A Lifetime of New York Sports Misery in Just One Year – Wall Street Journal

They say that comedy is tragedy plus time. Here on The Wall Street Journal sports desk, we prefer to say that love—namely of the Mets and Yankees, Jets and Giants, Knicks and Nets, Rangers, Islanders and Devils—is misery plus time, because we’ve all experienced it before, and we will all experience it again.

Is New York a more miserable sports town than all the others? It is if you ask its fans. Yankees fans are miserable when the Bronx goes quiet in October. Mets fans are miserable when Yankees fans are happy. Giants fans are miserable when Philadelphia is buzzing in January. Rangers fans are miserable right now. None of us can ever really escape it.

It was this citywide brotherhood of sporting sorrow that inspired us to create our “This Day in New York Sports Misery” feature one year ago. From Fred Merkle to Joe Pisarcik to Rosie Ruiz to Charles Smith, there was never a shortage. We even included a reader, Greg Perry, who pleaded with us on Feb. 10 to abandon the daily Misery because it was bumming him out. The next day, he found himself in our pages.

Now that we’ve retired the feature (you’re welcome, Mr. Perry), we’ve gone back one last time and assembled a list of the lowest moments from our calendar of calamities. Rather than simply devise a Top 10, though, we opted to highlight one moment in the history of each local team, as well as a couple more to represent the people of New York—the amateur athletes and weekend warriors who embarrassed us all.

To keep things palatably pitiable, we have omitted human tragedies, such as the ones that befell heroes like Lou Gehrig, Thurman Munson and Roy Campenella, and would rightfully dominate any list of true misery. Also, we limited ourselves to the daily Miseries we actually published this year, so anniversaries that fell on non-publishing days—such as John Starks’s disastrous Game 7 against Houston in 1994, or Bill Belichick’s refusal to coach the Jets in 2000—didn’t qualify. On most days, we were confronted with several tough choices.

So here you are, New York: Your most miserable sports moments of all time. Don’t like the ones we chose? Get in line.

KNICKS
June 2, 1993

The ultimate sports misery is the feeling that a long-awaited championship is finally within your grasp, only to see it suddenly ripped from your hands. That’s how Knicks fans felt on this day in 1993, when Charles Smith failed at the rim with multiple chances in the final seconds of Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the arch-rival Bulls at MSG. The Knicks were dispatched in Chicago in Game 6.

Runner up: March 23, 1985. Future Hall of Famer Bernard King blows out his ACL and doesn’t return for nearly two years.

NETS
Jan. 2, 1977

Losing an iconic player at the peak of his powers for non-sports reasons is never forgotten. In the case of Julius Erving, it was for money owed by the Nets to the Knicks for territorial rights relating to the 1976 ABA-NBA merger. The day after New Year’s 1977, Nets fans watched as Dr. J took the home court in an enemy uniform for the first time, as his 76ers pounded their team, 139-110. The defending ABA champions finished the season 22-60.

Runner up: May 1, 1984. Micheal Ray Richardson is called for a rare self-pass to lose Game 2 of the conference semifinals.

METS
June 16, 1977

The Mets’ “Midnight Massacre” trade of Tom Seaver technically happened minutes before June 16, so the real misery began when fans awoke to the news that the greatest player in team history—before or since—was suddenly gone, and all for four players of little renown. Dave Kingman, the team’s best power hitter to date, was also jettisoned in a separate deal, and also for meager returns. The Mets’ next winning season came in 1984.

Runner up: Oct. 9, 1988. Dodgers catcher Mike Scioscia homers off Dwight Gooden in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the NLCS, sinking the Mets’ title hopes.

YANKEES
Oct. 20, 2004

The regal Yanks suffered a shocking amount of embarrassing and, in retrospect, amusing misery in the 1970s and early 1980s—including teammates swapping families, an epic run of manager firings, Billy Martin fighting with a marshmallow salesman, and George Steinbrenner battling Dodgers fans on an elevator during a World Series collapse. But the nadir didn’t come until 2004, when the Yankees became the first team in baseball history to blow a 3-0 lead in a best-of-seven series, falling to the hairy, hated Red Sox in Game 7 of the ALCS.

Runner up: Oct. 13, 1960. Bill Mazeroski wins the World Series for Pittsburgh with his Game 7 walk-off homer against Ralph Terry.

GIANTS (baseball)
Sept. 23, 1908

Some misery forever changes the English language. In 1908, 19-year-old Fred Merkle failed to advance from first base to second on an apparent game-winning single and was called out on a force play. Darkness later caused the game to end in a tie and ultimately allowed the Cubs to win the NL pennant. The papers called it “Merkle’s Boner,” which spawned not only the nickname he’d carry around for the rest of his 16-year career, but one that endures to this day: “Bonehead.”

Runner up: May 28, 1957. National League owners unanimously vote to allow the Giants (and Dodgers) to leave New York.

DODGERS
Oct. 8, 1957

After a year of subjecting their fan base to uncertainty and dread, the beloved Bums officially announced that they would leave for Los Angeles in 1958, after 74 years in Brooklyn (going back to when they were the Atlantics). Team president Walter O’Malley didn’t bother attending the news conference. Even the team’s mascot wasn’t spared when on March 18, 1958, Dodgers fans learned that famous clown Emmett Kelly, whose persona came to represent all the “Bums,” wouldn’t accompany the team west. The L.A. Coliseum, he said, was “too big for one clown.”

Runner up: July 19, 1942. Pete Reiser’s promising career is derailed when he runs face-first into the outfield fence.

RANGERS
April 28, 1981

The Islanders’ mocking “19-40” chant, aimed at the Rangers and their fans to remind them of the last year they won a championship, was born during a Game 1 win in the Stanley Cup semifinals at Nassau Coliseum on this Tuesday night in April. The Islanders eventually swept the series on their way to a second straight title (the first two of four in a row). Fans around the NHL picked up the chant and taunted the Cup-less Blue Shirts with it for 13 more seasons.

Runner up: March 20, 1993. Brian Leetch slips on ice exiting a taxi in the city and breaks his ankle. The Rangers lose 11 of their last 13 games and miss the playoffs.

ISLANDERS
Feb. 4, 1997

Oh, the Isles: Four years of supreme glory, 38 years of misery. Things seemed to be looking up in early 1997, when the NHL Board of Governors unanimously approved the sale of the team to businessman John Spano, who had already tried and failed to buy the Dallas Stars and Florida Panthers. Five months later, it was revealed that Spano had barely a fraction of the $165 million price tag, having created the illusion with a series of lies and forgeries. He was later convicted of bank fraud.

Runner up: May 19, 1984. Wayne Gretzky and his Oilers replace the Islanders’ dynasty with their own.

DEVILS
Dec. 31, 1988

Another specific kind of sports misery is when your team is the victim of a historic performance. On New Year’s Eve 1988, Mario Lemieux became the only player ever to score a goal in every possible way—even-strength, power play, short-handed, penalty shot, and into an empty net—in an 8-6 win over the Devils. Athletes often get “posterized” when an opponent makes a great play at their expense. But those posters eventually come down and are forgotten. Lemieux’s assault on New Jersey may live forever in hockey history.

Runner up: May 8, 1988. Referees boycott a playoff game over an insult by Devils coach Jim Schoenfeld.

GIANTS (football)
Nov. 20, 1960

In a pivotal battle for first place, Eagles linebacker Chuck Bednarik obliterated Giants running back Frank Gifford, forcing a fumble and sealing the 17-10 win. The hated Eagles went on to the NFL championship. Gifford went on to a hospital room, missed the rest of the season, and the rest of the following season, too. The hit (and the photo of Bednarik delivering it) became a symbol of grit over glamour, with “Concrete Charlie” defeating Hollywood-handsome Gifford, standing in as the league’s Madison Avenue darling.

Runner up: May 15, 1991. Bill Parcells resigns as head coach, leaving the defending champs in the hands of Ray Handley.

JETS
Jan. 3, 1987

The Jets, leading by 10 points in the final minutes of regulation, appeared to have a coveted spot in the AFC championship wrapped up when the mustache-mullet combination known as Mark Gastineau senselessly roughed Cleveland quarterback Bernie Kosar. Instead of facing third-and-24, the Browns earned a first down and a quick touchdown before adding a field goal to tie a game they ultimately won in overtime. The Jets wouldn’t win another playoff game until 1998.

Runner up: Nov. 22, 2012. Mark Sanchez’s “butt fumble.” Enough said.

COLLEGE SPORTS
Feb. 18, 1951

The original NYC sports scandal. If New Yorkers were disappointed on Feb. 14, 1951, when Sugar Ray Robinson knocked out Bronx-born Jake LaMotta, they were apoplectic when news emerged that three CCNY players—Ed Warner, Ed Roman and Al Roth—were charged with fixing college basketball games. Said the Manhattan District Attorney, “It makes you wonder what’s happened to our moral values.” The nation’s perception of New York City as the mecca of college basketball soured, and the NCAA declined to hold a regional or Final Four in the city for the next 63 years.

Runner up: March 30, 1985. No. 1 seed St. John’s falls to Georgetown in Final Four.

AMATEUR SPORTS
Aug. 27, 2001

One could argue that conscripting children into a national cheating scandal constitutes the worst kind of misery—an earlier-than-usual debasing of innocence. In the weeks before 9/11, the city was reveling in the feats of the “Baby Bombers” from the Bronx and their 12-year-old ace, Danny Almonte, who had tossed the first perfect game in the Little League World Series in 22 years. But when Little League Baseball was alerted to discrepancies in Almonte’s birth records, it was revealed that he was actually 14. The team was retroactively disqualified and all of its records, including Almonte’s gem, were erased.

Runner up: April 21, 1980. New Yorker Rosie Ruiz cheats her way to a Boston Marathon victory.