Best and worst sports moments for cities

The Super Bowl losses, Hull's foot in the crease, losing the Braves, epic playoff collapse vs. the Oilers ... has there been a good moment?

 

OJ Si..shit

 

AFL championships; OJ's 2003 yards; the comeback vs. the Oilers; French Connection; Bob McAdoo; Pilot Field, the prototype for the retro ballpark craze; making four straight Super Bowls; UB's recent basketball success, a great triple-A franchise. It hasn't all been bad.

I take solace in that while it hurt to lose the Braves, they also failed in San Diego and were a disaster in LA for decades. There is no antidote for bad ownership.

And St. Louis lost four pro franchises, the National League abandoned New York, the NFL abandoned San Diego, Oakland, Los Angeles (twice), Baltimore and Cleveland, the NBA and AL abandoned Seattle and Kansas City, etc. The Braves have lots of company.

 

Got IT!!!!!

 

I always count the final scene from the Natural as a great Buffalo sports moment. Also, according to a documentary I once saw, the filming of the Natural helped spread the idea of Buffalo Wings to the West Coast. I swear they have a clip of a Redford in a Knights uniform talking about how he never tasted anything like buffalo wings and would miss them when he went back west. The presumption was the entire crew went back thinking the same way and soon buffalo wings became a thing.

 

It's a great sports town, its rather dismal sports history not withstanding. And even with three major-league teams (at one point), some of my favorite memories are of Buffalo Bisons baseball at the Rockpile (and Pilot, a great facility), Buffalo Bisons hockey from the old eight-team American Hockey League and Canisius/Niagara basketball doubleheaders at the Aud, which was truly a sports palace.

One of my earliest sports memories is going to WMS and seeing the Bisons play Rochester because my parents were big Luke Easter fans from when he played in Buffalo and they wanted to see him play one final time. He had to be in his early 40s, because it was 1960 or 1961 thereabouts.

My parents were extras in The Natural, but didn't make it on camera. And the book was written when Malamud was an English prof at Microville Tech, less than three miles from my home of the past 35 years.

 

The Braves had a brief shining moment about 1974-76, with McAdoo and Ernie D, when it looked like they were an up and coming power in the East.

That was about when OJ was at his peak, too.

 

I had never heard of Lucious (Luke) Easter so I looked him up. Wikipedia said his age was unknown but that in 1940 he was playing semi-pro ball in St. Louis. In the 1940 census a Lucious Easter was living in St. Louis and had an estimated birth date of 1916. His children were listed as eight and six in the census so he may well have been older.

But if we use the 1916 birth date he would have been 42 in 1958 when he was the MVP of the International League.

 

Buffalo is a great town, sports or otherwise. Never had a bad time there.

 

What a shitty 3 days for Cincinnati sports ...

Friday: Bearcat gridders blow a perfect season after a 3rd and 2 pass call fizzles and begets Georgia's buzzer-beating 53-yard field goal.

Saturday: Bearcat cagers lost at home to Tulsa for the first time in 54 years.

Sunday: Bengals end season at home with a 35-point loss in which they gained just 195 yards with a QB who went 6 of 21 for 48 yards and 2 picks.​

 

Um, it was 21 games, not 23. Nobody beats the 1988 Orioles 22 times in a row.

 

My favorite NBA player as a teenager was Bob McAdoo. I started reading the sports pages as a nine year old in Greensboro. McAdoo went to Smith High School and I had lived in the Smith district so he was my favorite (Lou Hudson was from Greensboro but went to another high school). I remember watching a Braves playoff game and betting my best friend that he would score 50. He did and I ate free pizza that night.