Catastrophic Sports Moments

I was reading an article about an ailing Jean Van de Velde visiting Carnoustie this weekend for the British Open (in Golf!). For those who are not aware what transpired with Van de Velde 8 years ago on the last hole on Sunday at the British Open, here is a brief summary: Van de Velde played beautifully for the first three days and up until the last hole of the tournament. He was leading by 3 strokes going to the last hole where he butchered it! He ended up triple bogeying to get into a playoff which he of course lost.

There are few equivalents in sports to a disaster like this. Let's see, a baseball equivalent would be to be up by 5 runs in Game 7 of the World Series and then lose by giving up a Grand Slam with 2 outs and 2 strikes. Yup, that bad! In basketball it would be like losing to a four point play as the clock expires-yeah, as an opposing fan you have to watch the guy nail a free throw after making an improbable half-court three pointer.

Given the magnitude of this, it screwed Van de Velde so bad that he lost his appetite, sleeps long and apparently is suffering from some mysterious illness now. Poor fella!

Everyone makes such a big deal out of spectacular failures in sports that it almost makes you feel sorry for these athletes but not so fast! All the adulation that they receive is soaked in but failures like these are not handled well. I think it is fair although the press does prolong this more than they should.

Which made me think, what are the catastrophic sports failures that you experienced as a fan . Here are mine:

-Growing up, I was a huge Cricket fan, so that last ball 6 that freakin' Javed Miandad hit to beat India in the early 1990s (not sure what year it was) stayed with me for a long while. Multiple subsequent crushings of Pakistan did not lessen the bad memory, will always remember the cocky Miandad walking off the field after hitting one out!

-India's loss to England in the 1987 Cricket World Cup Semi-Final when Graham f'in Gooch (or whatever his name was) swept India out. England had no business being in the Final. I remember my dad telling me after that match that he would not waste his time on Cricket anymore.

-Argentina losing to Germany in the 1990 World Cup is still in my memory for some reason. Was a huge Diego Maradona fan.

-The numerous times that Goran Ivanisevic lost in Wimbledon either in the Finals or semi-finals was so freakin' frustrating to watch. He just could not take the next step. It was as frustrating to watch as it was to play for him. This pain went away when Goran finally won Wimbledon recently. I always loved his game. Saw him play live at the US Open in 2001 and he seemed content.

-Game 7 1997 World Series loss by the Indians to the un-deserving Marlins. F'in Jose Mesa, blew it in the 9th inning of Game 7! I was a rabid Indians fan at the time and vividly remember staying up watching the Marlins celebrate after the miraculous comeback-not sure why. As painful as it was, I watched it. It ended at 2 in the morning and I had a Inorganic Chemistry Final in 7 hours and I had studied squat!

-Game 5 1999 Divisional Series loss by the Indians to the Red Sox. I was not a Red Sox fan in those days and imagine how painful it was to see an injured Pedro come in and no-hit the Indians for 6 innings. Despite hating at the time, it is tough not to respect someone like him who gave a crap about his livelihood (injured shoulder) and came out of the bullpen to no-hit a strong hitting team like Cleveland.

-Of course no journey in pain is complete without rehashing the 2003 ALCS Game 7 loss of the Red Sox against the Yankees. I was living in Lyon at the time but had followed the whole season from there by watching Red Sox games on MLB TV via the internet. My routine used to involve sleeping from 8 to 3 in the morning and then get up at 3 to go wake up my friend Chantal at her place to watch it on her computer. Remember Game 7 very clearly and at the time I did not think too much about Grady leaving Pedro in there after the 7th (did not know what Pedro's pitch count was). I mean even after that there were multiple chances for Grady to pull Pedro up until the 5th and tying run scored and for reasons unexplained he did not do it. I do think that sports is what it is, just sports but you should have tried explaining that to me after Game 7. I got up from my chair, it was 6 in the morning, walked down the stairs of Chantal's apt and just wandered around Lyon for 2 h. It was not a good feeling at all. Strange how sometime things like that make you feel.

ok, time to go sleepy.