2 Sports Questions For You
Mates,
These two questions are for you and relate to events that you personally participated in, not just things that you attended or maybe watched on TV. This is a pretty biased blog in that most of the folks that post here are sports junkies and played some level of sports relative to the overall population. All of us (or nearly all) at some point participated in athletics. It might have only been in gym class up to 9th grade, but for many it was high school at least and for many it was beyond that.
The questions are closely related and are as follows:
1. What was your most disappointing or embarrassing sports moment?
2. What was your favorite, most memorable sports moment?
XM
Most miserable
Playing point guard as a senior in high school - My dad is coach (and yeah, that's part of why I played the point) - Going up to halftime, we have the ball with 12 seconds left. In the timeout, Dad is very explicit - Take it up to the top of the key, counting to 8, if you can pass for an open shot, do it, if not, take it yourself. I come up to top after crossing a dude over, and shoot after 5 seconds. Nothing but the bottom! Why miserable? They take it out of the basket, rush it up, and score with no time left.
All I had to do was count to 8. Incredibly stupid.
Most fun and memorable
Was a moment that wasn't really even mine. I was on a co-ed softball team for work (yeah, as low as one can sink). I was playing short next to an Indian woman who was about 5'2", and had literally never played baseball/softball prior to about two weeks before this game. Men on first and second, one out, and this monster of a dude hitting. He crushes a top-spin liner to my left, two steps over and I backhand it waist high. I catch that the runner on second has started to take off out of the corner of my eye. With no thought at all, I turn and gun it as hard as I can to second. Not only is she there, on the bag, but she snatches the ball out of mid-air like frickin Lou Whitaker to complete the double play.
Immediately after letting the ball go, I was horrified, thinking that best case, I'd thrown it into right field (because how would she even know to cover?), and worst case, I'd just maimed her for life by pegging the softball into her nose. I simply could not believe she made this play like a damn pro. Remember, hard liner, two steps, gun it. The whole thing was under 2 seconds.
most embarrassing moment: JV baseball, I'm holding a guy on first base. Our pitcher is taking forever to deliever his pitches. My ADD kicks in, as it apparently also did with the base runner. I refocus back on the pitcher just in time to see his pickoff throw plunk me in the chest. I hear the baserunner yell "Oh shit" as he tries to get back to first. I had time to quick pick up the ball and tag him out. Makes me laugh all these years later.
Watching my super skinny best friend get pinned in 7th grade gym class by a kid a foot shorter and even skinnier than him.....and then having to listen to his excuses for the next week. Okay who am I kidding, that was pretty much an awesome moment.
Most embarrassing: As a sophomore miler - was prior to the metric system being put into place in high school track - I knew I could not overtake the eventual winner at the conference finals so I accepted the fact I would finish a comfortable second, after doing the unpardonable "looking over my shoulder" to see the runner in third place a good distance behind. I put it on cruise control at about 150 yards to go, only to be overtaken with roughly three yards left to the finish line. My teammates were screaming for "the kick" but did not know why until the above occurred. Not a good moment.
Most enjoyable is easy. Was playing against former school that I had left after the freshman football season. Two years later I was playing qb for the rival school that I had moved to. First play of game, I threw a beautiful play-action pass for a 60 yard TD, listening to my ex-team mates on the DL screaming, "Shit, Damn, Son of a Bitch, etc.," at being fooled so badly on the play action. Both the corner and safety bit bad too and our flanker was free by a good twenty yards. Very good moment.
1. What was your most disappointing or embarrassing sports moment?
Getting cut from the JV high school basketball team, not that I was better than anyone who made it, but getting cut was a bad look....
2. What was your favorite, most memorable sports moment?
Two men sit on a wooden beam 6 feet off the ground and swing pillows at each other. 1st time a dude who outweighed me by 50 pounds knocked me off in 5 seconds. After he defeated 100 people, he was knocked by a dude 50 pounds bigger than him. After he defeated 300 people, I got back on and somehow fought him to a draw. I was not strong enough to knock him off, but learned how to keep my left arm up and block the blow away from my body and I "countered pillow" well to keep him from loading up. Does compare to Al Bundy scoring 4 TDs in high school but the feeling of knowing the crowd watching was seeing something could believe, a skinny dud hanging with the "champ"