Barrett wrote a song title - “One Shining Moment” - on cocktail napkin. Not all that impressed, the waitress left. In an attempt to chit-chat with the waitress, Barrett expounded on Bird’s greatness. Larry Bird highlights were playing on the barroom TV. “She was more beautiful than Helen of Troy,” Barrett says. He couldn’t help but notice the waitress next to him. ![]() In 1986, after finishing a gig at the Varsity Inn in East Lansing, Michigan, David Barrett - who a few months later would be described in a CBS press release as a “modestly successful club singer” - took a seat at the bar. Like for so many endeavors, its inspiration came in a bar. At least my girlfriend at the time, who also grew up loving college hoops - and the song - said she was impressed. Basically, I was an extra: not exactly the way I dreamed of appearing in “One Shining Moment” as a kid. I was a little-used reserve on that team, and was in the shot for a blip, wearing my warmup. “The ball is tipped,” sang a wistful Teddy Pendergrass, “And there you are…”Īnd there I was, about a minute into the montage, to the left of the screen, running off the Princeton bench after the Tigers upset UCLA in the first round of the 1996 tournament. First, I heard the familiar keyboards: “Ding ding, ding ding, ding ding ding ding ding, ding ding, ding ding.” Then the trumpet blare: “BA BA BA BA BAAAAA!” A few seconds later, the lyrics begin. As per custom, I stayed up to watch “One Shining Moment,” the roughly three-minute highlight montage of the just-ended NCAA tournament set to an 80s ballad of the same name. ![]() ![]() Kentucky had just beaten Syracuse in the national championship game. I remember exactly where I saw it: in a dorm room, late one April Monday night, 20 years ago.
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