Replaying the ‘Miracle on Ice’

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. —  A dentist named Bill Baker, a restaurant manager named Mark Wells and a commercial banker named Phil Verchota had been in town for only a couple hours Friday afternoon before they wandered into the empty hockey arena where they once had played some games.

They stood at the top of a stairway leading to the hundreds of seats below. It was dark and silent. They were very much alone.

Baker softly began the chant: “U-S-A. U-S-A.”

Wells turned around, his eyes caught Baker’s, and he smiled and joined in.

“U-S-A. U-S-A.”

“Remember?” Wells said to his two friends.

Verchota looked around the place and grinned. Then the three men turned to walk away.

Remember? How could they possibly ever forget? It was, after all, the greatest moment of their lives.

In that arena, on Feb. 22, 1980, Baker, Wells, Verchota and 17 other fresh-faced hockey players from the Midwest and Boston upset the Soviet Union, 4-3, on their way to the improbable Olympic gold medal they won two days later with a victory over Finland.

Someone said it was as if a high school football team had beaten the Pittsburgh Steelers, then the NFL’s most dominant team. The upset was voted the greatest sports moment of the 1980s by various news organizations. And it became a yardstick by which all other sports upsets would be measured: the players, for example, have had their share of Buster Douglas questions this week.

Eight of the 20 members of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team returned to Lake Placid for the 10-year reunion of their “Miracle on Ice.” Baker and Verchota brought their jerseys, Wells wore his team jacket, goalie Jim Craig brought his camera. Mike Eruzione, the team captain who has forged a career from those dizzy two weeks here, came to organize his buddies, make a speech and even run onto the ice in his street shoes to pretend he was scoring the winning goal against the Soviets all over again.

Ken Morrow, Buzz Schneider and Steve Janaszak also came, while the others, including Coach Herb Brooks, couldn’t make it to town for a variety of reasons. One of them was the NHL schedule; 16 of the Olympians played at least one game in the NHL, and four (Dave Christian, Mike Ramsey, Neal Broten and Mark Johnson) still are active.

By now, almost all of them have settled into ordinary lives. Most live near where they grew up in Boston, Minneapolis, Wisconsin or Michigan. All but one (Wells) are married, most have children. Everyone but Ramsey is over 30. They play pick-up hockey games on Monday nights, they wear blue jeans and Reeboks, and they love to tell stories about each other.

“It’s never a handshake and formal hello,” Eruzione said. “It’s like, ‘Boy, are you getting fat.’ ”

They were middle-class kids who, for two weeks 10 years ago, captivated a nation as no single group of young athletes have since. Then they scattered. There wasn’t much money to be made in post-Olympic glory then, except for Eruzione and Craig. And even then, there was triumph for one, tragedy for the other.

Throughout this weekend, wherever they went, they were cheered. As they marched down Main Street in this tiny, snow-covered Adirondack village, clusters of people stood and applauded. Morrow, the former New York Islander who now coaches in the International Hockey League, showed up at a pin collectors’ show and all action stopped so everyone could clap.

“It’s like coming home for Christmas,” said Schneider, who scored the first goal against the Soviets and now works for a temporary services company in Minnesota.

It’s not just them. The other day, ABC-TV scheduled an interview with Al Michaels, the man who broadcast the 1980 hockey games and gave the team its signature line: “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”

“People come up to me in airports to this day and say it, ‘Do you believe in miracles?’ ” Michaels said. “I can’t imagine anything captivating the public like this. ... This was so much more than hockey.”

Ten years ago, Iran held American hostages, the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter was talking about boycotting the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, the U.S. economy was a mess. The nation needed a lift.

And then, so unexpectedly, the country got one. There was a time when “U-S-A, U-S-A” was a new, spontaneous chant, not a rather worn-out refrain to be expected at every international event. There was a time when the starting time of an event, like the U.S.-Soviet hockey game, was not changed for live TV, but was tape-delayed. There was a time when the U.S. team didn’t even sell out the arena for its first game, such was the lack of interest.

This was that time.

“The Soviets are our buddies now,” Eruzione said. “In 1980 they were the bad guys. Hopefully, it will never be that way again, but it was then. Nobody liked the USA anymore, and then we came along.”

In the last 10 years Eruzione has traveled to all but three states making speeches, playing in golf tournaments, being himself. He made five speeches in the last two weeks and has four more to give in the next 10 days.

“When I don’t do any for awhile, I worry it’s over and I have to get a job,” he said. “It’s not going to continue much longer, I don’t think.”

He never has watched a tape of the entire Soviet game (none of the players who was here has), but he did pop in a tape of the West German game when he was riding his Lifecycle at home near Boston last week.

“Nothing else was on TV,” he said.

For Craig, things have been very different. After the gold-medal-winning game with Finland, with the flag draped around him, he stood on the ice and scanned the seats for his father, who had been widowed a few years earlier. The image was replayed countless times on television, leading to a Coke commercial for Craig and his father. Within a week Craig was the starting goaltender for the Atlanta Flames.

But his world began to unravel. Facing unbearable pressure, he didn’t play well and soon was out of hockey. He never told anyone who he was; even his future wife had to be told by someone else what he had done. In 1982 he was involved in a car accident on Cape Cod that killed a woman. He later was found innocent of vehicular homicide. His name seemed to constantly be in the news, and the news was not good.

Now he has righted himself. He is married, and has a 15-month-old son and a good job as an account manager for an advertising insert company in Boston. His father died two years ago at age 69 of a stomach aneurism. Donald Craig used to watch the video tapes of the games “all the time,” Craig said. Now, for the first time ever, Craig wants to find the tapes to watch them himself.

Unlike Eruzione, Craig didn’t embrace the Olympics. He ran from them.

“Other guys on the team enjoyed the interviews on the Olympics, but, for me, I knew eventually it’s not what we were going to talk about,” he said.

The best part of the Olympics for him was what the gold medal did for his father, Craig said. “He was a lonely old man. My mother had died of cancer. It brought a new spirit out of him. For that reason, it was worthwhile.”

Some want to forget; others can’t stop remembering. Craig nodded toward Wells, who barely took off his red 1980 USA jacket all weekend. Wells never did make it to the NHL, and never could find much enthusiasm for hockey after the Olympics.

“I thought Mark would wear his medal too,” Craig said, smiling rather sadly. “I hope it never ends for him. And I mean that only in a good way.”