The McHale clothesline game on Kurt Rambis. Magic dribbles out the clock in regulation, Celtics win in overtime. At the Forum. What worsened matters was that the Lakers coughed up Game 2 when Worthy threw the ball (and the game) away to Gerald Henderson in the closing seconds.
Lakers lost the series in 7. I was so effing pissed off, I vowed that being a sports fan was no longer worth the misery. Even returning the favor on the Celtics in '85 didn’t completely make up for it. I also sensed fishy officiating (in favor of whichever team was down in the series), but every fan on the losing end says that.
That’s mine. (Super Bowl XIV – when the Rams lost to the Steelers after leading after three quarters comes in a distant second.)
What’s yours? Fire away, Cleveland/ Viking/Buffalo fan.
I wouldn’t even be born for 16 years. But I say the 1972 Olympic Basketball finals. Coach Iba was robbed, and so was the rest of the country.
Though the 2009 Bedlam football game would be close. OU sucked last year, and the Cowboys got shut out. And I drove up from Dallas and got scalped tickets to see it too.
11 July 2010… Spain - Holland will linger in my memmories for a long time, especially th 59th minute where Robben could have won it.
After that, the semi final against italy in 2000 and world cup semi in 1998 against brazil still hurt because we were better than the opposition (and lost on spotkicks).
We also lost on penalties in Euros 1992/1996, but those games were more evenly matched.
The loss against Brazil in 1994 also hurt, because we just came back to 2-2 after going 2-0 down when Branco struck that freak of a freekick…sad
I wasn’t born in yet in 74/78, otherwise they would surely be mentioned here.
Also, I suspect there’ll be a lot of Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox games mentioned in this thread.
For me, one that comes to mind in Gonzaga v. UCLA in the 2006 NCAA Basketball Tournament. Gonzaga had a big lead and a spot in the Elite Eight assured. Then … the meltdown. By games end, I had used every profane word in the English language in every possible combination.
I’m still a football fan, but last week’s Packers vs Bears on MNF was disgusting, probably the absolute worst football game I’ve ever seen, hands down, by both teams, and my high school won 0 games in 4 years.
I was a huge baseball fan in the 80’s, but gave up on baseball totally (even playing it) after the Mets drug scandal that smeared my favorite players: Doc Gooden, Daryl Strawberry, etc. It wasn’t a single game though, although when the Mets released/traded Hubie Brooks and then traded back for him, that was the last straw for me pretty much.
In basketball, I had the opposite phenomenon: the games were so good, I knew it just couldn’t get any better…I had seen the best basketball I would ever see in my life…there was no point to watch anymore. After Jordan’s 6th championship in the 90’s, I tried watching a bit more, but it just wasn’t the same. I don’t think any team will ever play basketball like that anymore.
Cleveland fan checking in. Yep, we are the poster children for getting your heart ripped out and stomped on. Just off the top of my head there’s… The Drive, The Fumble, The Shot, Red Right 88, Jose Mesa’s '97 World Series meltdown, and now The Decision.
Hell, I wouldn’t know how to act if my heart wasn’t ripped out and stomped on.
And I forgot the biggest one of all. Modell moving the Browns to Baltimore.
Well, the Minnesota Vikings have a habit of kicking their fans in the balls every 10 years or so.
1987: Vikings lose a close game to the Redskins in the NFC Championship game when a pass intended for Darrin Nelson at the goal line is tipped away. A punch to the gut, but no team with Wade Wilson at QB should be in the Super Bowl anyway.
1998: Oh boy, this one hurt. One of the best teams of all time. 15-1, lost their only game to a very good Tampa Bay team by just 3 points, had the Falcons dead to rights, and lost in the Championship game again when the kicker missed his first and only kick of the entire season with about 4 minutes left. Kept the door open for the Falcons to tie the game then win in OT. The Falcons would go on to be completely out-classed by the Broncos; I stil think that a Broncos-Vikings Super Bowl that year would have been fantastic. I want to live in the parallel universe where that Super Bowl is played.
2010: Vikings at the Saints, Saints are a decent favorite, but the Vikings completely dominate the game and should be winning by two touchdowns except they give the ball up like 5 times. Tie score, Vikings in field goal range with a minute or so on the clock. First, the coach manages to screw things up and get a too-many-men-in-the-huddle penalty that puts us prety much out of FG range. Then Favre, instead of jogging easily for the first down or lobbing he ball to the wide receiver wide open right in front of him, decides to throw against his body, back across the field. Of course the ball is intercepted, Saints go on to win and win the Super Bowl.
The Buffalo Bills lost four straight Super Bowls, then have been slime-infested doormats the last few years. The Vikings have lost four Super Bowls over several decades and come tantilizing close to another SB before losing in the most gut-wrenching fashion. Which city’s fans should we pity more?
The Super Bowls of 1981 and 1988. 1988’s especially. The Bengals allowing Montana to drive down the field like that especially after dropping an interception that would have iced the game…brrrr.
That segues into the 1990’s-early 2000’s which are like a blur of horrifyingly bad football, punctuated by astoundingly bad draft picks…and then Marvin Lewis. So at least there’s hope now.
You know, Pedro was actually pitching good enough… it should have been an easy pop-up out, but it managed to find the one spot on the field to land where it was four feet away from three different Red Sox converging on it. Then fucking Aaron Boone…
Of course, a year later the wounds healed quite a bit.
By the time of the “what 35 point lead” game, I’d pretty much given up on the Oilers, which was nice.
My heart-stomping moment was probably in the NLDS, Braves vs. Astros, Game 3, 1999; bottom of the 10th, bases loaded, nobody out, and they can’t get the frigging run across. And they lose the game, and the series. The heartbreaking playoff series (multiple) from the 80s were before my time.
2003 ALCS Game 6, Red Sox vs. Yankees. Grady Little refuses to pull an obviously exhausted Pedro Martinez while the Sox cling to a lead. Pedro then gives up the lead, and the Sox lose in extra innings. Yankees go to the World Series.
The pain would have lingered a lot longer if the Red Sox had not gone on to win it all in 2004.
Honorable mentions from my youth:
1986 World Series (ball dribbles through Bill Buckner’s legs)
Superbowl XX (Patriots crushed by '85 Bears)
Again, successes by the Pats and Sox since then have had remarkable healing powers.