Tenacious D: The Wide, Wacky World of Sports

I remember the biggest mistake in my life very clearly.

I was twelve years old and playing midfield for the Sharks, a soccer club team in my hometown of Sarasota, Florida.

We had played very well in the regular season, and even upset one of the top teams in the playoffs to make it to the finals.

During the final game, my team again played well and we had a 2-1 lead going into the final minutes. The refs announced injury time and a Divisional Crown was within our grasp.

That is, of course, until an errant pass of mine ended up on the foot of the other team's star winger. The boy, whose name I cannot bring myself to utter, scored the tying goal seconds later and his team went on to win the championship title in sudden-death overtime.

Suffice it to say, I was heartbroken. I had cost my team the win and had made a mistake when it counted most. Reflecting back upon my taste of infamy, I realized that screwing up in the glare of the spotlight is a common and, at times, tragic aspect of sports.

This thought was reinforced over this past weekend in the Stanley Cup playoffs. There was everything from the disastrously dramatic to the unbelievably absurd.

On Saturday, the St. Louis Blues experienced the former against the San Jose Sharks in the second game of their first round playoff series. Marc Bergevin, a Blues defenseman, caught a centering pass from Sharks defenseman Gary Suter and threw it at his goalie. Unfortunately for the Blues, Bergevin's thrown puck ended up in the back of the net instead of in Roman Turek's glove.

Responding to the rare own goal by Bergevin, Sharks forward Mike Ricci said, "Funny things happen."

The Blues did not think it was so funny, dropping Saturday's game, 4-2.

Another high-profile mistake was made Monday night in the Maple Leafs-Senators game. This time, the end result was more farcically wacky than bitterly disappointing.

After Senators winger Rob Zamuner scored a questionable goal in the third period of the game, Leafs goalie Curtis Joseph exploded in disbelief at the referee's decision to let the goal stand. As CuJo was rabidly frothing and skating towards referee Mick McGeough, he lost his balance and slammed into McGeough, taking him down to the ice.

The play was funny to watch, but the penalty assessed to Joseph probably cost the Leafs a chance to tie or win the game and go up 3-0 in the series.

Seeing these recent examples of the unpredictability of playoff sports made me think back to other important blunders made with a national audience watching.

One instance that comes to mind, which probably surpasses CuJo's tomfoolery, was perpetrated on football's biggest stage.

In Super Bowl XXVII, the Dallas Cowboys were handily beating the Buffalo Bills 52-17 in the fourth quarter. Then, after recovering a fumble, Leon Lett rumbled his way towards the endzone. However, Lett started celebrating prematurely and allowed the speedy Don Beebe to catch up with him and strip the ball. The idiotic fumble didn't cost the Cowboys the win that year, but it did keep them out of the record books. A 59-17 win would have been the most decisive victory in Super Bowl history, and the 59 points would have been the most scored by a single team.

Not all championship miscues are so innocuous, though. The same year of Lett's gallivanting, Michigan forward Chris Webber cost his team the NCAA title. Webber, who had the ball with 11 seconds left, called a timeout his team didn't have. The ensuing technical foul and possession for North Carolina gave the Tar Heels its first championship in 11 years.

But the most gut-wrenching mistake made in a championship game in recent memory (especially to baseball fans from around the area) occurred on Saturday, October 25th, 1986.

On this now-infamous date, the Boston Red Sox were one out away from beating the New York Mets to win their first World Series title in 68 years. In fact, Mets pitcher Keith Hernandez had already started drinking in the clubhouse, and the score board at Shea Stadium flashed a congratulatory message for the Red Sox. However, the message was premature as Mookie Wilson stepped to the plate in the bottom of the tenth.

Wilson hit an innocent dribbler to first baseman Bill Buckner, who had an easy play to first for the championship and Red Sox redemption. Tragically, Buckner let the ball roll between his legs, and the Mets went on to win the game and eventually take the series in seven.

Buckner, although he had been a solid player for the Sox (he had 2,715 hits in 22 seasons and a batting title in 1980), moved from Boston in the post-season to avoid the harassment of angered and anguished fans.

It seems that, in a sense, sports resembles theatre. The plot twists on a large stage before a national audience usually end up as either slapstick or Shakespeare. Either way, the unpredictable element of every move engenders a certain mystique that makes important games what they are.

And although my own "off-off-Broadway" production of a crucial, big game mistake won't rank with the devastation of the Webbers or Buckners of the world, I can attest to the bitter and acrid taste of that oft-bandied expression "agony of defeat."