|
|
This is one to be told around the tribal campfires in Eagles Nation, to be celebrated by the troubadours and the balladeers, to be polished and buffed by the spinners and minstrels of folklore.
This is a moment in time, to be forever frozen in memory and then passed down,
generation to green-faced generation.
This is a play that takes its place on the honor roll of Great Moments in Philadelphia Sports History.
This is, in short, how legends come to be legends. Tickets
Like all good stories, it starts this way: Once upon a time...
On a night of stabbing cold, on the 11th day of the new year, in a city that
had ached for a champion for decades, the local football team was down to its
very last gasp. In a playoff game against the Green Bay Packers, the Eagles
were behind, 17-14. There were 72 seconds left to play. The Birds had the ball
on their own 26-yard line, but they faced fourth down, needing 26 yards to keep
alive the drive, the game, the season, the dream.
Fourth and 26.
There are no plays designed for such situations. Fourth and 26 is the same as
fire in the hole. Or, incoming! Fourth and 26 is the second cousin of Fourth
and Abandon-All-Hope-Ye-Who-Enter-Here. Fourth and 26 is Fourth and RIP.
Fourth and 26? You might as well say Fourth and Forever.
Which is, perhaps, what we should call what happened next.
Fourth and Forever.
Quarterback Donovan McNabb leans into the huddle, looks into the reddened, sweat-streaked,
wide-eyed faces of 10 teammates and tells them, the steam streaming from his
mouth with each word: "Let's leave it all on the field. Don't come in Monday
morning saying that you should have done this or that."
The Eagles' tough and spirited running back, Duce Staley, remembers thinking
to himself: "You have to believe. Even now, you have to believe."
And then McNabb is taking the center snap and retreating, carefully and methodically,
1... 2... 3... 4... 5 steps. He plants and fires a hissing spiral.
Down the field, Freddie Mitchell, a talented but tempestuous wide receiver whose
mouth had far overshadowed his deeds until midway through this season, searches
for a seam in the Green Bay defense, finds it in the middle of the field, and
turns. The ball is almost on him, and also slightly behind him.
Like a cat adjusting in mid-spring, Mitchell arches his body to conform to the
course of the pass. He comes down with the ball cradled in his grasp, at the
Green Bay 46. A gain of 28 yards. Fourth and Forever, plus two. First Down Freddie,
known to his teammates as "Hollywood," has delivered.
It is arguably the most important pass completion in the 71 seasons in which
the Eagles have played football. For they used that play as the springboard
to a field goal in the final five seconds to force overtime. Then they won,
in OT, and are now one more win away from the Super Bowl. The ripple effects
of Fourth and Forever continue to fan out.
So how, exactly, do you measure the enduring greatness of a moment, of a play?
The boundaries are simple, really. They have to occur during the playoffs, when
the pressure is most suffocating, when the chips are stacked so high on the
table that you can't see over them.
Had Fourth and Forever occurred, say, in the third game of the season, back
in September, it would have been a highlight, but a fleeting one, mostly forgotten.
A play-of-the-week nominee, but not a play-for-all-time.
The most famous single moment in Philadelphia's sporting history was rerun last
week on what seemed like an endless loop.
It is a moment on a tart October night and a man is on the mound in a Phillies
uniform, both arms thrust exultantly heavenward. Frank Edwin McGraw has just
thrown a third strike for the final out of the 1980 World Series, which remains
the one and only such triumph in 120 years of mostly unrequited striving by
the Phillies.
At 59, Tug McGraw left us much too soon.
It seems fitting, somehow, that his signature line not only lives on but was
invoked by some of the Eagles as they awaited Fourth and Forever.
Brian Dawkins, the Eagles safety, said: "Ya gotta believe. I don't believe
I'm the first person in Philadelphia to say it. I believe there was another
professional athlete in this town who said it first."
Sometimes, what is said rather than done is what endures, what lives on. The
most famous example of that is the measured, rhythmic, abbreviated three-word
promise and prediction from Moses Eugene Malone as the 76ers were about to embark
on an NBA playoff run in the spring of 1983. Asked how he thought the Sixers
would fare, Malone replied with that typical baleful look:
"Fo'... fo'... fo'."
A sweep, he meant. They would play three best-of-seven series and they would
not lose. Not a game.
He missed by only one. The Sixers beat the New York Knicks in four, the Milwaukee
Bucks in five, the Los Angeles Lakers in four. Fo'-fo'-fo' lives on because
that was the last championship brought to this city, though our prospects do
seem to be improving by the minute.
Sometimes, a moment that lives on is not a play, but occurs in the immediate
aftermath, and in this category you are referred to the spring of 1974. The
Flyers have just won the Stanley Cup, for the first time, and their captain,
a fang-toothed demon named Robert Earle Clarke, is clutching silver hardware
and he is turning toward the impregnable goalie, Bernard Marcel Parent, and
he is giving him a slow, exaggerated wink. It seems to say: "Is this sweet,
or what?"
Smart and quick to grasp, Donovan McNabb and Freddie Mitchell cannot quite fully
appreciate what they have wrought with a pitch and a catch. Their own history
is young yet.
Fourth and Forever will grow with the retelling and the reliving. That's the
way it is with legends.
They live on.