SAN ANTONIO — Sometimes, you get multiple tries seeking your Moment. Reggie Jackson missed his first one, with the ’72 A’s, because he pulled his hamstring on the doorstep of the World Series, but he got others. And then, on the night of Oct. 18, 1977, he grabbed his biggest Moment by the throat, clobbered three baseballs over The Bronx sky.
Mark Messier had multiple Moments in the frontier hockey outpost of Edmonton, Alberta. He would get one once he transferred his talents to New York City — two if you count the warm-up he delivered on May 25, 1994, when he scored a natural hat trick at what was then called Brendan Byrne Arena, backing up the guarantee he’d made the day before.
But he’ll be remembered forever for what happened 20 days later — Rangers 3, Canucks 2 — when he accepted the Stanley Cup from Gary Bettman and started shaking it up and down like it was a 3-foot tall silver-and-nickel pepper grinder, ending a 54-year tour through the desert.
Sometimes, you only get one try. Joe Namath got one, and he seized the Moment in a way it’s rarely ever been seized, and in the mind’s eye is forever jogging off the Orange Bowl turf, his right index finger stabbing the sky. Patrick Ewing only got one, and it ended six points shy of the Canyon of Heroes. David Wright only got one during one blessed October when the Mets went on the kind of run the Knicks have been on, and looked like destiny’s darlings.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
