Maybe you were talking to the fan behind you in the stands, maybe you’d gone to the kitchen for a snack. Maybe you just weren’t paying attention. Whatever it was, there was a memorable moment unfolding in front of you and YOU MISSED IT!
Here’s mine. May 1983. Willie McGee of the St. Louis Cardinals hits an inside the park home run. My wife was speechless. I was speechless too, because it was the bottom of the sixth and I had gone to the concession stand to get her one more beer before they stopped selling them in the seventh inning.
What made it worse, I didn’t even want a beer for myself!
Not a sports play that I missed, but at a sporting event (and obviously, I wasn’t actually there)… 2004, I was watching the Super Bowl over a friend’s house, and it was the halftime show. My friend’s cat jumped over me, almost knocking my drink out of my hand. “Hey, watch it!” I exclaimed to the cat, looking away from the television screen at him. “Um… was that Janet Jackson’s boob?”, marveled my friend, who was still looking at the tv.
This is not me (for once), but a good friend of mine (and coworker), also a die-hard Dodger fan. She and her husband were at the Dodger game on September 18, 2006 against the Padres. Like me, she never leaves a game early, no matter what the score. Except, for reasons which are still unclear to me, that night. You know, the night the Dodgers were down 9-5, then hit four consecutive homers in the bottom of the 9th to tie the game, then gave up a run in the top of the 10th, and then had Nomar Garciaparra hit a walk-off two-run shot? Yeah, that one.
The next day, I was so excited to talk to her about it from her perspective, which is when she gave me the look of death. In fairness to her, I had been watching the game on TV and turned away for a bit. I tuned in JUST in time to see the celebration after the fourth homerun, so I missed it, too. But at least I was watching the game when the walk-off happened.
I took an extremely long late-afternoon nap in May 2008 and awoke to discover that Jon Lester had thrown a no-hitter and I’d missed the whole thing. Man, I was pissed.
I don’t recall the year, but I was at a SF Giants game and missed seeing a player on the other team (I don’t recall who it was) make a straight steal of home. I was actually watching the game at the time… but apparently I was paying as much attention to the runner on third as the pitcher was, which is to say, not very much at all.
January 1982: In the NFL playoffs the Chargers jump out to 24 point first quarter lead over the Dolphins. My brothers and I say, “This game’s over. Larry Bird and the Celtics are in town to play the Cavaliers. Let’s go see that.” So we did and we missed one of the best football games ever.
Link
Meanwhile, the Celtics beat the Cavs 106-103.
On July 4th, 1982, my family went to the Yankee game - except I decided to go for a hike in the Palisades. They saw Dave Righetti pitch a no-hitter, while I saw some trees.
At a minor league baseball game, just beyond the outfield fence, there was a giant two-dimensional lottery ball with the number 8 cut out of it. The 8 couldn’t have been more than six feet tall by three feet wide. The idea was that if a player on the home team hit a home run that went through the 8, everybody in the stands won a lottery ticket or something like that. I was in the bathroom or line for the concession stand when a player on the visiting team hit a home run that went right through the 8.
I watched the 6th inning, watched Texas melt down a bit. It was cool. But I was like “I don’t want to watch Texas win it all so if the Cards win tonight, I’ll just watch the game tomorrow and watch them win it all.”
I checked the score later on and it was tied and I thought “huh I should get out of bed and watch this.” Checked again later and it was still tied, but runs had scored. Thought again about getting out of bed.
I was still awake when the final score came through. I should have just GOTTEN OUT OF BED. But nooooo…
My father and I are probably the only two Florida Marlins fans on earth. He (or probably my mother) didn’t let me stay up to watch game 7 of the 1997 World Series, which the Marlins won in extra innings.
I’d had a job interview out of town and didn’t get back to Penn Station NY until 8pm. I was still 45 minutes away from home, so I went to one of the bars to watch the game. I sat there for 4 hours, leaving with 2 outs in the 9th thinking Texas was a lock and knowing if I stuck around for the last batter I’d miss my train and be stuck for another hour.
I got home just in time to see the news come up on ESPN and was dumbfounded.
I’m a Packer fan. During the last Super Bowl I took a break from the TV during the commercial break between the third and fourth quarters as the Steelers were driving and seemed to have taken all the momentum back. I walked back in the room with the TV and was shocked to see the Packers with the ball again. I missed what turned out to be the critical moment of the game, Clay Matthews forcing the Rashard Mendenhall fumble.
I also missed the Bartman play from the 2003 NLCS between leaving my office (in the Pacific Time Zone) where I was listening online and getting down to my car for the drive home. So I mostly remember the Alex Gonzalez error…the true travesty of that inning.
Not quite what the OP had in mind, but Armando Galarraga’s Perfect Game. On TV, not in person, but I was watching it live. I was watching it while surfing the net. I remember the announcer saying something like “12 up, 12 down” around about the end of the fourth. It was the seventh or eight when I thought “wait a minute…”. The announcers weren’t going on about it, because that’s “just not done”. Although I’m pretty sure they had shots of him sitting all alone on the bench when the Tigers were up.
I was paying very close attention when Armando stepped on first ahead of the runner for the last out.
And of course, I watched the out after that one, too.
