Imagine the unsurpassed pressure: competing in your first big game at the very highest level. The stress of a sports debut has unnerved many, including some of the greatest athletes that ever drew breath. Despite collecting more than 7,200 hits between them in their storied careers, baseball greats Hank Aaron and Derek Jeter each went 0-5 in their first games in Major League Baseball, while legendary swinger Willie Mays managed only one hit in his first seven games. Bill Russell scored a mere six points in his NBA debut, missing eight of 11 shots and all four of his free throws, nothing that would suggest a career that would lead to 11 championship titles in 13 years. A young Troy Aikman didn’t look like the quarterback who would be on the winning side in three Super Bowls, as he completed less than half his passes and threw two interceptions in a shutout loss to the Saints in his first pro football game.
Many struggled in their debuts, and many others played good first games, but merely being good doesn’t get you on this list—we’re looking for debuts that were amazing. Here are the 10 greatest first games in the world of sport, counting down to number one.
10 Wayne Gretzky
He was only 17 years old, but Wayne Gretzky shone brightly in his debut with Edmonton on November 3, 1978, skating on his home ice at the Northlands Coliseum in Alberta, Canada. Just 14 seconds into the second period, the teenager blasted a 50-footer past the Winnipeg Jets’ netminder Markus Mattsson. Critics who claimed Gretzky had a soft shot were silenced with that sizzling slapper. “I don’t know where I got that power from,” Gretzky said.
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A High Steaks Game - Gallaghers restaurant, New York's oasis for carnivores, has thrived for 96 years, playing host to a colorful crowd of sports heroes, show people and classic characters
Dean Poll, the owner of Gallaghers Steakhouse on Manhattan's West 52nd Street, has to think both like a restaurateur and the curator of a museum with an entire wing of art. Only, instead of tending to European oil paintings, Poll oversees images of Old New York. I work here every day. I am thinking about the food and staff, Poll says, sitting in a corner that could be called baseball cove. Over his right shoulder are stills of Lou Gehrig and the Yankees' Murderers' Row manager Miller Huggins. Jack Dempsey is clowning, grappling with a bat also held by Babe Ruth. "To Helen Gallagher, sincerely Babe Ruth," the inscription reads. Poll gestures toward signed caricatures of Tiger Woods, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. "So I lose, to a certain extent, the importance of what's on the walls. But the photos are the decor. They lend some hominess to the place. It's the heart and soul of this restaurant. It's not cheap decoration. The only thing missing is the cigar smoke", adds Poll, who fancies a Partagás 8-9-8 It's what this restaurant is for 96 years.
The Enforcer - Cole Hauser, who plays the tough-as-nails cowboy Rip on the hit show "Yellowstone," has been around horses since he was a little boy
Cole Hauser looks like he can kick your ass. And kicking ass is the specialty of his most famous character, Rip Wheeler from the hit series "Yellowstone." He's the show's man in black, his dark cowboy hat often coated in trail dust, shades hiding his intense eyes, black beard covering a mouth that seldom smiles. The absolute opposite of a pretty boy, he's never chatty-and when he does talk it's often with a bit of menace in his voice. He's not the kind of guy to take a back seat to anything.
Pinball Machines - "Two kind of people in this world," Ray Liotta's character says in the 1997 movie Cop Land.
"Two kind of people in this world," Ray Liotta's character says in the 1997 movie Cop Land. Pinball people and video game people." If you're 50 or older, you might fall into the former group of gamers who are enthralled by the ringing bells, snapping flippers and the captivating combination of mechanics and electronics that make pinball irresistible. While it's the ultimate Sisyphean game-the eternal (and doomed) effort to keep an 80-gram, carbon-steel ball from going down the drainfor those who love it, it couldn't be more fun.
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