Thursday, October 2, 2008

Great Moments/Events in Sports

I'm not feeling so hot today, so this may be a touch short. As a preface I would like to say how disturbed I am with Boyd writing in his last post that he likes the NBA so much he would make love to it. You know the league is full of large men, right? I found that particularly disturbing. Not that there's anything wrong with that, huh Rich?
What a great night it was last night. I had a long day at work dealing with frustration constantly, only to discover that my beloved Dodgers were pounding the crap out of the Cubbies. I don't have too many really good times in sports because I cheer for teams that never win, other than the Lakers. The Dodgers? Last did something in 1988. The Seahawks? Well, they've never really done much, so that's a constant frustration. The Lakers bury me because they have a bunch of pricks on their team that I can't stand right now. My teams in college will their conference pretty regularly, but nothing on the national scale. The fact that none of my teams are particularly impressive means I have to look for other things in sports that tickle my fancy... Literally. Here are some of my favorite things I've ever seen in sports. They aren't my absolute favorite, just some that came to mind while I was realizing how pathetic my teams are.


Hitting the Wall - This is my favorite baseball play of all time, bar none. The first time I saw this I was sitting downstairs at my parent's house with my father. We were talking and we both just erupted laughing so hard we were crying. We even bought a blooper tape just so we could have this highlight and review it whenever we wanted to. FYI - The guy who makes this amazing play is Rodney McCray, who was drafted by the Dodgers in 1983. Rodney has said that he is upset he didn't run through a Coke or Pepsi sign so he could have at least gotten some endorsement money out of it. Just loop this clip - it's amazing.

via videosift.com


Randy Flips the Bird - This is just amazing. How random is it that The Big Unit (the most graphic nickname in sports by the way - why not just nickname him the Long Penis?) destroys this fowl on a heater? Beautiful.



Chris - Jim Rome is known for running "smack." He had been calling Jim Everett "Chris" on his radio show, implying that Jim is a bit of a pansy. So, Jim Everett comes on Jim Rome's show on ESPN 2 (this is before Rome blew up something fierce) and tells Rome that he doesn't think he'll call him Chris to his face. Well, Rome does it and Everett goes for the throat - literally. Seeing Jim/Chris's reaction to this makes me wonder if all of the athletes that listen to the Jungle get all bent out of shape about Rome and want to kick his trash. I'm not a clone, but I love Jim Rome - he's the best there is.



The Celebration - This might be the funniest thing I have ever seen in sports. Bill Gramatica made a 42 yard field goal in the first half of an early season game against the Giants in 2001. He was so excited to give his team a 3-0 lead in this regular season game that he jumped up to celebrate and came down with a torn ACL. I don't like to make fun of people's injuries much, but this is absolutely awesome. I was unable to find any video of this one - how can that be? It should be plastered everywhere. If anyone can find it, please let me know.


Derek Fisher - I know many Jazz fans hate Derek Fisher because he bailed on Utah to go back to LA, but this is one of the most amazing shots in NBA history. It just doesn't seem possible for Fish to be able to get the shot off in time, let alone make it. The frustration of this is that they went on to lose to the Pistons in The Finals that season, but the shot is still incredible.



Give some feedback - what are your favorite moments in sports? It's probably easier for those of you who cheer for teams that actually win on occasion.

2 comments:

Rob said...

Lakers, Horry, '04, v. the Kings. I have to say that Game 7 of that series was also a great moment for me, watching with my roommate in a girl's apartment we hardly knew because we had no TV in ours in Berkeley.

The Fish shot was awesome. I was in another Berkeley apartment I was living in (we had a TV there), and after Duncan hit his shot, you could hear the screams of delight from the Laker haters echo from the the apartment buildings all around us. The SF bay is filled with Laker haters. But there are plenty of displaced LA kids up there for school. I must say, though, I didn't hear their screams. I was screaming too loud to hear anything - for about 5 minutes straight.

Taylor, Taylor! While the Dodgers have not won it all (or even a playoff series) since '88, they still have given us, well at least me, plenty of memories!:

Sept. 18, 2006. The Dodgers, in the heat of a pennant race, hit 4 freakin' consecutive HRs to tie the game against the Pads in the bottom of the 9th (against Trevor Hoffman no less), then win it on another HR by Nomar in the 10th. I tuned in after the first homerun on my buddy's Slingbox, because I was in Provo and couldn't pick up the game on TV. The homeruns just kept coming. Unbelievable.

Oct. 2, 2004. I was at this game. Dodgers were playing the hated Giants and needed to win just one game in the series to clinch the West. The game was tied in the 9th. I remember laughing hysterically as the crowd chanted "Hee! Seop! Choi!" while he was at the plate...he ended up drawing a walk. The Dodgers loaded the bases with 0 outs. We could taste the division title. Steve Finley was up. All we needed was a pop fly to the outfield, and it was over. So when he hit one to the outfield, we all started going NUTS, even before the ball came down. Because of the jumping and celebrating by everyone, I never saw the ball go into the stands. The only way I figured out that it was a grand slam was by seeing the scoreboard throw up 4 runs. Awesome day.

Finally, I had a great moment at the USC-Cal game in '03. USC was in the top 5, and we were still coming off our awful Holme years. Carson Palmer was the QB (he ended up with the Heisman that year). The game went into OT, and went back and forth on made, missed, and blocked field goals. We (the students) kept shifting the entire section to the right or the left depending on where we needed to make more noise to disrupt USC's offense (the student section is right on the 50 yard line in Berkeley). We ended up with the victory after a field goal in triple OT. What a blast. We rushed the field.

Anonymous said...

I was at the play-in game last year between Colorado and San Diego that the Rockies won 9-8 to make it to the postseason. That was insane. Long Penis - that's what I'm going with from now on.
-Tom