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Your Favorite Moment in Sports

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Songbird, Dec 26, 2012.

  1. Jake_Taylor

    Jake_Taylor Well-Known Member

    There are a few that stood out even though I didn't have a rooting interest in them.

    Boise State beating Oklahoma was unbelievable to watch unfold. Bolt's 100m in 2008 made me go "holy shit" in way no single athlete had since Bo Jackson in his prime.

    An incredible moment for me as a fanboi was in 2005. I covered a game and then helped finish the section on a Friday night before heading straight to the airport. I had to get to Lawrence the next afternoon because I knew Kansas was going to beat Nebraska for the first time in my lifetime. Apparently I wasn't the only one to feel that way. When I got to the gate for my connecting flight in Chicago most of the people there were wearing KU garb. I talked to the guy next to me on the plane about the June Henley jersey I'd had since high school and how if Glen Mason would have just given the ball to Henley one more time in 1993 he would have gotten the 2-point conversion with less than a minute left and that goddamned streak would have ended 12 years earlier.

    The real moment came with about five and a half minutes left in the game when Kevin Kane intercepted Zac Taylor and went 40 yards for the touchdown. The PAT made it 40-15 and the entire stadium was waving the wheat, because for once it wasn't filled with 70 percent Husker fans and the Nebraska people that were there were heading to their cars.

    But my moment of moments was in 1988 when the ball came off the backboard in Kemper Arena, Danny Manning grabs his 18th rebound to go along with 31 points and time expires. Manning cradled the ball and ran toward midcourt where he was mobbed while everyone in my house is going nuts. A few minutes later you start to hear people in the streets of our tiny Kansas town whooping and screaming. Horns are honking and you can hear the chant "Roooooock Chaaaaaalk JaaaaaaayHaaaaaawk."

    KU winning that national championship is the earliest memory of an event where I can recall ever detail. I was 7, and I have vague memories of being with my dad and watching Royals winning the World Series and Hagler vs. Hearns a a few years earlier, but not like this. Twenty years later I watched the team I'd loved longer than anything other than my parents do it again. But in 2008 I was in the newsroom and when Mario Chalmers hit the 3-pointer to send it to overtime my first thought was that I was going to have to change my front, only a few seconds later did it sink in that just this once I should be happy about an overtime. That was the moment that I realized sports was never going to be like it was for me when I was a kid again. It's sad in a way, but it only makes looking back on the moments that inspired you as a kid even more special.
     
  2. Crash

    Crash Active Member

    "In your life, have you seen anything like that?"

     
  3. Riptide

    Riptide Well-Known Member

    When Ben Crenshaw sobbed for Harvey Penick after winning the 1995 Masters.

    From Sports Illustrated:

    Maybe Harvey Penick has learned to channel golf tips through Augusta caddies, or maybe Crenshaw went out and won all by himself. However it happened, Crenshaw birdied the next two holes — the 16th from five feet and the 17th from 13 — for a two-stroke cushion. In the gallery Julie Crenshaw's makeup started to run a little, and back in Austin, Charlie Crenshaw soaked his sleeves with tears, and Tinsley Penick held a celebration for two with only one person in the room.

    When Crenshaw bogeyed the 18th for a 68 and a 14-under-par, one-stroke victory, he bent over at the waist and held his face in his hands and cried. Then he came out of the scoring tent and held Julie's face in his hands, and they both cried. Then he hugged his sobbing brother, Charlie, and everybody cried. All in all, you would've loved to have had a piece of the Kleenex concession.

    "I believe in fate," said Crenshaw when it was all over. "I don't know how it happened. I don't."
     
  4. Songbird

    Songbird Well-Known Member

    Definitely. I wanted Georgetown to win that in the worst way.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 15, 2014
  5. RecoveringDesker

    RecoveringDesker Active Member

    Great story, but one very, very, very quibble -- Tim Stoddard played basketball for N.C. State, not Carolina.
     
  6. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    The 2001 LSU-Auburn game is a great memory, maybe my fondest in a long line of Saturday nights in Tiger Stadium.
    The two schools had developed a great and very underrated rivalry over the previous decade, with a lot of "name games" -- The Interception Game, The Night the Magic Came Back, The Night the Barn Burned, etc. They were always played in September, but usually had some bearing on the SEC West race. LSU hadn't won a division title at that point. They'd been close, tied with Alabama or Auburn a couple of times, but always lost the tiebreaker.

    Finally, in 2001, everything broke right. LSU won its last three or four games and had about six other things fall in exactly the right combination to have a shot at the SEC West title. That included facing Auburn at home the first Saturday in December. Because of 9/11, the game had been postponed -- along with Florida-Tennessee, which was for the SEC East title -- so you ended up with the de facto SEC playoffs.
    Tennessee upset Florida that afternoon, and LSU-Auburn was at night. Auburn got a 15-yard penalty before the kickoff for jumping on LSU's logo. LSU went for and recovered an onside kick on the opening kickoff, went in and scored, and destroyed Auburn all night. The final was 28-14, IIRC, but it wasn't really that close. It was an ass-kicking against a heated rival and possibly the biggest game in recent history for LSU. They've won national titles since, but that was the night they really broke through and became relevant in the SEC.

    Among the highlights was a cloud of cigar smoke hanging over the upper deck in the final minutes (Tommy Tuberville had infamously smoked a victory cigar on LSU's field a couple of years prior), the aforementioned onside kick (a genius move by Nick Saban) and enough venom from the fans to make the Black Hole denizens blush. It was easily the most intense crowd I've ever seen at a sporting event. Afterward, one Auburn fan's van was set on fire and there were reports that crowds were rocking Auburn's team bus.

    The best moment, though, was Auburn kicker Damon Duval getting his ass kicked by LSU's tuba section at halftime.
    For some reason, he had come out at halftime to kick field goals. He did this while LSU's band was playing. Their big finale is to march from one end of the field to the other, which takes a solid minute to do. As soon as they started, you could this collision unfolding.
    They started at one end zone and Duval kept kicking. They got to the 30-yard line and he kept kicking. The 50 ... still kicking ... the other 30 ... still kicking ...
    WTF?
    Most of the band walked around Duval, but the tuba players were sort of stuck. They couldn't go around, so they went through. Bumped Duval aside as they passed, almost started a fight and got a standing ovation from the geeked-up crowd.
    Kind of a symbolic moment of that night.
     
  7. Lugnuts

    Lugnuts Well-Known Member

    My favorite moment in sports happened when I was 13 years old, and my father was coaching my girls softball team.

    We were a somewhat crappy team playing the undefeated almighty Angels. We'd played an amazing game waaay out of our butts and were winning 2-0 in the bottom of the 9th... when they loaded the bases with nobody out.

    Dad called a meeting of the entire team to the mound. He told all the outfielders to come in and play infield. In our league, we played 4 outfielders. He looked us in the eyes and repeated the phrase over and over: "If the ball is hit to you, throw it home. If the ball is hit to you, throw it home." Picture an entire team lining the infield. The Angels freaked out. 3 weak grounders hit to the shortstop. Three outs at home plate.

    Game over, we win. :)

    Balls, ladies and gentlemen, balls.
     
  8. heyabbott

    heyabbott Well-Known Member

    1975, in try outs for a summer baseball All Star, I parked the only 10 pitches I saw deep into the woods behind the RF fence.

    Made the team.
     
  9. Songbird

    Songbird Well-Known Member

    Mine was 1982. Last game of the LL season. Top-6, bases loaded, we're up a run or two. I'm playing shortstop. Lefty batter ...

    ... earlier in the season the same situation arose -- bases loaded, two outs -- and a grounder is hit to me. Instead of just flipping it to the second baseman I try to throw it home. Flubbed that up ...

    ... so I was very happy when I saw a lefty batter up there. Donnie was our pitcher. He was very good. I remember thinking "He's a lefty and won't hit it my way" and then the kid hit a liner straight at me. I put up my glove out of instinct alone and before I even realized it the ball with in my glove. Game over. Everyone rushes toward me, coach picks me over his shoulder. I asked if I could keep the ball. Coach said no.

    My dad and two brothers were in the dugout waiting for me. I know I wanted paternal affection but the best my dad could do was kind of shake my hand. I remember it being an odd moment and I wish he would have celebrated something I accomplished for once in my life but I was at least happy he was there. It's the only game he ever watched me play in baseball. I played soccer for 10 years and he never came to a game because of work.

    He took my brothers and me out to Pioneer Chicken to celebrate the winning catch.
     
  10. FileNotFound

    FileNotFound Well-Known Member

    * Missouri Class 3A girls basketball championship, 1988. Undefeated Marshfield vs. undefeated St. Charles Duchesne. Neither team led by more than 3 points the entire game, as I recall. Marshfield won on a Derreck-Whittenburg-to-Lorenzo-Charles-style last-second offensive rebound of an airball, 59-58. By far the best basketball game I've ever seen, at any level.

    * The Kirk Gibson home run. I said to all those assembled in my living room that night when he limped up to the plate, "Watch this sumbitch hit it out of the park." I meant it sarcastically.

    * But really, truly, nothing matches J-Mac:
     
  11. Riptide

    Riptide Well-Known Member

    I was at this NCAA first-rounder in 1989. It was phenomenal.
    Whatever happened to Mike Buck? He was six for six on 3-pointers.

    http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1989-03-17/sports/8901140941_1_seminoles-forward-tony-dawson-fsu

    -- No Seminole scoring in the final 5:22 of the game while an MTSU freshman sixth man by the name of Mike Buck was going nuts. Hitting everything from 3-pointers to breakaway layups to free throws, Buck scored 17 of the Blue Raiders` final 21 points. He came into the game averaging five points a game; he left it scoring 26. The Seminoles will be pulling Buck shots out of their hide until next November.
     
  12. Bruce Leroy

    Bruce Leroy Active Member

    Notre Dame-Miami in 1988. I was 8 years old, at the game with my dad, ran down onto the field afterward, and had an ND student with his face painted pick me up and spin me around in the air during the celebration, which was pretty damn cool when you're 8. And Pat Terrell's play on the two-point conversion was in the same end zone as our seats, opposite corner.
     
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