Reaching Immortality
The DMV Is Home To History Makers. Ovechkin Is The Newest To The Neighborhood
By James Estepp
This is a region that saw Slingin Sammy Baugh usher in the forward pass in the 1940s, Sonny and Billy rule the 1970s and Joe Gibbs (along with insert quarterback here) dominate the 1980s and early 90s.
The Big E, Elvin Hayes, along with Wes Unseld, ruled the court for much of the 1970s, making Landover as much a dominant part of the NBA as Boston and LA had been before them. When the GOAT, Michael Jordan, gave us two years in the early 2000s, it was a bonus for what had been recent hard times for the local sports fan.
Walter Johnson, the Senators Big Train, still holds the career record for major league baseball shutouts with 110, almost 100 years after he retired.
Those names will forever be part of the landscape here, each of them as famous here as anyone who has called the Capital of the free world home.
Imagine then that there is a star who has eclipsed all of them in one of the world’s most unforgiving cities/regions, and that he’s not exactly home grown.
As a 13-year old who smiled from ear-to-ear on February 22, 1980, when the U.S. Men’s Hockey Team performed a “Miracle” against the Soviet Union in the Olympics, there were very few things more pleasurable than seeing the red white and blue stick it to the U.S.S.R.
Who knew a kid born in Moscow, Alexander Mikhailovich Ovechkin, a man who had to wait an entire year to play in North America due to a lockout, would someday eclipse them all and earn his rightful place as our favorite sports son?
He was the exact opposite of the emotionless, robotic Russians of our youth. He was a hard-skating, hitting machine, with a lethal shot, an infectious smile and a personality that took over the ice. You couldn’t help but pay attention to his every shift. Nearly twenty years later, nothing has changed but the grey in his beard.
For a long time, it was a certainty that no one would ever break Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL goals record. The NHL had long ago created fixes so that the goal-scoring romp that was the 1980s could never return, with larger goalie equipment, larger goalies themselves, and defensive systems designed to see 2-1 wins instead of the era of 6-5 contests. It was so certain you could etch it in stone. Gretzky’s mark of 894 goals would last forever.
Forever, in this case, lasted 9,506 days. Ovechkin, with Gretzky in attendance, scored his 895th goal against the New York Islanders on Long Island this month.
Even with that, It wasn’t just the NHL record nine goal scoring titles, the three league MVPs, the goals, the bone-jarring hits and the electricity he creates just by stepping on the ice that forever endeared him here. It’s the fact that, after the region hadn’t seen a championship since 1991, Russia’s favorite son forever etched his name into history here when he lifted Lord Stanley’s Cup above his head in June of 2018, performing his greatest feat of magic, bringing a title to a group of fans who had been burnt so many times before, with immortality seemingly always just an outstretched arm away.
The celebration that followed the Cup win further cemented the legend, as well as the legacy of someone that has now (and perhaps, forever) taken a perch in the record books from the man literally known as “The Great One.”
Our “Great 8,” Ovechkin, now stands at the top of the DC sports landscape, having surpassed the achievements of all those before him to proudly wear the word “Washington” on their chests.
Maybe this time, forever will finally be achieved.
