Part of being a sports fan is having a bad time. For your enjoyment and/or cringing pleasure, we asked the SB Nation staff to tell us about the absolute worst time they ever had watching live sports. Please submit your own horror stories in the comments below. We want to hear from EVERYONE, because we know everyone has a horror story.
What’s the worst live sports experience you’ve ever had?
Come, join us. Tell your tale of woe. If nothing else, it’s cheaper than therapy.
Tom Pennington
Bill Hanstock is a writer, author and Emmy Award-winning producer. He began writing for SB Nation in 2011.
And now, the weeping:
James Brady: After gang violence at a preseason game between the 49ers and the Raiders, they upped security at Candlestick. It was a mess. They viewed everyone as criminals. One security guy kicked over my table full of food because one of the table legs was outside our parking spot. Literally kicked it.
During the game, a brawl of about six people erupted a row over from me, and security was nowhere to be found. This shirtless 400-pound dude looked like he was in a moshpit, and I saw him elbow a lady in the face. He also sort of ran over a kid, and then picked up that kid and pushed him toward the fight. I saw another guy move toward a group of kids and women and stand in front of them to protect them. Followed his lead, sort of locking arms with him, may have elbowed the moshpit guy. Security showed up a few minutes later and took the guy who was helping me protect the other people away and ejected him from the game.
An old man grabbed my crotch and said “do it,” when I was walking past the bathroom to get a beer. I’m not sure why. A young girl did almost the exact same thing five minutes later.
Pete Volk: It was the 2008 NLCS between the Phillies and the Dodgers, and my dad, my brother and I drove up to Philadelphia from D.C. to see Game 2, with our beloved Dodgers already a game down. We wore our Dodger blue, and within five seconds of getting out of our car in the parking lot my 15-year-old brother (not a big sports fan) was called a cocksucker. From there, we were called a variety of similar names on our way to the seats, and the Dodgers preceded to go down 8-2 after the third.
Around that time, we started to feel something hit us every once in a while, and it appeared a Phillies fan was throwing sunflower seeds and peanut shells at us from a few rows up. Other Philly fans called the usher -- we saw the fan warned and heard him say “It’s not like I was throwing rocks at them or anything,” but were unable to see who the fan was because of the slope of the stands. At this point, I assumed he was a drunk college student.
The sunflower seeds and peanut shells did not let up, and the man was eventually kicked out. He was not, in fact, a college student, but a sad 60-something attending the game by himself. The Dodgers got their ass kicked, and we went home.
James Dator: The promise of skipping school to watch Australia play a cricket match against the West Indies was something 11-year-old me looked forward to for two solid months. It wasn’t just the promise of being away from school for a day, it was the heady possibility of seeing Australia win, catch a ball and get autographs.
It was supposed to be my Ferris Bueller moment.
Instead my friend’s dad took us, and a friend of his to the Sydney Cricket Ground for the test to begin shortly after 9 a.m. By 10:30 he was too drunk to get up, sending us to the concession stand to buy more meat pies. Every hour or so he’d find the equilibrium to get up and get more beer, and this was at a heady time you could happily buy six and nobody would bat an eyelid. By noon we were bored, really bored.
The large clock on in the stands read 1 p.m. and my buddy asked again, “Dad, can we go home? What if mum came and picked us up?” At this time he informed us he’d dropped his phone in the toilet, before letting out a chortle. To this day I’m not sure if it was true or not.
Two 11-year-olds wandered around a packed cricket ground in a fugue state. It was blazing hot and the sun was baking us. We walked up to the boundary and started talking to Australian bowler Michael Kasprowicz, who was in the middle of the game and seemed legitimately concerned for our safety. He kept stalling to keep us near the boundary before calling for security. Maybe he was looking out for us, perhaps he just wanted us to piss off and stop bugging him.
We got escorted back to our seats. It was 3 p.m.
The next hour was spent pleading with drunk dad to let us leave. He gave us $50 and told us to stay occupied. This involved buying a small cricket bat and ball to play with on the hill at the far side of the stadium, then buying some chips we threw at seagulls.
From 4-5 p.m. we slept on the grass.
Thankfully he’d been sobering up over the past few hours, unbeknownst to us -- and I’m still not really sure if he was good enough to drive, but I’m still here. Shortly after 6 p.m. the game finished due to lack of light, scheduled to resume the next day.
That night I stayed over at their house. His dad kept talking about how much we loved the game to my friend’s mum.
The next morning he woke us up a little after 8 a.m. and asked if we wanted to go to the cricket. We politely declined his offer.
Bill Connelly: 1999: Kansas State 66, Missouri 0. I had been to all 10 Mizzou games that year (they were good the year before, and they were DEFINITELY going to be good again!), and even though they were 4-6 and hopeless, I didn’t want to ONLY have gone to 10. So before leaving for Thanksgiving break 15 hours to the east, I drove four hours west first. KSU was up 35-0 after the first quarter. I got a parking ticket.
Chris Haines: I am a wildly emotional and irrational Georgetown fan. I was at the game where, as a 2 seed, the Georgetown Hoyas lost to America’s favorite “Cinderella”, 15-seed Florida Gulf Coast in a pretty big blowout. The guy behind me was goading me into punching him the entire game (I didn’t, but I turned around once and told him to stuff it.) Everyone was rooting for Florida Gulf Coast and everything was horrible. This was the game that basically cemented FGCU’s “Dunk City” nickname, because they dunked all over the Hoyas. It also cemented John Thompson III’s reputation as a coach who can’t win in March and gave voice to some of the worst corners of Georgetown’s fanbase. I wrote a post on Casual Hoya about how depressing it was and NPR even interviewed me after one of their producers read the post. The two hosts joked after the interview ran that I was a little too invested maybe.
David Roth: The worst time I ever had a sporting event was at Game 2 of the National League Championship Series, which was in point of fact and results aside a pretty decent baseball game. Our seats, in our section’s last row, left our backs open to the wind, and the temperature crashed over the course of the game. An underdressed friend escaped to the bathroom between innings to run his hands under hot water, or did so until I insisted he wear my gloves. He compromised and wound up wearing one, and I wore the other and hugged my shivering girlfriend and watched first Guillermo Mota and then Billy Wagner get torn down by proto-Fieri doofus Scott Spiezio and Yadier Molina and (half-hour pause while I stalk around the block glowering at strangers) little-ass So Taguchi.
I have seen bad losses, and I have watched them in the cold. I did not feel anything in those seats that I have not felt before, honestly, although the ache before the numbness was admittedly a bit higher on the pain scale. What made it the worst was the sepulchral subway ride after, the quiet crawl home along with all these sad and shut-up people, all considering some irretrievably lost hours, and knowing it was So Fucking Taguchi that stole them.
Chris Fuhrmeister: As you might know, the Auburn-Georgia game, commonly known as the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry, is one of the highlights on the college football calendar. The series dates back to 1892, and only global warfare has prevented the annual matchup. It’s a big deal to folks who wear orange and blue or red and black.
The 2006 edition of this game was my last hurrah in the student section at Jordan-Hare Stadium. Auburn was having a fine season: 9-1 at that point, No. 6 in the BCS standings, and boasting a win over eventual national champion Florida. Georgia, on the other hand, was struggling. The Bulldogs started the year 5-0 and ranked in the top 10, but entering the contest, they had lost four of five, including a home game against Vanderbilt and a road trip to Kentucky. Believe it or not, Auburn fans were pretty confident.
To give you an idea of how the game went, I think I can simply relay the stat line for Auburn quarterback Brandon Cox:
4-of-12, 35 yards, one touchdown, four interceptions, four sacks
Are you surprised to learn that Auburn lost that game, 37-15?
Ryan Rosenblatt: I have thought it would be a good idea to go to the LA Coliseum and see UCLA play USC many times, but one of those was in 2011. UCLA was a measly 6-5 and USC was ranked 10th in the country, so it was never going to go well for me, but then again, it rarely did with UCLA football. And yet I showed up at the Coliseum, a pretty terrible place to watch a game, settled into my seats and watched a three-hour murder. By the time it was over, UCLA had lost 50-0, and it wasn't that close. But at least I had a bacon wrapped hot dog waiting for me at a random cart that had probably been dragged through mud outside the stadium. It was a delicious slice of greasy heaven -- only I never got it. The guy in front of me bought them all, then spilled them on the ground so he couldn't even eat them (not that he deserved them). So it was a day of horrible losing in a terrible place and wasted deliciousness. The sun would never shine as bright again.
Travis Hughes: I went to FedExField once.
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