With This Matchup, Everyone Wins on Super Sunday XIX

Whew!

That must be the standard reaction of a whole host of interested parties, now that the Super Bowl participants will include the 49ers and Dolphins.

That sound you heard in New York was Roone Arledge and the ABC executives popping champagne corks and lighting up the switchboards of Madison Avenue.

A lot of people stopped sweating--ticket scalpers, souvenir peddlers, hoteliers, advertisers and, yes, maybe, even fans.

The anti-history folks may be gnashing their teeth, the ones who like sad endings in movies, or films where the ugly guy gets the girl and Robert Redford is sent packing, the ones who like to go to fancy dress balls in pickup trucks, or who didn’t mind it when they got to the opera and the understudy was going to sing instead of Caruso.

There probably are people who would like to see the Indianapolis 500 won, or at least run, by a collection of stock Edsels, or who wouldn’t mind if the Kentucky Derby had a field of burros.

Some people love it when an unknown wins the U.S. Open and they get ecstatic when it happens every year.

But, the trouble with sports is not that you don’t get enough palookas, it’s that you don’t get these classic matchups often enough. I mean, suppose Jack Sharkey had beaten Jack Dempsey in their fight in July, 1927, and we had never had the Dempsey-Tunney rematch in September? What if there never had been a Long Count? What are we supposed to write about then? Would anyone care if Tunney had gotten 14 seconds against Sharkey?

What if the Washington Senators had won the American League pennant in 1932 and played the Cubs in the World Series, instead of the Yankees? Who would we have had calling his shot--Heinie Manush? Ever stop to think of the damage to sports mythology if Babe Ruth never got into that World Series? What if the Four Horsemen hadn’t beaten Army that day?

What if the Cardinals and Grover Cleveland Alexander had never made the 1926 World Series? Would there have been anyone to come out of the bullpen with a hangover to strike out Tony Lazzeri with the bases loaded?

Supposing the Oakland Raiders had beaten Joe Namath and the New York Jets in the AFL title game in 1968. We never would have had the watershed Super Bowl game in which Namath guaranteed, then made good on the guarantee, that the AFL would beat the NFL’s Baltimore Colts. The AFL might be without credibility to this day.

What if Dizzy Dean and the Gashouse Gang hadn’t made the 1934 World Series? What if the Giants had beaten Brooklyn in the final weekend series that year? You think baseball lore would have been served?

Look at the things that didn’t happen. Dean never got to pitch against Babe Ruth or Joe DiMaggio, or even Lazzeri. Walter Johnson never got to face Rogers Hornsby with the Series on the line. Bill Tilden never met Rene Lacoste in a Wimbledon final.

How many times have two great race horses not hooked up with each other for one reason or another? You can count on the fingers of one hand the number of storied match races in that sport.

Would you have liked to have seen Red Grange run against Notre Dame? In the Rose Bowl? It was not to be. What if Reggie Jackson had never made a World Series? Koufax? Clemente?

Something, or someone, always seems to intrude on the side of anti-climax. I mean, think we will ever get to see Russia vs. the U.S. in an Olympics ever again?

Like to save up all year for a concert and find out Horowitz has the flu the night you bought tickets for? Get to the ballet to find Baryshnikov has broken his ankle?

Well, the ’85 Super Bowl is going to be the night Caruso sings, Baryshnikov dances, Horowitz plays, and the Lunts are in the cast.

It’s not a road company Super Bowl. It’s not a dream game but it’s a lot better than the one we dodged.

After you’ve waxed teary-eyed about the fitness of wonderful Walter Payton finally playing in a Super Bowl, you’re pretty much left with a Pittsburgh-Chicago Super Sunday that might have set football back to the flying wedge. The Chicago Bears play football about the way Eddie Stanky played baseball, a kind of invisible game that appeals only to people who understand the fine print of the sport. The Steelers try to beat you, 14-7.

For years, sports aficionados used to root mightily for a Dallas Cowboys-Oakland Raiders Super Bowl. A barn-burner, a big betting interest coast to coast. But it never happened.

The Super Bowl, I don’t know whether you know it or not, is frequently--too frequently--the biggest bore on the schedule. It pits two teams that go together like ketchup and ice cream, beer and doughnuts. They bring out the worst in each other.

This year, we got a chance finally for that dream 49-47 score with two overtimes and hardly any field goals. This is not an agony fight, these are two guys who can slug. No gavotte, no feeling each other out. These guys will swing from the floor.

On paper, it looks like Dempsey vs. Tunney, Ruth vs. Walter Johnson, Reggie vs. Nolan Ryan. There haven’t been too many big moments in Super Bowl history. We sometimes get a Super Bowl where you can’t see how either of them can win it. Now, we have one where you can’t see where either of them could lose it.