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Your best sports memory

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by MTM, Mar 29, 2020.

  1. ChrisLong

    ChrisLong Well-Known Member

    That's awesome.
     
  2. Sea Bass

    Sea Bass Well-Known Member

    Mine’s not a huge game, historically speaking. Game 2 of the 1990 first-round series between the Bruins and Whalers.

    My father and I were/are Bruins die-hards and we went with good family friends, another father-son pair, who just hated the Bruins but wanted to be there nonetheless. None of us Ontario boys had ever been to the Garden. So off we went, me missing a week of high school as an added bonus.

    Anyway, my father knew Harry Sinden’s nephew and was able to get pretty sweet seats. First row of the second level, directly over the Bruins’ net. Great building, phenomenal atmosphere. Hearing the fans get fired up every time Neely stepped on the ice. Chanting Mooooog after every save. Hurling vicious (I mean vicious) insults at Bob Sweeney (who was on their team!).

    Bruins win 3-1 to tie up the series they’d eventually win in seven on their way to the Stanley Cup Final (in which they got rinsed by Edmonton). I’ll never forget that night.

    Couple days later we all made our first trip to Fenway to watch Clemens vs. Morris on Opening Day. Sox won, which didn’t matter to me. Then we drove to Hartford that night for Game 3, which the Bruins lost. Safe to say the Hartford Civic Center was the least impressive of the three venues we visited.

    Man, I loved that trip.
     
    Last edited: Apr 1, 2020
  3. Songbird

    Songbird Well-Known Member

    If so, what teams/athletes would you have been covering?
     
  4. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    I saw Jordan in his second year, when he was just coming back from a knee injury that took away most of that season. He came off the bench against the Nets and scored 22 points in 22 minutes, but the Nets won.

    The other cool thing about it was my Dad and I got to see the game for free. We went to see the Nets play the Lakers earlier that season, and the game was a sellout. The Nets announced that, to thank the fans, we could get free tickets to another game for that season. Fans were given the choice of several games, and as I recall, one of them would have been against the Celtics, but my Dad knew he wouldn't be able to get off work for that one. So we saw the Nets against the Bulls.

    Kinda funny how teams back then were so willing to give away free tickets, especially to marquee games.
     
  5. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    Most memorable non-descript game I covered was a high school sectional final. Last inning, opposing team has a runner on first with two outs and Local Team is ahead by one run. Batter hits ball to Local Team's second baseman, who throws to first. Ball beats runner by a few steps, but the throw's a little low, the first baseman catches it, and, from the home plate side, you can see part of the ball appear to hit the ground just as the runner crosses first.

    The umpire was stationed down the right field line, can only see the glove, can't see the ball, and rules the batter out. Local Team starts jumping up and down cheering and they come off the field. Meanwhile, opposing team's runner keeps running, rounds around third and crosses the plate. Opposing Team's manager comes out to the home plate ump, points out the ball may have briefly popped out of the glove. Home plate ump agrees, confers with first base ump, and they rule the batter safe and the run scores. Meanwhile, Local Team's fans are going ballistic because they thought the game was over.

    Game went an extra inning, and Opposing Team eventually won. Local Team's first baseman insisted she didn't bobble the ball. Local Team's coach walked away when I tried to ask her some questions on the game (she later apologized and said she was too upset to talk, and was very professional in subsequent dealings).
     
  6. Sea Bass

    Sea Bass Well-Known Member

    I don’t get why the run scored. The original call was out, which would have ended the game. Why was the ball not dead? Seems to me that once they declared the batter safe at first, the runner should have been placed at second.
     
    Donny in his element likes this.
  7. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    As I recall, the rationale was that the batter was technically safe and there was no time out call. Not that Local Team would have thought to call time out when they thought the game was over.

    It was a really crazy ending.
     
  8. OscarMadison

    OscarMadison Well-Known Member

    Thank you for posting your stories.

    My stories are more about the experience of the games than the games themselves. They're too mememememe to be good reporting. I know better than to think anything else. Maybe they're field notes of a sort.

    A quick confession to set this up: I decided I wanted to be a monster maker. One of the farm schools for ILM* over in Marin, CCAC (now known as CCA,) was located just a few miles from the Oakland/Berkeley line. Score! I could go to art school AND see my beloved A's and Raiders!

    I did see the A's play.

    The Raiders were another story. Even though there was talk they were coming back to the East Bay before the season started, no sign of their return meant their fans would spend another year watching and listening to them play in LA. I got to know many members of the mid-80s' vintage Raiders faithful. I watched games in living rooms and at bars with people who showed up in fan gear that was sometimes ready to wear from the store, sometimes homemade. I spent some afternoons and evenings in kitchens with people who are around my age now listening to color on the radio by people who had devoted their adult lives to Oakland sports.

    It was the first time I'd ever been fully immersed in a tribe that wasn't my own. I saw devotion drawn with very different lines than what I was used to seeing. I learned a lot about civic pride and communitas. My biggest regret is that I didn't write very much down. At the time, I honestly thought I was going to be detailing C3PO's shiny metal ass for the rest of my professional life.

    *Industrial Light and Magic, the FX arm of Lucasfilm.
     
    Neutral Corner likes this.
  9. ChrisLong

    ChrisLong Well-Known Member

    Another of the nondescript variety:
    JC baseball, a one-game playoff after the teams tied for first. Bottom of the 10th, home team gets a runner to third with one out. Next batter lofts one down the left-field line that is going to hook foul. The left fielder makes a mad dash, crosses the foul line and make a spectacular diving catch. As he skids into the bullpen benches, the runner on third casually tags up and trots across the plate with the winning run.

    This was the same game. I did not like the coach of the team I covered. He directly lied to me one time and I called him out on it after another coach I knew told me what I wrote was wrong. He also was one of those guys who thinks the coach wins the game and tries every gimmick to get an edge. One of his favorites was the double-squeeze -- and everybody knew it. Runners on second (fast runner) and third. The coach calls for a squeeze bunt trying to score both runners if the fielder throws it to first. This time, the batter popped up the bunt into a triple play. Was it worth the gamble? Well, in his two previous at-bats, against the same pitcher, the batter hit two homers that left the field in about 2 seconds and traveled well over 400 feet each. But Genius Manager calls for a double-squeeze. To me, it was horrible that the otherwise-enjoyable movie "Major League" ended with the Tribe squeezing in Willie Mays Hayes from second base.
     
  10. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    For the non-descript category, I did a quick Royals-Cardinals road trip in July 2000.
    Went to a Royals-Tigers game on Sunday in Kansas City, which was about as non-descript as it got in 2000. Cool thing was, I bought tickets the week before the game and found one in the third row, right behind the Tigers' on-deck circle, for about $17. Best seats I've ever had for an MLB game. I felt like a big shot.

    On Monday I drove to St. Louis to catch most of a Cardinals-Reds series. Went to the games on Tuesday and Wednesday, and got to see Griffey and McGwire play -- McGwire's BP sessions in those days were a spectacle unto themselves. The first game of the series was a day game on July 4, and there are two things I remember from it:
    1) Griffey signing autographs for a bunch of kids in the dugout after the game.
    2) After the Cardinals and Reds played, a couple of random American Legion teams had apparently rented the place out and played a game. I had nothing better to do, so I stuck around and watched most of it. It was cool, because there were only a couple hundred people in the stands of a 50,000-seat stadium. I spent most of the game just moving to different sections in the lower bowl and looking at the stadium from different angles. It's something you don't really get to do very often, and it was fun to take in the little details of everything that you're too busy or distracted to notice while the game is going on.
     
  11. FileNotFound

    FileNotFound Well-Known Member

    The best basketball game I've even seen, at any level, was the Missouri Class 3A girls state championship game in 1988. Two unbeaten teams back and forth all game. Duchesne took a 6-point lead in the fourth quarter, only to have Marshfield come back to tie the game. Marshfield then went into a stall and the teams exchanged free throws. Marshfield trailed by one with one starter having fouled out and three others playing with four fouls. In the final seconds, Marshfield's Melody Howard missed a mid-range jumper, but teammate Stacy Nunn rebounded it, pump-faked and scored as the clock expired. Marshfield's winning streak went on to exceed 100 consecutive games over the next three years, and Howard led Southwest Missouri State into the NCAA Final Four in 1992.
     
  12. MTM

    MTM Well-Known Member

    Personal sports most memorable moment.

    In 1974 I was 14 and playing in the Senior Minors division in my local Little League. The schedule was set up in two halves, with the winner of each playing for the championship. My team tied for first place in the second half and won a playoff game on Friday night to advance to the championship game, which was Saturday. Under the rules, pitchers couldn't throw two days in a row so we couldn't use the two guys who pitched Friday. Also, our best pitcher had thrown earlier in the week, so he could only go five innings in the championship game under the nine innings a week rule. We lobbied the league to move the championship game to Sunday so all pitchers would be in play, but were rejected.

    In the title game, instead of starting their ace, the other team started their second pitcher, who grew up to be noted horse racing expert Jay Privman. We got to Jay early and led 17-5 after five innings when our ace was done. We brought in the managers' son, who had never pitched before, and he started walking guys. It was 17-10 after six innings. Things didn't get any better in the seventh, and we brought in our catcher, who was an identical twin to one of our pitchers. We had asked our manager to just switch their jerseys, no one but their mom would have known the difference, but he said he didn't want to cheat to win. We ended up losing, 18-17.

    My best friend then and now was our first pitcher and as some of our teammates were in tears, we just laughed at the absurdity. We still tip one to the game annually on the anniversary
     
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