Today is the 42nd anniversary of the Miracle on Ice, the greatest sporting event in American history. On February 22, 1980, a group of college kids from Minnesota and Massachusetts, who had trained together for a few months, beat the Soviet Union, perhaps the greatest hockey team in history, 4–3 at the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid. Perhaps I’m just being sentimental when I say that it was the moment America said goodbye to the dreary, weak, doubt-filled, stagnating, misery-indexed days of ’70s malaise and began finding its footing again. But that’s how I remember it.