“Cancer can take away all my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart and it cannot touch my soul. And those three things are going to carry on forever.”– Jim Valvano, at the ESPYs on March 4, 1993.
Valvano’s speech at the very first ESPYs, is the last thing that ever happened at ESPN’s awards show that anyone remembers.
Hank Gathers died today in 1990 in a quarterfinal game of the WCC basketball tournament. Gathers, who along with Bo Kimble, had led Loyola Marymount to national prominence, was just the second player to ever lead the nation in both scoring and rebounding. Gathers had just thrown down a big alley-oop jam against Pacific before falling to the ground. Gathers had a heart condition and had stopped taking his medication before games. He was pronounced dead upon arrival at a nearby hospital. The player closest to Gathers when he fell? Pacific point guard Eric Spoelstra. Kimble would lead a spirited run to the elite eight in the NCAA tournament before LMU lost to eventual champion UNLV.
People magazine published their first issue today in 1974. Mia Farrow was on the cover as Daisy Buchanan from “The Great Gatsby”. The issue cost 35 cents. God willing, Baz Luhrman’s 2013 edition is better than Farrow and Robert Redford’s borefest.
It was today in 1986 when Janet Jackson proved she wasn’t going to just be Michael’s little sister anymore. She vaulted to superstardom herself with the release of “Control.”
Her third album sold over 14 million copies and made her one of the biggest stars of the second half of the eighties. The hits were plentiful: “What Have You Done For Me Lately?,” “Control,” “Nasty,” “Let’s Wait Awhile,” “When I Think of You,” and “The Pleasure Principal.”
Today in 1983 Spandau Ballet released their only hit album, “True.” “True” was a one-hit wonder and was on the radio every five minutes in 1983 and I hated it. It doesn’t sound as bad to me now. The 30th anniversary of the album brings to mind one of my favorite tweets from 2012:
One man thought “Let’s name the band Spandau Ballet” and four other men agreed.
Michael Ian Black — Bill Hubbell