FanNation - The Republic of Sport

I just regretfully declined an invitation to a wedding in January. So happens that it's the Saturday night BEFORE the second round of the NFL playoffs; there is no way I would miss the tailgate & Soldier Field for a wedding. Now, NFL.com says both games will be on Sunday--which I don't recall being the precedent--so I couldn't take the chance that the Bears game would be on a Saturday. Of course, if the Bears don't make it to the 2nd round I will be sitting at home, likely binging on mint chocolate chip ice cream and Kraft Dinner to swallow away the misery.

Art, as for your Excellent Adventure day ... my hand to God, I was at that twi-nighter (I remember because the tennis match made it impossible to park). In fact, I brought a girl to it -- a test, to see if she could go two. She failed. But I got a delicious Shea k'nish, at least.

I want to tell about a friend of mine here in Miami, a genuine tragic of the first degree. Has tickets -- manages ticket groups, in fact -- to every sport imaginable, the WNBA not excluded. Well, at the end of October, 1997, he attended home games of all four major sports in a 6-day period ... a seemingly impossible feat since the MLB and NBA seasons do not intersect. Sunday night was a rain-postponed Game 7 of the World Series at Pro Player Stadium, which caused the deferral to Monday Night (a second Monday Nighter) of a Dolphins home game. Friday night was the Heat's home opener, the closest (at that time, anyway) the two sports had ever come. One of the days in between, the Panthers were at home. My buddy was at all four (I was at the first and the last, for the record), not to mention the post-WS championship celebrating. I'm still impressed with that. I don't know if its ever been done, before or since.

I remember seeing you at the double-header. Were you the cow down the third base line?

Hey Chicago! Kraft Dinner? Are you Canadian?

Well, when I saw my sister was getting married 11/09/02 - the first thing that came to mind was, hmm. Fall - Saturday - what game will I miss?? Checking the schedule, I saw Purdue had a very heavily rated Ohio State team at home. Kinda relieved, figuring it would be a blowout and I wouldn't have to care. The wedding was at 2pm, Purdue kickoff at 11:30am. Getting ready for the big day (I was standing up in the wedding), I kept an eye on the game. 1st quarter 3-0 Purdue. Halftime 3-3. Drive to the church. Cell phone in pocket hitting refresh/refresh/refresh. 2pm. 6-3 Purdue with 3 minutes left. Wedding started. Walking down the aisle, standing next to everyone else. I snuck my hand into my pocket for a "secret" phone refresh. 1:35 left. Purdue up 6-3, Ohio State 4th and 2 from the Purdue 37 yardline. The priest or whatever is talking. I wait a courtesy 40 seconds and then do the phone sneak one more time. If Purdue stops them here, it would have been the biggest upset ever! As I look down into my lit up pocket, the phone slips out of my hand and goes bouncing off the altar steps I'm standing on, battery breaking out the back and flying off in one direction, the phone spinning like a top. I get the worst looks of all time, but all I care about is giving that damn phone life. Anyway, someone picks it up, and finally we are allowed to take our seats. I put the phone together and find the score. OS-Jenkins 37 pass from Krenzel (Nugent kick), 1:36. OSU wins 10-6. (Ohio State went on to win the BCS crown that year)

My best tragic moment happened during the 2005 ALCS...

I was working on a big project, under a tight deadline, so it meant working very late. What really sucked, White Sox in the ALCS, and I'm stuck in an office that gets no radio reception, and has no cable...so I'm following it on CBS Sportsline...in between doing work, I'm frantically hitting refresh on my laptop. We have a triage meeting about the status of the project...I'm sitting there laptop in hand hitting refresh, and making all kinds of noises...the rest of the room just starts to ignore my grunts. sighs and cheers...

I return to my desk, staring at the screen...AJ is up, with 2 strikes...and 2 outs...I'm hitting refresh like a mad man. Nothing is getting updated. I'm swearing and cussing. I've stopped working completely...I'm interrupting other people on the project to see if they can get an update on their PC, thinking maybe something was up with my laptop...nothing.

10 minutes pass, and I still know nothing. Of course, picking up the phone and calling my brother never occurs to me...

Finally, the screen shows that AJ is at first...with no info on how it happened. Then Crede rips a double...and I scream so loud, the PM on the project freaks out and calls a second triage meeting. Had to explain that the White Sox won...

It's not till about 2am that I finally get to see highlights of the game, and find out what happened.

The second best one, happened a few days later...Game five, I'm holding a sleeping baby in my arms, and as the last out is recorded, I scream out "HELL YEAH!!!!!!!!" Waking my daughter up, and pissing off my wife...hey, I've been waiting all my life for that...

Great story krish; I can hear the sound that phone made as it fell!did your sister let you stay for the rest of the wedding?
And Josh, at least you didn't do a victory dance and spike the package you were holding.
Great stuff.

I meant, "Mac 'n' Cheese"?

so in high school i ran a NCAA bball tournament for 5$ each per bracket people filled out...my senior year i was a senior officer "historian" or some bs title i won...
so we are in student council class and in the middle of an official meeting during our 4th period class...this is around 11:30 am on the west coast, so its before lunch when we could get all the scores going on across the country....so we're in class and our student body president has the floor and is going over the whole agenda of important information....
that Christmas i had gotten a lil 2 or 3 inch portable color tv as a stocking stuffer...we have the game going on during the meeting as we are watching the games on cbs...its wedged between two backpacks on our desk with no sound going on...our desk is in the middle of the class so everyone behind us could see what we were doing.....
we got away with it for a while, but eventually when a buzzer beater went down our "ooh's" and "ahhh's" gave us away...the teacher was disappointed in us, but i was proud...the first round of the tourney is among the best in sports anywhere

The first Thursday of the tournament is too good to miss; so you should be proud. Of course it's also the day that my draw sheet begins its sad descent to last-place city.

last year, during the improbable Kyle Orton led streak by the Bears, I was sent an invitation to honor the inaugraul class of the elementary school I attended. Being that I was part of the inaugral class and my mom had been on the board of directors, it was decided that I would go, on a Sunday. My sister brought my brother in law with as well, and so we decided to leave the banquet hall for the bar in the lobby, smoked cigarettes, drank beer and watched the bears defense make Jake Delhomme their ****. during the third quarter I was informed that they needed me to be honored, so I went and got honored, left as soon as I could to watch the rest of the game.

One of my other favorites would be when I decided to go to a Sox game rather than write a ten page paper which I hadn't even started yet that was due the next day. Now this was 05 so it was running down to the wire, this was THE sox-indians game where Joe Crede hit a home run in the tenth inning to win it, the game credited with getting the good guys on the road to the WS. So what did I do? went home half drunk and wrote the paper about the sox game.

There was also the time during that run when i told a professor that i wasn't going to be bothered with all of the reading until the white sox are done with the playoffs.

Tragic Tale #1

Was it fate, or clever planning? Only a few scant seconds had passed from the time that we secured our fall wedding date to the time that I was checking the Seahawks schedule how many home games I would miss during the two and a half weeks that we would be away. The result? Zero. None. Nada.. They had an away game and a bye week. How convenient. To this day my wife still wonders if I actually consulted the schedule *before* we set the date. Some mysteries are best left unsolved. I should probably add to this tragic tale the timetable in which I acquired my Seattle Seahawk season tickets. My wife (girlfriend at the time), upon completing a successful second interview at an Evil Empire located in a Seattle suburb called me with the good news from the airport of her impending offer. Having been a Seattle Seahawk fan since the 1982 season (from Connecticut no less) I immediately looked up the phone number for the Seahawk ticket office. Before the rubber from her plane's tires hit the Logan Airport runway, I had my season tickets in hand (okay, not in hand - but paid for at least). Mind you I had no job in Seattle (yet) and no apartment - but I knew exactly where I'd be for 5 Sundays in the fall (based on the number of home games remaining after moving out there). The Kingdome.

Tragic Tale #2

Fast forward to 2001. The NFL schedules are out. A quick scan through the Seahawk home games exposes a potential snag. The conversation would probably go something like this: "Honey? How do you feel about spending our first wedding anniversary tailgating and watching the Seahawks? Outdoors? In Husky Stadium? In November?" But this was no ordinary game. It was Sunday Night Football and the Seahawks were hosting the Raiders (back when the Seahawks were in the AFC West). We made the most of it. An afternoon/evening full of tailgating with a menu that included surf and turf and sparking wine...the works! I even went as far as having one of those special messages appear on the scoreboard between quarters. And the reward? The Seahawks dominate the Raiders with Shaun Alexander rushing for 266 yards and 3 touchdowns (including an 88 yard touchdown). The clincher? Shaun was on my fantasy squad that year as well. Oh what a night...

Dude...I was at that game! Shaun was on my fantasy team as well that year, and it was my first Hawks game. I had moved out to Seattle a few months before. There was a section of obnoxious Raiders fans right behind where I was sitting, and it was a blast listening to them talk smack after the Raiders scored, and then go completely silent after Shaun ripped through the heart of their D. It was a total blast of a game.

This is my "tragic" story, but it's of another kind -- participatory sports.

My senior year in college at UVa, I made a (probably drunken) vow to a group of friends at Penn that I would play on their intramural softball team and make every game (hey, senior year ...). It was about a 5-hour drive from Charlottesville to West Philly. It was an ambitious pledge.

So there's this big Sunday tournament, and as fate would have it, Saturday night was my fraternity formal. I was seeing a girl who was attending GW at the time, and she was coming down for the event. Since I was planning to be up most of the night and had an out-of-town guest, I had no choice but to beg off the softball tourney, first game scheduled for 11:00 am. Right? My date and I are up until about 4:00 am, and as I'm laying in bed, I'm not having much luck falling asleep. About 6:00 am, the adrenaline starts to pump, I shake the girl awake and start screaming "pack up your ****, we're outta here." I drag the dumbfounded, too-tired-to-protest girl out to my used Toyota Corona and start barreling toward Washington -- I'm not a total jerk, I've got to at least drop her off back home (I did give her the choice of coming with me to the tournament but she looked at me like I was nuts). Of course, because of this side chore, I now can't use the Beltway, I've got to cut right into DC. I arrive at GW, barely slow down, push open the passenger's seat door, right foot her out onto the street (figuratively), and hit the accelerator. Soon I'm careening up I-95, racing against the clock, fracturing the occasional law or two along the way. To play softball. I come pulling onto the street where the team "locker room" (i.e. house we party in after the game) is, and start honking my horn at the team just as they are heading out to the field -- right on time. I'm greeted like Willis Reed when he made the big inspirational entry.

The story ends as you would expect. I was so exhausted, sometime that afternoon my feet got tangled in left field, letting in crucial runs. And the relationship ended, too (to be brutally accurate, it wasn't going to last much longer, anyway).

Gee, it's surprising that the relationship ended. Go figure.

Art sent out the call for more tragic stories, so I'm pulling out this one. It's not about me. It's about a guy whose name I don't even remember. But it is truly tragic.

October 2003, NLCS. I have my regular tickets in Miami for Games 3,4, and 5 (Row 8, behind visitors' dugout), and there's a guy sitting next to me in a Cubs jersey, mid-40s or so, very Chicago, like the "Ditka" routine guys from SNL. Obviously paid big bucks for these seats, not to mention travel. A real tragic. Now I'm a good natured fan, always interested in sufferers and their stories (hey, I wrote a book about the Red Sox), so over the course of 3 games, I get to know him a little, talking about his long, sorry life as a Cubfan.

Well, they go back to Chicago with the Cubs up 3-2, Bartman happens, you know the rest, heartbreak for the Cubs, again.

My crazy sports road trip buddy (same guy as my first post, top of the thread) has insider contacts with the Marlins (the crazy ones always do, don't they?), and he cops us a couple of nosebleed tickets to Games 1 and 2 of the WS in Yankee Stadium. We cash frequent flier miles, swing some sweetheart deal at the W Hotel down in Union Square, and fly up there. We bravely ride the 4-train up to the Bronx in full Marlins regalia for Game 1. Now, there are scant few Marlins fans milling around; many of this "inner core" so to speak are deeply connected with the team somehow (like married to a player, for example), and huddling with them as kindred spirits accross enemy lines, we learn from these insiders that the Marlins are staying at the Hyatt Grand Central.

You remember Game 1, Penny beats the Yankees, and we hop the train south all juiced up. As the train stops at Grand Central, a light bulb goes off and we hop off and head to the lobby of the Hyatt to see if we can "get a glimpse" of the victorious Fish.

Well, nobody gives a hoot about the Marlins, so we waltz right in, and the lobby is teeming with players, coaches, families, former players (I recall Ryan Dempster) who came in to support their homies, groupies, etc., and just a few handful of shmucky fans like us (it's the Marlins). The time of our lives. Hangin' with Dontrelle (I wish I hadn't bought him a beer, now), Uggy Urbina, Mike Redmond, Bill Robinson, etc.

As I'm walking through the lobby, I look down at a big, plush chair, and sitting there is ... Cubs guy! The jersey, everything! He looks completely out of place, and miserable to boot. "Hey, hey, dude, what the heck are you doing here?" So he goes on to tell me this story about how he and his wife were so sure that this was THE YEAR, they went deep into their savings, bought WS tickets, made expensive hotel and flight reservations, and after the Cubbies spit the bit again, they figured what the heck, they've waited their whole lives to go to a World Series, they're coming anyway to see the Yankees and Marlins. He seemed happy to see a semi-familiar face, but looked like he was going to cry the entire time we talked.

Does it get more tragic than that?

Hey Nation: If you think you've got it good, this guy has it better than anyone. and his team's going to the Super Bowl.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16739093/

Huh?