THE LAST 30 YEARS

Over the last few weeks I have been mentally compiling a list of things that have happened, come and gone since the last Triple Crown winner (hereafter abbreviated as TCW).

During my childhood I got to see 3 of them. Even two in a row! I took the feat for granted. How spoiled I was! Sure, there was a 25-year drought before that, but I wasn't around for most of that.

Those of you reading this who are under 30 have not had a TCW in your entire lifetime. That includes several of my friends and all 9 of my nieces and nephews (a few of whom have kids of their own now). That blows my mind. And you might not even care. You don't know what you're missing. I do.

I'm slowly becoming a geezer. I had no idea I'd been around this long. Turns out, 30 earth orbits around the sun is a friggin' LONG TIME! Here's just a few things that have occured since the last TCW:

Dale Earnhardt won 7 Nascar championships (plus Rookie Of The Year in 1979!)
Disco Demolition!
The Steelers became the first team to win 3 Super Bowls
The AIDS epidemic
Cal Ripken's entire 2,632 consecutive game streak
Dan Rather replaced Walter Cronkite
The Falkland Islands War
The Iranian hostage crisis
J.R. Ewing and John Lennon were both shot
Michael Jackson released his first solo album (and was still black!)
Mount St. Helens erupted
Pluto moved inside Neptune's orbit and back out again, AND it's moon Charon was discovered
President Jimmy Carter was attacked by a rabbit
Richard Pryor burned himself
Skylab fell out of orbit
Three Mile Island
Voyagers I and II flew by the outer planets

Things that didn't exist at the time of the last TCW:
"Breakfast at Wimbledon"
CART
CNN, ESPN, MTV, Nickelodeon and the Weather Channel
Compact discs
Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" TV series
The DeLorean
Double-Stuf Oreos
The entire Indiana Jones and Star Trek movie series
Nintendo
The Susan B. Anthony dollar
Taxi and WKRP In Cincinnati (both of which ran this week on WGN's Outta Sight Retro Nights)
Test-tube babies

When Affirmed completed the Triple Crown at Belmont on June 3, 1978:

Barack Obama was still in high school
Toledo Mud Hens 3rd baseman Mike Hessman, the reigning IL MVP, was 3 months old
The Cubs had only gone a mere 70 years since winning the World Series
Marco's Pizza had either just started or was about to (all I know is they started in 1978)
Not only had ALF not yet premiered, but neither had Mork & Mindy!

Not yet born at the time of the last TCW:
Chelsea Clinton
Macaulay Culkin
Paris Hilton
Katie Holmes
William Hung
Anna Kournikova
Matthew Lawrence
Danica Patrick
Michael Pitt
Britney Spears
Justin Timberlake

Still alive at the time of the last TCW:
Harry Chapin
Alfred Hitchcock
Joe Louis
Keith Moon
Jesse Owens
Colonel Sanders
Jay "Tonto" Silverheels
Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen
John Wayne

People who were born AND died since the last TCW:
Heath Ledger
Adam Petty

And last but not least...Mister Ed, the talking horse, died on February 28, 1979. How's THAT for perspective? The last time the Triple Crown was won, MISTER ED was still alive!