Creep & Dubb Long Talkin’: All-Time Sports Sadness

Creep: Hey, it looks like our first post was a pretty big deal. At least 10 people read the WHOLE thing. The great JJ (you may know him if you’re reading this, you may not — you wish you did) came over the other day with a hankering for some good weed, a shared blanket, and a good movie. What did this fine young man, who barely has time to watch his beloved Syracuse basketball team (whoops, not the time for that), demand? TUSK motherfucker. Tusk. More glory? Sure. The great Ike Rugg (you may know him if you’re reading this, you mat not — you wish you did) texted the following, two days after our movie novel was posted: “Oh man, They Came Together. I have no words. Thank you.” Okay, maybe not word for word — but he and his lady watched it and loved it. That’s all you brotha, soak it up.

So this is working. We have our microscopic tool kit out, digging deep into the brains of those we love — and that’s why we started this thing. My mom read it (shocker! And I thank her heartily and love her greatly), and says we’re the second coming of Siskel and Ebert. While I love the sentiment, I know we don’t want to be pigeonholed. Ya want a movie recommendation? Sure, we gotcha. But movies are like our 8th favorite thing.

Sports. That’s what we are. That’s what we do. That’s what we bleed. So why the fuck doesn’t it love us back? Yep, it’s about that time. You and I have the ability to lead the reader(s) through some of the saddest years of hardcore fandom on record, so why not take them on that journey?

While researching this, I cried a few times. To write about what we’re going to write about, we have to go back and watch all of these games again. I’ve already started my journey, so please keep a hospital on notice and 911 loaded up in that keypad. I’m already furious with myself for suggesting:

THE MOST HEARTBREAKING, SOUL-CRUSHING, LIFE-ALTERING, GOD-QUESTIONING, WRIST-SLICING moments that we have experienced as die-hard fans of some pretty historically dysfunctional teams. For movies, we came up with our top five. For this, we need to keep it to three or the world honestly might not hear from us again.

So in the spirit of making lists and ranking things, I submit a challenge:

What are the three worst moments of your life as a sports fan?

Before we start, let’s make sure you’re cool with this idea. Are ya on board?

DUBB: This is a strange one to spend time wracking your brain for, as I suppose in some capacity we do the best we can to forget about these moments. Of course, we all fail miserably in that regard. In fact, as these horrible moments are happening in real-time these days I can’t help but think how we’ll be rehashing them for decades to come.

Part of the deal we agree to as serious sports fans is to stew in the inherent failure and disappointment that comes along with so much of our time spent watching our teams. Maybe in the Dog Days of a terrible season you start missing games here or there — I think over the years that’s probably healthy to keep your sanity intact. But you’re never totally out of the loop and always keeping tabs on the day-to-day of the squad in some capacity.

More importantly, you don’t turn off the TV or shut it down when a good team is letting it all go to shit. Cowardice my friends, that’s what I call that. Because for many of us, even when we have one of those once in a decade or even once in a lifetime teams, we still never experience the ultimately joy of winning the whole fucking thing. I know I haven’t.

Yet, you have embrace that sports sadness fully, as one day you will win it all (I keep telling myself this) and it’ll all be worth it. And I’d like to think that this jog down memory lane (don’t worry, not a marathon this time) will be a good reminder of that, particularly as we enter March Madness — at once the most glorious and terrifying 3 weeks of the year.

With that melancholy intro, why don’t you take the first dive into this empty pool of dashed sports dreams…

CREEP: Ah christ, you’re on board. I’m already regretting this trip down misery lane, but hey- that’s where I’ve lived for the entirety of my sports life, so why not show others this beautiful view.

I don’t even need to be my usual long-winded self to paint a really bleak picture. Wanna see? Okay…here are my three favorite teams:

3. Yoooooooooour New YORK KNIIIIIICKS !! (That’s the PA announcer during the player intros, it has been the most exciting part of going to the Garden for the last 15 years or so.)

2. The Arizona Wildcats Men’s Basketball team. Okay, so they aren’t synonymous with losing. They’re actually a stable, exciting, mediocre-NBA-player-producing west coast powerhouse, with one of the greatest “young” (because under 60 qualifies theses days apparently, and under 50 is some toddler shit in the CBB coaching world) coaches in all of sports. But they’ve won one championship, and I wasn’t even a fucking fan of the TEAM WHEN THEY DID IT. God DAMN this idea Josh. God DAMN IT.

In the 16 years that I’ve been a die-with-every-moment Zona fan, it’s been nothing but 808's and heartbreak. Now nothing is as bad as that album (or Kanye’s attitude, am I right?!? It’s like, calm down young man), but I promise to show you why being an Arizona fan for my entire adult life has been pain with a slight side of sadistic pleasure. I’ll show you by taking you through three minutes of a single Elite 8 game. I’ll show you, then I’ll show myself to a bubbler and enough beers to make tomorrow morning miserable for anyone who’s using the bathroom at my house. I’ll show you all.

And, of course…we have the team that has literally been like another family member since the second I entered this world. The team that helped raise me. The team that probably put me on Lithium, and kept me on anti-anxiety medication for 20 years. The saddest part is, you don’t even have to know me to know who I’m talking about. Only one team has been pathetic enough in the last 25 years to fit this description.

1. My beloved New York Mets. When you sign up for a life with this franchise, it should come with counseling sessions and a prescription pad to use at your own peril. I had to pay a lot of money to get those things, when the Mets are probably the reason I needed them in the first place. But don’t worry, it wasn’t hard to take a single moment from a lifetime of suffering… maybe because I still think about this moment every day.

I hate this idea. Let’s get it over with.

#3 WORST MOMENT: The year was 1993. The team was the New York Knicks. That’s right, it’s the “CHARLES SMITH GAME”

I’m probably going to say this a lot during this article, but I had plenty of nonsense to choose from when reaching into the dark corners of my brain for Knicks misery. Remember when Reggie Miller did the thing Reggie Miller did so that they could show Reggie Miller doing it every time Reggie Miller stumbles and stutters his way through calling a game on TNT? Someone dared me to get Reggie’s name in here 4 times, so there ya go (there was no such dare, I just fucking hate this guy — and so I show it by saying his first and last name, it’s a tough-guy thing that you wouldn’t understand).

But somehow, this isn’t the moment for me. It was as big as any, and certainly crazier than the Charles Smith game…but for whatever reason, missed putback after missed putback after missed putback after missed putback has always been harder for me to deal with. I even changed the course of events in my mind, and somehow convinced myself that missing lay-ups is better than having Scottie Pippen throw your shit time after time after time. Because that’s what happened. Smith didn’t miss 4 putbacks, he barely got a single one to the fucking rim…because everything that the Bulls did back then was just better. You wanna talk about what Pippen was as a single player? Look at that one highlight. He was as much a champion in his own right as anyone else to play the game. I had forgotten that. Or I had stopped caring about it…either way.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s what happened to one of the greatest Knicks teams of all time in 1993 (see, it’s all Pippen):

The Knicks jumped out to a 2–0 series lead in the Eastern Conference Finals against one of many Jordan-and-Pippen-in-their-prime Bulls teams. It looked like it was actually going to happen this time. Then they drop the next two, and we’re tied. Seen this before. It was okay though, because the most pivotal game in the series was happening at Madison Square Garden. This is back when that building used to shake 50–60 times a year. These were the glory days for any Knicks fan of our generation. This was Ewing at his best. This was when the Knicks were actually LIKABLE. Nope, LOVABLE. It’s pretty hard to imagine right now.

I mean just think about the core of that squad. Of course there was Ewing. Then there was that deadly second tier of semi-stars/bar-brawlers that made you feel cool for rooting for the Knicks. Yep, I’m talking Starks, Ant Mason and Chuck Oakley. There will never be another core like this…not to New Yorkers anyway. They embodied the city itself. I guess that’s why it was so hard to see them come up short year after year, without fail. Always right on the doorstep, never in the house.

Now I gotta ask ya Dubb, because my memory is dancing with the light of a thousand Knicks letdowns from those golden years. Back then, from the ages of like 8 to 14, it really did seem like it was the Knicks and the Bulls ALL THE TIME in the East. I know the Pacers (see above) had their thing going, and the Heat were a bitter and hated rival…but all I remember is Pippen and Jordan preventing Ewing from ever doing what we was sent here to do. Is this how you remember it? The tables have turned now, and your Bucks have a future worth living for…but back then, it must have felt like you were kind of watching from a distance. Am I remembering this wrong?

DUBB: Ah yes, the sad and hilarious tale of Charles Smith. The sad speaks for itself and the hilarious I’ll get to. A few things about him first:

Every few years I make it back to his Basketball Reference page for some reason (after seeing the missed/blocked layups I’m sure) and I’m reminded that dude put up legit numbers for the (albeit terrible) early 90's Clips.

Unfortunately his career peaked with LAC and if I recall, he was a punching bag in NYC following this fiasco and eventually out of the league at the young age of 31.

He seems to have done okay in his post-playing career. I mean look at this!?!?!? Oh wait, wrong Charlie Smith. Anyway, it seemed like he’d been doin’ alright, at least until he got caught up in this madness.

As you said though, the Knicks crew of that era was iconic, whether you were a fan or not. I will remind you that they actually made it to the Finals the next year (losing to the Rockets/the OJ car chase) but of course were robbed of the opportunity to beat the Bulls with MJ, which I’m sure made it at least a little bittersweet.

Speaking of MJ and circling back to the hilarious part of all of this, I was a die-hard Jordan fan growing up and hate to say that I reveled in this scene at the time and loved everything about it. I mean, if you weren’t a Knicks fan you hated them and if you were a Bulls/MJ fella you really fucking hated them. Had we met back in ’93 we would’ve beefed over Hip Hop preferences and certainly this match up.

So in one sense I did have distance, as I didn’t live in the middle of it back then, and Chicago coulda been thousands of miles away from Madison for all I knew. But I was all in on the Jordan experience and as a result, the Bulls. Go back to my house in Mad and take a quick peak at my childhood room and this is still the case. Looking back on it, it’s a weird thing that any one player could supersede my local team in the Bucks. If that happens to my kid one day with Seventh Woods I’ll be appalled. But at the time it was just undeniable for some of us and the Bucks spent most of the 90's not putting up much of a fight for my allegiances. Of course, then MJ left and it was just…over. Millions of folks like me opted out of the Tim Floyd experience and once again had a clear NBA head.

So let me ask, what was your perception of this MJ/Bulls fandom at the time and how do you look back on it? Could you enjoy what was happening with the greatness of those squads or did it just add to the sickness of the many Charles Smith-esque moments in that rivalry?

CREEP: It’s really a great question, and almost an impossible one for anyone who grew up with that Knicks squad to answer.

First let me just point something out to those who may not know/ do not care about what certain New Yorkers go through in the sports world. It is NOT that hard to go through life with this combo: Knicks/Jets/Mets…it happens to some poor child born into this world every single day. I gave up on the Jets (and really, the NFL for non-fantasy purposes) years ago…but I don’t need to tell anyone the tale of their incredible multi-decade futility. Now the Mets were a real thing in the 80's, and we’ll touch on that later — but when the fuck were the 80s? We were both born in the earlier part of it, yet we’d be lucky to remember anything before 1990 with real clarity. All that really means here is…1986 might as well be ancient history. Caligula coulda been the shortstop, it wouldn’t make a difference in my memory. These period piece jokes doing anything for ya?

Sorry, there IS a point here. In the 90's, this Knicks team was really all a lot of us young New York die-hards had, and believe you me I was living and dying with all of it. Dying, mostly. And so — no, I could not appreciate Jordan for what he was at the time…but don’t worry, I got there eventually.

I’d be really interested to hear other how other Knicks fans dealt with this (especially at the age that we dealt with it), but the only way I can make sense of my Jordan experience is to explain it as a progression. I’ll break it into some simple steps for my own sanity:

1. Little kid, the Knicks are my world — there’s a villain (Jordan) who won’t let my superhero (Ewing) win a championship.

2. A little older than a little kid — the same villain is there, the team around him seems to be better every year…I’m starting to realize that we are in the midst of something that may never be repeated in the sports world again. But I also feel like the Knicks are getting tougher every year, and starting to hate every other team more than I ever had before because I can’t come to terms with the fact that we might never break through. The hatred is mostly aimed at the Bulls, with MJ in the crosshairs.

3. Finally close to our teens, if not there yet — I remember leaving the Garden with my dad, Jordan had just dropped 40-something on the Knicks (again). He was smiling, I was ready to fight people (little people, but the anger was there). I asked him what he was so happy about, and he tells me that one day I’ll understand how lucky we were to see Jordan in person every year. I told him I would be taking the train home, and that he could drive back alone to think about the things he had said to me. He made me run extra laps in football practice later that week.

4. At some point in my still unfinished maturation process — The Knicks never end up doing it, the team that started this whole conversation starts to break apart slowly until somehow we’re all left with the last 20 years of celebrating a single 4 point play and a bunch of failed max contracts. We also developed an affinity for well-aged superstar guards, but enjoyed paying them like they were still in their prime. From Steve Francis to Mike Bibby (and ya know how I feel about him in life), that whole ride was fun for exactly no one. As for Jordan, I have only one opinion left. I feel lucky to have ever seen him play in person, and put him next to Babe Ruth in the “this person is just from a story book, but never actually existed” category. I mean WE all know Jordan existed, but I feel like that’s how kids will talk about him 50 years from now.

5. Always — The shoes. I should probably leave any shoe talk to you ol’ Dubb…but you know I’ve lived the Jordan life with ya in that department. The last 7 years or so, as a teacher, I loved seeing students revive the 11's and 12's and everything before and after even though they had no idea who Jordan really was. It allowed me to talk to them about his career like my grandfather used to talk to me about World War II. The conversations always ended the same way with the youngsters too…“so he was like LeBron?” No, guys. He was not like LeBron. He was Michael Jordan, the most iconic sports figure in any of your parent’s lives. Read a book about him.

Now before we finally kick it to you for your third most horrifying moment (another novel in the works here), I want to attempt to make internet history. I want to end this with a tidbit about Charles Smith, because he’s the one who opened the door to this haunted world of lost opportunities.

I’m going to ask myself a question, without looking it up. Then I’m going to look it up to see if I was right. This is internet history, I’m telling ya.

Wasn’t Charles Smith like the best college player of his generation statistically? At TCU if I’m remembering correctly?

(pause, while I check this by clicking on your link to his Basketball-Reference page)

Nope, he went to Pitt. I was thinking of Kurt Thomas, who now looks exactly like Charles Smith in my head. Ah well, at least I was honest about everything.

Sooooo….how we lookin brotha?

DUBB: Love that Kurt Thomas/Charlie Smith confusion and for the record, Kurt was the fucking man in college (that senior year!) It’s hard to believe, considering that he was a lumbering (super) old fella by the time he wrapped up his NBA tenure, but he put in serious work at TCU.

Briefly back to MJ, I’ll always be saddened that I never saw him play in person and your Dad was prescient in his words about him way back when. I do distinctly recall being at my grandparents in Albany, NY for the Double Nickel game, which was a glorious moment for me and probably a sickening “More of the Same” moment for you. Alas, that may have been the closest I got to an iconic Jordan moment.

#3 WORST MOMENT: The Comeback

How many games in sports history possibly have this designation? Too many to count I imagine but Wikipedia has branded this one as such, so go to hell (where you would’ve found me during/after this game).

This one will likely register as a surprise to most, as it doesn’t involve any of the Badgers/Brewers/Bucks/Packers pantheon that comprises my sports world, but this is a deep cut for the heads who knew me back in ‘93. I did not grow up a Packers fan and frankly didn’t care for them or the statewide obsession they inspired for many years. It took my time as a young college transplant in Arizona (gotta be a forthcoming exchange on that time of our lives) to really start rooting for them, so in a sense I’m only about a 14-year old in Packers fandom terms.

Anyway, for me the squad was always Warren Moon’s Oilers. It started with Warren — I still have his poster up to this day — and extended to the Run and Shoot, those team colors, the WR: Hill, Givins, Duncan, Jeffires, SLAUGHTER, etc. My homie at RB, Lorenzo White, the inspiration for my name in Spanish class. Those uniforms, that logo. And on and on.

This was a powerhouse team that was spectacular to watch — really played a style more appropriate for the NFL in 2015 than the early-1990s — yet never played in an AFC Championship game, let alone a Super Bowl. And one of the main reasons why was The Comeback. This goddamn game that is replayed every year and is a perpetual reminder of what never was for these glorious Oilers teams. Maybe it was appropriate that the Bills were the team to do it. I generally rooted for them, as my Dad is fan and from the area, but eventually those Super Bowl losses piled up and I couldn’t take it any more. Yet, they were basically an extension of the Oilers — a truly memorable franchise of the era yet never good enough to win the big one.

I won’t walk you through the game. Watch the whole thing here if you so choose. The Bills came back from 32 down to win in OT 41–38 and I remember even as a youngster watching — not even 10 yet — I could feel the total collapse happening and it was suffocating. Worst of all, it was spurred by backup QB Frank Reich, who was otherwise largely forgettable but just seemed to have an obnoxious knack for overcoming historic deficits in huge games. Fuck that guy…but you have to respect his once a decade miracle-hustle.

In the end, I was left in tears and on the floor at a family friend’s house (shout out to the Thorns!), with an early lesson on how devastating sports can be. The Oilers actually bounced back with a 12–4 regular season in ‘93-’94 but again fell short in the playoffs, and that was that for the dynasty that never was. I continued to root for the team — though to a lesser extent — as they transitioned to the Titans (another team that fell agonizingly short) and eventually reached the end of my chapter with the franchise.

The last and only non-Wisconsin franchise that I cared about to that extent ended up being the first to teach me about sports sadness. Don’t worry 9-year old lil’ fella, there’s plenty more to come.

CREEP: And the Warren Moon poster (oh it’s real folks…still in mint condition and currently blessing its 77th different house) finally gets the back-story it deserves. See this is why we have these month long conversations. Just when I thought I knew everything about you as a fan, I’m reminded of some things I either never knew or completely ignored the first time around. If you asked me if you were a fan of Warren Moon, I think I would have been able to answer confidently — but I was never even close to understanding the depths of your suffering on this one. I can see little Dubb now, squirming around on the floor and needing whatever MC Hammer jam was hot at that moment to calm him down. This is such a trying exercise.

On the cheer-up tip, look at this way — you could have decided back then that the Oilers were gonna be your thing for life. You could have followed them to Tennessee, as you stated. Just imagine what life would be like if you decided to remember the Titans. Right now you’d be rifling through a recent history of Jake Locker’s broken body (he retired since we started this, neat) and several years where literally zero Titans players were being started on any given week in competitive fantasy leagues. You know how hard that is to pull off? The Jets have accomplished it too, I’m sure. It’s pretty safe to say that in the end, you ended up on the right side of things in the football universe. As for me, I have come to root against the Packers just because it makes me really sad when my friends are happy…and soooo many of you folks live and die with the green and yellow. I guess it’s a Wisconsin thing, and I get it — but no one ever asked me if I wanted to go to Green Bay for the weekend. Just sayin’.

Anyway, it feels like we got the two safe memories out of the way. Yeah, recalling these was no Sunday drive (please allow ONE of my new catch phrases to stick)…but I wasn’t in complete agony. Actually, it was kinda nice to put a weirdly constructed, back-route tribute to Jordan into actual words and sentences. So with that said, I’m in no way ready to talk about:

#2 WORST MOMENT: March 26, 2005. 3 seed Zona (30–6) VS 1 seed Illinois (35–1). For me, this is THE COMEBACK.

Fuck. This one hurts so much. So so much, to this very day. Fuck. Fuck Deron Williams (clown, look at you now). Fuck Luther Head (clown, look at your stupid name). Fuck the big 10??? No, can’t say that. Just fuck, then.

Let me start by saying something that will offend my Knickerbocker brethren. I would trade a Knicks championship for a regular season Arizona win. Okay, I wouldn’t…but I care a whole hell of a lot more about anything Zona related than whatever bullshit James Dolan is peddling. Mix in the reality that college basketball is just by FAR the greatest thing to exist in the sports world, and it ain’t even close. I may have lived and died with Ewing and Co. as a youngster, but now we’re talking about some real adult pain. Some shit that will never go away.

Now Dubb, you’ve been a Badgers guy through and through and I always respect the hustle there. They are NOT a team I root against for fear that my friends might be enjoying something that I don’t care about. In fact, in recent years they’ve shed that grind-it-out mentality and put up fun point totals night after night. I really do root for em with ya, although a lot of that came crumbling down on the back of Frank Kaminsky embarrassing Aaron Gordon and Co. in the elite 8 last year. Ah well. While I know where your heart rightfully lives, it’s also safe to say that you’ve never taken your eye of that squad that you called a home-team in 2001 (man, we really DO need to go back and form some sort of written account of that year in Tucson). Knowing this, and knowing that this game may not be as famous as the others that we discuss, I’m just wondering…do you remember this shit show?

DUBB: Yep, now we’re getting truly hurtful and painful. Before I touch on THIS COMEBACK though, I have to mention that game that I always get confused with this one — the other heartbreaking Elite Eight loss for Zona,in 2003 vs. Kansas. And don’t forget, this one featured our fellow classmates in Hot Sauce, Salim, Channing, Iggy, Walton, etc. A truly fun crew that deserved better.

Anyway, our good pal Geeeeeeee and I organized a viewing party of sorts for the Kansas game and went through the extremely complicated process of procuring a quarter barrel of brew with our flimsy fake IDs, only to discover that said viewing party would in fact only consist of us two. We briefly debated returning the keg — child’s play really — and instead proceeded to drink the whole thing together. We were sad at the end of the game but you know, not that sad. Mostly just very drunk and probably wandering around our DOPE apartment complex, trying not to get shot.

For the miserable game you speak of though, I certainly watched it and died a little inside — Zona was and will always be my #2 behind UW in bball — but I can’t FOR THE LIFE OF ME remember where I actually was. I can remember the disbelief and sadness and I also recall that I spent the first weekend of that Tournament on spring break in lovely Ann Arbor — the beginning of my tradition to travel somewhere for the Tournament and really a story for another time.

Let me ask you — I know you only spent one year at U of A but when did you start loving the squad? I know I liked them when they won the title in ’97 but it was from afar and without much knowledge. It took going to school there for me to truly get on board. My feeling with you — and correct me if I’m wrong — is that your love for the ‘Cats has only grown since you left and that maybe you were too close (smoked too much weed with) that ’03 group to truly toss yourself in the ringer. By ’05 there was less of that factor and you were primed to get punched in the face/gut/balls by their devastating collapse.

Bonus question: How many hoops games did you actually go to in your year at Zona? I spent two years there and somehow only went to one — TJ Ford! Royal Ivey! Sydmill Harris! — not including Midnight Madness earlier that season, featuring a never-ending supply of Fast Break candy bars (delicious) and an almost certainly coked out of his brain Tom Arnold emceeing. You were missed Sophomore year my friend, you were truly missed.

CREEP: I love thinking about these questions way more than I enjoy talking about any of these games.

Real quick — and I do mean REAL quick — let me just tell the folks out there what happened in the original game in question. Illinois had only lost one game going into what would become the greatest horror show of my tournament life. That said, Arizona was the better team. I don’t care, they were. They dominated at both ends for 36 minutes and that’s not hyperbole. I remember the attitude on the Zona sideline. A ton of laughing and yelling and flexing — you know, the things a bench does when they know their team is doing something special.

And then they really did something special. Here’s the (really) quick version: Zona was up 75–60 with 3:58 left. Yep. That’s pretty impossible to fuck up. Basically, a combination of Dee Brown (to a lesser extent), Luther Head (to a greater extent) and Deron Williams (to a heart-shattering extent) decided that they would do nothing but steal passes and hit threes for those final 238 seconds. Those seconds did not go by quickly. You can tell when a team is losing their minds and playing each possession only to see the clock inch closer towards zero. That’s what happened. Zona went from dominant to shell-shocked after two consecutive turnovers, and never recovered. Some folks who remember this game forget one SUPER FUN detail: it actually went into overtime. But you know how that goes. It’s kind of like that Duke-UNC game last night (Feb 18, 2015… because who knows when we’ll be done with this). Once regulation ended and the comeback had been crazy enough to tie the game, you knew overtime was pretty much a formality. Zona managed to keep it real for the entire 5 minutes, but ultimately did what they were sent to the Elite 8 to do (year after year after year). They choked. Just like they did against Kansas (that fun-ass squad you mentioned). Or UConn (Derrick Williams was EASILY the most dominant player in the tournament). Or Wisconsin (Aaron Gordon was the best defensive player in the world, and Nick Johnson was a seasoned pro). It just doesn’t seem to matter. The Elite 8 is where them West Coast Wildcats go to die. That could very well change this year (Stan Johnson folks, remember the name)…but it probably won’t.

Now, to some fun. I love these inquiries.

First of all, I remember the Kansas game just as well — as in I know where I was and how I felt and all that. I remember that Hinrich and Nick Collison were insane, which is a funny thing to say these days. But it’s true — everyone was scared of those Kansas teams as long as those two were the anchors. If you’ll remember, that glorious ’03 Zona team beat Gonzaga in one of the best 1 vs 9 games of all time (that’s real, not my words) to eventually get to that Kansas game. For whatever reason, that seemed to be enough for me that year. I mean, not at the time — but this just doesn’t ring out as loudly as I think back. Also, as weird as it sounds, I never hated those Kansas teams. Not sure what there was to like, but I remember feeling at peace with the fact that they were the reason our season ended. That was not the case with Illinois. Not at all.

Now, as for my Zona origin story…it’s a fun one. This is true.

I was the definition of an average high school student. I had good SAT scores and a lazy looking GPA, whatever it was. I knew that I didn’t want to go to UConn (where 50 people from my graduating class ended up going). I was a Maryland fan growing up (hey, they held out until the year I actually got to Tucson to win that championship…another wound, more salt)…but my academic resume wasn’t good enough for ‘em. I was basically left looking at like 9 of the same school. Clemson, NC State, South Carolina, something like Colorado or Oregon (wouldn’t have minded)…I knew I wanted to go to a big one, and I knew that basketball had to matter wherever I went. I’ve never been a big college football guy (shocking, I know). Now Arizona was always KIND of like the Duke/UNC/Whatever-team-you-hate of the West Coast growing up…but unlike those other squads, they always had a genuine coolness to them. They wore fun socks, constantly had insane point guards (Point Guard U!), and put up like 85 points a game for most of the 1990's. So yeah, they were a powerhouse — but in Connecticut there was more than enough distance to admire them. They were a blue chip program, but an exotic one. I was rarely up late enough to see them on TV, but whenever tournament time came around they were always a really fun force to be reckoned with.

And that’s why we know each other good sir. Arizona was the first acceptance letter I received, and I remember thinking how amazing it would be to kind of force myself into their wildly entertaining and constantly dominant world of world class point guards and breakneck tempos. I thought about going to Clemson for a hot second, so I dodged a bullet there. To all the youngsters out there, let me be clear. I am absolutely advocating that IF you go to college, it should be fully based on sports teams and your ability to attach yourselves to them for life. The academic part is a joke, and does not matter. I knew that then, so I went to Arizona. As for the academic part not mattering, that much was evident in my 1.9 GPA. I think at Zona they even spot you a point, so that’s pretty tough to do. Instead of academic probation, I took my show on the road and ended up at Northeastern (and eventually Loyola New Orleans). I’m not sure why I was accepted anywhere after my showing in Tucson, but I know that I took the basketball team with me wherever I went. To quote “In Her Shoes” — I carry it in my heart. Man, I love that movie.

And finally — another great question. Man, it was damn near impossible to get into a game at McHale center. Compare that to the free football tickets that came with our orientation packets if you want to reflect on the energy that surrounded the McHale Center. The whole fucking experience in Tucson was about basketball for half the year.

Aside from TJ Ford and the Texas game (did we somehow not go to that togther? What’s happening), I only ended up seeing them smash ASU on parents weekend. My dad and I stood the entire time in the second to last row, and it was magical.

DUBB: If it makes you feel any better — and I imagine it doesn’t — I hear about the eventual heartbreak Illinois themselves went through all the time being in Chi. They shot terribly in that 2005 title game against what seemed like an all-time college team in UNC (NOT an all-time NBA crew) and still almost won the game. But didn’t. And really, though they’ve had some decent years since, they now stand as a pretty nondescript program, which I imagine would be a bit different had they won it all that year. I mean they have this type of shit pulled on them these days. Sad for them, maybe some payback for you.

A few more things before I roll into the pond for my #2 worst memory:

Were you at that Texas, Zona game? Because it took place in December 2002, when by all accounts you were back East and lost from us forever. Did you sneak into town sir?

Earlier you mentioned that college hoops were just about your favorite thing in the world (besides maybe the Mets slicing your throat each year…stay tuned!). Is that directly related to your love for Zona or would you truly prefer to watch a random, high-level college game to it’s parallel in the NBA? And if you just generally enjoy college ball more than the NBA, I’d be curious to hear why. Sooooooooo many clowns take this stance with generic arguments — More grit! More effort! More defense! Blah fucking blah — but I know you would have a more nuanced take on it if so.

Lastly, let’s add some joy to our lives in this smorgasbord of sadness. Give me your Zona All-time Starting 5 — define the parameters however you choose — and a brief take on why each fella made the Creep cut.

CREEP: Goddamn, fuckin homework assignments here Dubbman. I accept.

First of all, this is great — I was not at the Texas game. I knew it was a Big 12 team (I swear, for some reason that was ringing in my head), and I knew it was an early-season home game against a juggernaut. Guess who it was?

KANSAS! Full circle my friends. I saw Drew Gooden’s squad put up 105 points in Tucson, and I remember it being a really early game for some reason (like 11 am or some crazy shit) and I remember being drunk hours before tip…so that’s that. Despite the loss, it was an unforgettable experience — even though I seem to have forgotten a lot of it. I remember a certain someone who I’d gone to high school with (we won’t name names, he later fought all of your friends and broke a lamp) grabbed two tickets and I was blown away by how insane a college game felt. It was the first college home game I’d ever been to…ya know, like one not at MSG in November or whatever.

Now check this out. That year, they went to Phoenix for whatever reason to play their next game after losing to Kansas at home. If we’d taken the road trip (like the one you declined to Mardi Gras a few months later) to see that one, ya know what we woulda seen? An 87–82 win against the #5 team in the country. Oh, who was 5th that week in 2001 you ask? Illinois. That’s right. Somehow the three teams we’ve discussed over the last 78 paragraphs managed to fit their way into one week of hazy memories. That’s fun.

Now I don’t want to make this about a whole other thing, because we could — but yes, I prefer pretty much any real regular season college game to anything NBA related. First of all, you know me. I care nothing for grit. I will teach my kids to play the game the wrong way. If a player does things that don’t show up in the box score, I don’t care about him. So I’m not one of those assholes, although I know exactly the type of person that bothers you and it annoys me too. That said, I think you CAN like college ball more than the NBA despite the fact that the drop off in talent (obviously) is shocking to see. You ever flip back and forth between the two on the ol’ television. Yes, you have — because I’ve been next to you many times as we attempt to see if we can lose two overs in two different leagues in the span of two hours. So it’s not about that. I guess it really does start with the fact that Arizona has been pretty fucking great for the last 15 years (we’ll let that Lute Olsen to Sean Miller transition period go for now), and the Knicks have been too inept to properly describe. But I do like the fanaticism. I like the energy…I get into it. I like the idea of an upset on any given night. Sure, the Sixers could beat the Rockets tomorrow and that would be shocking — but no one would really care and it wouldn’t have any effect on anything long term. When NJIT beats Michigan in the first 6 weeks of the season, however, that’s news. That’s still news right now. So I guess the “anything can happen, and it will matter when it does” thing has a lot to do with it. Also, I won’t lie. I haven’t made the playoffs in our fantasy basketball league in four years, and haven’t been competitive for the last two…so that might have something to do with my slow and gradual departure from the NBA world. When I say departure, I mean that I can name the first 9 guys (although I probably can’t right now, 993 trades just happened as we sit here typing) on every team in the league with ease, and will always follow closely enough to do so. I just don’t have a great passion for any of it right now, and again, a lot of that has to do with the fact that I’ve had very little to root for for a very long time. This hasn’t stopped me in the baseball world, but then again- who gives a fuck about college baseball? Seriously, does anyone…it should be a bigger thing. Oh, and I haven’t lost by less than 30 in 7 NBA2K games so far this year…so that ain’t helping either.

Now onto some real fun. Thank you so much for asking me to put together an all-time Zona team. When the time comes, I will make you do the same…it gives us a chance to turn these frowns upside down for a few minutes.

Here’s one parameter that I will use, and it does limit this exercise but also personalizes it for me. I will only pick players that existed in the new millennium (i.e. players that were on teams who had the pleasure of having me watch every single minute of their season).

This does kick some insanely fun all-timers out of the equation. No Bibby, no Miles Simon, no Jason Terry or RJ. Obviously no Kerr or Sean Elliot…no Kenny Lofton. No Tom Tolbert. And most importantly (and for this one I’m serious, I don’t care about Tom Tolbert)…no Gilbert Arenas. For a 4–5 year span, Gilbert was my favorite athlete in any sport. Well, either him or Carlos Beltran — but don’t worry Carlos, you have a dissertation waiting for you at the end of this conversation.

Other than that, I’m not going to restrict myself. I don’t care if they were a one and done (although none of them were) — I’m shooting straight from the heart here.

So, here is THE CREEP’S ALL-TIME ZONA SQUAD:

PG — Mustafa Shakur. What’s not to like? He was an extremely rare thing in major college basketball — a true PG who was a four year starter, including two truly great under-the-radar seasons to end his career. But let’s be honest, we all signed up to love this guy on name alone — his game was just the cherry on top. I’m not shocked things didn’t work out for him in the NBA — he couldn’t shoot for shit — but man, I wish it had. He averaged 12 points, 4 rebounds and 7 assists a game his senior year. Those are very cool college numbers. I hope you’re happy wherever you are sir.

SG — Salim Stoudamire. Do I even have to explain myself? You’d be hard pressed to find a more fun player in the history of college basketball. That might sound like something Bill Walton would say, but I mean it. Did it help that he smoked weed in my dorm room and lost to me in NBA street? Yes. But fuck that. This guy would drop 35 footers because he felt like it, shot like 99.9 percent from the stripe, and was as clutch as they come. In his senior year, he hit 3.5 threes a game and shot over 50 percent from the field. That’s nuts. He also just didn’t seem to really give a fuck, all while propelling great Arizona teams to huge wins (clearly he gave a fuck). I’ll leave it at this. East Coast bias is a very real thing in college basketball, I don’t think that’s up for discussion. When Salim was a senior, and JJ Redick was a junior- all anyone cared about was Redick. He was the most famous young man in all of the land. Well, I’m here today to tell you that Salim was better that year. I don’t care about arguing it, I’m just going to say it and walk away from the conversation.

SF — Andre Iguodala. This one hurts a little. He had two very fun, very good years at Arizona…but he (and they) really should have been SO much more. He was that rare type that was just ready for the NBA two games into his college career. His game was somehow better suited for the next level, whatever the fuck that means. Maybe that’s why he’s really the only definitively successful NBA player from Zona in the last decade. As for his time in Tucson, when he and Hassan Adams were in the mood they were the most entertaining two man show in the country. To add a personal touch, I bet a mutual friend of ours (Casey, he’s in first in our fantasy league right now….no one could possibly care less) 100 bucks that he would be a top 10 pick in the 2004 draft. He went 9th. I needed the money way more than Casey did, so it’s all good.

PF — Derrick Williams. I don’t want to talk about what he’s become…although we should probably do that soon, because we might be running out of time. Another one that needs no explanation. Anyone remember what he did to Duke in the sweet 16 four years ago? 32 and 13, with two of the craziest dunks in Zona tournament history. That was my favorite moment as a Zona fan, that game. Of course, we lost to Uconn on three missed shots as time expired in the elite 8 the following weekend (fuck you Jamelle Horne)…but let me just remember the good times for a second. There were some REAL good times with Derrick his sophomore year, way too many to leave him off this roster.

C — Channing Frye. I know he’s a dork. Also, we actually know he’s a dork — his television watching habits in the dorm alone were enough for us to be skeptical freshman year. But he was also a star, and another understated one at that. He gave us 2 good years and 2 great years before heading to the league. He was in like the 97th percentile of talent in the country for most of his career, but did it so quietly and had so much around him the entire time that he was easy to lose in the shuffle. He also didn’t play this pussy game (also known as the Kaufman special) that he plays today…he could shoot (which is always fun for a big man in college, I think you might have some of that going on right now with that big white guy ya got in Madison), but he was smooth in the post as well. So many college big men can barely catch a basketball…Frye was developing his post game from day one, and by the time he was done he was an incredible weapon. Sadly, he might be the second best pro to come out of this bunch, but let’s wait until Aaron Gordon has a shot at some real run before we make any crazy statements.

BONUS 6th Man — Brandon Jennings. I don’t even wanna get into it. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, look it up. Just don’t come around me with it.

HONEST, SINCERE, HEARTFELT APOLOGIES TO: T.J. McConnell, Chase Budinger, Jordan Hill, Aaron Gordon, Solly Hill, Luke Walton, Jerryd Bayless, Will Bynum (ha) and Momo Jones (Iona somehow made him cooler).

A Special Note to Jerryd Bayless — I love you, and I’m sorry that your one year had to be under fucking Kevin O’Neill. If you had ANYONE else running that team, you’d probably be spearheading this charge. You might have even found a starting job in the NBA by now.

So there it is. Tomorrow it might be a little different, but that’s what I’m feeling right now. I can’t believe some of the players that had to be left out- because I loved them just as much. Tough decisions are…tough. That’s why we play the game.

And now, for the motherfucking love of god, enough about me. We know about Warren Moon destroying tiny Dubb’s life, but we don’t know much else. Keep it moving brotha, break our hearts again.

DUBB: That is a truly top notch job on the Zona starting 5, well done my friend. A walk down memory lane and we’ll have to delve deeper on a future U of A memories post at some point. Good call on pointing out what may have been in Bayless, who has still managed to have a serviceable NBA career. I’m currently enjoying his work as a bench scorer for the Bucks and hopefully he’ll stick around as the franchise makes upward moves in the coming years. On with it…

#2 WORST MOMENT: 2011 Rose Bowl

These last two worst moments for me are a little strange relative to yours in the sense that they likely don’t register highly on the scale for the average sports fan. Some maybe remember this game — it was one of the better Rose Bowls in recent memory — but in the scheme of things it probably seems kinda low-stakes to have this high on the list. A handful of factors make it #2 on my list though:

Look, I’d love to lose national championship games (you know what I mean) but UW just has not quite gotten to that point as a program yet. For us, the Rose Bowl is pretty much the gold standard until shown otherwise. We won the 3 Rose Bowls we went to in my younger years — all still huge deals — and this loss to TCU started a string of 3 straight Rose losses and 4 bowl losses overall.

TCU had guys like Andy goddamn Dalton and dudes with names like TANK CARDER (nice NFL career Tank!) on their team. I know Dalton got paid and has had some (limited) success in the League, but they were such a group of dorky college guys at the time. What a fun underdog story!

UW was pretty loaded — JJ Fucking Watt, a young Montee Ball, John Clay, James White, Nick Toon, Scott Tolzien, Jared Abbrederis, Lance Kendricks, Gabe Carimi, an injured Chris Borland (also retired since we started writing this, christ), etc, etc — all NFL players.

We frankly let the game slip and absolutely shouldn’t have lost. We took too long to incorporate a bruising John Clay, who dominated the final drive on offense when we finally started giving him the rock consistently. And speaking of that last drive, down 8 points we very leisurely took 5:30 off the clock with the absurd assumption that we’d get the 2 point conversion after scoring a TD and tie the game. Well, that conversion didn’t happen and with under 2 minutes left and 1 timeout, it was pretty much a wrap.

More than all of that though, I’m biased toward this gut punch because I was there. My first and only Rose Bowl in person and the experience was all it was hyped up to be until those final minutes. And while I’ve been extremely lucky to mostly grow up during the golden era of UW football, my early years as a fan were the tail end of a football program in shambles. One of my early memories of the team is a lone FG we managed to put up (to take an early lead!) in a 51–3 shellacking from the eventual 1989 Miami national championship juggernaut.

So while I’d lived with mostly UW football success, I had a great appreciation for where the program came from and to be there at the football mecca for Big Ten fans was a special thing. And the place truly is great. Save for the long caravan of cars waiting to get into the parking lot — I’d very much encourage renting a party bus/limo/driver next time around — the whole scene was something to behold. I was there with Digs, the folks and several family friends. The sun was out, skies blue and a slight chill in the air that’s only right for a football game of magnitude. Wandering around the pre-game tailgate we saw what seemed like every person we ever knew at UW, in many cases for the first time since graduation several years earlier. And the mood was just on point for everyone, gettin’ wacky no doubt but I know in my case, somewhat holding off until the inevitable win.

And for whatever reason, the win did feel inevitable. I guess because we didn’t lose Rose Bowls (until we lost all of them) and the scene was just too perfect for things to end any other way. The funny part is that I have no idea what would’ve happened post-game had we won. I don’t recall any singular plan, much like a crisp random fall Saturday night in Madison after a big win. But things always turned out absurd in a great way there and I assume it would’ve been like that but turned (turnt?) up several notches. The UW team hotel, a mansion in Hollywood Hills, The Playaz Club, Compton,Watts, jail? I have no idea where the night would’ve gone but it went up in smoke the moment that pass was batted down the 2-point try.

The night ended quietly at a lovely little Italian restaurant in Digs’ old hood of Sherman Oaks. The game was discussed, sure, but mostly just shocked faces all around and nowhere to expend that pent up, ready to go bonkers energy. Maybe next time.

CREEP: Oh man, well there goes my smile. Way to come back from a hiatus with a bang old friend…And by come back I mean remind us all why we should probably just stop rooting for things.

First off let me honestly tell ya that I remember this game — but only because I knew you were there and thought it was really fucking cool that I had a friend at the Rose Bowl.

As I said before, the average Zona enthusiast is about one season and one season only — and it ain’t football season. That’s changing as we speak (how we lookin Rich Rod? You’re fun), but I honestly have very little connection to the last 30 years of anything college football related. I’ve basically lived through your passion for them Badgers and thousands of dollars in lost bets. Maybe don’t bet on a sport you don’t follow? Far be it for me to lecture the kids out there, but that seems like sound advice.

Now one thing you said really resonated with me because frankly, up until now, college football has been a weird fucking sport to a lot of us. I mean the football part isn’t weird. In fact, the increasingly frenetic pace at which most teams (the entire Pac-12, for example) play is kinda crazy to watch. But the set up was always weird (and by weird, I mean awful) to me. Say Wisco wants to be fun and play Oregon in the second week of a fictional season. The way I saw it, the system punished such bold and exciting moves. Losing a game like that pretty much took a team out of the running. I mean some years some poor powerhouse could literally lose that type of early season slobber knocker (just wanted to fit that term in), then win out and STILL end up with the rest of the teams in the fantastic world of “no one will remember who won this non-title bowl game next year.” For the die-hards like yourself, I completely get how the Rose Bowl might as well have been the championship, and I really respect and enjoy that mindset. For the casual observer though, the shit just seemed extremely flawed and honestly a little boring.

But not anymore. And here’s where your comment comes in. No, the Badgers are not Alabama…They’re not Florida State…But I love ya enough to have kept up with them for a good decade now — so I feel safe in saying that they’re absolutely in that next tier.

So with that said, I have a question. How much does this playoff format excite you? How has it changed your mentality as a fan? Are you officially in the permanent title conversation now? Are you worried that you’ll get done dirty like TCU (sorry) or Baylor did last year? I know the playoff thang got me into it way more this year than any other I can remember — but what has it done for the actual college football heads of the world? Gotta be exciting right?

DUBB: Funny that you mention Alabama because to speak to how things used to be in college football and how they are now that this playoff exists, UW is playing ‘Bama in Dallas this upcoming season to kick things off. And played LSU last season and will play them again in Green Bay in 2016. Yes these are all made-for-TV fun early season match-ups but they also now exist to give yourself a chance for an impact win early in the season and in the worst case scenario, a loss that doesn’t look bad at all by the time you get to the late season playoff seeding portion of things.

As you said, in the old system you were largely penalized for this type of aggressive scheduling and making it all the way back from any loss to the national championship game was a long shot. As a result, most teams scheduled shitty non-conference games and only once in a blue moon would something fun and goofy happen.

The playoff is really just a whole new world that we’ve all been waiting on forever. The BCS and everyone who hung on to it until it took it’s dying breath were all full of shit. And there are still an absurd amount of unnecessary bowl games that reward the most mediocre of programs. But there’s no doubt that the 4 team playoff is an incredible thing and I’d be shocked if it isn’t expanded to 8 in the near future.

From folks like you who are relatively indifferent on the college game to even people who actively dislike college football/sports and everything they claim to stand for, the playoff system immediately makes it exponentially more interesting and hard to resist for at least those last two games. For a fella like me, it does allow me the expectation to be in that playoff conversation just about every year. I imagine the Rose Bowl will always hold a special place for many of us and I’d never scoff at a season that ended in one. But at a certain point — 6 Rose Bowls in 20 years — you gotta aim higher and the playoff provides that opportunity.

On that note, it’s just about time for us to aim higher on the sadness scale and get the jump off going for our #1's. Briefly though, can you holler at some quick-shot honorable mentions for any franchises/moments/players that you haven’t gotten to yet? Take that any direction you so choose but I’ll demand at least one exploration of a player that brought you the most sadness, whether that’s in expectations unfulfilled, someone you loved that broke your ol’ heart or a fella that constantly tortured your team (of the non-MJ variety). Type those tears for me.

CREEP: Haha okay. Not sure what I did to ya, but whatever it is, I truly apologize.

Jus j’n, this is the fun part.

So the player that fits ALL of those descriptions and then some is Carlos Beltran, but again, I’ve got a lot to say about him in a minute here.

So for now, I’ll go in a few other directions. First of all, let me link my first two tales of terror to nail this inquiry pretty fittingly. In the last 10 years, the Knicks have had 3 top-10 draft picks. Now if we were talking about a perennial title contender, then fine. Unfortunately, we are talking about one of the worst teams in the NBA over that span. How the fuck they managed to be truly pathetic AND non-factors on nearly almost every draft day (COSTNER! WATCH IT PEOPLE!) is nothing short of miraculous.

So here’s the fun part (and by now you know that fun means “suicide-inducing” in this here discussion):

Two of the three top-10 picks in the last 10 years for the Knicks have been Channing Frye and Jordan Hill. Yep. If that ain’t the God of sports winding up and kicking ol Auggie square in the penis, then I don’t know what the fuck he/she has in store for me. Hill was pretty much run out of town before he could get any sustained run (draft him as a “project” and then have zero patience for a growth period — cool), and Frye just kind of existed (and was unliked by most Knicks fans since the moment his name was called on draft night). It’s pretty hard to draft two incredibly solid college big men in the top-10 (in a five year span no less), and have them mean absolutely nothing to the franchise at any point in time. Now, God forbid Stan Johnson makes sense for us this June — New York fans will bitch and moan at the Arizona brand alone. I can’t really think of a more disgusting situation than that.

Does that work for ya? And if so, I need you to answer the same question. Who do you need to work into this house of horrors? Maybe it’s time for some Brewer talk?

DUBB: That’s an unexpected direction but you’re right, their stints were too quickly forgotten in NYC, which is a good reflection of how fast the Knicks gave up on both. They’ve each gone on to have their moments in the league. Neither one would ever be described as a star but I’d be glad to have both in my big man rotation. Seeing as how the Knicks have been seriously lacking a normal compliment of functional players for years now, they coulda done worse than to hang on to both fellas for more than 12 seconds. Stan is obviously better than both in terms of upside and I could see his steez fitting in well there but you have reason to be wary. Of course, you’d also buy that jersey in .04 seconds upon him being drafted.

Honorable Mention:

Packers — I’ve already gone over my tumultuous relationship with this franchise but let’s be honest, the life of a Packers fan over the past 20+ years has been a charmed one. 3 Super Bowl appearances, 2 wins and a team that’s pretty much in contention every year. When you play high-stakes games in most seasons, inevitably you’re going to have some heartbreaking moments — The Catch II, 4th and 26, Favre’s last pass as a Packer, 15–1 squandered and the aforementioned Seahawks choke job. That’s a painful list for any Pack fan but the common thread is that they’re all playoff games, which any sad Browns bum would literally murder for at this point.

Bucks — The 2001 NBA Playoffs were an incredible thing for Bucks fans and really the only truly special team of my lifetime. There were good ones in the 80's, the Fear the Dear year in 2010 (which didn’t even win a playoff series) and largely garbage in every other direction. That ’01 team was legit and fun — look at Ray!!!! — and I firmly believe would’ve put up an actual fight vs. the Lakers in the Finals that year (the 76ers…didn’t). But I’ll bring up two sad things about that team. Big Dog misses a wide-open go-ahead jumper at the buzzer in Game 5 at Philly, which would’ve put the Bucks up 3–2 headed back to Milwaukee. And on a much larger scale, the Bucks got totally fucked by the refs during that entire series. Now, I’m not THAT GUY normally but this is a well established thing. And until we get back to that point (maybe in the next 5 years…Giannis, Jabari, eh?), we’ll be stuck on that ‘01 squad.

And all of that is preamble to the real answer to the question and really the MVP to my sports sadness, the Milwaukee Brewers. They won’t be featured in my #1 moment because akin to the marathon nature of a baseball season, their failure spans days, weeks, months, years and decades rather than singular instances. And I say this with full appreciation for the much-improved franchise of the past 10 years, the great ownership of Mark Attanasio and I suppose what is probably the best baseball moment of my life (PLUSH).

Yes, there’s the eventual loss that year in the NLCS to the Cardinals, which it being those goddamn Cards just kinda felt inevitable. And I will say, I still remember the feeling of clown-fuck Shaun Marcum inexplicably getting the ball in Game 6 and getting destroyed immediately. HE WAS TERRIBLE FOR 6 WEEKS PRIOR TO THE DECIDING GAME OF THE SEASON. WHY IS HE PITCHING!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

And of course, there’s last season’s historic collapse (not hyperbole), which was just a slow-motion clusterfuck that I watched every single day of, pretending that they might at some point turn it around. And I guess that was the annual feeling of being a Brewers fan for the first 20+ years of my life: “Maybe this is the year they at least break .500!” (aim high kids)….“What’s that, the season is basically over in June and everyone in the state is camped out at St. fucking Norbert’s College waiting for Packers pre-season to start?” That was basically the whole 90's for me.

Player of sadness you ask? Let’s just nominate Ryan Braun and keep this shit simple. I think Brewers fans are so fatigued about the subject of Braun that they’ve mostly reached the point of indifference but briefly, he was the new hope and represented all that was right about a generation of competitive (sometimes winning!) Brewers baseball and was headed straight to #RobinYountVille (where there’s all the Robinade your heart could desire) in the process. Yeah he was kinda dickish and corny, but you could probably say the same about many baseball players of his ilk (choose an ilk, any ilk). If I had to enjoy the off-the-field personalities of all of my favorite athletes, than how could I love Michael Finley? (jk, he’s incredible)

Anyway, I distinctly remember the moment that Braun was jammed up for his foolishness. Awoken from a hungover slumber on TL Smooth’s couch in the Mil with the news that Braun was caught cheating, I was flabbergasted, saddened and compelled to start to drinking immediately to temporarily forget about this sad and just beginning new chapter. And then he denied it, kinda ruined that one dude’s life, got questionably cleared of the whole thing and then got caught all over again. I won’t even go to the trouble of linking anything in that previous sentence to show you how exhausted this cracker (yeah I did) makes me at this point.

Not because of his cheating, mind you — just about everyone we rooted for in baseball during a let’s say 10–120 year stretch had been doing that in some fashion. Rather, his Lance Armstrong-esque desperation to prove that everyone else was full of shit — not him — was just so insanely obnoxious and condescending that I don’t know if I’ll ever recover from it.

In the meantime, I root for his Brewers jersey #8 to do well for the sake of the team but I also look forward to the day when he hits the dusty trail and takes his Remetee’s with him. That may coincide with another quarter century of Brewers losing and irrelevance but at least there’s a nice comfy familiarity with that ol’ pal.

CREEP: And something has been unleashed. Good lord.

What is it about baseball that just wants to make us rip people’s throats out? Probably the fact that we spend like 200 days a year with these teams. Baseball teams become part of your family…your summer family, if you’d like. When they love you and treat you well, you feel invincible. When they treat you the way Braun treated that fella from the testing facility, then you feel betrayed and lonely and depressed. You put on weight, you lose weight, you put it back on again. You pretend not to know that it’s almost 7 pm every single night (or whatever time fits your particular situation), and then coyly put on the goddamn game that you promised yourself you wouldn’t watch. It can be a disgusting and abusive relationship.

One quick thing on Marcum. First of all, I remember thinking to myself: “the Brew would be better served getting an inning from every single available pitcher than starting this motherfucker.” I was correct, and I’m sure I wasn’t alone in thinking that. It also speaks to how heartbreaking that series loss was…you had folks in New York thinking about lineups and rotations in Milwaukee. I only say that because when neither the Mets or Yankees are involved, the ol’ city goes from a baseball town to a ghost town. The playoffs are lucky to get a mention on the back page. Anyway, he ruined that day (and year, and life) for you, and then came to the Mets. He pocketed a few million, threw up (pun intended, just vomited all over the mound) an ERA near the 9's and no one has heard from him since. Or maybe they have, I don’t know. I don’t care. We’ll see him in hell.

On Braun — his attitude a few years ago with all this shit reminds me of this fella on The Jinx (fun little 6-part HBO true crime thing happening, check it out). Robert Durst is his name, I believe his story is somewhat famous even without the HBO treatment. Now Braun did not murder several people and live to give the interview from his living room, so we’ll give him that — but what is it about some folks…they just think they can get away with anything, and do not give one fuck when proven otherwise. I mean Braun hasn’t even apologized, has he? If he has, it was quarter-assed at best, because I sure as hell don’t remember it. I just hate that air of invincibility, it’s one of the few unlikable things about sports. Some athletes, Braun being the example here, just love to SHOW us that they’re living on a higher plain. I’m sure this is true in all corners of celebrity life, but when it comes from an athlete you just hope they break they’re fucking leg the next time they’re on the ol’ tube. He’s a dick sucker of the highest degree, and I’m sorry that you have to kinda root for him to drive in players that you actually like. It’s a weird and uncomfortable situation, and I do not envy it.

Speaking of cheating, I’m sad that Mike Piazza is pretty much completely compromised at this point. I mean, it was silly to think that he wouldn’t be lumped in with all the other sluggers of his day. Other than Junior Griff (the coolest baseball player of all time perhaps?), they all cheated. Clearly. I also don’t care, because it was just what we were used to seeing. But because Piazza was literally all the Mets had for some years, I certainly held him to a standard that apparently just did not exist at the time. His lack of a Cooperstown invite has shed some obvious light on the situation (although that bullshit is a whole OTHER conversation), but whatever…it still hurts a little bit.

Hey, Piazza was a Met. Most of my sports-related anguish comes from the Mets. Is that a segue? It’s not a good one, but I think it works. Also, that word looks funny when you type it — segue. English is a tough language.

THE WORST SPORTS MOMENT OF MY LIFE: The 2006 NLCS. Mets VS THE FUCKING CARDINALS. Wainwright K’s Beltran to end it all

No surprises here. If you know me, or you know a real-life Mets fan, this is about as bad as it gets.

Now Dubb, if you don’t mind, I’d like to play a little game of “remember that night in Madison.” This is unfortunate, because 99 times out 100 this game is great — as was almost every night during that bless-ed year. This night…well, I’ll get real poetic here — it was not great. It was one of the worst of my life, and if that sounds crazy to you out there then please, read no further. Because I’m serious. This shit was a real problem for me. It was ugly.

Now ol’ brotha, you were in that house with me. I don’t need you to recall any specifics of the game, I’ll handle that fun! Can you just tell the folks out there how you remember my reaction? You can do this in any way you see fit, I just know that it’s worth retelling from your perspective so I’d like to give it a shot.

Close your eyes and tell me what you see…

DUBB: In terms of Piazza and the HOF, that is a conversation for another day but one we will get to. In short, I think we’ll largely look back on all of the consternation about the Steroid Era as laughable and many of the notable fellas will get in sooner or later. Maybe with asterisks or disclaimers on their plaques, but in nonetheless. It’s possible guys like Piazza will fall through the cracks though and that’s a shame. That’s basically saying that a whole generation of baseball (our youth) never happened. Anyway.

First of all, the worst sports moment of your life at least took place in this lovely house (this shot is from July 2007 when it — situation not house — had all fallen apart. See the sad trashcan for symbolism). As an aside, that whole year needs to be an oral history via the involved parties sooner rather than later.

But man, that night. That fateful night. It was still early on in the Horton & August (BPB) + Dubb + Rodriguez (Danny Lo!) Hoyt House experiment but up to that point it had been a pretty baseball-centric summer and early fall. My Brewers had a standard 4th place finish (Billy Hall!) but we were playing MLB The Show ’06 on an endless loop and most importantly, the Creep’s favorite team in the world was legitimately great and had realistic World Series aspirations.

I’ll allow you to set the rest of the scene but of course, it all came crumbling down that night. At the moment of the Beltran K itself I can’t totally recall where you were. The group of fellas in general was downstairs at the main TV spot, watching on our bulky main TV (not even a flat-screen, so 2006!). Were you upstairs, watching alone in your room? Is that possible? If so, very understandable. If not, then I have an alternate memory of you running upstairs the moment he struck out. The mind done played tricks on me, clear this up.

Either way, after it happened the rest of the room/house was totally silent, as though we just found out that someone close to us died (which was kinda true, a part of you did there for awhile). I can say from being on both sides of moments like this, if you’re not a fellow die-hard fan of the team that just suffered the life-altering loss, there’s really nothing of value you can say at that moment or in the several (days/weeks) that follow. We had all become Mets fans in support of the Creep (I am to this day) but there’s no way we had an iota of the feelings he was hit with at that moment. It’s just not the same and it can’t be manufactured. That was the culmination of years of fandom, with the decidedly wrong result.

Almost immediately, my Mom — who had gotten to know Andy pretty well both in person and by reputation at that point — called to make sure he was okay. Yes, emotionally OK, as any big sports fan would be struggling with in that moment. But also in a “keep on eye on that fella…what a terrible, awful manner for someone’s favorite team to lose, seriously make sure that guy is OK” kinda way. I don’t know if you were quite “OK” until at least two weeks or so later when this glorious creature showed up and I know it all sticks with you to this day.

So as you expand on everything from that moment, night and the aftermath, let me ask you: What about this situation is different if you’re watching the game in NYC or CT instead? Where are you watching, who are you with and do you make it out alive? Did the separation of being in Madison among sympathetic fans but not METS FANS make it worse or is at all just a fucking mess no matter where it is?

CREEP: I’m so glad I asked you to do that, pretty much perfect.

Your mind has played no tricks here good sir, for the final three innings I told the group I loved them, grabbed some weed and a bunch of beers, and headed to my room to watch alone in the dark. That was a fun activity when I was catching up on The Wire…it was a motherfucking horror show on this night. Truly a bad move. I wish I had stayed with the group, perhaps I wouldn’t have felt that stinging feeling of isolated devastation that lingered for months. Years. It’s still there. Also, I literally felt a stinging in my right hand for weeks — that crash you heard from below was me attempting to beat the shit out of the wall. I lost. I fell. Furniture tipped over. I was a sore for sight eyes at that moment, if ya catch my drift…just swimming in defeat and pathetic in every way.

I basically just wanted you to tell the story of your mom calling, because it actually happened and is one of the few fragments of this memory that make me smile. Maybe the only fragment. The rest makes me think that it’s never going to happen for me in the sports world. Yep, that’s how bad this was. Is.

Now, again — I don’t see much point in taking you through the entire game. There’s the internet for that. Yes, if you’re out there you are also reading this on the same internet — but please look somewhere else on said internet if you want to relive that night for some goddamned reason.

I will mention one thing from that game, other than the Wainwright hook that sunk Beltran. Endy Chavez made one of the most unbelievable catches in the recorded history of baseball, and he did it at an absolutely pivotal point in the game. It was the type of catch that just told you “oh my fucking god, we are going to win this game.” I didn’t know at the time that the catch was actually talking to Cardinals fans. But that’s the life of a Mets fan…we can’t just lose a NLCS Game 7 — we have to lose it like we’re following some sort of awful script from a baseball movie that never got made. I mean you can’t make this shit up. You want a video of Endy’s catch? Google that too, I’m not in the mood. His entire glove disappeared behind the left field wall before snapping back with the ball, that’s all I’ll say.

Speaking of the catch, this seems like a fine time to say a few things to some of the folks sitting in the other dugout that night.

To Scott Rolen, who hit the ball that Endy caught: You were never anyone’s favorite player. I think they threw batteries at you somewhere at some point. You’re a clown. You were never cool. You thought that was a home run, probably should have been. But you got robbed in a crazy way, and that only happened to you because you deserved no glory. Ever.

To Yadier Molina, who did things later in the game that I don’t want to talk about: There is absolutely nothing cool about who you are or what you do. I’m aware of the endless accolades. I wish I could punch you in the face. What are you going to do when they speed up the game and you can’t go out to the mound 64 times in 6 innings? Will you develop another mode of communication? You’re like somebody’s grandfather’s favorite player. You sure do play the game the right way. They just don’t make em like you anymore. Good, I hope the Yadier Molina machine stays broken forever. Fucking retire.

Hold up, real quick — all Cardinals past, present or future…Dubb, I can’t do this without asking. You wanna get some shots in?

DUBB: You know me too well, as this is right in my wheelhouse. It’s a well-known spring tradition to shit on the Cardinals and I’m glad to do my part. I can’t imagine a Cards fan possibly coming across this but yes you bastards, part of this hate stems from all of the winning you do. I know that’s just GREAT for you playing the good ol’, down home, nose-in-the-air, “best fans in the game,” Cardinals Fucking Way, but everyone else hates it. But yes, you do win. If you didn’t win, you’d just be the gritty, no nonsense and laughably terrible Diamondbacks, so cheers to you with an ice-cold mug of your awful Bud Light.

Funny enough, the common thread between those two franchises is none other than Tony La Russa, one-time obnoxious (and successful) manager of the Cards and now obnoxious (and not so successful) D’Backs executive. He’s the worst and in the pantheon of hateable managers but then again, this happened to him and gave us all warm and nostalgic memories of Sloth and/or the Toxic Avenger, so credit’s due.

For the rest of the Cards clowns of the past decade or so, let’s just break ‘em off quickly, Half Baked Style.

Fuck You: Tony La Russa, John Mozeliak, Albert Pujols, Scott Rolen, Yadier Molina, Jason Marquis, Chris Carpenter, Jeff Suppan (he gets a double for his dreadful Brewers stint), David Eckstein, Skip Schumaker, Adam Wainwright, Aaron Miles, Juan Encarnacion, Ryan Ludwick, Adam Kennedy (so many goddamn light-hitting infielders on this list), Braden Looper, Matt Holliday, David Freese, Allen Craig, Jaime Garcia, Matt Carpenter.

Ya Cool: Jim Edmonds (short Brew tenure, was actually kinda cool), Ray Lankford, Reggie Sanders, Jason Heyward (we’ll see if it lasts), Colby Rasmus (you also hated La Russa), Kyle Lohse (saved by Brewers tenure), Carlos Beltran (sigh).

CREEP: Knew it was comin’, glad we did it.

Now back to this one particular day, upon which the Cardinals were especially easy to hate. Actually, back to this one particular day where every Mets fan (is it Met fan? I think it is, but I like Mets fan better, so we’re sticking with that) who understands nothing about baseball started to hate Carlos Beltran. That’s more accurate. And sad.

See, that’s really who this is all about. It seems obvious, because he was the dude who struck out looking in the most excruciating possible situation…so that makes some sense. What makes NO sense is the assault on logic that followed in the haunted hallways of Shea Stadium and the now crumbling (metaphorically, and for alliteration’s sake) corridors of Citi Field. That one play, which just so happened to include a curve ball constructed by god herself and sent directly to right hand of a then-young Adam Wainwright, ended up defining Beltran’s career for a LOT of Mets fans…and that’s beyond ridiculous. But more on that when I end this tear-jerker.

Before the Beltran discussion (which I’ll probably cut short because I’ve had it 238 times in my life), I think it’s important to note a few things. The 2006 Mets were unequivocally the best product that had ever appeared before my eyes in that toxic dump of Flushing, Queens. Yes, the millennial Mets made it to the World Series — and made it back home across the bridge just as quickly after the Yankees slapped em around (that one ended on a fly ball by Piazza that I thought was a homer at the time, but I can’t do that right now Dubb…I just can’t go through em all…) — but they had NOTHING on this 2006 squad. Others might argue. Others are wrong.

Here are some shocking highlights, a beautiful and lovable combination of stars that we will most likely never come close to seeing again — at least on the offensive side of things. As for pitching, well…we got some real hope there right now. But this isn’t about hope! It’s about misery. But before the ultimate misery, there was the beauty. It looked a little something like this:

Jose Reyes — Jose is the best place to start. I mean, he did lead off. Again, I can’t get into the absurd and insulting lack of an attempt to make this guy the franchise (thanks Wilpons! Really, for everything!)…I only want to say that he was the most beloved player to ever wear the blue and orange in my living memory, and that includes his buddy David Wright. Wright is still here and MOSTLY adored (as he should be), but Reyes was electric in a way that is indescribable. I would hear all the time from fans of other teams that he was their favorite player in baseball — now that’s some cool shit.

His 2006 explains some of the obsession that surrounded him in those years, and looked a little something like this: In 647 ABs, he hit an even .300 with 19 HR, 81 RBI, 64 SB and 122 runs. Jesus Christ. For the moneyball stat-heads, he had a WAR pushing 4 and played a flashy and incredibly consistent shortstop.

*Note — The Mets have not had a lead-off hitter since he left. Fun.

David Wright — It breaks my heart to say it, but I guess this was Wright in his prime. 2005–2008, officially. A young prime I suppose, but the numbers don’t lie. It makes sense, look at who was around him in the lineup. I mean no one will deny that Wright should have thrived more with Jason Bay protecting him in the 4 hole (anyone remember that era? Or should i say error? eh?), but he was surrounded by insane people on all sides in 2006. It led him to a .311, 26 homer and 116 RBI campaign. Just as a point of reference, Wright is a not an old man and has not driven in 100 runs in five years now.

Carlos Delgado — Hey, we saw him eat a full meal in Puerto Rico during my bachelor party. I would call him the jolly giant of this group, but he really didn’t seem too gigantic in person. Shorter than one would think. Anyway, he got in on the party in 2006 in a fantastic way. Aside from his hallmark fist-pumping at first after big double plays (which in turn made the rest of us scream and yell every time), he just fucking crushed it on a regular basis. There are dudes who hit homers, and dudes who hit BOMBS. He hit bombs. This fateful season was his first as a Met (where he actually ended his career a few years later, gracefully) and he arrived to the tune of 38 HR and 114 RBI. More importantly, he was the veteran in that core — 34 years old at the time and coming from a Hall of Fame (uh-oh, not sure what that means now) pedigree in Toronto. His clubhouse presence was always a hot topic, and always in a positive way. We all loved this Carlos.

annnnnnnd…

Carlos Beltran — We didn’t all love this Carlos. I swear to you, it just breaks my heart. I will say this now, and will never be trusted by any baseball fan over the age of 40 ever again. CARLOS BELTRAN WAS THE BEST PLAYER IN THE HISTORY OF THE FRANCHISE. Yep, fuck you. Fuck you for hating on a player because it didn’t look like he was “hustling” all the time- because his natural stride and once-in-a-generation talent got the job done, and he didn’t need to grimace and grunt to present himself as a hard-nosed player. His normal, relaxed disposition on the field was more than enough…and got it done in ways that you complainers will probably never see again. Clowns.

Let’s field some questions.

Didn’t he have a less-than-stellar first year after signing a crazy deal? Yes. Get the fuck over it.

How can he be the best player in the history of the franchise when he was only relevant for 5–6 years? Because in that span, he did things that no Met had ever done before, and will probably will never do again.

Didn’t he have more walk-off home runs, usually in big games, than any other Met EVER? Oh sorry, that’s me asking questions.

I had to jump in, you’re questions are dumb. I’m done answering them.

Let’s start with the glove. I’ll make it quick. He was the best fielding center fielder of his era, and easily top-10 all-time. Not fielding questions here, I saw it every day. DID I SEE EVERY OTHER CENTER FIELDER THAT’S EVER PLAYED THE GAME EVERY DAY? I said I was done with the questions, I’m making statements now. Sorry for the anger — this discussion usually comes in the form of a drunken argument at a bar. From gunning runners down from 300 feet away, to making diving catches in Houston on a motherfucking HILL with a FLAGPOLE in it…this dude did something every day that made you reach for the ol’ text message machine. Texting wasn’t AS big back then, but ya get it. And the dude wasn’t even hustling!!

That bat? Just as flashy. It’s easy for Beltran-haters (and I speak only of the Mets fans that hate him…I don’t care how he’s perceived by fans of other teams he’s played for) to gloss over the perennial Golden Gloves, although I’m not sure why that’s fun. It’s harder to quantify the impact defense has on a game, unless you wanna go down the WAR path again — and that usually doesn’t go too far in bar arguments.

SO SO SO many motherfuckers use this ONE strikeout as their basis for dishonoring his historical tenure with the Mets. I mean it’s truly insane…and still comes up at least five times a year. As for the Wainwright K…look, no one was hitting that pitch. Beltran said it himself, which also didn’t endear him to fans…but what, you want him to lie? What would you like him to say? As he put it, the only shot anyone would have had was to take it and pray that it falls out of the strike zone. It didn’t, Wainwright was born, the Cards moved on to another World Series, and Beltran was the perfect scapegoat.

Except for the fact that he wasn’t. They would not have been in that situation without him, and certainly would not have been in a position to collapse in 2007 and 2008 (again, I can’t get into it) if he wasn’t easily the most dominant player in the lineup, and arguably the National League at the time.

Want some stats?

Let’s start with WAR. In 2006, the year that made him a villain, his was a video-game like 8.2. Are you kidding me? That’s historic, and somehow aligned with the same dot on the timeline that marks the departure from his corner for a huge chunk of Mets fans. This is why I fight about it in public. This is why I’ll never let it go. This is why I don’t care that “he’s a Yankee now” (no he’s not, he’s just there collecting on a bad contract), and therefore never existed for us. I don’t care about anything that anybody has to say about Beltran if they aren’t willing to at least ATTEMPT to see him for what he was.

In 2007 and 2008 he had seasons that almost mirrored each other, and was firmly in the MVP discussion both years. He should have won the award in 2006 by the way, but whatever. Stealing 20–25 a year was never a problem, and RBI totals in the 110–120 range came easily. Again, all while saving runs all over the place in the field. Despite the stats that jump off the screen, he was still a player that you just had to see to understand. If ever there was a real “natural”, it was Beltran. Again, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t hustling folks — it just means that he was born to play center field and bat third on any intelligent fan’s dream team. Somehow that wasn’t good enough for most folks though…all because of one pitch. It’s maddening.

So yes, the Mets losing in 2006 was the ultimate heart-breaker for me. They were the best team in baseball that year, and most of us thought they were destined for immortality. But beyond the obvious, it’s the sad tale of Carlos Beltran that kills me. It began on that night and continues to be written in varying states of drunken discourse as the years pile up. He is my favorite athlete of all time, in any sport — so I suppose it’s fitting that this is his legacy in New York. It’s why we write these pieces, right? That legendary Wainwright hook could have victimized anyone — but it had to be Beltran, and it had to be then. It’s just another bold reminder of how cruel the sports world can be, especially when you’re TRULY all in on a team — and more specifically, a player. It only took one night for it all to come together in a motherfucking train wreck that still haunts me to this day, and was never in doubt as the king of awful awful sports memories and moments in my sad-sack fan-life.

I could go on and on and on about this, and have on many occasions as I’ve stated — but enough is enough. I’m wiped out brotha. I feel like I just lived it again. Man, this was a terrible idea.