Guest Post - Biggest Games

My brother Bruce, who's a long-time reader, first-time poster, requested that I give up one of my monthly blog entries for a guest spot.  I personally think that the timing is poor, since nobody reads this blog anymore, including my wife, except Kurt.  To whom we are grateful for.  Anyway, his stories below are well-written and interesting, and let's not pretend you have anything better to do.  Really?  You'd rather look at Facebook status updates than this?  Let me just tell you what's going on in your "friends" lives:

"Just got back from DQ!  Yummers!"
"My little cutie pie Braden just called his stuffed duck 'Ducky'!  I am so blessed..."
"Please fwd this link, this message needs to be heard...http://wp-content/uploads/2009/10/"

See?  Nothing is happening.  So read this post that Bruce has been working on for, well, his entire life.  It's all I ask.  Plus, I've read it, edited it for vulgar language (he didn't use ANY) and 80's pop-culture references (nobody knows who Caspar Weinberger is, Bruce), so it should be good to go.  With that, the floor is Bruce's:



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Recently my 9-year-old son Clyn played in the championship game of his
indoor soccer team's 6-team division. Seeing his disappointment
afterwards when they lost brought back memories of some of the biggest
games I've played in in my life. (Warning: None of these games are
that big. But they were big for me.) So I thought it would be
interesting to put together a list of the biggest games I've ever
played in, and what the outcome was. And since, if I put that into one
of my newsletter emails I would ensure that no one would ever read
another one again, I thought that Kent's blog would be the perfect
place to put it. Especially since the topic fits well into the main
themes of this blog: (a) stories from childhood, and (b) lists.

Please note that the intent of this entry is to list games that were
big games going in. Some games start small but become big, even epic,
over the course of the game. Those are not listed here, but it sounds
like a great topic for a different entry.

1980: (Game 1) Cubs vs. A's; (Game 2) Cubs playoff game. Southport, IN

When I was 8, I played in my first kid-pitch league in Southport,
Indiana. I was on the Cubs. I pitched half the time and played
shortstop the other half. Yeah, I was pretty good. I don't remember
hitting too many balls on offense, but in the first year of kid-pitch,
nobody hits much of anything.

I remember two big games from that year. The first was at the end of
the regular season. We were playing the mighty A's, who were
undefeated. Among their players was a friend of mine from my
neighborhood, I think his name was Wally. Short kid, but a good
athlete. This further raised the stakes, of course.

We got out to an early lead. I pitched the last two innings. This was
Pee-Wee, so every batter came up every inning; two innings is a pretty
good workload. Going into the last inning, we still held to a slim
lead. I remember running out to the mound while the loudspeakers
blasted Iron Maiden and the scoreboard flashed "Game Over". Just
kidding. I remember just concentrating as hard as I could on each
batter and making sure I got the ball over the plate. When one kid
came up to the plate with baseball pants on, I added some extra
velocity. Struck him out looking. After each retired batter, my
alternate SS/pitcher (Mark Bumps, I can't believe I still remember his
name) came up to the mound and yelled out, "4 down, 5 to go!" or
whatever the case was. I think I ended up striking out the last kid
and pandemonium ensued. We had beaten the undefeated A's.

It wasn't until after the game that I realized that the A's actually
weren't that good, and that the whole secret to their success was that
they were a bunch of short kids (like my friend Wally), so they all
just walked around the bases. Still felt good to beat 'em.

A couple of weeks later we were in the playoffs. They had us playing
on the big kids' field, with a grass infield (and the bases actually
on the grass, since they were only 60' apart), and it was a night
game--more drama. Again in the last inning I was brought on to pitch
to protect a slim lead. The thing I remember about that inning was
just being baffled at how I couldn't throw it past their batters. I
was pretty much used to the fact that, if I threw a pitch as hard as I
could and it actually went over the plate, no one would hit it. But
this happened repeatedly in this game. Sure, they didn't hit it hard,
but at that level, if you put it in play, you were on.

Finally the bases were loaded and they had a tough-looking hitter at
the plate. This time I was determined. I rared back and fired it
literally as hard as I could. He still hit a grounder down the
3rd-base line. I don't remember what our fielder did, but the winning
run came in. I was pretty disappointed knowing the season was over,
and also knowing we were moving to Texas and so I wouldn't be on that
team any more. It also proved to be the last real baseball game I ever
pitched.

Nov. 1981: Texans vs. Tornadoes, city championship. Plano, TX

This is actually probably the biggest game on this list. In Plano,
Texas, soccer was king. (Kind of funny how Indiana is famous for
basketball and Texas is famous for football, but my experience in
those places was baseball and soccer, respectively.) And there was
nothing bigger than playing for the city championship. I seriously
think I can say without exaggeration that for a 9-year-old kid in
Plano, playing for the city championship was as big as playing in the
Final Four would be for a college basketball player.

We were playing the Tornadoes, a team I despised. We had played them
before in other seasons. We had tied them, but never beaten them. They
had one player on their team who reminds me now of Steven Wollaston,
who will appear later on this list: a punk but an amazing athlete.

We lost, 2-0. Never could get the ball in the net. I don't remember
too much about the game. I just remember I left everything on the
field. One of the teachers from our school came to watch the game
because several of her students were on our team. Afterwards she said
that she had never seen kids play so hard for something in her life.
This was small consolation to me at the time. "Well, duh," I thought.
"It's the city championship." Today I remember that statement with
pride.

1987: Church basketball regional final.

We moved to Utah, and my thoughts soon turned to basketball. Although
I came close, I didn't make the school teams, so I became the
stereotypical Church-ball hero. Our ward was always loaded with good
players, and we won stake all four years I played, I believe, although
there was always a rival team that came close. The 1st ward one year,
the 4th ward another, the 5th another.

My freshman year was the only year we made it to the finals of the
Regional tournament. As a freshman, I didn't play a starring role, but
I got some pretty good PT. The team we played in the finals was
awfully good, though, and had a sizable lead at halftime. The second
half I came off the bench and scored 10 points to lead a furious
rally. I hit a couple of outside shots and even had a behind-the-back
assist that I was quite thrilled with. We ended up falling short, but
I had a positive feeling about having played well.

1986-90: Church volleyball regional finals vs. 4th Ward

Yes, those dates are correct. We played in the volleyball regional
finals 5 straight years, all against the 4th ward from our same stake.
It was quite the rivalry, as you might imagine. Obviously, there
weren't too many other wards that got into volleyball, but there were
enough to put up a decent resistance on our way to the finals and make
the tourney legit.

The 4th ward had the aforementioned Steve W. This guy could have
played on the national team, as far as I was concerned. He was
surrounded by a bevy of less talented but dedicated bevs. Our team was
generally deeper, but without the big stud. Although I remember Tom
Williams as being a bit of a freak in v-ball.

The first year we lost in an epic showdown, but we responded by
winning the next four--count 'em and weep, baby, four--years in a row.
How did you get in 5 years of eligibility, you ask? Medical redshirt?
Well no, actually, the last year I coached. And if I can coach a team
starting John Valentine to the regional championship, well, I deserve
to call that championship my own. Actually give John credit--he made
the stuff-block on the final play to win the last championship.

1988: Softball stake championships vs. 5th ward.

By the summer of 1988 our ward sports team was a bit of a juggernaut,
having won seven straight stake championships across all sports
(basketball, softball, and volleyball). But softball is always a bit
of a crapshoot, depending so much on attendance, and that summer our
team was decimated by vacations. Plus, the 5th ward seemed to have
declared it their collective life's ambition to win softball that
summer, demonstrating their devotion by arriving at least an hour
early to every game and even holding regular practices. I think they
also sacrificed a goat before each game. The following is condensed
from my highly detailed journal account of July 14, 1988.

We limped into the double-elimination stake tourney and promptly lost
to the 5th ward. We fought through the losers' bracket to get to the
semi-finals against the 2nd ward, and by then we had most of our guys
back. It didn't seem to do much good, though, as we found ourselves
down 8-4 going into the bottom of the 7th, the last inning (these
church softball games were surprisingly defensive-oriented). Unless we
came up with 4 runs, our season was over; we wouldn't even go to the
region tournament. I led off with a single, then later scored when
Mike Wall hit a 3-run homer. We then loaded the bases with two outs
and pushed across the tying run. I was coaching 3rd base and told
Carter Cherry to run as soon as Shane Wallace hit the ball. To this
day I am convinced that their pitcher heard me (and hence I am the
true hero here), because Shane hit a grounder back to the pitcher, who
fielded it cleanly, but rather than going to first (two outs,
remember), threw it to their uncoordinated catcher, who dropped the
ball as inevitably as the day follows night, and Carter raced across
with the winning run.

Somehow this drama was actually surpassed in the following game
against the 5th ward (which was a "conditional" championship game; we
had to beat them twice). They hit a grand slam over my head in the
1st, then scored two more on another hit over my head in the 6th. So
going into the 7th we were down 7-2. A key play in that inning had
John Sorenson on third with Neil at the plate. Neil hit a grounder to
short and John tore home. The genius first baseman for the 5th ward
took off to cover home, because of course they had an uncoordinated
catcher. But he was no match for John's speed, and the shortstop, who
naturally just wanted to throw it to first, had nowhere to go. So once
again we see uncoordinated catchers playing decisive roles at critical
junctures. The next key moment saw runners on second and third with
two outs, 7-5 score, and Shane Wallace up again. He hit a grounder up
the middle, plating two and tying the score. Brett Bailey then doubled
Shane home, and I doubled Brett home, though I was tagged out trying
to stretch it into a triple. No matter; we led 9-7, and we got the
bottom third of their lineup out 1-2-3, with me making a fadeaway
catch to end the game to partially atone for the earlier hits over my
head.

All that just to get to the championship game! The 5th ward showed up
two hours early for batting practice; we had 6 guys there at
game-time. We found three more players but had to play with 9 (with
one automatic out) until the 4th inning, when a leader scrounged up an
obligatory uncoordinated catcher for us (our official scorecard always
marked this player as UCC). In the meantime, the game was a defensive
struggle, with me catching most of their outs in left field, a common
scenario against the 5th ward since they're all pull hitters. We clung
to a 3-2 lead heading into the 7th when I came up with two outs and
one on. The 5th ward coach, who knew every one of our players'
tendencies to a T, knew that I liked to drop singles in front of the
left fielder, so he moved him in. I saw him do that, and so I promptly
drilled the first pitch over the left fielder's head for a home run
and a 5-2 lead. They threatened in the bottom half, but Shane Wallace
made a nice catch for the third out and the championship.

1989: Basketball regional quarterfinals vs. 4th ward.

This is my most painful memory in sports. As a junior, I was one of
the team leaders, and we had a successful stake season. I dreaded
facing our arch-rivals the 4th ward, though, in the regions, but sure
enough, our brackets brought us together. We started out the game
well, but in the 4th quarter the 4th ward mounted a furious comeback.
They were running out of time, so they started to foul, and I can at
least say that I did make 4-of-4 free throws in the last quarter. But
once again the infamous Steve Wollaston hit an incredible 3-pointer
that tied it late. We failed to score, and then they came back and hit
a free throw with just a few seconds left. The second one was missed,
though, and the ball bounced out and into my hands so fortuitously
that we actually had kind of a semi-break opportunity going the other
way. I dribbled down the right side of the key and saw Sam Dallin wide
open under the left side of the basket. To this day I don't know what
happened to me. My brain seized up. I looked up at the basket and
suddenly felt like I totally had that shot. I shot a leaner going away
from the hoop...and it wasn't even close. Might have been an air-ball.
Sam wisely fouled the guy on the rebound, but the game was over. An
excruciating loss. And made worse by the fact that my teammates were,
understandably, largely unsympathetic to my pain afterwards. My family
drove home in silence afterwards and, after my Dad had checked to make
sure I wasn't actually suicidal, he left me in the back of the station
wagon for the next hour, howling intermittently.

To this day I find it hard to talk about or think about that game,
which I admit is a bit strange. But I was comforted some years ago in
college when I talked to my friend Earl about it late on a Sunday
night. He had his own story which he said was still hard for him to
talk about. A few years after that I heard about how, after losing an
absolutely epic college football game to USC, Notre Dame coach Charlie
Weiss went with his son to the USC locker room afterwards and told
them that it was an honor to have played in such a game. I think that
someone who has that attitude even in defeat is one who truly
understands the purpose and meaning of sports. Perhaps it was, after
all, an honor for me to have played in such a basketball game.

1997: BYU Intramural Coed Softball championship game

After high school and the mish I returned to BYU, where intramural
sports was king. I don't think I even thought about intramural sports
when I first started college, but once I discovered it, I was all in.
I played flag football, soccer, basketball, softball, racquetball,
ultimate frisbee, even--get this--intramural sports trivia. The prize
dangling at the end of all these games was the coveted intramural
champs t-shirt, greatest status symbol on campus. But it had eluded me
up until this game. Never mind that it was coed softball, man: a shirt
is a shirt.

Just getting to the game was a bit dramatic. The morning of, we were
at the Broadbent Family Reunion in the Sierra Nevadas of California.
Fortunately, said reunion was ending. Neil and I got up at the crack
of dawn and drove like men possessed so I could make it to the game on
time. When I showed up at the field before the game started, Travis
Ficklin was so happy to see us that he kissed me on the ear. Could
have done without that.

The game itself was anti-climactic. I was nervous for the first 5
minutes or so, but it soon became clear that our opponents were not in
our league. We destroyed them, and I think that we had even
mathematically clinched the win (owing to the quirks of BYU coed
softball rules, which I loved) before the last inning started.
Receiving the t-shirt afterwards, I felt like how Peyton Manning
probably felt when he finally won the Super Bowl: Somehow I thought it
would be more than this.

1996, 1998: Two BYU Intramurals Ultimate Frisbee finals.

Ultimate Frisbee was always kind of a side-show for me, but somehow I
got involved in two huge intramural championship games in that sport.
The first one was really the most memorable. Our ward liked to play
frisbee in our spare time at Joaquin Elementary (R.I.P.), so naturally
we got an intramural team together. We did okay during the regular
season, and then the tourney started. The very first team we played
was incredibly intimidating. They had a guy who could throw it the
entire length of the field, and a couple of other big guys. We hung in
there with possession-based ball control. Somehow we kept up with them
and forced sudden-death overtime. They turned it over out the back of
our end zone, and then we commenced the longest drive in history.
Seriously, this must have gone on for at least five minutes. Short
passes, all the way down the field. If you didn't have it, pass it
back. We knew if we turned it over, we would lose. Finally we just
wore the other team down, and Glen Waldron made the winning catch at
the back of the end zone. Pandemonium ensued. Walking off the field, I
heard a ref say, "Well, that was the proverbial 16th seed beating the
number 1 seed, wasn't it?"

That game gave us confidence in our system. The next game was another
battle, but again we prevailed. We won one more game to make it to the
championship game. We, a bunch of scrubs from Moon Apartments, were
poised to take the t-shirt. The team that emerged from the losers
bracket was not the first team we beat ("the #1 seed"), but the
second. This was not, however, good news. As we quickly found, the
second team was actually better than the first. We just didn't realize
it the first time we played them, and in our ignorance, just played
them like anybody else and beat them.

The second time around, though, they had us figured out. They had to
beat us twice, and did so without even breaking a sweat. They put on a
two-hour clinic for us that left us shaking our heads and wondering,
"How did we beat these guys?"

Two years later my friend Earl recruited me for another Ultimate
Frisbee team. It kind of seemed like a slam dunk at the time; lower
division, and he knew a couple of ringers. We breezed into the
championship game, but the team we played refused to roll over. It
turned into an absolutely epic match. Ultimate Frisbee games have the
tendency to do that, because you're running constantly and it requires
a heroic effort to finish it off. The final game also went into
overtime, and I remember one throw in particular by one of our ringers
that came within inches of being caught for the clinching score. But
it wasn't caught, and we ended up losing another gut-wrencher.

So Ultimate Frisbee ended up just being a heart-breaker for me, but
fortunately I never invested too much time in it, so it didn't feel as
bad. At least, not after a couple of days.

2002: Provo City Coed Softball championship game

The final game on this list almost never happened for me. Like the
other coed softball game described above, I woke up the day of the
game far away from the ball field: Portland, Maine, to be precise. I
had a plan for getting back, of course, but the problem was that it
was out of my hands. We were flying stand-by, and things looked pretty
good, but I was a little anxious about that first leg from Portland to
Newark. When we arrived at the airport, my worst fears were confirmed:
the flight showed 52/50. We needed 4 no-shows, and those are
relatively rare on a small plane like that.

We checked in and walked to the gate, but I had no hope. I plopped
myself down in a chair and stared miserably at the ceiling. I couldn't
believe that our team had come all that way, and now I was going to
blow my chance at playing in the championship game.

How far had we come? Well, four games into the season we were 2-2. And
we were not surprised to be 2-2. The year before we had had pretty
much the same team, and we finished right on .500. We would
consistently lose to the competent teams and easily beat the pathetic
teams. We were pretty well resigned to our fate.

The 5th game of the season we played not just a competent team but an
awesome team. The Orange Team, we called them, rather imaginatively. I
assumed they would destroy us. But we jumped on them for 5-6 runs in
the first inning and then just held on the rest of the game. I braced
myself for their offensive explosion, but it never came. We ended up
winning a low-scoring game. I assumed it was a fluke. They were
probably missing a couple of guys.

Nonetheless, that game turned the season around for us. We won the
rest of our regular season games to finish 8-2. Still second to the
Orange Team, of course, which finished 9-1. When the tournament
started, we watched other teams play and surmised that we would be
making a quick exit. But we didn't. We won game after game, and when
we played the team I feared most in the semi-finals, we destroyed
them. Destroyed them! I began to think that maybe we could win this
thing after all.

But I wasn't going to be in this thing at all if I couldn't get on
that plane, I reflected miserably, back at the Portland airport. But a
minute later they called our name, and I went from agony to joy in a
split-second--we were on our way home! But then I went from joy back
to agony a few seconds later, as I realized that I was going to play
in the game and the nerves set in.

I don't think I've ever been so nervous for a game. I couldn't eat
beforehand. I finally forced myself to eat a cookie. Bad choice. It
never got all the way down and I ended up throwing it up in left field
before the game started. But the nerves went away when the game
started and the other team (not the Orange Team; these guys had beaten
them) scored a bunch of runs in the first inning and I realized we
weren't going to win anyway.

But like the Frisbee games above, they had to beat us twice. In
between games, I finally got a decent bite to eat. And the umpire came
up to me and discretely told me that he thought we could still take
'em. They just had that one big inning, he said. He liked our team. I
think a lot of people did. We were laid back, except for me I guess,
generally had a good time, and mainly focused on making jokes.
Softball is a great game for jokes.

The second game went much better. We avoided the big inning
defensively and consistently scored on offense. I played a solid if
not spectacular game; I think I was 2-4, and I had a good play in the
outfield where I drifted to my left, lured the batter to try and pull
it, and then took off at the crack of the bat and caught his line
drive right on the foul line. Yes, some satisfaction there. The final
inning we clung to a 3-run lead when we took the field. They got a
couple of runners on, but Holly Ence caught the final two outs as
catcher, behind the plate, to be the hero, and we had finally won.

We went undefeated in the brief Fall season after that. The next
summer we went 9-1 in the regular season and then destroyed the
competition to win another tournament (over the same team in the
championship game, I might add). Overall we won 27 out of 29 games
starting with that win over the Orange Team that I had assumed was a
fluke. We never were the most talented team, but we played smart and
had a good time, and it was one of my favorite teams to ever play
with.

Afterword

Looking back, one clear lesson emerges: I should just stick to
softball. But also writing this entry has caused me to remember all
the great friends I had and made while playing on these teams.
Oftentimes we weren't such great friends off the playing field, but
being on the same team brings you together. Sometimes I'll talk to
someone who nonchalantly says that they were "never into team sports."
I think it's too bad they never experienced the camaraderie of playing
with a bunch of other guys and working toward the common goal of
crushing the opposition.