Apologies for being a little slow here catching up on the LOSE news. I was busy last week as deadline nears at the magazine where I work. But we've had some shocking acts of losing here recently which cannot possibly go unmentioned.
As I have said here repeatedly of late, promotion to, and preventing relegation from, the English Premier League is a HUGE deal. Desperate times call for desperate measures and produce some utterly astonishing results.
This game from last weekend is a fine example. This is from the second division Football League Championship playoff between Leicester City, a club that knows frustration well – The Foxes have lost the FA Cup final four times without a win, which is a record – and the Hornets of Watford F.C., who are far more famous for being once owned by Elton John than they are for anything on the pitch. It's a two-game playoff, with goal difference, or "aggregate," being the tiebreaker.
To set the scene here further: Leicester won the first game 1-0, and Watford are leading 2-1 at Vicarage Road, their home grounds, in the return match's dying moments when a questionable penalty is awarded to the Foxes. The conversion rate on penalty kicks is generally in the 80-85% range, mind you, and a goal here will give the Foxes a 2-2 draw in the match and they will win the playoff, thus advancing to
the playoff finale at Wembley, where a shot at the coveted place in the EPL awaits. And in the unlikely event that the Foxes miss the penalty, the game would then end 2-1 in favour of Watford, then overtime will be necessary since the overall aggregate is 2-2. So the Foxes would seem to hold all the cards here, right?
Well ...
I have never seen anything like that. I also have NO EARTHLY IDEA what the Leicester goalkeeper was doing on that play.
To give you another perspective, here is some video shot from the grandstands at Vicarage Road:
I'm not sure how you overcome that sort of a collapse if you're the Foxes. The hangover from that game (and from the heavy drinking which would follow) may last about six months, if not longer.
And thus, with the 3-1 win and 3-2 aggregate score, the Hornets advanced to Wembley where they'll play Crystal Palace on May 27 for the right to join automatic qualifiers Cardiff City and Hull City in getting regularly thrashed competing next season in the EPL. This is a one-game, winner-take-all playoff, and pretty much all bets are off.
"I didn't think it was physically possible, but this both sucks and blows." – Bart Simpson
Down three games to one in the best-of-7 series against the heavily-favoured Boston Bruins, the Toronto Maple Leafs had squeaked out 2-1 victories in Games 5 and 6 to level the series. In Game 7, the upstart Leafs had shrugged off an early 1-0 deficit, outplayed the Bruins on the B’s home ice at Boston Garden (and I don't give a shit what bank has their name on the building, it's the Boston Garden), taken a 2-1 lead in the 2nd period and then, early the third, struck for two more goals to stun the home crowd and pretty much everyone watching – which apparently was everyone in Canada, as CBC reported it’s biggest TV ratings in history. Nazem Kadri’s goal at 5:29 of the third period, giving the Leafs a 4-1 lead, seemed to cement and finalize one of the more impressive, and shocking, about-faces in sports in recent years.
All it did was set the stage from which the Leafs could fall off, because the Leafs were just getting started.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are one of the most inexcusably bad franchises in all of professional sports. While they can claim 13 Stanley Cups in their history, they haven’t won a championship since 1967, the year before the so-called ‘modern’ era began in the NHL, when the league expanded from it’s “original six” and doubled it’s membership to 12 franchises. Not only have they not won a Stanley Cup in 46 years, the Leafs haven’t even been that close, not even reaching the finals during that time. More often than not in that time, the Leafs have been afterthoughts. Indeed, this year’s Leafs squad gave Toronto fans a sniff of the playoffs for the first time since 2004, and most experts considered that to be a grand act of overachievement.
And it’s not as if the Leafs can lean on the crutch of “we don’t have any money.” They are awash in loonies and twoonies. The Toronto Maple Leafs are the most valuable franchise in the NHL, estimated by Forbes to be worth $1,000,000,000 in a league otherwise awash in red ink. Toronto is the largest city in Canada, and the 5th largest city in North America. Through sheer demographic pull, the Leafs dominate the hockey media north of the border, which has also spawned a rather fierce and large battalion of Leafs haters – and with good reason, since the Leafs have done pretty much nothing in four decades to be worthy of such attention other than be based in Toronto. The Leafs have failed to succeed in spite of what seems to be almost unfuckable circumstances. Every external force would lead you to believe that the Leafs should be a dominant force in the NHL, not a meek also-ran mired in perpetual failure.
The North American sports model allows for such long stretches of ineptitude. As I’ve pointed out prior here in IN PLAY LOSE, poor enough performance in the Europe gets you banished to the wandering the badlands of Division Two. In North America, however, bad franchises continue to flounder seemingly ad infinitum with seemingly little or no consequences to the club. At the root of almost all spats involving the spectre of franchise relocations are teams which aren’t very good – which the owner can then blame of a lack of local resources, thus justifying their threats to move to greener pastures. But it also has led to some unique narratives in which failure, in fact, is embraced and ultimately celebrated, held up right alongside the stories of fame and glory. The story of the New York Yankees’ 27 World Series titles is inevitably intertwined with the 80+ years of frustration of the Boston Red Sox, who are almost always really good but never quite good enough. If I was the use the term ‘storied history’ of the Philadelphia Phillies, who have lost more games than any franchise in the history of professional sports, I would do so without irony. After enduring more than 10,000 losses over the centuries, you can understand why Philly sports fans would be apt to do things like boo Santa Claus.
Nowhere is failure celebrated quite like Chicago, however. The Cubs haven’t won a World Series since 1908, and every time they seem to be approaching that pinnacle, some sort of colossal failure or absurd debacle ensues, leading to the notion that the franchise is somehow cursed or predisposed to bad luck. This is a convenient sort of excuse, of course. The fewer chances you have to succeed, the more epic the failures seem to be. Indeed, the aforementioned Bruins suffered one of the most epic chokes in history three seasons ago, winning the first three games of a best-of-7 with the Philadelphia Flyers and losing the next four, including blowing a 3-0 lead in Game 7 at home. All the B’s did was go out and win the Stanley Cup the following season, and that collapse was easily forgotten. But to Cubs fans, of course, Steve Bartman and Steve Garvey and the Amazin’ Mets become supporting cast in the constant narrative of victimhood, the act of winning a World Series being a Promethean sort of task with failure seemingly decreed by the baseball gods.
In the excellent book Scorecasting (which is pretty much required reading for all loyal readers of IN PLAY LOSE) authors Jon Wertheim and Tobias Moskowitz dedicate an entire chapter to the Cubs, attempting to use mathematics and principles of economics to try and discern whether the Cubs are, in fact, cursed. It’s a fun exercise put forth by a couple of long-time Cubs fans, but by every metric they can model, the Cubs appear not to be cursed at all. It isn’t because of bad luck or misfortune that they’ve gone 105 years without a World Series title – it’s because the Cubs have been TERRIBLE.
Furthermore, the authors then venture into theorizing why the Cubs have been terrible for so long, and their conclusion shouldn’t be a surprise – they are terrible because there is no incentive to do otherwise. A string of Cubs owners over the years have made it a point to try and market the experience of going to a game at the 'Friendly Confines' of Wrigley Field, what with the day games and the ivy covered walls in the outfield and the shoehorned ballpark in among the trendy residential neighbourhood where enterprising neighbours sells tickets for rooftop bleacher seats. They actually document how the franchise’s attendance and overall value increases when the club is losing on the field.
“If they’re looking for a guy to push the button when they blow the place up, I’ll do it ... Chicago’s one of the worst places in baseball … really for anything … I read where they got approval for some more upgrades. Count me in the group of people extremely happy to see that. I guess I'm just spoiled. There is a tremendous history associated with it and there is something special about playing on the same field that guys like Babe Ruth did. But really, what kind of history is there? It's not like there has been one championship after another. It's mainly been a place for people to go and drink beer." – Texas Rangers 1B/OF/DH Lance Berkman
Berkman is a rather outspoken player who is also somewhat of a goof, but he was definitely onto something when he said that. The ticket prices in Chicago are among the highest in the game, yet the beer prices are among the lowest. 100-year-old Wrigley Field may be quirky and charming for a fan, but the players generally dislike it. The place has become a spot for the Windy City’s hip and trendy to see and be seen, a frat party booze cruise where the game itself doesn’t really matter – and, in fact, where losing has taken on a bizarro aura of civic pride. But don’t take my word for it, just ask former Cubs manager Lee Elia. In case you couldn’t make that out on the audio:
“Fuck those fuckin' fans who come out here and say they're Cub fans that are supposed to be behind you rippin' every fuckin' thing you do. I'll tell you one fuckin' thing, I hope we get fuckin' hotter than shit, just to stuff it up them 3,000 fuckin' people that show up every fuckin' day, because if they're the real Chicago fuckin' fans, they can kiss my fuckin' ass right downtown and PRINT IT. They're really, really behind you around here... my fuckin' ass. What the fuck am I supposed to do, go out there and let my fuckin' players get destroyed every day and be quiet about it? For the fuckin' nickel-dime people who turn up? The motherfuckers don't even work. That's why they're out at the fuckin' game. They oughta go out and get a fuckin' job and find out what it's like to go out and earn a fuckin' living. Eighty-five percent of the fuckin' world is working. The other fifteen percent come out here. A fuckin' playground for the cocksuckers. Rip them motherfuckers. Rip them fuckin' cocksuckers like the fuckin' players. we got guys bustin' their fuckin' ass, and them fuckin' people boo. And that's the Cubs? My players get around here. I haven't seen it this fuckin' year. Everybody associated with this organization have been winners their whole fuckin' life. Everybody. And the credit is not given in that respect. Alright, they don't show because we're 5 and 14... and unfortunately, that's the criteria of them dumb 15 motherfuckin' percent that come out to day baseball. The other 85 percent are earning a living. I tell you, it'll take more than a 5 and 12 or 5 and 14 to destroy the makeup of this club. I guarantee you that. There's some fuckin' pros out there that wanna win. But you're stuck in a fuckin' stigma of the fuckin' Dodgers and the Phillies and the Cardinals and all that cheap shit. It's unbelievable. It really is. It's a disheartening fuckin' situation that we're in right now. Anybody who was associated with the Cub organization four or five years ago that came back and sees the multitude of progress that's been made will understand that if they're baseball people, that 5 and 14 doesn't negate all that work. We got 143 fuckin' games left. What I'm tryin' to say is don't rip them fuckin' guys out there. Rip me. If you wanna rip somebody, rip my fuckin' ass. But don't rip them fuckin' guys 'cause they're givin' everything they can give. And right now they're tryin' to do more than God gave 'em, and that's why we make the simple mistakes. That's exactly why.”
Greatest rant in the history of sports. Apparently the Bleacher Bums at Wrigley Field can recite this verbatim, considering this tirade by their frustrated manager at the time to be some sort of badge of honour. I, for one, find the Cubs’ fans lifelong celebrations of failure to be rather baffling. I also find it impossible to sympathize – the club’s owners have pretty much banked on the notion that the fans are sheep for a century, and made few efforts over that time to legitimately field a competitive product. If that incentive isn’t there, why bother?
This sort of perverse fascination with failure also seems to run rampant when it comes to the original subject of this post, those wacky Toronto Maple Leafs. 46 years of high-profile failure will do that. There is an odd sort of acceptance of failure at play, one which, paradoxically, in tinged with the angst of high expectations. Their fans expect the Leafs to lose, but hope and pray and wonder if this is the year the losing will finally stop. The Leafs particular brand of ineptitude can largely be attributed to the dubious ways of owner Harold Ballard, who did pretty much all he could to run the franchise into the ground. Ballard was a cheapskate, among other dubious traits, and did all he could to maximize his profit margin while knowing full well the margin was always going to be there. Whatever poor product he put out on the ice was going to be a financial success regardless of the outcome.
The new ownership groups since Ballard’s death has done little to change the fortunes of the franchise around. Freed up from decades of cheapskate ways, the Leafs now spend freely and spend badly, whiffing repeatedly in free agency and doing a poor job in the areas of scouting and player development. They hire big name GMs and big name coaches, all of whom manage to do less with more, as big money simply breeds impatience. And while there are a few hockey players who can excel and even thrive living and playing in the fishbowl that is Toronto, quite a few more don’t like the constant, minute scrutiny. (This is akin to the theorizing which comes up every time the Yankees make a trade as to whether the player can cut it in New York.) The misfortunes of the Leafs, much like the Cubs, are ultimately their own making. The fact that simply making the playoffs should constitute an achievement in Toronto speaks to the overwhelming state of disrepair.
And Leafs fans had no real expectations of success in this postseason. Few people expected the Leafs to even give the Bruins a competitive series, much less find themselves playing Game 7. The Leafs were playing with house money. But it’s easy to forget that when, 3¾ games into a playoff series, Nazem Kadri scores to give the Leafs a 4-1 lead and they stand on the verge of a terrific upset.
And then this happened:
Yes, that happened. A collapse the likes of which the NHL has never seen.
It fits in rather nicely with the Leafs’ narrative of failure, even though what happens in the moment has nothing to do with what happened 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. And with such a colossal flop will come even more unrealistic expectations for next season, as the Maple Leafs go about attempting to live this one down. And while a good number of my Canadian friends (of which I have many, since I speak fluent Canadian) have gleefully engaged in some schadenfreude this past week, reveling in the failures of the hated Leafs, I cannot help but feel a bit for them. The reputation for being a choker is one of the hardest to live down. If anything, they overachieved this year simply to reach a point where they failed. But unfortunately, the Peter Principle is often strictly enforced in sports – you rise to the level of your own incompetence. In Toronto’s case, it’s a level which, until Monday, no one in hockey had ever seen before.
