference. Today the concept of amateurs in the Olympics is as obsolete as eight-track cassettes. The expression dream team has become part of the five-ring lexicon. Herb Brooks would later see the dream team as ironic because when you have dream teams, you seldom get to dream. But this was a game of striking contrasts. It was experience versus youth, men versus boys, champions versus upstarts, communism versus capitalism, all on a sheet of ice in the Adirondack Mountains. After studying the Soviets for years, Herb Brooks could sense their overconfidence and told his team to take advantage of it.

I kept wetting their appetite. Someone will beat those guys. Someone's going to beat those guys. I don't like how they're playing.

They think they're better than they are. Brooks also thought his team was giving too much respect to the Soviets. So he began chipping away at their mystique by poking fun at their leader. They were one of the top players in the world, who just happened to look a lot like a famous comedian.

Boris Mikhailov was as close to the hockey chief of the world as there was. And Herbie starts teasing the guy all the way. Look at that guy's nose. God, look at that guy's face. Looks like Stan Laurel. And he's insulting the guy. Can't play against Stan Laurel.

Piece of cake, guys. To relax them, to keep them focused, and also plan that and say, hey, someone's going to beat those son of a guns. And you've been listening to the story of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team Lake Placid, New York, miracle on ice story. It's experience versus youth. It's communism versus capitalism. What will happen next? Well, Herb Brooks is already chipping away at the mystique of this Soviet team like a great leader would, mocking and satirizing him.

When we come back, more of this remarkable story, the story of the 1980 miracle on ice here on Our American Stories. Make your dorm the place to be with Roku TV, streaming players and smart lights. Head to roku.com or your favorite retailer to deck out your dorm.

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See website for details. Highfive Casino. And we continue with our American stories and the story of the miracle on ice. Let's pick up where we last left off. Then, on Friday, February 22nd, the Cold War was put on ice. The 13th Winter Olympic Games. The excitement, attention building.

The Olympic center filling to capacity. In the locker room before the game, Herb Brooks gave the speech of his life. You were born to be hockey players. He told us we were born to be a player.

You were meant to be here. This moment was ours. This is your time.

And he told that story about going up and spitting in the eye of the tiger. This is our time. It's not their time. This is your time. Screw them. Stan Laurel, all those Russians.

Now go out there and take it. It's our time. And I remember a telegram we got from a lady in Texas. And all the telegram said was, beat those commies. You realized that the USA on the front of your sweater meant that you were playing for your country.

One, two, three, USA! As the game is underway, the Soviet Union had ran in the United States in white. I remember for the first five or six minutes feeling as though I couldn't feel my feet on the ice. The Soviets struck first. And it was deflected in. And the Soviet Union leads one to nothing at the 9-12 mark of the first period. The Russians scored first.

And you winced and thought, here it comes. But the U.S. team took that blow. Craig made some key saves. And then Buzzy Schneider came down the left wing.

Adler's up ahead to Schneider. Shot shot goes in for Schneider. That's the type of goal you don't expect somebody like Freddie Eck to give up.

The tie-in goal failed to unnerve the Soviets. And gets it back and scores. They quickly scored again. And it looked like the first period would end with them leading 2-1. But with just seconds remaining, the methodical team that almost never made mistakes made the worst kind.

A mental error. And it changed the course of the game. David Christian has the puck. It's about five seconds left to go in the period. I stopped the skate to the bench thinking the period's over.

I remember seeing Mark Johnson go scooting up. Like, he just didn't stop playing. He was still playing. The Russians had stopped. That made it one to nothing.

Long shot. The easy save by Treadyack. But Johnson is there and scores with one second to play in the period. The Soviets aimed to fix that mistake in the second period, quickly scoring the go-ahead goal. They dominated the action, outshooting the Americans 11-2 in the second period. Only Jim Craig's brilliance in goal prevented the game from becoming a blowout. But the Americans had never come from behind the best team in the world.

And the Soviets always dominated the third and final period. It looked as if this night would be no different. That is, until lightning struck. Just 81 seconds later, the team's captain, whose name in Italian means eruption, triggered one. And that's when the building went crazy. I mean, that's when sound had feel. I mean, that was like an earthquake.

Now we've got Fedlam. Oh, I love Brooks' reaction. Here it is again. The atmosphere in that arena was incredible. The feeling, the sense that they could do this, that they could actually pull it off. That goal coming at the 10-minute mark, exactly halfway through the period. When I sat on it, I looked up and I went, 10 minutes. That's a long time against these guys. They could score in 10 minutes what would take us 60 minutes to score.

And I knew that. Too much time, too much time. We can't hold them off this long. It was just a constant clock watch.

Shift by shift, shift by shift. Eight and a half minutes to play. The Americans now leading 4-3. It went on forever. The time just stood still. Five and a half minutes to play. 3.53 remaining in the game. 2.25, 2.24, 2.23 remaining. It kept building and building, and the clock kept winding down.

It just got louder and louder. Fifty-five seconds. But Dikalov has the puck. Twenty-eight seconds. The crowd going insane.

Carlemont. The plan in hand is there. The puck is still loose. Eleven seconds. You've got ten seconds. The countdown going on right now. Morrow up to Shultz. Five seconds left in the game. Do you believe it?

Yes! Unbelievable. The entire U.S. bench cleared. Everyone except Coach Brooks. After throwing both arms overhead and doing a tiny pirouette and punching the air with an emphatic left fist, he walked straight off the bench, turned right into the runway, got patted on the back by weepy state troopers, and went back into locker room five. Herb Brooks locked himself inside an orange toilet stall and cried. Once the team made it into the locker room, they broke into a spontaneous chorus of God Bless America, filling in the words they couldn't remember with hums and whistles. In Lake Placid and all over the United States, the victory triggered an outpouring of national emotion never before provoked by a sporting event.

On the Iron Range in Minnesota, people ran outside and hollered and shot off guns. In the Mediterranean Sea, the USS Nimitz, one of the world's largest supercarriers, flashed the score to a Soviet intelligence ship that was nearby. The Soviets would not lose again for five years, and the Americans would not beat them for another 11 years. But the future domination came with no rewind mechanism, no claws that could undo what happened on Friday night, February 22, 1980.

It was the 13th anniversary of the film debut of Walt Disney's Cinderella. Maybe it figured. The nation continued celebrating, but for the hockey team, it wasn't over yet. People always forget that the U.S. had to win another game on Sunday. It was still possible.

The Americans did not beat the Fins, that they would not only not win the gold, they wouldn't win any medal at all. And Herb understood this. And we were excited, we were anxious, we couldn't wait to get out and play. And Herb Brooks walked into the locker room, and he looked at us and he said, if you lose this game, you'll take it to your f***ing grave.

And he stopped, he walked a couple of steps, turned, looked at us again and said, your f***ing grave. Once again, the Americans would have to come from behind. We were in the third period, and I think we just steamrolled them from the time they opened that door and let us out.

They didn't have a chance. Johnson to McClellan, and he scores! Three unanswered goals in the third period gave the U.S. a 4-2 win, and the gold medal. Four to the gold medal.

This impossible dream comes true! The Olympics broke Herb Brooks' heart in 1960, and made him the most celebrated American hockey coach in history two decades later. But on August 11, 2003, in a single car accident, a little bit of the Lake Placid miracle died, with Herbert Paul Brooks on the hot, hard asphalt of Interstate 35 in Forest Lake, Minnesota. As his casket descended from the ground, as his casket descended down the steps of Assumption Catholic Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, it passed under a curved canopy of hockey sticks raised up by his 1980 gold medal team.

Many of those holding sticks were fighting tears, and losing the fight. If Herb Brooks' passing reminds us that human beings have a shelf life, it also reminds us that miracles do not. And this miracle didn't happen on accident. I see Neil Brotby skating on a flooded rink in Roseau, Minnesota, that his father got up at 2 a.m. to make in 25 degree below zero weather. I see John Harrington's late father Charles skipping overtime at work to watch his kids' games, because his overtime would always be there, but the games would not. And then see him years later listening to John skate against the Russians from the cab of his locomotive. I envision Margaret Craig running her goaltender's son and all her other kids all over southeastern Massachusetts, a devotion that was absolutely unstinting until her cigarette habit caught up to her and cancer arrived. Behind every player, there are stories of love and sacrifice and struggle. Life is hard, and Olympic gold medals provide no exemption.

You push on, do your best, and if you are really brave, you dream big. Doubts and fears be damned. This is the stuff that miracles are made of, and the proof was there to see on February 22nd, 1980.

And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. I love that note from that lady in Texas. Beat those commie you-know-whats.

And again, this is the story of us against them and these college kids against the big, bad Soviet bear. And I'll never forget where I was on that day. I was at my best friend Paul Beatini's house.

He would later die on 9-11 on the 100th floor of the World Trade Center. But on that day, the family gathered. First period, maybe about a dozen of us. Second period, maybe about 30 of us. Last period, the Beatini household being the place you'd go to watch a sport.

The place was packed. And those are days you never forget. The Miracle on Ice, the story.

It's personal for people who were there, for those who've never experienced it. Well, there you have it. A story of not just a hockey game, a story of not just an Olympic event, but the story of American triumphalism and the American dream, the original dream team, here on Our American Stories.

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