“GORDIE HOWE-ITZER” and “GOING OUT ON TOP”
$788/#787
788. NEW YORK RANGERS VS DETROIT RED WINGS
FEBRUARY 1, 1959
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
QUALITY OF PLAY—7.40
DRAMA—6.77
STAR POWER—9.35
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—6.15
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—6.85
LOCAL IMPACT—7.35
TOTAL: 43.87
“GORDIE HOWE-ITZER”
They call it the “Gordie Howe Hat Trick”—a goal, an assist, and a fight in a single game. The term is used to honor the NHL’s longest-serving and perhaps greatest all-around superstar, a man who was as gifted with his knuckles as with his stick and ice vision.
Howe spent a quarter-century in Hockeytown, USA, aka Detroit, Michigan, playing with the Red Wings. Despite the legend, Howe only ever accomplished the eponymous hat trick twice in his carer, once in 1953, and again in 1954, both against the hated Toronto Maple Leafs. Fighting wasn’t really his thing, though rough play and general flintiness sure as hell were. He racked up over 2,000 penalty minutes in his absurd 32-season career (including time in the World Hockey Association and his comeback season with Hartford at age 52 in 1979-80), most of which was played when the league wasn’t so quick to send players to the penalty box as they are in modern times. His son, Marty Howe, who played pro hockey himself, once noted that the true “Gordie Howe Hat Trick” was a goal, an assist, and a cross-check to the face.
Howe combined the two definitions during the game that featured his most famous fight, and perhaps the greatest one-on-one matchup in Garden history (the Bruins going into the stands in 1979 and the infamous 1947 brawl with Montreal, when riot police were required, may have caused more mayhem, but were less fights than anarchic rampages). It took place on a Sunday night, the first of February, 1959. The Red Wings came to the Old Garden on Eighth and 50th squarely in the cellar of the six-team league. New York was in fifth, but were right in the playoff mix, and badly needed a win over the worst team in the NHL.
The then-30-year old Howe had scored already, securing the first part of the hat trick, his 23rd goal of the season. But the Rangers dominated the action, scoring three early tallies, including star Andy Bathgate’s 28th of the year. Late in the opening frame, New York left winger Eddie “Clear the Track” Shack, a fiesty pepperpot who had been instigating since the opening faceoff, flew down ice, with Howe in pursuit. As he stepped across the blue line, Howe savaged Shack with his trademark high stick to the face (part three of Marty Howe’s definition). A nasty cut that required thee stitches to close opened over Shack’s eye. But ref Frank Udvari ignored the obvious penalty.
Bloodied but unbowed, Shack let go a drive toward the net, one that was tipped in by teammate Larry Popein to make it 4-1. Howe, still enraged and on the ice, started to mix it up with Shack again just after the ensuing face off.
That brought New York’s “Leapin’” Louie Fontinato into the action. Lou was the NHL’s primary enforcer of the era, a rugged defenseman who became the first player to record over 200 penalty minutes in a season. He and Howe had beef over the years, so it was no surprise that when the opportunity arose, Lou Leaped into the fight, telling Gordie to “keep his stick to himself.”
Big mistake.
Fontinato actually got the best of it for a spell. He and Howe immediately dropped the gloves, and Lou landed a few shots, leaving Howe with a shiner. But then Howe got serious. Grabbing Lou’s jersey with his right hand (this according to the Daily News report from the game—other retellings reverse the hands, not that it mattered, for Howe was ambidextrous when it came to both writing and handing out ass-kickings), he unloaded a series of savage left uppercuts. The first blow would have felled a steer, and probably Fontinato too, had Gordie not been holding him up. It has been called the “most famous single punch in NHL history.”
”Lou wanted action, and now he got it, primarily to the area around the metacarpus and phalange bones once Gordie launched his counterattack,” as one writer put it. Howe’s piston-like punches sounded to onlookers like an axe chopping wood. Red Wings trainer Lefty Wilson said that “With every blow you could hear something break—squish, squish.”
Udvari, continuing his comical attempt at officiating this contest, stood there watching with his linesmen, like “awed fight fans for a solid three or four minutes before they became NHL officials again,” wrote Wes Gaffer in the Daily News. Udvari would of course comment on the fight later, telling an interviewer he heard a loud “Thwack! And all of a sudden Louie’s breathing out of his cheekbone.” At last, Bathgate took it upon himself to jump in and save his teammate from having the entirety of his face destroyed by Gordie’s fists.
Leapin’ Lou was “bombed out of commission,” in the words of Jimmy Breslin. The damage would have caused even the Korean War vets in the crowd to gasp in horror. Louie’s nose was (re)broken, his eyes shut, the whole grille a black and purple mask of grotesque bruising. Howe too had suffered the black eye, and in one of his autobiographies, Howe claimed he dislocated a finger in the brawl, which “hurt like hell.”
Meanwhile, the game continued. Incredibly, the two combatants received merely five minutes for fighting, and even more incredibly, both Howe and even Fontinato returned to the ice despite their battle scars. They were just built different back in those days. Fontinato even picked up a couple of minor penalties later in the game.
New York led 5-2 in the third, but Detroit scored twice, including Howe’s second of the game, to make the home team sweat it out. But Gump Worsley in the New York net made a couple of late saves, including one off his face that opened a cut on his eye, too, and the Rangers held on for the much-needed, if sanguinary, 5-4 win.
Howe had scored twice, cross-checked a rival to the face, and beat up a hated opponent in a fight. But he didn’t set up a goal, and thus the evening technically failed to qualify for either version of the “Gordie Howe Hat Trick.”
AFTERMATH:
Only after the game did Leapin’ Lou check into St. Clare’s hospital, where he stayed a few days after surgeons reset his nose (they had to wait for the considerable swelling to go down). He wore a protective mask the next time Detroit and New York played, but there was no rematch between Lou and Howe. He and Gordie playfully pretended to fight and then shook hands upon meeting off the ice later that year.
The beatdown took on a life of its own when Life Magazine ran images of Fontinato’s destroyed mug alongside Gordie performing a wrestling-style bare-chested flex in the locker room. Howe was certainly considered an all-around badass prior to that evening—after whaling on Big Lou he became larger than life, a two-fisted Ted Williams of the Canadian prairie. Years later, Howe would tell Wayne Gretzky this was his favorite fight, and also write, “It didn’t make me happy to see Louie in such bad shape, but I can’t say I feel sorry for him. That might make me sound cold-hearted, but to my way of thinking he was just doing his job and I was doing mine.”
Meanwhile, the Rangers captured a key win that night, but coach Phil Watson couldn’t stop the club from spiraling out of the playoff picture after that, missing out by a single point, not so easy to do when four of the league’s six teams made the postseason. Watson always blamed Howe’s clubbing of Fontinato for the team’s collapse down the stretch. “We never got over Louie’s pasting,” Watson said. “His nose looked like a subway hit it.” The fight didn’t spur the Wings into anything, however; they finished in last place.
Fontinato was eventually traded to Montreal for the great Doug Harvey. In 1963 his career came to a stunning and abrupt halt when he lunged at former teammate Vic Hadfield of the Rangers, missed the check, and slammed headfirst into the boards. Lou broke his neck and was paralyzed for a month. Fortunately, he regained movement and recovered, but never played hockey again.
The two combatants died in 2016 just three weeks apart.
WHAT THEY SAID:
“That honker of his was right there, and I drilled it.”
—Gordie Howe
FURTHER READING:
Gordie Howe: My Hockey Memories by Gordie Howe and Frank Condron
VIDEO:
Sadly, Howe’s destruction of Fontinato was not captured on film. You’ll have to settle for this:
787. PETE SAMPRAS VS ANDRE AGASSI
U.S. OPEN TENNIS CHAMPIONSHIP
MEN’S SINGLES FINAL
SEPTEMBER 8, 2002
ARTHUR ASHE STADIUM
QUALITY OF PLAY—7.18
DRAMA—7.44
STAR POWER—8.20
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.45
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—7.47
LOCAL IMPACT—6.14
TOTAL: 43.88
“GOING OUT ON TOP”
The last American to dominate men’s tennis was Pete Sampras. His mid-90s run included four Wimbledon titles in five years and a record 286 consecutive weeks as World number one, as well as some memorable Davis Cup moments, particularly in the 1995 championship against Russia.
But unlike previous, more charismatic Yank greats like John McEnroe or Jimmy Connors, Sampras wasn’t especially beloved. He was well-mannered and quiet, boring, quite frankly, in stark contrast to the Enfant terrible behavior of Johnny Mac and Jimbo, but this seemed to work against him in the court of public opinion.
Sampras was also often overshadowed by his greatest contemporary rival, Andre Agassi, whom Pete had tangled with since they were junior-level players. The Las Vegas native brought a bit of Sin City to the oft-staid ATP Tour, and his party-hearty demeanor, rock-n-roll hairstyle, and loud attire broke through to the masses. Sampras was appreciated for his game, a sublime serve-and-volley that made him almost unbeatable on grass courts, but the average Joe and JoAnn preferred Agassi, who won with incredible stamina (he was known as “The Punisher" for running opponents into the ground) and perhaps the greatest service return in the history of the sport. It helped that Andre often seemed to win despite a ferocious hangover.
Styles make fights, as they say, and the differences between them made every match electric. The two weren’t exactly buddies, either, which helped; Agassi once noted that someone “who looks like a monkey who just swung out of a tree”—Sampras—should not be the number one player in the world. For his part Pete would often imitate Andre’s famous pigeon-toed walk around his pals.
Pete defeated Andre back in the 1990 U.S. Open final, his first ever, and they had tangled in an incredible match in 2001 in Flushing, a quarterfinal in which neither player broke serve. Sampras took three of the four tiebreakers to win a match that became the standard of their rivalry (look for it later in this countdown). Sampras, having just turned 30, was clubbed in the final by Lleyton Hewitt, however, giving him pause and furthering thoughts of retirement. It was the first time in a dozen years of pro tennis he hadn’t captured a major, and Sampras refused to go out like that.
So he decided to give it one more go in 2002, and it appeared to be a disastrous decision, relatively speaking. He was bounced in the fourth round in Australia, and never played well in Paris, where the clay courts blunted his awesome serve. Wimbledon was his second home, but when he was shockingly ousted—on a lonely outside court—in the second round by 145th-ranked no-name George Bastl, Sampras had second thoughts about continuing. He asked his old coach, Long Islander Paul Annacone, to get him through the U.S. Open, but Sampras continued to struggle through the summer.
He came to New York seeded just 17th. He hadn’t won a tournament in 33 tries, and because of this new underdog status the crowds adopted him as they had seldom done before, knowing this was likely the end for the American great. They went wild when he edged Greg Rusedski in a 5-set marathon, after Rusedski had said Pete was a “step and a half slower” than he used to be. Still quick enough to beat the mouthy Canadian, however. Sampras, seemingly refreshed by the win and carried along by the loud crowds, knocked off fellow American Andy Roddick in the quarters. His old precision and power, that beautiful movement, had returned, and Pete blitzed out the nervous and overmatched Dutchman Sjeng Schalken to reach his 8th straight Open final.
Awaiting him there, appropriately enough, was Agassi. Andre, the sixth seed, had blown through the tourney, dropping just two sets, both in tiebreakers, and walloped the top-seeded Hewitt in the semi. Andre is 17 months older than Pete, and was 32 at the time of the ’02 Open (it was the first matchup of over-30 players in the Open era) but in part due to the break he took from tennis a few years earlier (brought about by injury, boredom, hatred of the game, a tabloid-y social life and oceans of crystal meth) he actually seemed and looked younger. He was the odds-on favorite to win his eighth major, though Pete was surely the sentimental favorite. Their place in the hearts of fans had flipped, at least for this one match.
Pete had beaten Andre in three of the four major finals they reached, including that first Open in ’90. They took the court to a rousing ovation from the sellout crowd of 25,210 late in the afternoon of a cool Sunday, September 8, 2002, not a year since 9/11. At first, it seemed Andre would simply give his rival a walkover. Pete dominated the first two sets, banging out ace after ace (he would finish with 33) and racing out to a 6-3, 6-4 lead. In a complete lapse in character, at one point Pete shouted, “That’s what I’m talking about!” The crowd inside Ashe went nuts.
Andre was reduced to pacing in little circles, trying to find something to slow down Sampras. “I felt pretty outplayed those first two sets,” Agassi admitted, but he turned matters in the third, unleashing his incredible service return, putting balls at Pete’s feet and tangling him up. A series of screaming passing shots gave Agassi the third set, 7-5, and hope for a true classic swept over Ashe.
The sun began to settle behind the Stadium, and it seemed the sun was setting on Sampras as well. He was clearly getting low on fuel, taking more and more time between serves. In his mind he was doubtlessly thinking he had to end this thing in four, because there was little hope of outlasting the Punisher in a fifth set. But Pete had plenty of grit as well. He took a 20-point game early in the fourth, and fought off two break points at 3-4 to keep matters on serve. “Having Agassi across the net,” wrote Johnette Howard in Newsday, “feeling that special buzz of danger and adrenaline that only Agassi evokes in him, was like a whiff of smelling salts.”
The ninth game was the breakthrough. Sampras easily broke Agassi, and served for the match under the now-fully illuminated lights. He uncorked his 33rd ace, then placed a vintage-Pete backhand volley down for the match, 6-4 in the fourth. The crowd erupted with what Sampras called “the loudest ovation he ever received.”
It was Sampras’ fifth Open title, and 14th major victory, extending his (then) record for the most Grand Slam wins ever. Sports Illustrated would call him “The greatest man to ever play the game” in the wake of the match.
“I'm going to have to weigh it up in the next couple months to see where I'm at,” Sampras said at the post-match press conference, sitting with his newly-won trophy. “To beat a rival like Andre in a storybook ending, it might be nice to stop. But I still want to compete, you know? I still love to play."
AFTERMATH:
Sampras did, in fact, hang up his racket. In the moment he was widely considered an all-time great, but his achievements have been somewhat obscured by the immediate subsequent supremacy of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic, whose monumental reign atop men’s tennis lo these many years and majors shunt Pete’s truncated career to the back of the closet a bit. This is unfair but the reality of sport. He’s doing just fine, however; let’s not weep much for a multimillionaire married to former Miss Teen USA and actress Bridgette Wilson.
Fortunately, there is still some fire in the Sampras-Agassi rivalry. During a charity match in 2010, Agassi mocked Pete for being a poor tipper. Sampras responded by firing a serve at Andre’s head.
WHAT THEY SAID:
“This might take the cake. This might be my biggest achievement so far. To come through the year I’ve had and win the U.S. Open, that’s pretty sweet.”
—Pete Sampras
FURTHER READING:
A Champion’s Mind by Pete Sampras and Peter Bodo
VIDEO: