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| Don’t get too cocky, Chicago. You still have the Bears. |
– Beavis and Butthead
IT ISN’T hyperbole to suggest that Wednesday night’s World Series Game 7 between the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians will go down in the annals of baseball history as the most memorable game of all time. Given what was at stake, given the two clubs involved and their tortured histories, given the massive audience – it was the most-watched baseball game in the past 25 years – and given the drama which unfolded over the course of 10 innings and more than four hours, you’re not likely to ever see a game quite like it again. The Cubs’ 8:7 win over the Indians in 10 innings was one helluva roller coaster ride, with twists and turns and huge momentum swings all over the place. When it was over, the Cubs were so spent that many of them were completely overwhelmed emotionally and were decidedly subdued in their celebrations. It was gripping theatre and incredible drama.
And the game itself was something of a mess. The Cubs won in spite of Joe Maddon’s repeated managerial gaffes – seriously Joe, what the hell was that bunt on a 3-2 pitch? – and Terry Francona didn’t have his best night, either. The Indians continued the clownshoes approach to outfield defense which had cost them in Game 6 and also got a runner picked off. The pitchers for both teams were running on fumes, missing their spots, and generally ineffective, with the difference being Chicago’s batters hit ’em where they ain’t a bit more often than the Tribe’s. You could hardly say this game was particularly well played.
But that’s often the case with these sorts of games. Mistakes are part of the game. Hell, they ARE the game in a lot of cases, in that the team who makes the fewest mistakes winds up winning. Every game comes down to mistakes, in the end. You just hope that the last mistake isn’t the one that kills you. (Run the damn ball, Seahawks!)
Perhaps the most memorable baseball game of my lifetime – the Red Sox v. Mets in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series – ended with a wild pitch and a routine grounder rolling between Bill Buckner’s legs. People forget just what a comedy of errors that entire game was. It was a preposterous mess filled with mistakes, mess-ups and managerial malfeasance. Had that been a spring training game, or some meaningless mid-summer game, both teams would’ve taken the game film out back and set it on fire in the dumpster. The circumstances, however, made it memorable and magnificent.
It’s easy to confuse a great game with a great quality of play. You don’t need the latter for the former. Oftentimes, it’s something outside the realm of “great play” which makes the game memorable: sometimes it’s a big mistake at the wrong time, sometimes it’s one moment of individual greatness, sometimes it’s a terrible decision by an official. If everything goes well and everything goes according to plan, the game itself is actually not that interesting a lot of the time.
I’d actually been thinking of writing this Lose post for quite some time, and watching that terrific and exciting game between the Indians and the Cubs has spurred me to act. Here at In Play Lose, we often talk about stuff which is done poorly – but I don’t think I speak often enough about stuff that’s done really well. Or, if not really well, stuff that has become memorable to me for a variety of reasons.
The first sporting event that I ever attended was a football game in Berkeley in 1976 between Cal and Washington State, and I barely knew the rules of football, and I still remember how Cal jumped out to a 23-0 lead before W.S.U. rallied … it was 23-8, and then 23-16, and then the Cougars scored late to make it 23-22 and went for the 2-pt conversion and the win, and my dad and I were seated in the end zone where the Cougars were attacking and I can remember the whole play developing, as WSU QB Jack Thompson dropped back to pass, looked to his right, had an open receiver in his sights and … got sacked. Cougars lose by a point. (I found this crazy old silent video of some of the game action on YouTube.) Now, neither of those teams were any good at all, but that was A GREAT GAME of football in that it was tense and dramatic, which is ultimately what you want. The beauty of sports is that they are ultimately unscripted and unpredictable. You have no idea what it is that you’re going to see.
So I started thinking about all of the various sporting events I’ve attended in the past 40 years, trying to think about what were the best events that I’ve seen in person. Not on TV, mind you, but actually in person, because as much as I enjoy watching games on TV, I find the live experience to be so much more satisfying in that you share a common experience with those who are seated around you and the atmosphere in the arena adds to the experience.
But touching on all of the really good sporting events that I’ve attended strays from the mission of this blog, which is document and contemplate and pontificate about losing. Well, in keeping with the epigram of this blog, if I’m going to celebrate the great events that I’ve attended, I would also do well to recollect the truly terrible events that I’ve attended as well. You do, in fact, need stuff that sucks to have that’s cool, and I’ve seen a lot of stuff that sucks over 40 years.
Here then is my good, bad, and ugly list of sporting events that I’ve attended in my lifetime. You will find that the definitions of those three are somewhat mutable and flexible – sometimes it’s due to circumstance, sometimes to quality of play. This was a fun list to put together, brought back a lot of good memories (and some bad ones), and required a variety of digging about the archives. And to qualify this further, I will say here that nothing on either the “bad” or the “ugly” side of the ledger will involve a team that I was rooting for actually winning the game, because this is In Play Lose here and we’re all about the Lose. I can say, without a doubt, that the worst pro football game I have ever attended was at the Kingdome on Nov. 14, 1993, a 22:5 win by the Seahawks over the Cleveland Browns which featured only 450 yards of offense, two safeties, a fumble returned for a TD, and a QB duel between the illustrious Rick Mirer and Todd Philcox – the latter having gotten the job when Browns coach Bill Belichick rage cut Bernie Kosar earlier in the week. This game was absolutely dreadful. Even for a fan of bad football, this one was tough to take. But the Seahawks won, so the desired outcome had occurred – but we’re not interested in desired outcomes here. I’ll take an ugly loss over an aesthetically pleasing win any day. Anyway, permit me this ambling down Memory Lane – even though some of these memories are rather fuzzy, and some feel like really bad dreams.
NFL
The Good: I have to be honest here: I’ve been to pro football games in Seattle, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, and I’ve never, ever been to a game that was any good at all. The team I’ve seen in person most often – the Seahawks – were terrible when I lived in Seattle in the 1990s. I went to a smattering of games and they were all pretty dismal.
The Bad: Since I’ve never been to a good one, you can imagine I have several bad ones to choose from. Two stand out in particular.
My one venture to a game at Candlestick Park, on Nov. 28, 2004, certainly was dubious – the Dolphins and the 49ers had the two worst records in the league, and the game was an error-strewn affair, with the 49ers fumbling on five straight possessions in the second half on their way to defeat. The box score lists the attendance as being 66,156, but about 25,000 of those fans were dressed as empty seats. And you’ve not really had a truly miserable sporting experience until you’ve been to Candlestick at a time with a number in it on a day ending in Y. My girlfriend at the time was a Miami supporter, so we were sitting with the other Fins fans on the side of the Stick that was out of the sun, and I was wearing about five layers of clothing in order to combat the constantly swirling winds, but then I’d go down to the concourse to the concession stands, which were in the sun, and I instantly started roasting. It amazes me that people put up with that shithole of a stadium for as long as they did. When I went with five other friends to the very last sporting event played at Candlestick – a friendly between the U.S. and Azerbaijan in the run-up to the World Cup – I told everyone “bring a coat” even though it was about 80° in San Francisco that day. People thought I was kidding. “I’m serious. Bring a coat.” They were all grateful that they took my advice.
But the Seahawks 19:0 loss to the Raiders at the Kingdome on Oct. 18, 1992 simply cannot be ignored, because this is the only time I’ve ever cheered about an offensive holding penalty against my own team. The Seahawks went 2-14 that season and were so injury riddled that 3rd-stringer Stan Gelbaugh started most of the games at QB. This was the most lopsided 19-pt. game in NFL history, because at no point did I ever think Seattle was going to score. And it’s not like the Raiders were any great shakes, either: probably half of their meager yardage total came in the 4th Quarter when the Seahawks D was out of gas. Anthony Smith of the Raiders got four sacks against the Seahawks sieve of an offensive line, and after whiffing on a block on the previous play against Smith which resulted in a sack, the Seahawks OT promptly got beat again by Smith and just went for the full-on takedown. It was one of the best form tackles I saw all year. Sure, it cost them 10 yards but at least kept Gelbaugh standing upright and we cheered, as this constituted progress.
The Ugly: My trip to New Jack City in Landover on Nov. 23, 1997, was particularly absurd. The game between the Redskin Potatoes and the Giants wound up a 7:7 tie, and that final scoreline should indicate to you just how inept this game was. Oh, I guess you could call it a “defensive struggle” since there were 6 turnovers and 11 sacks. What made this game infamous was Potatoes QB Gus Frerotte concussing himself after head-butting a wall following his 1-yard TD run. I’m about 6 miles from the field where I’m sitting, which is the norm in that cavernous and soulless stadium, and none of us could figure why Jeff Hostetler was suddenly on the field and Frerotte was out of the game, and then a guy a row back who was listening along on the radio told us what happened and myself and the others in my section all just looked to one another in stunned silence, dumbstruck and incredulous.
NBA
The Good: I’ve posted about this previously here on the blog, but the single-best sporting event that I have ever attended was on Apr. 28, 1992, when the Sonics defeated the Golden State Warriors 129:128 in Game 3 of their Western Conference playoff series. The Warriors were one of the great offensive teams in the history of the league, but the Sonics upset them 3-1 in this series and beat them at their own game. (Shawn Kemp’s ultimate act of posterization in Game 4 became the series’ most iconic moment.) In this game, the Warriors shot 56% and lost, because the Sonics shot 61%. The defenses weren’t even all that bad, per se – it was just a case where the offenses for both teams were incredible and were completely unstoppable. And there was no relief in this game. It was just a relentless onslaught from both teams. At one point in the fourth quarter, the Sonics built a double-digit lead, and then the Warriors probably wiped that lead out in about two minutes. The Sonics broke the tie in the final minute with a 3-point play by Kemp on the most insane fast break I’ve ever seen and wound up winning by a single point. People were literally falling all over each other in the stands when Kemp dunked that lob from Payton, jumping up and down in a frenzy and completely losing their minds. I’ve never been so exhausted from watching a game before.
The Bad: Pretty much from the moment this game began on Apr. 6, 1993, I had a bad feeling about it. The Sonics weren’t playing with any intensity, and the 7-64 Dallas Mavericks were playing with urgency. You watch a game like this one unfurl and you think to yourself that at some point, the team that actually knows what it’s doing is going to get it together and clamp down on these guys and force some turnovers and go on a run and blow that awful team away. It never happened. What I remember the most about this game was coming to a strange point of acceptance that the Sonics were about to lose, on their home floor, to one of the worst teams in NBA history, and being remarkably okay with this fact when the game was over. Dallas was the better team and deserved to win and, hey, my team had a bad night. It happens sometimes. And it’s weird to look back at these old NBA box scores and realize just how much the league has changed in 20 years. The 3-point shot was a novelty back then, and the pace of play was incredibly slow. This is why I get really, really bored with every pundit and analyst who talks about how the game was so much better in the era of the Jordanaires. It wasn’t. The game was becoming pretty dull and growing extremely predictable and uncreative.
The Ugly: What on earth was I thinking?
MLB
The Good: I’ve been to some great baseball games in my life. I was fortunate to see Chris Bosio pitch a no-hitter in Seattle. I went to two Mariners playoff games in 1995, and I also went to the impromptu AL West playoff game between the Mariners and the Angels, a 9:1 win by Seattle in which Randy Johnson threw a 3-hit complete game and a tight game wound up being blown open by Luis Sojo’s ridiculous Little League grand slam. I say this game was “impromptu” because the Angels played a night game against the A’s the evening before, they had to win to force a playoff, and the game went on forever, and the result of this was people waking up in Seattle on that Monday to discover that the Mariners were a) playing that afternoon in the Kingdome, and b) tickets were on sale now. The whole affair was hasty and cobbled together and that extra spontaneity made it memorable.
As I was saying before, what constitutes “good” varies dramatically: it can represent a high quality of play, it can represent an amazing atmosphere, etc. The “best” baseball game I’ve ever attended took place on Oct. 22, 2012. It seemed, at first, like it was a beautiful night for some baseball – if only the St. Louis Cardinals had bothered to play any. It was Game 7 of the NLDS between the Cardinals and the Giants and, early that afternoon, I was at my office down in Palo Alto and I got a text message from The Official Girlfriend of In Play Lose: “Section 330.” Kismet! And it was a scramble to make it to Phone Co. Park for the early start time, and I didn’t make it until the top of the 2nd inning. The Giants pushed two runs across in the bottom of the 2nd, and then all hell broke loose in the bottom of the 3rd, as the Cardinals kicked the ball all over the place and the Giants scored five runs, three on the weirdest play that I have ever seen on a baseball diamond:
Only Hunter Pence could do something that weird.
From that point onward, it was basically a party with 41,000 of my new-found friends. And as I said, it was a beautiful night for some baseball, right up until it wasn’t:
It started pouring down rain in the top of the 9th inning, the storm coming seemingly out of nowhere. The field was barely playable, but the game quickly ended as the Cardinals hitters swung at most everything, just wanting to get the game over with. We slogged back to the BART station, a 45-minute walk in an absolute downpour, chanting “Beat Detroit!” along with 30,000 other joyously happy people. We were completely soaked and we both threw our ruined shoes straight into the trashcan. Now that right there, that was a good day.
The Bad: I’ve been to so many bad Seattle Mariners games in my life that I’ve lost count. They all run together. So we’re going to pivot here and go in a different direction.
During a dark time in life when I was living in western Colorado, a Colorado resident. From a sporting standpoint, you could do far worse than be in Steamboat Springs, Colorado in 1998. The Broncos won the Super Bowl, which put everyone in a good mood; Steamboat is actually closer to Salt Lake City than it is to Denver, and I wound up spending a lot of time in Salt Lake City, where people there were pretty excited about the Utah Jazz reaching the NBA Finals, and also the University of Utah reaching the NBA championship game; and 1998 also meant the Winter Olympics were going on, and Steamboat Springs has produced more Olympians per capita than any other city in America. So while a lot about my life in western Colorado sucked – don’t ask me to go into the details – at least I had some pleasant diversions.
And then I’m in Denver in late April and I like Denver, it’s a really nice city and I am always happy to go there for a little while. And hey, look, the Rockies have a series against the Cincinnati Reds at Coors Field and that would be fun. So I make the decision to try and become a Rockies fan, and so I go to the game and it’s a cool ballpark and I’m having a good time and the Rockies are up 4-3 after six but then Kile runs into trouble on the mound in the top of the 7th and can’t get anyone out and here comes the arson squad that is the Rockies bullpen to throw gasoline on the fire and the 7th inning takes about two years off my life. The Reds score eight runs in the 7th, three more in the 8th and four more in the 9th and win 18:7. Yeech.
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| Just another day at Coors Field |
NHL
The Good: Along the way to an unlikely appearance in the Stanley Cup finals in 1994, the Vancouver Canucks fulfilled the ambition of a good number of my Canadian friends, which was to beat the hell out of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Game 3 of that series is noteworthy because of a line brawl late in the game, after which the Canucks scored again to further rub Toronto’s nose in it, and Game 5 is notable because it went to double OT, but Game 4, on May 22, 1994, was probably the tensest and most intense game that I have ever seen, because it was 0-0 deep into the 3rd period. It was a tight, defensive, somewhat claustrophobic game and the tension ratcheted up with every minute that passed. The game was balanced on a knife’s edge and the crowd would just sort of surge collectively to the edge’s of their seats with every rush up ice. So much nervous energy, so much anxiety.Finally, at 17:35 in the 3rd period, Cliff Ronning broke the deadlock with a goal to give the Canucks the lead and you could feel the wave of jubilation rushing over the crowd. I’ve never felt such a palpable, collective sense of relief. The vibe stayed with me, a rush of endorphins and a tingle in the central nervous system that just sort of lingered on for several days.
The Bad: This one was horrible. On one of my two trips to see a Canucks game against the L.A. Kings at the Fabulous Forum, the Canucks got beat 9:1 by the Kings but that really wasn’t the story. No, the story was that the night before, the Canucks players were sitting on their team plane on the tarmac at LAX when a plane crashed nearby. Suffice to say, the players were shellshocked, and it was pretty obvious that they just flat didn’t care a whit about the game. There was also a crazy backstory to this game, in that it was the first game coached by Pat Quinn – whom the Canucks had basically stolen from the Kings several years earlier, and paid a steep price for it – but none of that really mattered in light of what had happened at the aeroport the night before. And it was a weird atmosphere at the game. The fans didn’t really get into the game, as it felt almost like a scrimmage out there at times, since the Kings were basically playing against a group of ghosts.
The Ugly: I went to see the Canucks play the Washington Capitals in one of the Caps’ last games at their old building, the Capital Centre in Landover, on Nov. 4, 1997, and it was probably the most lopsided 2:1 hockey game that I’ve ever seen. It should have been about 10:1, actually, but Kirk McLean stood on his head in goal for the Canucks, who were on a long losing streak at the time and all throughout this game, I was saying to the guy next to me, “Pat Quinn is getting fired after this game.” Sure enough, he was. Quinn had built the Canucks from one of the worst teams in sports up to being a game away from winning a Stanley Cup, and now in 1997 they were completely disintegrating: they’d dumbly signed Mark Messier as a free agent that summer, who was useless, and there was complete disunity and discontent in the team, and then the Canucks replaced Quinn with Mike Keenan, who was also useless and lasted only into the middle of the following season, and Pavel Bure then demanded a trade in the offseason and vowed never to play for the Canucks again. It was sad to see this team which brought me quite a bit of joy completely collapse before my eyes.
Soccer
The Good: The beatdown at Carrow Road on Jan. 21, 1990, was thorough and systematic. The final score was only 2:0 but it very easily could have been more. Norwich City F.C. were one of England’s best teams, having led the First Division for most of the season prior, only to falter down the stretch and wind up finishing in fourth. The Canaries played attractive football that was creative and geometric and dynamic, and they ran all over their pathetic, inept opponents on that day.
“Norwich were absolutely brilliant. That was the best performance by any side I’ve seen since I joined United. They certainly reached a peak today. But that effort from my side was not acceptable. I know there is a distinct lack of goal threat from us. That was certainly a low for my lot today and there is absolutely no excuse.” – Alex Ferguson
Yes, that Alex Ferguson, the manager of Manchester United, who got walloped by Norwich that day in a game that was nowhere as close as a 2:0 scoreline would indicate. United were abject and atrocious in this game, which was their 10th straight without a win and they were hovering just above the drop zone. And the Yellow Army at Carrow Road were yukking it up at United’s expense, since mighty Man U was six kinds of crap, and that Ferguson guy was obviously a shit-for-brains who couldn’t coach and would soon be out of a job. Suffice to say, Sir Alex figured it out.
The Bad: It was appropriate that this game took place at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, because El Tri were absolute pants. We had a great time going to the Copa América Centenario matches this past summer, and the atmosphere for the Mexico v. Chile quarterfinal on June 19, 2016, was truly electric: 70,000 fans, with about 68,000 of them wearing the green of El Tri. Among our watch party assembling in the South Bay for this game was César, the Official South American Correspondent of In Play Lose, who had also brought along his dad, and after about 2 minutes – during which Alexis Sanchez absolutely roasted the El Tri right back and his pinpoint pass almost resulted in a goal – the Official Father of the Official South American Correspondent of In Play Lose leaned over to his son and said, “Chile is going to win and it isn’t going to be close.” And in the first half, Chile were great. They were absolutely great. Alexis was making all the plays up front on the left and some of his touches were just exquisite. Come halftime, Chile are up 2-0 and we’re in line to get a beer and a Mexican fan comes up to Phonerz and I, asks if we’re Chilean, and we point out that we’re Americans and, thus, not the enemy combatant in this game, and he shakes his head and says, “we suck.” And El Tri completely collapses and capitulates in the second half, giving up two quick goals in succession while I’m still standing in line to get a beer, and after Chile makes it 4-0, someone in line smashes a trash can, at which point security moves in and the kiosk selling beer immediately closes, which pissed me the hell off. But Mexico’s matador defense continues on and soon it’s 5-0, and then 6-0, and then 7-0, and by this point the El Tri fans are openly mocking their own team with chants of “Olé!” as they go chasing the ball while the Chileans play keep away. Security had been heightened for this game, as authorities were wary of possible crowd trouble – a threat I didn’t take all that seriously, as I’ve been to Mexico games before and there’s never been an issue that couldn’t be attributed to anything other than people having had too much to drink – but nothing takes the sting out of a crowd and diffuses a situation quick like a systematic beatdown. We like to give El Tri some shit from time to time here at In Play Lose, but it’s good-natured razzing and I’m generally a fan of what they do. But this game was, without question, one of the most shockingly awful performances by a team that I have ever seen.
The Ugly: there is no ‘ugly’ because soccer is ‘The Beautiful Game’ … *foolishly makes trip to White Hart Lane* … uh, OK, so maybe there are ugly soccer games after all.
NCAA Football
The Good: I went to a small Div. III school, the University of Redlands, and in my freshman year, the football team won one game – and it was the best ending to a football game I’ve ever seen, because they were losing to Pomona-Pitzer 27-24 and, on the last play of the game from around midfield, the QB flung a Hail Mary pass towards the end zone … which came up about 10 yards short of the end zone, and there were two Redlands receivers down there, one behind the other, along with three Pomona DBs, and the front guy jumped for the ball and got crunched by the defenders early, and the official down there reached for his flag to call pass interference, saw the other Redlands receiver jumping up and down in the end zone with the ball, and signaled a TD, having been so fixated on calling the pass interference that he hadn’t noticed a) the ball had hit the ground; and b) the Redlands guy behind the pass interference melee had gone down to one knee to field the ball, which meant he was down on about the 5 yard line. Touchdown, game over, we win 30:27. So not only did the Redlands football team only win a single game that entire year, but they cheated in order to do it. My heroes.
The Bad: Back in the days when Washington State knew what they were doing (and I should point out that those days have returned, given that Wazzu beat Arizona 69:7 this afternoon), it was fun to venture either to Berkeley or Palo Alto to mingle with W.S.U.’s chapter of Bay Area alums and see The Good Guys beat up on Cal or Stanford. But it was more morbid curiosity which led me to do this on Nov. 1, 2008, venturing down to Palo Alto in the driving rain to watch W.S.U. get beat 58:0 by Stanford. This was absolutely, without question, the worst football team that I have ever seen. Given that the Cougars had already lost games that season 66:3, 63:14, 66:13, and 69:0, only giving up 58 against Stanford constituted progress. I didn’t stay for the end of it, because I was soaked.
The Ugly: The 1985 Washington State team had a dazzling array of future NFL talent, including a future Super Bowl MVP at QB, but negated this talent with perpetually brain dead play on the field, including two games where they committed seven turnovers, and it was after the Cougars coughed up yet another winnable game, losing 21:16 to Arizona State on Oct. 26, that Spokesman-Review columnist John Blanchette coined the verb “to coug,” which has since became a staple in northwest sports vernacular.
NCAA Basketball
The Good: Given that it was a record-setting game, it’s somewhat surprising that it’s so hard to find more info about it online. I went to a couples of basketball games at the Gersten Pavilion, on the campus of Loyola Marymount University, including this one, from which I found this snippet on a website about Gonzaga basketball:
That doesn’t tell the half of it. Loyola Marymount were setting records during this period of time. It was the wildest, craziest variation of basketball imaginable. They led this game against the Zags 61-50 at halftime, and each team scored 86 points in the second half. The 172 points is an NCAA record for most points scored by two teams in one half. The spectacle was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen on a basketball court.
The Bad: I actually found this article from the archives of the Spokane Chronicle detailing a truly awful game between Washington State and Arizona which had to be moved to an auxiliary gym because of a power outage. Arizona was building towards a Final Four team a season later – their entire starting lineup wound up playing in the NBA (not including Steve Kerr, who was hurt and out for the season) and their backup point guard was Kenny Lofton, who played CF for the Cleveland Indians – while W.S.U., meanwhile, was abysmal that season. Whatever electricity could be garnered from having a sellout crowd in such an intimate atmosphere was negated pretty much from the opening tip, the spectators being rendered to sitting in embarrassed silence during the course of this 37-point smackdown.
The Ugly: The meanest, nastiest, most competitive, most cynical college basketball game I have ever seen was also the lousiest in terms of quality of play. The first round of the NCAA West Regionals was at W.S.U. in 1984, and #1 ranked Georgetown came all the way to Pullman along the way to winning a national title, but they almost didn’t make it out of Pullman, because they got pushed around and beaten up by S.M.U. on Mar. 18, 1984. The game was brutally slow, overly physical, and neither team could throw it in a lake. S.M.U. was ahead 24-16 at half, and when Georgetown finally got the lead late in the second half, they went into a four corners, all-out stall – this was before the shot clock had become the rule – which brought boos cascading down from the crowd. Patrick Ewing wound up tipping in a missed FT late and the Hoyas won 37:36 to advance, but the whole experience was decidedly unpleasant.
Other Random Sports
The Good: On a whim, I went to see the All-Blacks play Barbarians in 1989 in London at Twickenham, which is the sport’s Valhalla. New Zealand won the match by 21 points to 10, and I was pretty much hooked on the game. It gets no better than that. (And now I am seeing here on the wire that today in Chicago, Ireland beat the All-Blacks for the first time in 111 years of trying. Yet more proof that Ireland is cool, as if we needed more evidence of that.)
The Bad: I’ve attended two college baseball playoff games in my life, both of which were ridiculous. In the first, Washington State played Arizona, who would go on to win the national championship and whose best player at that time was current Cleveland Indians manager Terry Francona. Arizona batted around in the first inning … and the second inning … and the third inning … sigh … the final score was 22:14, and the only reason it was even that close was because the Cougars scored 10 runs in the bottom of the 8th inning – an impossible late game rally which, honestly, felt like it might just go on forever.
My second college baseball playoff game was in 1991, in the Div. III days at Redlands. I was good buddies with one of the guys on the baseball team and they were hosting local rival Cal St. San Bernardino in a playoff game, and so I wandered over to the diamond to check it out – and wandered back after an inning, because I didn’t need to see any more, not after San Bernardino scored 18 runs in the inning. That one didn’t end very well.
The Ugly: I got so annoyed on a trip to a horse track – having gone 0-for-9 and not won a cent – that for the final race of the day, I said to hell with it and bet on a horse named Garage, who was a long shot of 100-1 … and who finished about 100 lengths behind the horse who finished second to last. Garage was huffing and puffing down the final stretch long after all of the horses had finished and after some had even left the track. Seriously, slugs move faster than that thing did.
This was fun. It made me happy and made me laugh, just thinking about this. Laughter is life’s best medicine and, at the moment, I could use a few laughs.
