Most depressing sports memories

[Pat]

Most depressing moment for me is easy: 4th and 26.

[SgtCarp]

1. Clint Longley's TD pass on Thanksgiving to beat the Redskins.

2. Giants 36-0 win over Washington

3. Skins 20-10 loss in playoffs to Seattle.

4. Chris Burke's HR in 18th to sink Atlanta

5. :censored:in' Kimo von Olhoffen's cheap shot on Palmer in 06 playoffs.

6. Ghana's Steven Appiah scoring a PK that would ultimately sink the US in the 06 World Cup.

[BCBoy]

Most depressing moment for me is easy: 4th and 26.

The only time Fred-Ex Mitchell did anything useful

[marlinfan]

Baseball was not invented. It evolved from rounders and cricket. The earliest known reference was in a British publication in the 1740s. Hell, I remember reading a piece that claims baseball could go back to the 1400s in Spain. The earliest known American reference is 1791 where the town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts outlawed playing baseball within 80 yards of a new town center.

This game had a flurry of names from baseball to town ball to cat and dog. The rules were very vague and was very very different from the game we play today.

The Abner Doubleday story has as many holes as Swiss cheese. He never claimed to have invented the game. He was given the title of inventor of baseball by Spalding (the man) and a commission that turned up nothing when they tried to find the exact start point of the game. Doubleday wasn't even IN Cooperstown in 1839 when he supposedly invented the game.

The first baseball game played under the same basic rules we still use today was in 1845. Alexander Cartwright (also the inventor of the modern boxscore and many of the stats we use today like batting average) wrote the rules and his Knickerbocker club lost to a team from New York.

If you were to give the title of inventor to ANYONE it would be to Cartwright.

The consensus among historians is that baseball evolved from the different sports in England and the United States- not Canada.

Sorry Canada.

[infrared41]

I'm a Cleveland fan. Where would you like me to start?

Seriously though, the one I took the hardest was Earnest Byner's fumble in the '87 AFC title game. While "The Drive" truly sucked, I think in '86 I was just happy to be there. To come all the way back in '87 just to see the TD that would have tied the game fumbled away was a gut wrencher.

[Stampman]

1990 - Jets blow 3-1 series lead to go down in 7 to the Oilers. Oilers cakewalk all the way to the Cup.

That sucked--they should have won that...

[IceCap]

Sorry Canada.

Oh don't be bitter. You guys (Americans) like to pull the same stuff with us about hockey. What? Can't take the heat?

[BB61]

Okay, let's go around the horn.

Flyers:

- Losing to the Oilers in the 1987 Cup finals in seven after fighting back from 3-1 down.

- Blowing a 3-1 lead to the Devils in the 2000 ECF.

- Falling to the Lightning in seven in the 2004 ECF after coming back to tie that series.

- Pretty much every other year in the Bobby Clarke Era.

Phillies:

- Blowing a 10 game lead to the Cardinals to lose the 1964 NL Pennant.

- NLCS's 1976, '77, and '78

- Joe ing Carter

- Pretty much every season since then.

Eagles:

- NFC title games 2001-2003.

- T.O. growing a brain.

[marlinfan]

Sorry Canada.

Oh don't be bitter. You guys (Americans) like to pull the same stuff with us about hockey. What? Can't take the heat?

I'm not bitter. You?

[TNT44]

That's number one on my list. The others are:

Super Bowl XXXVI: Adam Vinatieri kicks a game-winning field goal against my at-the-time favorite team St. Louis Rams.

Super Bowl XXXVIII: Adam Vinatieri kicks a game-winning field goal against my current favorite team Carolina Panthers.

2006 NFC Championship: The Seahawks tore the Panthers apart.

[Discrim]

the 2006 Cubs season

the 95 UW season opening massacre at the hands of Colorado

the 04 Cubs pennant race implosion

the 05 Notre Dame-USC game, when the Condom Boys stole what should've been an Irish win

2001 UW vs Michigan...a mental lapse by a Badger freshman on a Michigan punt in the dying minutes turned a certain Wisconsin win into a Michigan comeback

and of course, the 2003 NLCS, game 6 implosion.

[SouthSidePride]

Bulls: going up 2-0 against Washington then loosing 4 straight to blow it in 2005.

That was depressing for you? Really?

It was a first round game between the 4 and 5 seeds. Those are expected to be a toss-up, and it was also the first playoff appearance of boths teams in a while. It's not like expectations of either team were high to begin with, and the Bulls would have been smoked just as badly by the Heat as the Wizards were.

I get individual pain, but it seems like that playoff series loss was a just-happy-to-be-there moment more than anything else.

My most devestating sports memory was the Wychek's forward lateral. I just felt so helpless.

Granted, all those things you said are true, but the fact that they went up 2 nil then lost 4 in a row was the fact that it hurt so bad. That was the year that anything we got in the playoffs were awesome, especcially after years of being the laughingstock of the NBA. We were so happy to be there, and when we went up 2-0 in emphatic fashion, we wrote off the Wiz. Now, if the Wiz didn't win 4 in a row, it wouldn't have hurt so bad, but the series was over and then lost in only a few days, and after all the loosing, it just seemed like we were going to suck again for the next 8 years.

[Original6]

1994 : MLB strike

1999 - 1998: Being a Jays fan

2000: Raptors getting swept in the playoffs by the knicks

2001: Vince carter missing the buzzer beater and losing the ECSF series to the sixers

2002: The Chris Childs debockle... what a friggen moron!

2003: Being a Jays fan and a Raptors fan

2004: Trading Vince carter for a bunch of stiffs, Drafting Rafael Araujo, expos departing from Montreal (It was a bad year).

2005: Same as 2003.

2006: The Jays are starting to live up to their usual, although they have prolonged the begining of the misery days for like a month extra.

Best sports memories:

- I know this wasn't asked but I will take that Joe Carter walk off World Series winning HR with me to my grave.

- The 1992 World Series

- November 1995, the NBA comes back to Toronto.

[Sport]

1990 NLCS the Bucs had a better team than the Reds but never showed up.

That's what they said about the A's too, but we all know how that turned out. It's been 16 years and the team that was in first place from game 1 until game 162 still gets no respect.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Now, if the Wiz didn't win 4 in a row, it wouldn't have hurt so bad, but the series was over and then lost in only a few days, and after all the loosing, it just seemed like we were going to suck again for the next 8 years.

But your team was awesome for the previous eight! Yeesh...even still, the Chicago Bulls have won 6 of the last 16 NBA championships. Think about that -- take Bill Simmons' five-year gripe-free rule and multiply that by six, and you should give the Bulls a 30 year break before you're allowed to complain about their success on the court. Six out of 16 is 38% of NBA championships since 1991. If the Bills had won just one of those four Super Bowls, upstate New York would be a lot happier. Look how ecstatic Boston fans are with just one World Series win. You've got six championships to hang your hat on! I just don't think there is ANY room for sour grapes Bulls fans, especially considering what Jordan did to so many other teams.

This is all assuming you're older than, I don't know, 20, and can have some sort of appreciation for those Bulls wins.

Again, far be it from me to judge anyone else's pain, but a lot of these "most depressing" memories really don't seem all that bad to me. To me, expectations play an awful lot into this. I can definitely see how a Vikings fan would be depressed over the 98 or 2000 playoff collapses, or a Yankees fan upset about 2001, 2003 and 2004.

But the US losing to Ghana in the World Cup? So what? Minor league baseball finals? Sean Casey being traded? Regular season NFL games? I just don't get it.

I especially like the guy whose most depressing memory was his once favorite team losing and then his new favorite team losing a year later. How can you be depressed when your loyalties are so easily compromised?

[NY Jay]

1. Losing the 2004 ALCS to Boston after leading 3 games to none.

2. Jets losing the 1998 AFC Championship Game after leading the Broncos at half time.

[YELDARBfield]

Super Bowl XXXIV.

"TOUCHDOOOOOOOOOOOOWN TITANS! TITANS! T-T T-I-T-A-N...."

ONE FRIGGIN' YARD!!!

[youcan'tseeme]

1998-99 NHL season leafs loose to the Sabres in the confrecne finals

2000-01 season leafs looser to Hurricanes in confrence finasl

2002-03 Leafs loose to Philadelphia in second round that dam roenick

[IceCap]

Sorry Canada.

Oh don't be bitter. You guys (Americans) like to pull the same stuff with us about hockey. What? Can't take the heat?

I'm not bitter. You?

Why would I be

[gashouser27]

old school

Don Deckinger -1985