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Worst Losses Ever

January 31, 2011, 10:43 am

This is a great post, with a lot of terrific video links, on one man's list of the worst sports endings ever.  (via Tom Kirkendal).  It is very long, but my favorite was probably #10.  And of course all of us of a certain age probably remember watching #1 live.

Tags:
Category: Sports

4 Comments

  1. Matt:

    The worst thing about that US-USSR Olympic game is that if one watches it carefully and one is honest with oneself....it's hard to fault the referees for most of the chaos. The only real mistake they made was waving McMillen away from the baseline at the very end.

    For the rest of the 'do-overs', they were honestly trying to correct mistakes that just kept happening on a repeated basis, due to bumbling and confusion at the scorer's table. Maybe that's why the loss hurts so much.

    There was a great documentary on ESPN about this game a few years ago. The refs didn't speak English (they were Bulgarian and Greek, if I remember correctly) and the US players couldn't understand what they were trying to tell them. Coach Hank Iba was frustrated because he kept trying to get answers and also couldn't understand what the refs were saying.

    I notice in the article they leave out the point where the Olympic official came down out of the stands and insisted after Ending #1 that the scorers put 3 seconds back on the clock, even though he had no authority to do so.

    January 31, 2011, 2:48 pm

  2. Tom Kelly:

    Worst losses? Yes. Worst ending- the earthquake that killed the World Series and a whole lot of people.

    January 31, 2011, 4:56 pm

  3. 会社設立:

    everything is losing.

    January 31, 2011, 9:25 pm

  4. Hal:

    I'm a Raider fan who has followed the Raiders since the 60's.
    I have watched most of their games, probably including this one, but don't even remember that ending of the Cleveland game in 1981. Memorable it was not.
    I think the fans of the losing team feel the pain while the winning fans just go on to the next game.

    On the other hand, the 1972 "Immaculate Reception" by Franco Harris still painfully stands out. Every football fan of the era knows that one.

    Any list of worst losses ever without that game included simply is non-representative.

    Hal

    February 2, 2011, 3:22 pm