Like no other incidents in sports, a game-deciding coaching blunder or a botched trade made by the G.M. instills the belief in otherwise sedentary fans that knowledge gleaned from Sunday mornings in a sports bar and countless hours in a La-Z-Boy makes him eminently more qualified to lead his team to the title than the $5 million-a-year hacks getting paid for such jobs. And in What Were They Thinking? the frequency and enormity of all said events finally comes to light.
What Were They Thinking? includes some of the most famous moments in sports history, like Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” (finally shedding light on the series of coaching errors that led to his pennant-winning home run), to the infamous sideline punch thrown by Ohio State’s Woody Hayes that forever soiled a great career, to the USSR’s puzzling goalie change at the 1980 Winter Olympics that set the stage for the USA’s “Miracle on Ice.”
And some of the most absurd sports stories – like the riot that broke out at Comiskey Park during Disco Demolition Night, resulting in a forfeit by the White Sox; the wife of Jeff Tarango slapping the chair umpire at Wimbledon, resulting in his ban from the tournament the following year; and the incredibly story of not one, but two different CFL teams in consecutive years drafting players that were deceased.
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Every sports fan has experienced the pain and agony of seeing their beloved team’s championship dreams derailed by the bumbling incompetence of a dimwitted referee. The Worst Call Ever pays homage to those instances of athletic anguish by profiling the most egregious failures and fleecings ever perpetrated by referees, umpires, officials, and judges.
From the famous to the forgotten, and from ever major sport in the world - covering the last 100 years - there is something for fans of any and all sports, and the rabid and casual alike. In reading this book everyone will recognize moments, famous or personal, that they remember all to well. But they will also discover several unknown gems of documented deceit on the sports world’s biggest stages.
Each narrative also places the play in question within its historical context, examining the characters and stakes involved, the scope of injustice inflicted, and the path of change that was often its result.
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