Three Days of Sports Hell

By Jason Branch
Jack ‘Bauer’ of All Sports

Even for the rugged man of steel who is Jack Bauer of Taking Back Sports, the 72 hours I endured last week were the kind of pure torture not even suffered by the real Jack Bauer of CTU. What happened to me last Saturday, Sunday and Monday must be illegal. It must be somewhere in the fine print of the Geneva Convention. United Nations of “Sports World,” where were you last weekend?

It was so bad, I wouldn’t wish my weekend even on USC fans, San Francisco Giants fans, or Dallas Cowboys fans, my sworn enemies of the Sports World. So here goes the recap, and I challenge everyone reading to top the pain I went through in such a short span of time.

Saturday 10/17: Saturday began at about 6:30 a.m., when I woke up an hour before my alarm because I was rudely awaken by unexplained forces. I had a 9:20 a.m. flight up to the Bay for the weekend to hang out with friends and watch my Eagles hopefully whip on the punchless Raiders, who were not who I thought they were heading into this season. I’ll admit I had a small element of concern going in because ticked off NFL teams are dangerous at home. The Raiders were bound to be ticked off, coming off a 44-7 road loss to the G-Men, but still, it’s the Raiders! The Raiders (in Allen Iverson “practice” press conference form)!

Anyways, so I wasn’t going to leave for the airport two hours before a Saturday morning flight, so I put on ESPN College Gameday and was quickly greeted by Lee Corso and another dose of his pitiful and arrogant commentary. Not a good way to start any morning, let alone a weekend chock-full of sports. I couldn’t turn the TV off fast enough, and with nothing else on that early worth watching, headed for the airport.

Being in transit Saturday morning and hanging out with friends the entire day, I missed quite a few good college football games, much to my disappointment, and every result was completely the opposite of what I wanted. First, my UCLA Bruins fought hard but were just overmatched at home against a better Cal team. (I’m not nearly as passionate about college football as other sports because one, I really grew up on the NFL, and two, Division I college football teams do not play for a championship, so at the end of the day, what’s the point?) Still, I do follow UCLA football and very much want them to win and am disappointed when they don’t.

My two sworn college football enemies and the evil empires of the sport, USC and Florida, both were pushed to limit, but like they always seem to, they both pulled out victories, much to my dismay.

Sunday 10/18: Sunday is for the pros in football, and the day started out promising. The Giants were already trailing when I woke up at about 10:00 after a late night out, and the Redskins were poised for another defeat from a winless team (which did end up happening). And during my travels from my friend Frank’s (Frank is a Raiders fan, for the record) house and our seats at the 35-yard line in a lower-level suite, there were no issues with the much- hyped hostile Raider fan base. A few words were said in fun at me walking from the car to the seats, but nothing close to nasty. The only real jabs came from the police officers working traffic, who jokingly didn’t want to let Frank and I into the parking lot because they spotted my beautiful midnight green DeSean Jackson jersey and Eagles hat. When you are a visiting fan of team that is 3-1, not even a conference rival of the home team, let alone division, and the home team is 1-4 and hasn’t looked like an NFL team since opening weekend, you aren’t treated as bad. Also worth considering is the fact that the Eagles and Raiders fan bases are considered among the most hostile and violent in all sports, so there is a mutual respect for each others’ capabilities if someone goes too far in the hazing.

Frank, Jack of All Sports, Dr.Sportsfan, and Frank's friend in some suite seats at the game. Sadly, the seats were the only sweet thing about the game for Jack and "the Doctor".

Once Frank and I got to the seats and met up with Dr. Sportsfan, it was all downhill. The Eagles and Raiders both looked like playground teams, with the exception of the Raiders D-line, which came to play. The Eagles, led by the Master of Poor Play-calling and Clock Mismanagement, Andy Reid, did not find the end zone the entire game despite benefiting from playing against the Raiders offense, one of the worst in the league, which surrendered two INTs. The Eagles offense managing just nine points against the Raiders is a flat-out disgrace worthy of Joe Banner cutting off contract extension talks with the “fat man.” It’s a shame Dr. Sportsfan and I saw him in an elevator at the stadium before the game, as opposed to after.

So as bad as it went for me in football, the 72-hour time period under examination was just getting started. My fantasy football team, riding a three-game winning streak to climb to 3-2 after catching horrible breaks the opening two weeks, was poised to continue the streak against The Phoenix’s 1-4 fantasy team, which conveniently had Drew Brees benched in favor of Carson Palmer. The problem for me was my team looked like the Eagles, managing just 70 points and needing a 21-point performance from Antonio Gates on MNF to get a win against one of the worst teams in the fantasy league. Talk about insult to injury and shattered dreams, losing to two 1-4 teams in the same weekend. Only in a fantasy world could that happen. Perhaps I should’ve swallowed the red pill instead of the blue one and not gotten myself into this fantasy football mess.

So that’s football, now for baseball. It frankly didn’t look like the Dodgers had a shot Sunday night against Cliff Lee at home, but to not score a single run is not becoming of a team playing for a championship pennant. That is just embarrassing and depressing to watch as a fan. The Eagles may have failed to find the end zone, but at least they found the scoreboard! Come on, Dodgers! Really?

So that does it for Sunday sports, in all their non-glory for me, leaving me crying and battered inside. But won’t this horrible day ever end? I sincerely thank United Airlines for that one. Curses to Southwest Airlines, the best airline in the country, for not having any seats out of San Francisco on Sunday night when I booked my trip. I was on a 10:24 p.m. flight out of San Francisco, as soon as I could, to escape the Eagles’ giant stench left across the Bay and the bar where I watched the Dodgers leave their own trail of stink in Philadelphia. Jack Bauer simply got raped by the entire city of Philadelphia on Sunday.

The cause of my day not being allowed to end was my United plane. It was still sitting on the runway in Las Vegas 20 minutes before scheduled takeoff. At least it wasn’t in Philly, but that would’ve been more fitting. So when I finally left Frisco and landed at home in San Diego, it was 12:45 a.m., MONDAY MORNING! The torture that was Sunday for me never ended.

Monday 10/19: Sports for Jack Bauer Monday consisted solely of the Dodgers, with minor interest in the Chargers-Broncos as I wanted to believe Gates could reel off 100 receiving yards and two TDs to give me a victory from the jaws of defeat in fantasy. Not meant to be, though, as the Broncos are for real and the Norv Turner is who I — and the entire Sports World — thinks he is. A lousy coach who has a 2-4 record with one of the most talented teams in the NFL. A Chargers win could’ve given me some hope for my predictions in my regular season outlook. The Broncos now have six wins, one more than I predicted for them to get the entire season. Bill Belihcick screws me again, by way of his offspring.

It started out bad once again for the Dodgers, falling behind 2-0 after just one inning. But the Dodgers team I have seen all year, resilient and never quitting, showed itself at last and rallied back, tying the game 2-2 before taking a 4-2 lead, and clinging to a 4-3 lead going into the final frame. As iffy as Dodgers closer Jonathon Broxton has been in the past in big games, he had been money for much of the season and had been nails for the past few months. Against a powerful Cardinals lineup, he slammed the door to secure a 5-3 win in Game 1 of the NLDS, and two nights prior, shut down the Phillies in the ninth innig to even the NLCS at 1-1. I did not expect him to repeat his 2008 performance in Game 4 of the NLCS against the same team. But it was not meant to be, and Broxton once again did his best impersonation of Trevor Hoffman in a big-save situation. Broxton’s Achilles’ heal, his control, once again reared its ugly face and he allowed to two Phillies to reach without a hit before throwing a 99 MPH belt-high dart over the middle of the plate that any major league hitter could hit. Jimmy Rollins made him pay with a two-run hit, capping off a magical three days of sports for yours truly.

The only good news for me was that Tuesday was an off-day for sports, because whatever team I wanted to win would have probably lost. And it was unlikely to improve Wednesday, as I didn’t know how any team (the Dodgers) could come back from what happened that Monday night, other than you don’t (my point was conveniently proven as the Phillies secured a second trip to the Fall Classic that Wednesday night). The Phoenix is officially off my Christmas card list this year, but Dr. Sportsfan can stay because I didn’t play his 1-4 team in fantasy football and lose.

Tags: baseball, dodgers, eagles, football, NFL, pain, phillies, raiders, suffering