Upset

This column is one of my winding detective adventures about the olden days in sports. There is no fantasy anything here. This is about a great upset in the world of sports.

Do you know where the term upset as in a sports’ upset came from? Man O’War won 20 of 21 races. He lost to a horse named Upset. Until that time, upset meant you had an upset stomach or you were upset with something. Thereafter, a surprise win by an underdog was an upset.

I was chatting with a client today who mentioned that his two daughters were both about to graduate from Iowa State University. I responded that I was pretty sure that was where Dan Gable had gone to college. Not being a sports fan, he had never heard of him. If you’re under 45, you’ve also probably never heard of him.

I consider him one of the greatest American athletes ever.

In 1999 ESPN Sportscentury ran a series of the 100 greatest North American athletes of the 20th Century. Each week they did a retrospective on one or two athletes in reverse order of the list. When they had finished the countdown from 100-21, Mr. Money A.H. Bags shot me an email, asking me to list what I thought would be the top 20 to compare it to his top 20. Here is 21-100 according to ESPN:

21 – Gordie Howe
22 – Joe Dimaggio
23 – Jackie Joyner-Kersee
24 – Sugar Ray Robinson
25 – Joe Montana
26 – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
27 – Jerry Rice
28 – Red Grange
29 – Arnold Palmer
30 – Larry Bird
31 – Bobby Orr
32 – Johnny Unitas
33 – Mark Spitz
34 – Lou Gehrig
35 – Secretariat (really!)
36 – Oscar Robertson
37 – Mickey Mantle
38 – Ben Hogan
39 – Walter Payton
40 – Lawrence Taylor
41 – Wilma Rudolph
42 – Sandy Koufax
43 – Julius Erving
44 – Bobby Jones
45 – Bill Tilden
46 – Eric heiden
47 – Edwin Moses
48 – Pete Sampras
49 – OJ Simpson
50 – Chris Evert
51 – Rocky Marciano
52 – Jack Dempsey
53 – Rafer Johnson
54 – Greg Louganis
55 – Mario Lemieux
56 – Pete Rose
57 – Willie Shoemaker
58 – Elgin Baylor
59 – Billie Jean King
60 – Walter Johnson
61 – Stan Musial
62 – Jerry West
63 – Satchel Paige
64 – Sammy Baugh
65 – Althea Gibson
66 – Eddie Arcaro
67 – Bob Gibson
68 – Al Oerter (superb choice)
69 – Bonnie Blair
70 – Dick Butkus
71 – Roberto Clemente
72 – Bo Jackson
73 – Josh Gibson
74 – Deion Sanders
75 – Dan Marino
76 – Barry Sanders
77 – Cy Young
78 – Bob Mathias
79 – Gale Sayers
80 – AJ Foyt
81 – Jimmy Connors
82 – Bobby Hull
83 – Honus Wagner
84 – Man o’War (well there he is!)
85 – Maurice Richard
86 – Otto Graham
87 – Henry Armstrong
88 – Joe Namath
89 – Rogers Hornsby
90 – Richard Petty
91 – Bob Beamon
92 – Mario Andretti
93 – Don Hutson
94 – Bob Cousy
95 – George Blanda
96 – Michael Johnson
97 – Citation (really)
98 – Don Budge (superb choice)
99 – Sam Snead
100 – Jack Johnson

I typed this list for a few reasons. First, in guessing the top 20, you need to see the guys that didn’t make it. It’s a pretty good list, with a few silly entries, mainly the 3 horses. It’s easy to argue with things on this list (Bob Beamon had one incredible day, and to a lesser extent, so did Joe Namath), and I wanted to have the list typed somewhere so I can refer to it again at some time and make those arguments. It’s nice to see Al Oerter and Don Budge on the list, two people I sort of came in contact with in my life. Those stories are for another time.

You’d think that once you have 21-100 listed, the top 20 would be pretty easy. Yes and no. Go make your list before you read on. It’s mostly obvious, but those last few entries weren’t so easy. Really, give it a try. It’s fun. In compiling the top 20, you don’t have to ask “Who are the top 20.” All you have to identify are 20 people who could not possibly be left off the list of the top 100.

Here was my approach: I looked at it by sport.

In baseball, clearly Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson and Ted Williams have to be in the top 100 athletes. After thinking a little longer, I added Ty Cobb. So that makes 6.

In basketball clearly Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, Magic Johnson and Bill Russell have to be on the list. That’s 10.

The next five on my list were spread out: in football, Jim Brown; Wayne Gretzky in hockey (remember – North American athletes); Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis are must inclusions from boxing, and if anyone is going to be on the list from golf, it’s got to be Jack Nicklaus.

That was the easy 15, which Mr. Bags and I agreed on. The other 5 was the tricky part, partly because some of the athletes go back a bit.

Jesse Owens and his 4 gold medals in Berlin could not be excluded from the top 100. Thinking of his gold medals reminded me of Jim Thorpe, one of the greatest football players ever, who not only also played major league baseball, but won the gold medals in both the pentathlon and the decathlon in the 1912 Olympics. That extreme crossover made me think that Thorpe could well be at the top of the list (he wasn’t).

Jim Thorpe’s gold medals and multi-sport prowess reminded me of Babe Didrikson, who we don’t remember too much, but who also won Olympic medals (in 1932, gold in the javelin and hurdles, silver in the high jump), was an All-American basketball player, and was the best female golfer of her time. Actually, her athletic resume is outrageous and will be the subject of a future entry here, but here is something on her from Wikipedia that is pretty incredible:

“Representing her company in the 1932 AAU Championships, she competed in eight out of ten events, winning five outright, and tying for first for a sixth. In the process, she set world records in the javelin throw, 80-meter hurdles, high jump and baseball throw in a single afternoon. Didrikson's performances were enough to win the team championship, despite her being the only member of her team.”

Olympic gold also reminded me of Carl Lewis, who won gold medals in 4 Olympics, winning a total of 9 golds in sprints and the long jump. He’d be hard to leave out of the top 20, and impossible to leave out of the top 100.

In retrospect, all 4 of these athletes are pretty obvious. It was that 20th spot on the list that was tricky, and which neither Mr. Bags nor I got right. ESPN included Martina Navratilova. I just did not think of her as North American, even though she’s now an American citizen. No doubt, a great athlete, but we assumed she wouldn’t meet the qualifications.

My 2 thoughts for that last spot were Dan Gable and John McEnroe. It’s impossible for me to think of either of these guys not in the top 100. McEnroe was not only one of the great singles players, he is generally considered to be the greatest doubles player ever.

Subsequently I have thought Bob Hayes should have been on that list. Is anyone a two sport Hall of Famer? This morning I was thinking about how great it would be to see a race between Hayes and two other multi-sport phenoms on the list, Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson. And, as long as I’m fantasizing, let’s throw in the pre-1951 World Series Mickey Mantle. My guess: Mickey wins from the batter’s box to first base. Deion wins from home to third base. Bo Jackson wins the 40 yard dash. And Hayes wins everything over 50 yards.

As for Dan Gable, the boy from Waterloo, Iowa is best remembered as the unbeatable wrestler of the late 60’s and early 70’s. He won the Olympic Gold in 1972 in Munich in freestyle wrestling. His high school and college record was 182-1.

He followed this with one of the greatest coaching careers in all sports. As head coach at Iowa from 1976-1997, Iowa won 15 NCAA championships, 21 straight Big Ten titles and had a dual meet record of 355-21-5. He coached 152 All-Americans. He was also the coach of the American Olympic freestyle team in 1980, 1984 and 2000. I doubt anyone in any sport has ever reached a pinnacle as high as Gable as both a player and a coach.

Finally, finally, I’m getting to what tickled my interest: what’s the story behind that one loss in high school and college? It turns out, it was quite a story.

Back in the day, freshmen could not compete on varsity teams. Gable was undefeated in high school, and he went undefeated as a sophomore, winning the NCAA championship at 130 pounds. He was undefeated as a junior and won the NCAA championship at 137 pounds. He was undefeated as a senior, and reached the finals of the NCAA championship at 142 pounds. So his collegiate record was 118-0 and his high school plus college record was was 182-0 heading into his final match.

And that’s the one he lost.

His name was Larry Owings, a sophomore at the University of Washington. As a high school senior he faced the 2 year older Gable in the 1968 Olympic Trials. Gable smashed him 13-4. In 1970, Owings started the season wrestling at 177.

But he had a Vision Quest – just like the incredible novel of the same name by Terry Davis and the cult movie starring Matthew Modine (if you’ve never read the book or seen the movie, check them out!), and he began to lose weight in order to face Gable one more time. (Much of the following history comes from an SI article by Herman Weiskopf, published in 1970.)

“I weighed 173 last fall, and during the season I wrestled three times in the 177-pound class and won all three. Then I really cut down. I got to 155 easy. I had to work harder and eat less to get to 148, and then I almost had to stop eating completely to make 142.”

While other wrestlers were avoiding wrestling at 142, Owings was killing himself in order to face him. According to an article written by Seattle Times reporter Bob Sherwin, in an interview with a Chicago paper leading to the great matchup, Owings said, “I’m not going to this tournament to be a national champion. I’m coming here to beat Gable.” Gable saw the article and started scouting Owings’ matches. “He noticed the UW wrestler was making “all kinds of mistakes but still ended up pinning his opponent.” The pins were accomplished by Owings’ best move, an inside reverse cradle that left his opponent unable to escape.” So Gable started practicing countermoves to the cradle with his teammates.

At the NCAA tournament at Northwestern, Owings was seeded second, which meant that he would face Gable in the finals if he made it that far. Gable pinned all of his opponents in reaching the finals. Owings pinned four of the five he faced.

The Northwestern Field House was packed as they came out for the final. Owings got off to a fast start, and was up 7-2 when Gable started his comeback during the 2nd period. Going into the third period, Owings led 8-6, with Owings starting on top. Gable got a reversal, and Owings broke free for an escape to bring the score to 9-8 in favor of Owings. However, that was not the true story. Gable had a riding time advantage of over 2 minutes, which was worth 2 points, so Gable actually led 10-9. With 30 seconds to go, in Owings’ words, “I had his arms locked in front of his chest. I looked down and saw his feet, and knew I had to go for them. I tripped him and as he went down, I was on top of him and got his shoulders to the mat.”

It was a four point play – 2 for the take down and 2 for a near fall. It was a move Owings had never even tried before, and because of it, he now led 13-10 with only seconds remaining. Gable escaped, to make it 13-11. With 3 seconds left, he needed an instant takedown. He didn’t get it.

Gable had lost his only collegiate match, his last.

Owings said later: “He (Gable) was dazed and confused. He was stunned he had lost. We were on our knees at the end of the match. We got up, and he offered me his hand and we shook… It was bedlam. They shut down the tournament for 15 minutes. The roar of the crowd was unbelievable.”

Weiskopf’s article continues: “Fifteen minutes later Gable mounted the victory platform beside Owings and accepted something he had never received before – a second-place medal. As he took it, 8500 people rose to applaud. Gables chin was on his chest. He bit his lips. The applause continued. Thirty seconds. Forty five. It lasted another half-minute and during that time Gable slowly raised his head until it was erect. Even in victory he had never been so honored nor received the tribute of a crowd that expressed itself more eloquently.”

There is a video of this match on Youtube. The quality sucks. There is no audio. But it’s a true record of one of the great upsets of all time. Check it out.

They met one more time – at the 1972 Olympic Trials. Gable beat him 7-1, though if it is any consolation, it was the only point Gable allowed during the trials, and in the Olympics in Munich, he did not give up a single point on his way to winning the gold.

Owings finished his collegiate career in 1972 with a record of 87-4, but that was his only NCAA crown. He lost in the finals as a junior and as a senior. He is not in the US Wrestling Hall of Fame (in Stillwater, OK), though hope is not lost yet. “Probably some day,” according to the President of the museum. “You can’t put someone in there because of one match. If he had won two national championships it would be easier, but he never went to the Olympics and didn’t do much international wrestling.”

Owings considers his huge upset to be the worst thing that ever happened to him. Despite a fine career, he is remembered only as “the man who beat Dan Gable.” As for Gable, he said of Owings decades later, “I don’t think he’s out of my head even today.”

According to Sherwin, “Owings has not talked to Gable since 1980, and that was a brief conversation to ask him to consider looking at a wrestler in his district. During the conversation, neither mentioned the match. They haven’t talked to each other since.”