A severely injured Kirk Gibson is sent out of the Los Angeles Dodgers dugout to pinch-hit in the ninth inning of the opening game of the 1988 World Series, a truly desperate moment; watching him walk to the plate, you doubt he could even run to first base if he hit the ball, which he probably won’t do because he’s facing arguably the greatest relief pitcher in history.
Then, amazingly, improbably—impossibly!—he homers and limps his way around the bases, fist pumping in triumph.
It’s 1998, and Michael Jordan cans a jumper as time runs out, clinching his final championship with the Chicago Bulls. His victory leap becomes an iconic image of success. Nike’s stock price rises 23 percent.
The 2000 World Golf Championships, eighteenth hole. It’s not that daylight is fading; it’s actually nighttime. Tiger Woods takes a literal shot in the dark with an eight-iron, 158 yards, and the ball somehow finds its way to within inches of the cup. Tiger taps it in for a win as flashbulbs explode to capture the moment.
It’s 2006. Reggie Bush takes a handoff left and sees what Saints running backs have been seeing all their careers: the broad backs of their teammates’ jerseys being pushed back at them.
So he cuts a hard right and, while twenty-one players on the field are moving in one direction, he is moving in the other and he gets 44 yards before anyone can catch him. The Reggie Bush era begins.
Okay, three of these are considered among the greatest moments in contemporary sports history. But only one was truly important.
I think you know where I’m going with this.
Truth is, no one outside New Orleans will ever remember what happened the other night. First of all, it was not only a preseason game, but it was the preseason opener, not just football’s—but the entire world of sports’—least meaningful event.
If anything memorable happened at the game Saturday night—something that just might make the history books, in fact—it was that our backup quarterback was run over and injured by a golf cart driven by the Tennessee Titans’ mascot.
How the hell does something like that happen? Aren’t these people supposed to be protected from nonsense like that? I mean, when the Saints play the Falcons, can we send Whistle Monster or Holy Moses down to give Michael Vick a pregame wedgie or something?
Anyway.
Reggie’s run was no Miracle on Ice or Hail Mary Pass or Immaculate Reception. (Please note the overtly religious overtones of great moments in sports history, for it is well documented that Jesus was mad for all sports, with the exception of bowling.)
But I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that those 44 yards—the first glimpse of the potential of this guy Reggie—were fraught with implication, both real and imagined.
The first point is: it gave us something to talk about that was completely unrelated to The Thing—if anything that happens around here can be said to occur outside the all-consuming context of The Thing, which I doubt it can, but let’s go with it anyway.
I watched part of the game in a loud and crowded Bourbon Street bar Saturday night and was amazed at how I witnessed a single run from scrimmage play a small part in making some people whole again. Right before my very eyes.
I heard at least two conversations in which the term “play-offs” was bandied about, and I thought: Wow, I miss that playful delusion that everyone around here used to have. That completely illogical yet congenital attachment to schemes that don’t work and if there was ever—historically speaking—a scheme that doesn’t work, it’s the Saints.
Now, truth is, I’m not a Saints fan in the conventional sense. I watch every game and listen to the postgame shows and all that, but I have always been fascinated by the Saints more as a sociological phenomenon than as a mere sports team.
We could dig deep into the well of New Orleans clichés about how we don’t do anything the way they do it in other places and our relationship with our football team is certainly up there on that list. Their performance seems to have such a profound influence on the mood of this community and never more so than this year and I know that sounds superficial and, in fact, it is superficial.
Only a game, right?
Not anymore. Not here. Not now.
We need a real juggernaut to lift us up, and it turns out that a big fireworks display and masquerade ball, as our mayor suggested, to commemorate the drowning of New Orleans wasn’t quite the answer.
But a winning football team? Ah, that would be something.
In fact, I’m worried that if the team doesn’t deliver, it could deal a devastating blow to the psyche of the city. More than anything else Saturday night, I was hoping and praying not that Reggie would play well but that he simply wouldn’t get injured—by an opposing team’s linebacker or a middle-aged man wearing a big furry costume.
If Reggie goes down, I told a friend on the phone Saturday afternoon, it could be the proverbial straw that breaks this camel’s back.
Levee failures, looting, death, destruction, murder, corruption, depression, suicide, bankruptcy—those we can handle.
But another losing season? Oh, the horror.
So mark it in your memory lockbox—that 44-yard run—just like remembering where you were and what you were doing when you heard that Kennedy was shot or O. J. Simpson was on the run or a man had walked on the moon.
That was one small step for Reggie Bush, one giant leap for New Orleans.