Open Thread

by: Adam Bink

Mon Sep 14, 2009 at 22:36


Kicking it off (no pun intended) with how the Buffalo Bills may not know how to finish off an opponent, but they always know how to break my heart.

Biggest heartbreaking sports losses or whatever else you want to chat about.

Adam Bink :: Open Thread

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Open Thread | 28 comments
three years in a row on Monday Night Football (0.00 / 0)
2007
2008
2009

Now words. Just :(  

How about Juan Martin del Potro (0.00 / 0)
20 years old winning the US Open. Nearly as epic a match as Wimbledon earlier this year.  
thanks for the reminder (4.00 / 1)
i forgot there is football tonight.

i'm happy--packers won.

I live in a true blue state--I will have a choice in November

Yes. Go Pack Go! And... (0.00 / 0)
Sometimes, when the evil Bears are vanquished, the obvious must be repeated.

[ Parent ]
Ha! Shows what you know about broken hearts! (4.00 / 1)
Try being a Cleveland Browns fan!

REID: Voting against us was never part of our arrangement!
SPECTER: I am altering the deal! Pray I don't alter it any further!
REID: This deal keeps getting worse all the time!
Try losing a last-minute MNF game to the Browns last year (0.00 / 0)
Oh wait, we did!


Me on Facebook
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[ Parent ]
You guys at least got to go to a super bowl... (4.00 / 1)
The closest we ever got was this:

Ugh!  

REID: Voting against us was never part of our arrangement!
SPECTER: I am altering the deal! Pray I don't alter it any further!
REID: This deal keeps getting worse all the time!

[ Parent ]
Wow! No Superbowl, ever? Is this a record? (0.00 / 0)
Or ar there more teams competing about that title? Sry, but Superbowls are about the only football I ever watch, so I'm rather uninformed. But I'm sure the sports statistics nerds have the information at their fingertips!
[ Parent ]
More teams (4.00 / 2)
Cleveland and Houston have this in common.  Each had franchises move away and make the Super Bowl else where (Baltimore Ravens, Tennessee Titans).  Neither city made the Super Bowl.

Detroit has had a franchise all along and never made the Super Bowl. Period.  Currently the Lions are pretty bad.

New Orleans has never made the Super Bowl.  Neither have the relatively shorter term Jacksonville Jaguars.

During that time, Cleveland has had teams make the baseball World Series and the NBA Finals without winning them.  

Houston won two NBA titles and made the World Series once (losing).

Detroit has won both the World Series and NBA titles and a bunch of NHL titles.

New Orleans has an NBA team (second try).  Neither has made the NBA finals.

Jacksonville does not have a team in MLB, the NBA, or the NHL.

Just on football, the sad sacks are the Lions.  Ironically, they won their last NFL title by beating the Cleveland Browns.  In 1957.  Cleveland won in 1965.  Otoh, the Browns were named for one-time coach/founder Paul Brown.  He was forced out and the new team he founded, the Cincinnati Bengals has made multiple Super Bowls (but not won hem).

[ Parent ]
in the 1990s (0.00 / 0)
I worked with a bunch of Russians. You want heartbreaking? Mention the U.S. victory over the USSR hockey team in the semifinal of the Lake Placid Olympics. More than a decade after the fact, Russians were still passionately upset about that game. They had the better team! They deserved to win!

I think the most painful loss I ever watched was Tim Henman losing to Goran Ivanisevic in the 2001 Wimbledon semifinal. I lived in the UK at the time, and you can't imagine the pressure on Henman to win that tournament. He'd been playing so well for two weeks and was ahead of Ivanisevic (not the world's toughest player mentally), but was unable to put it away in the fourth set. Then a rain delay pushed the conclusion of the match to the next day, and Henman folded so quickly. It was agonizing.

Ivanisevic has to be among the least worthy players ever to win Wimbledon. It's ridiculous when you consider that even Pat Rafter never won it.

Jana Novotna's third-set meltdown against Steffi Graf in a Wimbledon final (ahead 4-1, lost the set 6-4) was also painful, but at least Novotna came back a few years later to win the tournament.

Join the Iowa progressive community at Bleeding Heartland.

About the same hysteria as about the 1966 soccer worldcup final (0.00 / 0)
Way back then, England won 4:2 with a viciously debated "goal" for the 3:2, which led to another irregular goal (audience on the field!) for the final win. There have been heated debates if the ball ever crossed the line or not. Modern video analysis shows that only the line was hit, so that this wasn't a goal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1...

To this day, German soccer fans are still pissed about having been "robbed" of the champiionship...

[ Parent ]
Not that I blame the Limies! (0.00 / 0)
After all, the referee, however confused he has been, made a decision, so according to the rules, it's a "valid" goal. And it shouldn't be forgotten that this World Cup victory, England's first and only one, was an important step towards reconciloation between the nations. We Germans have won three championships, the first one being the 1954 "miracle of Bern", a positive heartbraker, so we can afford to be generous. Hmm, maybe the UK should get its stuff together and create a unified team, including Wales and Scotland, in order to catch up...
[ Parent ]
Btw, for those interested in soccer, and history... (0.00 / 0)
...I recommend the 2003 movie by Sönke Wortmann "The Miracle of Bern":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...

A great portrait of the difficult conditions in post war Germany, about soccer becoming a main way of distraction from the hard times for the masses, uniting working class and the more afluent, and about the World Cup, of course. The family drama, with its many sentimental moments, is entertainment for the whole family. I'm sure even some girlfriends will like it!
:D

Wortmann later directed the documentary movie about the 2006 soccer World Cup, "Deutschland: Ein Sommermärchen" (Germany: A summer fairy tale):
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt08...
A must see for soccer fans!

[ Parent ]
Another apropos (last one, I promise) (0.00 / 0)
One of the heroes of Bern was the late Heinz "Heini" Kwiatkowski:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...

Any relationship, Mike? :-)

[ Parent ]
That Goal (0.00 / 0)
 I watched that game on TV as a young teen & England deserved that goal .. they were leading at full time & WG never looked like scoring another.

Geoff Hurst took the ball with his back to goal, turned on a dime, beating his man, and unleashed a cracking shot that struck the underside of the crossbar. It came down, bounced and out. Roger Hunt, who could have made sure, turned and ran away with his arms up hailing the goal. The Germans protested, but what would a Russian linesman give to Germans at Wembley?

No matter what the video evidence, England and Hurst deserved the goal and the match. Hurst was on fire that day - he is still the only man with 3 goals in the World Cup Final.

And, I'm Irish for chrissakes! This was not one of those "agonising defeats" - England were the better team, maybe not the best in the world in 1966, but tournament winners definitely!

[ Parent ]
So many teams "deserve" to win, but lose! (0.00 / 0)
So, I don't see this as a serious argument. As I said, the ref decided this was a goal, and this settles it officially. But it is clar now that he made a mistake. As for this allegedly not being an "agonizing defeat" - if you would have been a German soccer in 1966, you would see that differently. And don't try to argue with that, or else I'm gonna boycott our local Irish pub!
:D
[ Parent ]
All they had to do..... (0.00 / 0)
All the Bills had to do was hold on to the freaking ball.  How hard can that be when you have five 260-320lb opponents trying to strip it from you?  sigh....  who needs a whole heart, anyways?

Saw parts of those last two sets of the Open Final.  That kid was KILLING with his forehand.  You never knew where it was going to go, where he was sending it.  I've never seen Federer seem so flat-footed.

And now, the Raiders seem to be playing well.  Wow.  Stranger things have happened, I guess.  (No offense Raider-fan... It's just that Oakland has been looking like the Bills of the mid-80's pre-Kelly era.)

anyone watch Montana @ UC Davis saturday night? (4.00 / 4)
Hilarious.

So the Griz are up by 7 late in the 4th. The Aggies drive the ball all the way down, great drive, tons of momentum. On 4th down with less than a minute left, the Aggies are ready to throw the 15 yards to the end zone to tie the game up.

And then the fucking lights went out.

Not joking.

The stadium lights were on a timer and shut off at 10 PM sharp. Guessing because of Ahnold, but they didn't have a person to turn the lights off after the game, they just shut them off at 10.

So they had to let the lights cool down before turning them back on. Of course, totally iced the QB. When the game resumed 20 minutes later, UC Davis threw an interception, Griz won.

On twitter: @BobBrigham

Heatbreakers (0.00 / 0)
The definition of it came when Man o War lost his only race (of 21) by half a length to a horse named Upset.  Previous to that, upset meant to overturn.  After that, underdogs were said "to pull an Upset."  Man o War's jockey did such a bad job in the race that he lost his license and was forced to become a trainer.

That is not only well before my time but well before anybody's time here.

The 1978 Red Sox not only blew a 13 game lead but teased (or tortured) their fans by forcing a one game playoff.  The early Sox lead was offset by a homer by Bucky Dent (or as he was known in New England, Bucky !@#*% Dent) and a 5-4 loss.

The Yankees all-timer was the 1960 World Series where they outscored the Pirates 55-27 but still managed to lose 4 games to 3.  Bill Mazerowski's homerun capped a big comeback in Game 7.  Yankee Manager Casey Stengel was fired despite winning 10 pennants and 7 World Series in 12 years.  Asked what he would do different at a press conference, Stengel bitterly replied that he would never be 65 again.

Of course the Cubs not only had the Bartman loss to the Marlins but a similar loss in 1984 to the Padres when they brought in Rick Sutcliffe (who was IIRC unbeaten as a Cub after being acquired in a trade) to close the ninth.  It never happened.  The Padres got the same treatment just a few years back when their great closer Trevor Hoffman blew the lead to the Rockies in a playoff game.

For those who like to headbang to the Hurdy Gurdy (0.00 / 0)
Plus fiddle, whistle and mandola.

This always makes me smile.  It just looks like they are having so much fun.

Sorry, no sports.  It isn't basketball season, yet.

biggest heartbreaking loses - All Red Sox Division (0.00 / 0)
1946 - Pesky holds the ball

1948 - Lose a playoff game to Indians

1949 - Lose on the last weekend to Yankees

1967 - Gibson does it all

1972 - only team to ever lose a division race by 1/2 game

1975 - Rice breaks wrist; Foster interferes; Spaceman throws Perez a gopher ball

1978 - Buckey bleeping Dent

1986 - Gedman drops strike 3

1988 - Morgan Magic runs out against the A's

1990 - A's do it again

1995 - Indians do it again

1999 - Yanks again?!

2003 - Aron Bleeping Boone

It's just too plainful to remember.  

Give me a break! (4.00 / 1)
You guys have won 2 world series in the past few years... and killed the one last hope of the Indians winning one (the first since 1948, I might add).  Boston fans have nothing on Cleveland teams... NOTHING.  You guys have won super bowls... NBS championships, etc.  WTF are you complaining about?

REID: Voting against us was never part of our arrangement!
SPECTER: I am altering the deal! Pray I don't alter it any further!
REID: This deal keeps getting worse all the time!
[ Parent ]
forgot about 1974 - blew a 14 game lead in the middle of August to the Orioles (4.00 / 1)
all of the near misses,make the pain all the more exquisite.

Cleveland had the greatest football dynasty of all time from 1946-1965.  The 2 losses to Elway have to be painful.

[ Parent ]
Sale of babe (4.00 / 1)
Must add

1919- Red Sox sell Babe Ruth to the Yankees for $100,000 and a $300,000 loan.

[ Parent ]
Wow! Horrible screw-up. (0.00 / 0)
Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but in the Wikipedia article, it looks as if this was a quite controversial move in 1919/1920, too. A bit ridiculous for a team owner to be too stingy to meet the salary demands of one his best players, and then to use the money to finance his "lady friends". No, no, Nanette, this deals suxs!
:D
[ Parent ]
what about Bill Buckner's fielding error (0.00 / 0)
in game 6 of the 1986 World Series? That was a painful one for Red Sox fans.

Join the Iowa progressive community at Bleeding Heartland.
[ Parent ]
Today is Primary Day in New York (4.00 / 2)
Q: Who are the best progressive candidates?
A: Find out here: http://www.workingfamiliespart...

Q: Where do I vote?
A: In New York City - http://gis.nyc.gov/vote/ps/ind...
Elsewhere - https://voterlookup.elections....

Q: What races are exciting?
A: Corey Ellis for Albany Mayor, Richard Aborn for Manhattan D.A., races for Public Advocate and City Comptroller in New York City, and the slew of community organizer challengers in races for the City Council. Learn more - http://www.workingfamiliespart...

Who are you supporting Adam?



Working Families Party online street team was here

Hey Adam - WTF, Bills? (0.00 / 0)
I'm a passionate New England hater, (first and foremost can't stand Bill Belichick, among other reasons), and was really cheering hard for the Bills. I couldn't believe it when it looked like the Bills were going to pull it off, despite all the self-inflicted wounds they'd made throughout the game. And then...and then..


Open Thread | 28 comments
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