Your worst moment playing sports

The time I head-butted that Italian dude in the World Cup final.

 

Crashing and burning at 21 miles in my first marathon. The final five miles were awful, still finished in 3:28.

The good news was, I did run my third-fastest half-marathon in that same race. Which directly led to the crash-and-burn eight miles later. First-time marathon mistake I learned from.

 

Mine came during a high school swim meet. Sophomore year, if I remember right, during the 200 meter individual medley. For all you non-swimmers, that's 50 meters each of butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle in that order. Probably the most grueling event at a high school meet.
Anyway, I wasn't very good. But this time I hit the freestyle leg and see a guy all the way on the other side of the pool who's not that far ahead of me. We're racing for fifth, and at that point in my career beating somebody would have been as good as finishing first. So I kick it in, start closing on him and make a pretty good flip turn.
And then my stomach starts doing flip-flops. As I'm swimming, I threw up in the pool.
I go from swimming like a madman to barely inching forward, or at least that's what it felt like. Obviously, I didn't catch the other guy. But I didn't stop, either, and finished the race. So I've always been kind of proud about that. And to this day I have no idea if it was a dry heave or if there were floating chunks.

Maybe the worst part of the whole thing came after the race. After I got out of the pool, I told one of the officials what had happened. By then, the girls 50-meter freestyle was already on the starting blocks and he just said, "There's nothing we can do about it now." So the really hot girl who swam in that lane in the next race might have gotten part of my lunch stuck on her goggles.

 

As bad as my British soccer experience was, my brother suffered a worse humiliation than I did.

He was in sixth grade, playing a Saturday league basketball game. This team he played against had a 6-5 kid, athletic as hell. Ran the floor well, could shoot, block and rebound. Well, after a couple minutes, this other team knew that my brother's team wasn't going to do much. They parked one kid in the other lane and let the tall kid block the shot/rebound, throw to the other end of the court and lay it in.

Halftime was 42-0. 30-point mercy rule was in effect. To this day, I have never seen a shutout in basketball.

 

I missed my freshman year of sports because of a shoulder injury suffered by throwing way too much the summer before, but I came out and played JV ball my sophomore season. It was one hell of an adjustment for me, being a scrawny, tall kid who suddenly was dealing with curves, sliders and the like. I went hitless for the first 10 games of the season.

We're playing a team that is really good (our record was something along the lines of 1 and 15), and we're on the team bus before the game. I'm thinking if we play like we did in our one victory, we have a shot -- yeah, I was that kind of player. Anyway, the coach stands there and says:

"We have no chance of winning guys, so I don't care what happens. So-and-so, you've always wanted to pitch but never have...you're starting there. So-and-so, you've always played right field...you're playing third today."

Then he looks at me.

"And you, you can't hit...you're batting cleanup."

I went 1 for 3 with a single, we were destroyed (our coach stopped keeping score) and I turned in my uniform at the end of the season. Never played competitive baseball again.

Wasn't the worst feeling ever experienced on the field, but it was one of the most hurtful I've ever been part of in organized sports.

 

Every time I got pinned in wrestling in HS. Nothing is more humiliating (ESPECIALLY in HS) than another person showing to a large group of people that he is either A) physically better than you or B) you royally screwed up and the guy took advantage of your fuck-up.

 

last year of little league. my team tied for first with the team three of my best buds were on. i was a "star" catcher.

we had a title playoff game on a monday night. we lost a great, well-played game, which included my best friend to this day pitching. i was thrown out on a key play to deep short, with another good friend nailing me by a step.

i get home and realize i need to call my shortstop friend to get a homework assignment i was missing. man, making that call was haaaard.

p.s. -- 37 or so years later, i still rag on my dad for not making it to the game that night.

 

I never was that great at sports (I just stuck with cheerleading for a few years). I pretty much stayed out of playing sports because of how much I sucked when I was little. And don't let the "left-handed advantage" fool you. It didn't work for me back then.

Case in point: One day when I was in about the third grade, I was playing softball in the back yard with my older sister. The picnic table was first base, the stump was second, and the wheelbarrow was third.

So there I was up to bat. My sister would pitch slowly to me, because I was so little, but I swear it made me even worse. I hit the ball on the first swing. I knew it went mostly up instead of out, but I figured I'd at least try to run in case it wasn't a foul.

I ran as fast as my scrawny little legs could carry me. Just about the time I made it to the picnic table WHAM!! I was knocked to the ground. I had hit myself with my own foul ball!!

I think that moment left me scarred for life.

 

Oh and in that same day, after I got over hurting myself, I went to pitch for my sister. Well apparently my reaction time was down because she hit the ball and it came straight for me. I can still remember seeing it make a hard straight line at me, so fast that I didn't have time to react. It hit me square in the chest, knocked me down, plus knocked the breath out of me. That was really an unpleasant day.

 

It was indeed me who shared the painful story of our inaugural soccer team (at a football haven school) getting whacked 0-20 on the season and never scoring a goal. Our assistance coach was one really great guy who knew zero about soccer.

You know who was in goal for half of each game and you know who got a kick right in the junk during one particularly forgetful game, and allowed five or six goals in one half.

 

Pulling my hamstring shortly after the section meet junior year of high school, three weeks after breaking 11 seconds in the 100-meter dash was by far my worst moment. I came out senior year 15 pounds heavier and just never got my form back after spending most of the season trying to get back into shape. What a year it could have been. :'(

 

striking out with the bases loaded and my team down a run during an Easter baseball tournament my senior year. I never struck out (had 4 in 2.5 years before that) but afterwards, I struck out maybe 10 more times that season.

we went from a 4-3 lead with 2 outs and nobody on in the top of the final inning to losing 5-4 in the bottom of the inning. we loaded the bases with no outs and our 4-5-6 hitters up (I was No. 5) and we popped up, struck out, lined out.