Glory Days

I read a rather entertaining book recently…Glory Days: The Summer of 1984 and the 90 Days That Changed Sports and Culture Forever by L. John Wertheim (watchers of “60 Minutes” will recognize). When I first heard about the book I wasn’t that interested…I heard the author on a couple of podcasts doing his promotional tour but wasn’t terribly excited. I did, however, look it up at the Phoenix Digital Library and placed a hold on the eBook version.

A few weeks later, I received an email notifying me that my hold was available. The timing worked perfectly as I was going to be doing some weekend traveling and wanted a leisure book to read. I started reading and was finished in three days…it was a spectacularly enjoyable read!

Wertheim looks back at what appears to be a random period of time in the mid-1980’s; it is truly fascinating what happened during those 90 days (plus/minus a couple of months in some cases)…and the stories surrounding the events are incredible.

Some highlights:

• An upstart computer company (IBM had 50x this company’s sales at the time) introduces its newest product, the Macintosh, two days after a commercial during the Super Bowl teased it. The upstart’s CEO, Steve Jobs, predicted that his company would one day have a $10 billion market capitalization. He was a tad conservative with his prediction as Apple now sports a valuation over $2 trillion!
• Our country was preparing for the Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles…earlier in the year a prominent magazine had the cover story, “Are the Games Dead?” as financial struggles threatened their existence. Under the leadership of Chairman Peter Ueberroth, the first privately financed Olympic Games resulted in a surplus of $250 million. Carl Lewis and Mary Lou Retton were two of the stars, along with the Men’s Basketball Team (composed completely of amateurs). The men’s team success was highlighted by a player that was about to take the world by storm—Michael Jordan, who had been recently drafted by the NBA’s Chicago Bulls with the third overall pick.
• The NBA Draft was televised for the first time…think of Charles Barkley’s awful suit and players awkwardly coming onstage to shake hands with Commissioner David Stern. Nowadays it is a huge television event that players of today grew up watching…but then it was brand new and doubted by many television executives.
• Entire chapters were devoted to Nike’s courting of Michael Jordan—these were easily my favorite stories in the book. When you consider what Nike and the Air Jordan brand have become, it is surreal to think about how Michael really didn’t want to sign with Nike. “You know I am an Adidas guy,” he kept telling his agent. “Just get a deal done with Adidas.”
• The 1984 NBA Finals that summer matched up Larry Bird’s Celtics against Magic Johnson’s Lakers for the first time as both were professionals. They previously met in the 1979 College Basketball championship game…a game that many say changed college basketball into the monster that it is today.
• The Chicago Cubs made the Major League Baseball playoffs for the first time since 1945. Back in 1984, baseball games were mostly seen on TV only regionally (other than the NBC Game of the Week)…the exceptions were the Atlanta Braves, whose games were seen on Atlanta’s WTBS and the Cubs, whose games were seen on Chicago’s WGN—these were two “superstations” that cable companies were busy rolling out nationally. Wertheim correctly says that famous Cubs play-by-play announcer Harry Caray and the Cubs were de facto babysitters for a generation of baseball-watching latchkey kids until parents returned home from work…and people wonder how Gen-X’ers fared so well during the COVID quarantine!
• Two very large personalities were taking over the professional tennis world…John McEnroe and Martina Navratilova.
• Donald Trump started appearing in the news a lot…the business mogul was buying up New York real estate and bought the USFL’s New Jersey Generals, which he then ran into the ground; the entire league soon followed.
• 26-year old Michael Jackson was dubbed “The King of Pop.” His album “Thriller” was number one on the charts and The Jackson’s Victory Tour began.
• Wayne Gretzky was skating up a storm in the NHL.
• A very underrated at the time sports movie debuted…The Karate Kid.
• ESPN changed cable television forever…for years the struggling company paid cable networks to deliver their content to homes/subscribers. After realizing that they had become mainstays in American’s lives, they turned the tables on the cable companies and forced the cable companies to pay ESPN a fee for every subscriber in order to continue to carry the channel…crazy to think about…especially today as those ESPN subscriber fees make up a huge part of people’s cable bills and are a big reason why so many are “cutting the cord” and doing away with cable television altogether finding more end-user specific content via streaming services.

Wertheim is a terrific storyteller and each of these bullet points have fabulous stories behind them. Perhaps it was my formative age (I was 16 in the summer of 1984), but it sure seems like an awful lot happened during this time…I think the book is a very worthwhile read!

Amazon - Glory Days: The Summer of 1984 and the 90 Days That Changed Sports and Culture Forever

-Gary Weiss, November 2021