When Has Sports Broken Your Heart?

Spinning off another thread: Watching, I think it was Tom Watson missing his putt to win the Open. It was all so perfect, especially for his fellow old men. It was like you were about to see the rising of every saint and instead saw... Stewart Cink?

Playing, man... A bunch. This will sound stupid, but last season, in my old man fall football league, we had a great year. I was playing well at 44—I'm the goalkeeper—and we won the league and then made it to the final of the playoffs. It was at night, under lights, bad wind, snow falling. It was kind of beautiful but also really tough conditions.

We lost 3-0, and I got a fingertip to all three goals. They were all an inch out of reach. We didn't come close to scoring, so it's not like we were robbed, but I still have this fantasy that I made all three saves and we went to a shootout and we won.

It's a meaningless league with a bunch of old men playing and drinking beer after, but that loss has eaten at me for months. I have no idea why, but I suspect it's for the same reasons that the Tom Watson loss broke me: Time always tells, and somehow you gotta find a way to be okay with that.

 

Goals in football? What kind of socialist crap are you trying to spread around here!?!

Kidding.

Post college girlfriend. Smart. Fun to be with. Was really happy. I told her I wanted to train for a marathon. She said she wanted to train for a marathon. I assumed that meant we would train for a marathon together. My mistake. What was a great relationship, broke down quicker than it should have because of training runs and marathons. We ended up breaking up about two weeks before the marathon, which was one of those destination ones. We were with a group so we switched out rooms and plane tickets. Didn’t help because it made for a shitty experience as I ran.

 

Alex Gonzalez booting an easy double-play ball in the 2003 NLCS. And I was at the game.

Also everything that happened after Muhsin Muhammad's TD catch in Super Bowl XLI, and Derrick Rose collapsed on the court in the final minute of a blowout playoff win.

 

Kawhi's four-bounce dagger. The heart-break lasted about two seconds. I nearly slammed my forehead on the TV room coffee table, then popped up and was fine. I'm 50, and the only other person in the room was a kid who didn't care at all about the game and was waiting to watch another show. So that sped my recovery. But I felt it.

 

Welcome to the board, Steve Bartman.

As I said on the other thread, Game 7 of the 1986 World Series was the worst because it was nine innings of knowing -- knowing! -- the Sox were gonna lose. They were so cosmically mind-fucked (and so was the fanbase) that nothing was stopping the Mets from winning. The fact there was a one-day delay for rain made the damn thing even more fucking interminable.

I didn't go to school for two days after Game 7. I was 13 years old, had listened to upwards of 100 games on WTIC that season (because I lived in southern CT and we rarely got Sox games on TV), so I was all-in that season, the last before I developed a serious interest in girls. And so, basically the last summer of innocent youth. Goddamn that loss hurt.

 

2003 Red Sox, but they’ve more than made up for it since.

 

Clint Fucking Longley.

 

2nd and 26.

 

Wings getting swept by the Devils when I was in high school. But then they became a powerhouse for 25 years, so all is well there.

Personally, losing out the starting QB job in high school. I had the better arm, but the coach ran veer-option and I really stopped caring when I kept being told to stop throwing the ball and hand it to the RB. So I quit and got a part-time job at the local TV station, shooting the games on Friday night. I should have never done that. Look where it got me, becoming a journalist!

 

The Vince Young-Reggie Bush-Texas-USC Rose Bowl. My daughter wanted it so bad. I wanted it for her, so she could get to experience a national championship while being at the Rose Bowl for the first time.