Talk About a Career Day : Reggie Jackson’s Three Home Runs on Three Pitches, Jesse Owens’ Four World Records Top 20th-Century Feats

The 20th Century has been one of wall-to-wall sports.

There has been intercollegiate, professional, and Olympic competition in a continuous parade led by throngs of individual achievers.

The parade began, in one sense, 99 years ago with the revival of the Olympic Games after a lapse of 15 centuries.

In a more realistic sense, though, it began only seven decades ago, when, suddenly, and revealingly, the 1920s were applauded as the golden age of sport.

The 1920s?

There have been so many big days since then--hundreds of them--that this is, more exactly, the golden century of sport.

Of all those big days, not surprisingly, a few stand out.

Looking back, a top 10 can be identified--10 matchless individual athletic achievements--plus two that seem close.

Those two are pitcher Don Larsen’s perfect World Series game in 1956 and Bob Beamon’s long jump in 1968, when, flying 29 feet 2 1/2 inches, he broke the world record by nearly two feet.

On his historic day, however, Larsen, who finished with a real-life won-lost record of 81-91, was simply out of character. And so was Beamon, a good athlete who was magnificent only once.

That doesn’t diminish their accomplishments, but it does diminish my interest.

The intention here is to measure individual achievements in major events by athletes who had careers of excellence.

The question: On the top 10 days of 20th Century sports, who stopped the world?

Here’s my vote:

1. REGGIE JACKSON

Three pitches, three home runs.

In New York on Oct. 18, 1977, Jackson hit three World Series home runs for the Yankees on consecutive pitches--extending his streak to four on four pitches, counting a home run in his final-at-bat the game before. Driving in four runs with his three home runs on the last day, Jackson made the difference as the Dodgers lost the game and Series, 8-4 and 4-2.

Though all but unreported at the time, Jackson’s was the century’s peak achievement, given these three circumstances: No athletic feat is more difficult than hitting a pitched ball over a big league fence, the three-swing masterpiece occurred in the decisive game of a World Series, and Jackson did it under pressure created by his own reputation as Mr. October.

Because of all he had done as a World Series winner in Oakland, Jackson, just that year, had been brought East to do it in New York. And he did it spectacularly, hitting a fifth-game home run in his last turn, beginning the sixth game with a walk on four Burt Hooton pitchers, then hitting first-pitch home runs off Hooton in the fourth inning, Elias Sosa in the fifth, and Charlie Hough in the eighth.

2. JESSE OWENS

Four events, four world records.

In 45 minutes on May 25, 1935, Owens, 21, Ohio State’s sophomore sprinter, broke three world records and equaled a fourth in the greatest one-day performance in the recorded history of the world’s oldest sport.

Winning events pioneered by the ancient Greeks, Owens, during a Big Ten track meet at Ann Arbor, Mich., tied the world record for the 100-yard dash and set records in the 220, 220 hurdles and long jump.

As usual, he was running on an old cinder track--without the aid of starting blocks--yet he raced the 100 in 9.4, the 220 in 20.3, the hurdles in 22.6 and jumped 26-8 1/4, setting conference records that have never been broken. A year later, although he set no world records at the Berlin Olympics, Owens made a dramatic comment on Hitler’s Aryan nonsense by winning four gold medals.

3. FRANZ KLAMMER

Gold medal for a wild ride.

At Innsbruck, Austria, on Feb. 5, 1976, downhill skier Klammer won an Olympic gold medal for Austria by throwing himself off a mountain. Shocking everyone who saw it, Klammer, racing recklessly, seemed to lose his common sense and all pretense at technique. At times he hit speeds nearing 100 m.p.h., and he rounded some turns with one leg sticking out. Nothing in a century of competitive sports has been as wild and exciting as that run.

It was a response to two kinds of pressure. First, the defending champion, Bernhard Russi of Switzerland, had just come down in 1:46.06, a time that appeared insurmountable that day on that course. Second, all Austria was praying for an Austrian to beat an Austrian mountain. In 1:45.73, he did.

4. RED GRANGE

Twelve minutes, four touchdowns.

On Oct. 18, 1924, Grange scored for Illinois against Michigan the first four times he touched the ball. He returned the opening kickoff 95 yards, then added touchdowns on runs from scrimmage, going 67, 45 and 56 yards, all in the space of 12 minutes.

Michigan, which hadn’t lost since 1922, was on a 15-game winning streak when it arrived at Urbana, Ill., where the Illini extended their own winning streak to 11.

After sitting out the second quarter, Grange, on the biggest day a football player ever had, came back with three more big plays in the second half. Playing both offense and defense, he intercepted a pass, scored a fifth touchdown, and threw a pass for Illinois’ other touchdown as Michigan fell, 39-14.

A year later, rescuing the struggling NFL, Grange was the magnet for the first big pro crowds, 73,000 in New York and 75,000 at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

5. KIRK GIBSON

How to beat a better team.

On Oct. 15, 1988, the Dodgers were losing to the Oakland A’s in the ninth inning at Dodger Stadium, 4-3, when, with one on, pinch-hitter Gibson limped out to become the only man to win the World Series with one first-game swing.

The A’s, greatly talented that year and understandably arrogant, were heavily favored with Rickey Henderson, Jose Canceco and the dominant closer of the era, Dennis Eckersley.

But the Dodgers had Eckersley well scouted.

Although Gibson’s knee and hamstring injuries were so severe that he couldn’t run--and couldn’t even bat again that season--he was ready for Eckersley’s two-out, 2-2 pitch, a hard slider that hit the low outside corner. Leaning far out over the plate, Gibson flicked his wrists and incredibly pulled a perfect pitch into the right-field stands.

As the ball rose into the night, the air went out of the A’s, who realized, sickeningly, that now they’d have to beat Orel Hershiser twice. They couldn’t.

6. MUHAMMAD ALI

How to win without fighting

At 4 a.m. on Oct. 30, 1974, in Kinshasa near the River Zaire in central Africa, Ali, forsaking his fists, used his knowledge of boxing to upset a 1-3 favorite, George Foreman, then and now the heavyweight champion, and then and now the deadliest one-punch destroyer of them all--except Joe Louis.

To recapture a title that had been stripped away seven years earlier, Ali perfected a surprise game plan, backing into the ropes instead of fighting the champion, who wore himself out swinging wildly.

For seven long rounds, there Ali was, right in front of him, and Foreman couldn’t find him. And in the eighth, Ali smoothly knocked him out.

The sports scholar of the century, Ali based his plan on the sometime tactics of Sugar Ray Robinson and two early-century fighters, a welterweight, Young Jack Thompson, and heavyweight champion Jess Willard. In 1911, Willard needed 26 rounds to wear out Jack Johnson before, like Ali 63 years later, knocking his man out.

7. ARTHUR ASHE

Mind over man at Wimbledon.

On July 5, 1975, illustrating the place of the intellectual in competitive sports, Ashe upset the world’s best tennis player, Jimmy Connors, by making him run for the ball in the Wimbledon final, 6-1, 6-1, 5-7, 6-4.

Connors, a 2-11 favorite--heaviest in Wimbledon history--could have demolished Ashe in a heavy-hitting duel.

Forestalling that, Ashe, carrying the weight of his lineage as the only black man to win Wimbledon, came up with a new style just for the day--a style designed to defuse the hard returns and ground strokes in the arsenal of a classic counterpuncher.

With wide serves, and soft slice shots dropped into the center of his opponent’s court, Ashe destabilized Connors by making him come up--or go out--for the ball, where he lost power.

Or as Connors said: “He didn’t give me much to hit at.”

8. MAGIC JOHNSON

Point Guard? Center? Whatever.

On May 16, 1980, with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar out with a sprained ankle, Johnson, 20, a rookie point guard, moved to center--making the most drastic position switch in basketball--then imperturbably and improbably led the Lakers to the championship in Philadelphia’s Spectrum, 123-107.

Though never an NBA center before or since, Johnson demonstrated his mastery of the sport that night, scoring on skyhooks, tips, drives, whatever it took, and producing 42 points on 14 of 23 shots and 14 of 14 free throws. He was also there for 15 rebounds.

With 5:12 left, after Julius Erving’s six consecutive points had put the 76ers close, 103-101, the Lakers scored 20 of the game’s last 26 points for Coach Paul Westhead, and Johnson, smiling all the way, had 11 of the 20.

9. ROGER BANNISTER

One mile in four minutes

On May 6, 1954, a British runner showed a surprised world that what human beings do is what they think they can do. Thousands of athletes had dreamed about it. Medical student Bannister believed it, running the first four-minute mile.

In a minor track meet at Oxford, England, before a crowd of about 1,000, he won in 3:59.4--a time that instantly made a major psychosocial impact on the world. Indeed, it still has a meaning beyond track.

As Bannister, now a medical doctor, was to say later, “Most of the barrier was psychological. For hundreds of years, nobody could run a four-minute mile. In the last few years, it’s been run hundreds of times.”

10. TED WILLIAMS

From .399 to .406 in one day.

When he got up in Philadelphia on Sept. 28, the last day of the 1941 baseball season, Williams, 23, was batting .399. To finish the year as a .400 hitter--an achievement so rare that nobody has been there since--Williams only needed a one-for-one game for the Red Sox that afternoon against Connie Mack’s A’s. And he got it.

And after 449 at-bats that season, after 180 base hits, Williams had earned the right to sit down. In 1950, Joe DiMaggio was to sit out the last game of the season after climbing to .300 in the next-to-last game--but Williams played boldly on.

Putting the .400 in jeopardy, Williams played through a doubleheader into the September twilight, and, achieving with a magnificence that matched his valor, hit .750 that last day--six for eight--lifting his 1941 batting average to .406.