Did You Know? “One Shining Moment” Was Written in East Lansing
Maybe you know the story. Maybe not.
Tonight, the NCAA Basketball Championship wraps up with the title game. And the song, "One Shining Moment". During the song, you'll see highlights from the NCAA Tourney (we'll see some good Michigan State highlights), people will cry and bets on the game will be paid off (more people will be crying when they lose their money)
And (like a lot of stories) the song "One Shining Moment" all started with a guy trying to impress a pretty girl at a bar in East Lansing.
According to MLive.com, a musician and former Albion College basketball player named David Barrett was sitting by himself at the Varsity Inn bar in East Lansing in March of 1986 when a pretty waitress sat down beside him - and he panicked. He started talking about Larry Bird. Yeah, Larry Bird of the Celtics, who David was watching on TV at the time. David looked up to watch the game and when he turned back,(surprise) that pretty waitress was gone. So, according to an old article from the New York Times, David (poor David) decided to write a song to make the waitress understand about what it felt like to be "in the zone" when you're playing basketball. He wrote it the next morning in 20 minutes. And with a little help from some friends at CBS - the rest is history.
David lives in Ann Arbor now with his wife (no, not the waitress) and writes TV scores for a living.
So East Lansing WILL be represented tonight! Kinda, sorta.