<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In honor of Sports Illustrated's&amp;nbsp;60th&amp;nbsp;anniversary, SI.com is republishing, in full, 60 of the greatest stories the magazine ever ran. They will appear each weekday for the next 12 weeks. First up: Steve&amp;nbsp;Rushin's&amp;nbsp;magnum opus, How We Got Here, a five-part feature published in the Aug. 16, 1994 issue that celebrated SI's&amp;nbsp;40th&amp;nbsp;anniversary and is, at 22,000 words, still the second-longest piece in the magazine's history.&lt;/em&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chapter 1: The Titan Of Television\r\nChapter 2: Home In The Dome\r\nChapter 3: The League Leader\r\nChapter 4: The Long, Hard Run&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In a painting, there's a spot at which the parallel lines -- a&amp;nbsp;river or a ribbon of road -- appear to converge. Artists call this the vanishing point, that place in a drawing where things seem to&amp;nbsp;disappear into the distance, often creating the illusion of a&amp;nbsp;horizon. And so I find myself at the vanishing point of this story: I&amp;nbsp;am standing, atremble, before the largest shopping mall in America.&amp;nbsp;This is the horizon. All lines converge here.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So vast is the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., that the&amp;nbsp;area in which I've parked is labeled P5-WEST-BLUE-NEVADA-D-6, a&amp;nbsp;mantra I have desperately repeated since abandoning my rental car in&amp;nbsp;the world's largest parking complex. Even by itself this would be the&amp;nbsp;consummate postwar American dream: the 13,000-car garage. But the&amp;nbsp;aptly named Mall of America says so much more than that about the&amp;nbsp;desires of modern society.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Megamall, as it is known locally, is built on 78 acres and&amp;nbsp;occupies 4.2 million square feet, but publicists prefer more&amp;nbsp;grandiose international imagery to convey its knee-weakening scope.&amp;nbsp;The Mall, therefore, could comfortably contain all the gardens of&amp;nbsp;Buckingham Palace, is five times larger than Red Square and contains&amp;nbsp;twice the steel of the Eiffel Tower. Most telling of all, it is 20&amp;nbsp;times larger than St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. For its visitors, who&amp;nbsp;have come from virtually every country in the world and number&amp;nbsp;100,000 a day on average, the Mall of America is indeed the One True&amp;nbsp;Church.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mind-boggling sports analogies have also been employed to describe&amp;nbsp;this edifice. ''Seven times the size of Yankee Stadium,'' said &lt;em&gt;The&amp;nbsp;New York Times&lt;/em&gt;, adding that it has ''88 football fields worth of&amp;nbsp;[floor] space.'' Such comparisons are especially apt at the Mall of&amp;nbsp;America, which was built on the site of the former Metropolitan&amp;nbsp;Stadium, longtime home of the Minnesota Twins and the Minnesota&amp;nbsp;Vikings. In 1982 the teams moved from the Met to the Metrodome in&amp;nbsp;downtown Minneapolis. Ten summers later the Mall opened, constructed&amp;nbsp;as a square donut, at the center of which is an indoor, seven-acre&amp;nbsp;amusement park called Knott's Camp Snoopy.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the northwest corner of Camp Snoopy, embedded in the faux-stone&amp;nbsp;floor, is a five-sided plaque that evokes home plate at the Met. In&amp;nbsp;fact, it more closely resembles a tombstone, bearing as it does the&amp;nbsp;legend METROPOLITAN STADIUM HOME PLATE 1956-1981. Five hundred and&amp;nbsp;twenty feet away, in the southeast corner of the amusement park,&amp;nbsp;affixed to a wall three stories above the floor, is a fold-down seat,&amp;nbsp;looking down like a lifeguard's chair. The seat is in the approximate&amp;nbsp;spot where Harmon Killebrew deposited the Met's most prodigious&amp;nbsp;dinger, on June 3, 1967. If&amp;nbsp;Killebrew were to hit the home run today,&amp;nbsp;it would carom off Hooters.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Next to the Mall lies the derelict rust-hulk of Met Center,&amp;nbsp;erstwhile home of the Minnesota North Stars, who now play in Dallas&amp;nbsp;-- a hockey team in the buckle of the Sun Belt. Minneapolis&amp;nbsp;officials, in the wake of the Stars' departure, are trying to lure&amp;nbsp;another NHL team to the gleaming downtown arena in which the NBA&amp;nbsp;Timberwolves now play. In June the NBA denied the Wolves permission&amp;nbsp;to move to New Orleans, where they would have been owned, in part, by&amp;nbsp;a Houston attorney named Fred Hofheinz. You will recall that he is&amp;nbsp;the son of the Judge, who built the Astrodome, which spawned the&amp;nbsp;Metrodome, to which ! the Twins and Vikings moved, thus clearing&amp;nbsp;property for . . . the Mall of America.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Of course, before building the Astrodome, the Judge had planned to&amp;nbsp;build an air-conditioned shopping mall on Westheimer Road in Houston.&amp;nbsp;Instead he sold that property, which was developed in 1970 as the&amp;nbsp;Galleria, a mall that thrives to this day with what once seemed a&amp;nbsp;wonderful novelty: an indoor ice- skating rink at its center. The&amp;nbsp;Mall of America, meanwhile, was developed in part by brothers Mel and&amp;nbsp;Herb Simon, owners of the Indiana Pacers, late of the American&amp;nbsp;Basketball Association, the first rebel league of Gary Davidson.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In America's Original Sports Bar, on the Megamall's fourth level,&amp;nbsp;patrons watch games on the 55 televisions that pull in action from&amp;nbsp;around the planet. But the most telling snapshots of sports and&amp;nbsp;society today are to be seen in the Mall's more than 400 stores: in&amp;nbsp;Kids Foot Locker and Lady Foot Locker and World Foot Locker, in&amp;nbsp;Footaction USA and The Athlete's Foot and Athletic X- Press, in&amp;nbsp;Sports Tyme and Team Spirit and The Sportsman's Wife, in No Contest and Golf for Her and Mac Birdie Golf Gifts, in Big Leagues and Going&amp;nbsp;to the Game and Wild Pitch. A friend once counted nearly two dozen Megamall stores in which one can purchase a Starter jacket. There are, meanwhile, two bookstores in the place.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In sports-addled ancient Greece, citizens created the agora, the&amp;nbsp;marketplace as a center for social exchange. Socrates said, ''Having&amp;nbsp;the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.'' In sports-addled&amp;nbsp;postwar America, citizens created the shopping mall, the marketplace as a center for naked commerce. Social exchange? An official Mall of&amp;nbsp;America T-shirt says SHUT UP &amp;amp; SHOP.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is fitting, and perhaps inevitable, that last winter's most&amp;nbsp;unrelenting sports story unfolded each day from a shopping mall in&amp;nbsp;America. For what are big-time sports today if not a boundless&amp;nbsp;marketplace? And so there was Tonya Harding, week after stupefying week, blithely turning triple Axels for the television cameras on a&amp;nbsp;skating rink at the Clackamas Town Center mall in Portland. She was&amp;nbsp;preparing for the Olympic Games, another invention of the ancient&amp;nbsp;Greeks, suitably adapted for our times.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;*****\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;''Who told you you can't have it all?'' So goes a lyric from the&amp;nbsp;Mall of America theme song, voicing a notion as unmistakably American&amp;nbsp;as the mall itself. ''In our collective discourse,'' writes David&amp;nbsp;Guterson in &lt;em&gt;Harper's&lt;/em&gt;, ''the shopping mall appears with the tract&amp;nbsp;house, the freeway, and the ^ backyard barbecue as a product of the&amp;nbsp;American postwar years, a testament to contemporary necessities and&amp;nbsp;desires and an invention not only peculiarly American but peculiarly&amp;nbsp;of our own era too.''\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It was, fittingly, a man named Victor who developed America's&amp;nbsp;first fully enclosed shopping complex, vanquishing the suburban&amp;nbsp;landscape of Edina, Minn., in 1956. Southdale, as it is named,&amp;nbsp;remains a staggering success four decades later, apparently unfazed&amp;nbsp;by the Mall of America, a mere 10-minute drive to the east. Victor&amp;nbsp;Gruen's creation was quickly loosed on other inclement cities: The&amp;nbsp;modest Gulfgate soon went up in Houston, and Judge Roy Hofheinz was&amp;nbsp;thus inspired to explore the limits of air-conditioning for his own&amp;nbsp;gargantuan mall.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Come 1960, when the Judge was newly smitten by sports and Roone Arledge was arriving at ABC, Melvin Simon &amp;amp; Associates, Inc. built&amp;nbsp;its first shopping center, Southgate Plaza, in Bloomington, Ind.&amp;nbsp;Today the firm's $625 million Megamall is the third-largest tourist&amp;nbsp;attraction in America -- at least according to the mall's own press&amp;nbsp;kit, which claims that only Disney World and the country-music&amp;nbsp;capital of Branson, Mo., are more visited.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And yet, far more than Mickey Mouse or Mickey Gilley, it is the&amp;nbsp;Mall that is emblematic of our age: from the 13-year-old girl who&amp;nbsp;went into labor here to the trailer-park marriages performed at the&amp;nbsp;Chapel of Love on Level 2 to this now familiar little postwar irony:&amp;nbsp;The Mall of America was financed by the Mitsubishi Bank of Japan.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Distinctly of our time and place, the Mall is also entirely&amp;nbsp;otherworldly. While strolling about the Mall's four levels, I fall in&amp;nbsp;behind two businessmen, one of whom produces a bleating cellular&amp;nbsp;phone from his jacket. ''If it's for me,'' says the other guy, ''tell&amp;nbsp;them I'm not here.'' In fact, no one is here, because here is . . .&amp;nbsp;Nowhere, a place of perpetual 70 degrees days and hospital&amp;nbsp;cleanliness, a self-contained city that serves all needs, but one in\r\nwhich only Willis H. Carrier could feel comfortable.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;At the same time the Mall is . . . Everywhere, with its 14-plex of&amp;nbsp;movie theaters and its Cholest-o-Plex of fast-food counters. In the&amp;nbsp;Mall of America, as in the United States of America, there is the&amp;nbsp;ubiquitous Raider cap on every head, a pair of Nikes in every store&amp;nbsp;window and the presence of professional athletes everywhere -- in&amp;nbsp;person, on packages, in electronic pictures. They wink as we walk&amp;nbsp;past, and whisper, ''Who told you you can't have it all?''\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;*****\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is National Fragrance Week at the Megamall, and promotional literature promises six days ''filled with activities designed to&amp;nbsp;stimulate your nose.'' There is, for example, a Smelling Bee for&amp;nbsp;children. And at Bloomingdale's, ''Michelle McGann, top-ranked LPGA player, will host a breakfast and speak about what fragrance means to&amp;nbsp;her.''\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I follow my nose to Oshman's Super Sports USA, a sporting-goods&amp;nbsp;concern so breathtakingly vast that one hardly notices the basketball&amp;nbsp;court, the racquetball court, the batting cage or the archery range&amp;nbsp;on its premises. Not far away, the 11,000-square-foot World Foot&amp;nbsp;Locker is tiny by comparison. Every NFL, NBA, NHL and major league&amp;nbsp;baseball jersey is available here. World Cup jerseys are on display.&amp;nbsp;Every icon of international sports appears to be represented. ''We&amp;nbsp;sold a lot of Astros caps this spring,'' general manager Dan Peterson&amp;nbsp;tells me. ''The Brewers, the Tigers -- just about any team with a new&amp;nbsp;logo sells pretty well.'' Which is why teams now change logos like&amp;nbsp;they're changing pitchers? ''Yes,'' agrees the affable Peterson, who&amp;nbsp;is attired in a referee's shirt.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;On display at Field of Dreams, a sports-memorabilia store, is the&amp;nbsp;cover of SI's 35th-anniversary issue. Framed -- and autographed in the enfeebled hand of Muhammad Ali -- the cover can be yours for&amp;nbsp;$149. A 1954 Topps Hank Aaron baseball card from his (and our) rookie year goes for $900. This same week, on a home-shopping channel, I&amp;nbsp;have seen Stan Musial peddling his signature for $299.95, ''or three&amp;nbsp;monthly payments of $99.98.'' Children once got Musial's signature on&amp;nbsp;a game program. Now they get it on the installment plan.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;An Orlando Magic jersey signed by Shaquille O'Neal is available&amp;nbsp;for $595 at Field of Dreams. I want to ask the manager how many of&amp;nbsp;those the store sells, but I am reminded of the advice proffered by&amp;nbsp;the Mall's T-shirt: SHUT UP &amp;amp; SHOP. The shirt sells, if you're&amp;nbsp;interested, for $14.95.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;*****\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Beneath the fronds of a potted palm, a doleful black man waits on&amp;nbsp;a bench. His is the hundred-yard stare of the Mall Widower, a man&amp;nbsp;whose wife was swallowed by Macy's much as sailors are claimed by the&amp;nbsp;sea. The Mall has a two-story miniature golf course to alleviate the&amp;nbsp;Widower's ennui, but this potbellied man is a good mile away from&amp;nbsp;Golf Mountain. And so he waits, in his replica NFL jersey, a&amp;nbsp;three-quarters-sleeve Cleveland Brown shirt of a 1960s vintage. The&amp;nbsp;number on his chest, naturally, is 32.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This corpulent Jim Brown reminds me of the corporeal Jim Brown,&amp;nbsp;who would probably not be surprised to learn that six months after&amp;nbsp;the Megamall opened, gunplay crackled in Camp Snoopy and three people&amp;nbsp;were wounded in a struggle for a San Jose Shark jacket. This was an&amp;nbsp;address on the appalling state of society, to be sure, but the shots&amp;nbsp;were more than that: They were literally a ringing endorsement, a&amp;nbsp;one-gun salute to the San Jose Sharks and the wild, worldwide&amp;nbsp;popularity of their logo.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am reminded of the fact that this hockey team in San Jose is a&amp;nbsp;direct descendant of Gary Davidson. So is the hockey team in Orange&amp;nbsp;County, Calif.: The Anaheim Mighty Ducks are the first postmodern pro&amp;nbsp;sports franchise, a mere merchandising venture owned by Disney, a&amp;nbsp;logical line extension derived from a film. And as the Pepsi Ripsaw&amp;nbsp;roller coaster ratchets up a hill overhead, I am further reminded&amp;nbsp;that &lt;em&gt;The Mighty Ducks&amp;nbsp;&lt;/em&gt;sequel was filmed, in part, here, in Camp&amp;nbsp;Snoopy.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A columnist once described Davidson as ''always eager to meet the&amp;nbsp;demand for something nobody asked for,'' and it occurs to me now that&amp;nbsp;the same might be said for the Megamall: You can buy a synthetic&amp;nbsp;human skeleton here or a sign that reads PARKING FOR LITHUANIANS ONLY&amp;nbsp;or the children's book &lt;em&gt;Everyone Poops&lt;/em&gt;. In this state of reverie I&amp;nbsp;find my reflection in a beer at America's Original Sports Bar, 20,000&amp;nbsp;square feet of tavern, 55 televisions flickering like lightning&amp;nbsp;through windows at night. As ESPN parcels out the evening's&amp;nbsp;highlights, I recall something Roone Arledge said as we sat in his&amp;nbsp;network office. ''It used to be common practice in tennis that if a&amp;nbsp;tough call went against your opponent, you hit the ball into the net&amp;nbsp;on the next point if you were a gentleman,'' he had said. ''You&amp;nbsp;didn't want to win because of a bad call. I can't conceive of a top&amp;nbsp;tennis player doing that today. Could you see McEnroe? Connors? &lt;em&gt;Andre&amp;nbsp;Agassi?&lt;/em&gt;''\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And while watching SportsCenter, I cannot conceive of a player&amp;nbsp;today hitting a home run and running the bases with his head down. Or&amp;nbsp;imagine a halfback simply handing the ball to an official after a&amp;nbsp;touchdown. Why would a man merely lay the ball off the glass when he&amp;nbsp;could dunk on some fool and then bark into the baseline camera, sure,&amp;nbsp;like Narcissus, to see his own reflection on the cable network that&amp;nbsp;night?\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Only a few weeks have passed since Chicago Bull captain Scottie&amp;nbsp;Pippen refused to enter a playoff game when his coach designed a play&amp;nbsp;giving someone else the last-second shot. Pride and insecurity, the&amp;nbsp;prospect of embarrassment and the perception of disrespect: It is why&amp;nbsp;children shoot children for their Shark jackets; it is why Derrick&amp;nbsp;Coleman turns down a $69 million contract offer from the New Jersey&amp;nbsp;Nets; it is why Barry Bonds demands the same obsequious deference&amp;nbsp;given to the supernovas of the movie and music industries. As Agassi says in a famous TV commercial, ''Image is everything.''\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;All of which makes it devilishly tempting in 1994 to look beyond&amp;nbsp;the beauty of athletic competition and see only the off-putting&amp;nbsp;backdrop of marketing and money, money in amounts unimagined in 1954.&amp;nbsp;''Everyone is more interested in money in most cases than they are in&amp;nbsp;sport,'' Arledge said. ''And a lot of fun has gone out of it. The&amp;nbsp;original motivation a lot of us had for wanting to be a part of&amp;nbsp;sports -- that no longer exists.'' Pause. Sigh. ''On the other hand,&amp;nbsp;the level of performance is so high today, who could have ever&amp;nbsp;imagined &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;?'' And it became clear as he talked enthusiastically&amp;nbsp;about the Stanley Cup playoffs that the harried Arledge hadn't shaken\r\nsports at all, and couldn't if he wanted to. ''I'm so happy to see&amp;nbsp;him talking about sports again,'' his assistant said while ushering&amp;nbsp;me out. ''I really think he misses it.''\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cynicism is a sine qua non of modern citizenship, and as I&amp;nbsp;continue pacing the Mall's terrazzo floors, past the Carolina Panther&amp;nbsp;beach towel beckoning from the window of Linens 'n Things, I am&amp;nbsp;given to seeing sports only as the multinational business that it is.&amp;nbsp;But then I think of the unfailingly upbeat baseball writer I know. He&amp;nbsp;checked into a drafty old hotel in Cleveland at three o'clock in the&amp;nbsp;morning a few years ago, preparing to cover the miserable Indians&amp;nbsp;that afternoon. ''Business or pleasure?'' the desk clerk asked him,&amp;nbsp;and the scribe was forced point-blank to describe the sports&amp;nbsp;industry. ''Business,'' the writer finally said, smiling, ''but it's&amp;nbsp;a pleasure.''\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sports are a swirl-cone mix of capitalism and entertainment (it&amp;nbsp;occurs to me at Freshens Yogurt), and 40 years after the&amp;nbsp;Army-McCarthy hearings, 14 years after Lake Placid, four years into&amp;nbsp;the post-Soviet '90s, America remains the world's leading exporter of&amp;nbsp;both commodities. Ray Charles opened the Mall of America by singing a&amp;nbsp;single song: &lt;em&gt;America, the Beautiful&lt;/em&gt;. His rendition raised gooseflesh.&amp;nbsp;His reported fee for doing so was $50,000.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;America, the Beautiful, indeed.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;*****\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;They stand as twin towers of postwar American ingenuity -- the&amp;nbsp;fast-food emporium and the suburban shopping mall -- and the two&amp;nbsp;concepts are conjoined in connubial bliss in a Mall of America food&amp;nbsp;court, where I am ingesting a Pepsi-Cola: ''The Official Soft Drink&amp;nbsp;of the Mall of America,'' the press kit reads. ''2.6 million cups&amp;nbsp;served in 1993.'' My ''cup'' is roughly the size of a nuclear-waste&amp;nbsp;drum.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pensively sipping, I cannot help but recall the two Pepsi&amp;nbsp;spokespeople I had seen a day earlier, two tall-drink celebrities&amp;nbsp;conversing on MTV. Orlando Magic center Shaquille O'Neal was sitting&amp;nbsp;for an interview with supermodel- journalist Cindy Crawford. Shaq was&amp;nbsp;demonstrating the different smiles he will rent to interested&amp;nbsp;advertisers. ''This is the 2.9,'' he began. And though a small&amp;nbsp;fissure appeared across his face, Shaq was speaking not in Richter-scale figures but in millions of dollars. ''This is the 5.3,'' he&amp;nbsp;continued, grinning amiably. ''And this is the 8.9.'' O'Neal beamed&amp;nbsp;enthusiastically.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;''And if somebody offered you $20 million?'' asked Crawford.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A ridiculous smile-for-hire engulfed O'Neal's head; he held the&amp;nbsp;pose, a ghoulish grinning Shaq-o-Lantern.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can't spell Shaquille without the letters S-H-I-L-L. Stoked by&amp;nbsp;this realization, I take a stroll, attempting to count the stores in&amp;nbsp;which one can purchase an item bearing the euphonious name of the&amp;nbsp;seven-foot&amp;nbsp;spokescenter. When the toll hits 19 (stores, not items), I&amp;nbsp;realize the laughable inadequacy of my count: I have not looked in&amp;nbsp;video-game stores or in department stores. A pasty fat boy wearing an&amp;nbsp;O'Neal road jersey pads past me in Shaq Attaq shoes by Reebok. I have even neglected, somehow, to count the shoe stores.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;How could I have forgotten? An unmistakable size-20 Shaq shoe&amp;nbsp;stands sentry in front of World Foot Locker. One cannot handle the&amp;nbsp;autographed shoe, for it reposes under glass like the Star of India.&amp;nbsp;What the shoe really is, is the star of Bethlehem, drawing&amp;nbsp;Mall-walking magi into the store. ''Shaq,'' the manager needlessly&amp;nbsp;informs me, ''is quite popular.''\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In Babbage's, an electronics store, I ask the manager, ''Is there&amp;nbsp;a video game that Shaquille O'Neal. . . .''\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;''The rumor is they're &lt;em&gt;working&lt;/em&gt; on one,'' the guys says,&amp;nbsp;anticipating my question. ''Look for it the beginning of next&amp;nbsp;season.'' I am given to understand that the much-awaited game will&amp;nbsp;have a martial-arts mise-en-scene and that it will be called . . .&amp;nbsp;Shaq-Fu!\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fu, Fi, Fo, Fum: Sam Goody stocks the rap album. &lt;em&gt;Shaq Diesel&lt;/em&gt;, while allegedly unlistenable, is nevertheless available on cassette&amp;nbsp;and compact disc. At Toy Works, I adore the Shaq action figures by&amp;nbsp;Kenner. Shaq's film debut, &lt;em&gt;Blue Chips&lt;/em&gt;, has come and gone at the&amp;nbsp;movieplex.&amp;nbsp;&lt;em&gt;Shaq Attaq!&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Shaq Impaq&lt;/em&gt; beckon from bookstores.&amp;nbsp;Shaq-signature basketballs line the shelves at Oshman's. Field of Dreams stocks wood-mounted photos of O'Neal: Shaq-on-a- Plaque. I&amp;nbsp;stagger to The Coffee Beanery, Ltd., looking for Swiss Shaqolate Mocha, vacuum-Shaq-Packed in a foil Shaq-Sack. The Mall's walls are&amp;nbsp;closing in. T-shirts seem to be telling me to SHUT UP &amp;amp; SHAQ.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In addition to harvesting these golden eggs, Shaquille O'Neal is&amp;nbsp;paid $48,000 per game to play a fearsome brand of basketball in&amp;nbsp;Orlando. Fifteen thousand fans happily pay to watch him do so 41&amp;nbsp;nights a year. He may yet revolutionize the game. &lt;em&gt;Who told you you&amp;nbsp;can't have it all?&lt;/em&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;''You can't have everything,'' comedian George Carlin likes to&amp;nbsp;say. ''Where would you put it?'' It appears they've put everything&amp;nbsp;here, in Champs Sports. Surrounded by officially licensed&amp;nbsp;merchandise, seated in a director's chair embossed with a Mighty&amp;nbsp;Duck, 32 televisions arrayed before me and each one of them playing&amp;nbsp;NBA highlights, I rest my Niked feet at last.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For weeks I've been wondering how we got here in sports -- from&amp;nbsp;primitive to prime time, from the invention of the wheel to the&amp;nbsp;invention of Shaquille -- without ever pausing to ask, ''Where &lt;em&gt;are&amp;nbsp;&lt;/em&gt;we, anyway?'' But the information kiosks at the Mall of America make&amp;nbsp;it perfectly clear. ''You Are Here,'' all the map arrows say. \"You Are Here.\"\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chapter 1: The Titan Of Television\r\nChapter 2: Home In The Dome\r\nChapter 3: The League Leader\r\nChapter 4: The Long, Hard Run&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.si.com/more-sports/2014/08/05/si-60-1954-94-how-we-got-here-chapter-5>