Jim O'Donnell: When Michael Jordan's Garden Party spawned the enduring 'for the ages'
APRIL 20 REMAINS ONE OF THE landmark days in the history of the Chicago Bulls.
Quite rightfully, it can be said that the date "belongs to the ages."
All modest cloaking aside, it also remains one of the grand days in the history of phrase making in American sports journalism and beyond.
That's because that was the day "belongs to the ages" and its now grossly overused stepsister "for the ages" were resurrected for post-19th century usage.
Michael Jordan was the muse.
The word crafting belongs to the back pages of The Daily Herald.
ALL MR. JORDAN DID on that transcendent Sunday afternoon - April 20, 1986 - was go out and score 63 points at Boston Garden in Game 2 of a hopeless best-of-five playoffs series vs. the Celtics.
With CBS presenting only the second legacied network telecast of Jordan's NBA career, the eighth-seeded Bulls lost in double OT, 135-131.
The championship-bound Celtics were a mere 40-1 at home that regular season.
Jordan had been back for all of five weeks after breaking a foot in the fourth game of the schedule the previous November.
AFTERWARD, DOWN OFF THE PARQUET, Larry Bird later uttered his most memorable: "That was God disguised as Michael Jordan."
Years later, Dave Corzine - who started and played 39 minutes of the epic - said: "I remember watching (Jordan) at one point in the game from the bench and thinking, 'How cool would it be to be able to take a basketball like he was doing and go anywhere on the floor and do anything you wanted to do at the Boston Garden against as great a team as the Celtics were that season?'"
THE GAME WAS OVER, the Garden emptied and a Daily Herald beat writer sat up in the hockey press box alongside Mark Vancil, Tim Hallam, Bob Sakamoto and Corinne Zartler.
Technically, the deadline was soft because of the 1 p.m. Eastern start. But all five were booked on a 7 p.m. United Airlines flight out of Logan Airport that would take Jordan and the Bulls back home.
(Yes, the Bulls were still flying commercial in those days.)
THE WRITER STARED at the banners and the parquet and contemplated the lingering aura of amazement before beginning to type. Only two thoughts flashed through his processing mind:
"History," and "succinctly catch the history quickly."
The intellectual files quickly flipped. And then the summary muse so kindly plucked the inspiration only through the librarian grace of God from a book by Robert J. Donovan originally published in 1955 titled "The Assassins."
"BELONGS TO THE AGES" - the words that Edwin Stanton, Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of War, said when the 16th President was pronounced dead on Holy Saturday morning, 1865.
Stanton's full phrase: "Now he belongs to the ages."
The Daily Herald lead the morning after Jordan's Boston tour de force: "The game belongs to the ages."
That was it.
IN ALL THE YEARS SINCE, "for the ages" has been used to refer to everything from a relatively mundane four-touchdown game to an MLBer's conquest of violent nasal discharge.
The writer's regret has been that the Garden word work and its primary derivative couldn't have been copyrighted.
That could have resulted in a royalty stream "for the ages."
STREET-BEATIN': Regarding DeMar DeRozan and the Bulls at Milwaukee Wednesday (TNT, NBCSCH, 8:30 p.m.), Vegas theorist Steve Makinen reports an empirical probability of close to 80% that the game will go under its betting point total of 225. (His projection has to do with NBA postseason home favorites of double digits in a Game 2 - the Bucks are minus-10.) ...
Melissa Stark has pulled a Lazerus and will be sideline reporter down below Mike Tirico and Cris Collinsworth on NBC's "Sunday Night Football" this season. She filled a similar role on ABC's "Monday Night Football" from 2000 to 2002. ...
Some dissonant internal grumbling about expenditures in the University of Illinois's Department of Intercollegiate Athletics. A.D. Josh Whitman is attempting to counter with pointed transparency. ...
A line from the ages: Pat Hughes, recalling Bob Uecker's advice on how to catch a knuckleball - "Wait until it stops rolling and then pick it up." (Paging Hoyt Wilhelm.) ...
And Stephen Colbert, noting that the annual Easter Egg Roll returned to the White House lawn for the first time since the start of the pandemic: "So nice we can gather and watch the children have their egg race while we gamble our brains out on FanDuel."
• Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears three times weekly, including Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com.