This could very well have been me:
Talk about a heart-stopping game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Indianapolis Colts.
Terry O’Neill, 50, of Pittsburgh, was watching the game at a bar and had a heart attack seconds after Jerome Bettis fumbled trying to score from the 2-yard line late in the fourth quarter.
***“I wasn’t upset that the Steelers might lose,” he told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “I was upset because I didn’t want to see him end his career like that. A guy like that deserves better. I guess it was a little too much for me to handle.”
O’Neill, who was recovering at a hospital, credits two firefighters with saving him.
“The Steelers won the game and I’m still alive, so I guess I’m doing pretty good,” he said.
I bet that Bettis fumble took out more than one sausage-eating Yunzer in the Pittsburgh metropolitan region. Although in terms of sheer anger, it was the overturned INT that made me come the closest to meeting my maker. I threw my damned phone and had to buy a new one yesterday.
KC
The laugh I needed to have today . . .
Damned at Random
The spousal unit took my BP right after the intercepton call. Said he wanted a reference for when my face is red and I’m screaming “Motherfucker” at the ref. It was 162/101. Thought it would be a lot higher than that.
The Other Steve
What is it about Steelers fans?
One of my buddies used to get like that during games. Worse he used to play this football game on his computer, and he had to buy new controllers about once a month cause he was beating the damn things to death.
Maybe you need to lay off the caffeine or something. :-)
Otto Man
You’re throwing phones? Who do you think you are, Russell Crowe?
Krista
I’d remind you that it’s just a game, but that’d be pretty rich from someone who once beat the shit out of an oak tree with her 3-wood, and leaned out of a car window, whooping, when the Canadian men’s hockey team finally won gold.
Never did get into football, though. It’s probably for the best.
Jeremy
I think the anger thing is pretty universal among us fanatic sports fans. I have a huge bruise on my hand when I smacked it into a metal pole after the Seahawks fumbled for the 2nd time on special teams. My wife bought me padded gloves that will protect me from myself :-)
Joey
Oh, it’s not just Steelers fans. Some of you may remember the IU/Charlotte game last year, where a fifty foot shot was made by Charlotte at (after, in reality) the buzzer to win the game. I had to buy a new remote after that. And that wasn’t the first time I’ve had to buy a new remote. Nothing gets my BP up like basketball officials.
Dave Ruddell
John, when you’re damaging tour own stuff, you might have a problem. Damaging other people’s stuff is okay…
Krista, that was a fine day indeed. Since I was living in NC at the time, I thought it wise to keep my celebrations more restrained.
Krista
Dave Ruddell – that probably was wise. The horrible part for me was that we were at the bf’s family’s house that weekend, and had started watching the game, but then had to get back home. So instead of watching it, we had to make do with the CBC Radio coverage. I just remember them announcing, after the score was 4-2, that Wayne Gretzky had finally cracked a smile, and that’s when I knew that we had it in the bag. You should have seen the cars driving up and down the streets honking their horns when the game was over…flags hanging from everybody’s balconies, whoops and hollers emanating from the bars. I tell you, our politicians can talk about national unity all they want, but nothing brings us together like our hockey team winning Olympic gold.
Krista
It made up for the crap officiating in the women’s game.
chopper
dude, that’s taking sports waaaay too seriously.
now, if this were a close presidential election, that’d be something completely different..
Sam hutcheson
Seriously, man. Anger. Management.
Another Jeff
I’m sure this guy was one happy meal or prime rib dinner away from a heart attack anyway.
If a 79 yr old coach and a 76 yr old coach can watch their kickers shank FG after FG at the end of a game and in overtime and not have a heart attack, there’s no way a fifty year old man should, unless he has other issues.
DougJ
John, just so you know — it took every ounce of will power I have not to create a fake identity on a spoofed IP and come on here and bait you with idiotic defenses of the horrible Polamalu call. Next time you go off on me for queering a thread, just keep that in mind.
Dave Ruddell
DougJ,
You show remarkable restraint.
Wait, maybe that was a fake DougJ?
Vladi G
Funny, I don’t remember Canadians being that happy after the 1996 World Cup.
I’m a pessimist, so I always just figure my teams are going to lose, but there’s always a glimmer of hope, which is what made game 6 of the 2002 World Series just about the greatest sporting event I’ve ever witnessed on Television (still have it saved on TiVo), followed closely by Game 7 of the 1993 Campbell Conference finals (suck it, Leafs fans), and game four of the 2001 series between the Kings and Red Wings when the Kings scored three times in the final six minutes and won in overtime.
Losing, however, just makes me more disappointed than mad, unless it’s partially caused by a bald faced liar like Doug Eddings. But hey, no use crying over spilt milk.
Capriccio
At first glance this will seem totally off point, but sooner or later Far North is going to come along and start ranting about the “tuck rule” again, so I want to be sure and get this in front of his (or her) face:
I’d really, really like to let this 5-year old issue go, but those here who are like me and frequent both sports and political sites have probably noticed how festering passions are very much the same and tend to overhwhelm fact and reason. Thus it is with the Iraq war declaration or, say, the “tuck rule.” I just read a piece in the New York Post which both echoes and reinforces the ravings of fans who insist that the tuck rule was some phantom, diabolical scheme cooked up by the NFL to stick it to the Raiders. The Post writer concludes by assuring his readers that:
“The tuck rule ultimately disappeared.”
Sports journalism, alas, is no more reliable than political journalism. The “tuck rule” has no more disappeared than it appeared out of nowhere in the first place, as both links below document.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/09/AR2005100901458.html
“The rule in question relieved officials of the burden of deciding a quarterback’s intent when he brings his arm forward, Pereira said. In other words, officials are not supposed to ask themselves: Did the quarterback intend to throw a pass or was he trying to tuck the ball in and run?
In a similar play in the second game of the season, the Patriots recovered an apparent fumble by Vinny Testaverde of the New York Jets but it was ruled an incomplete pass after being reviewed. The Jets went on to win 10-3.”
http://espn.go.com/nfl/news/2002/0120/1314728.html
Here’s my final shot at the NY Post writer (and the same goes for unnamed posters here):
Why don’t you try and keep up with things in your so-called area of expertise rather than recycling tired old bullshit?
Now, if it was only this easy to prove what we all actually decided upon with the Iraq War vote life would be grand.
skip
Will someone please tell John his team won. Of are we going to have to wait till the next game to end this thread?
demimondian
John, my team won, and they’ll be playing the Panthers next week in the NFC champioships.
Is that what you wanted, skip?
Alan
All I could think of when I saw that fumble was Ernest Byner….Thank goodness Pittsburgh ended up winning. And happy joy that Payton will still be plagued with having never won the big one. :-D
Bob In Pacifica
It’s all about justifying your anger.
Pooh
As tetchy as we sometimes get about politics, I think it’s safe to so that many of us are much more involved with sports. Even a year + later ask many a New England democrat whether they would rather have had the Red Sox, or Kerry win if they could have only had one, and I think the Sawx win in a landslide (both my father and I took about .3 seconds to reach that answer…)
Joey
I feel like I have more power in sports than in politics, which is kinda sad. My vote probably won’t matter, living in a die hard red state, but if I can raise my voice just a little bit more, I might be able to help rattle the oppossing point guard. Speaking of which, I gotta make my way over to Assembly Hall fairly soon. I got courtside seats for the IU/Illinois game, and Dee Brown’s pretty hard to rattle. I better buy some cough drops for tomorrow…
John Cole
Given the choice in 2004 between a Bush win and a Steelers Superbowl, I am embarassed to admit that it might very well be Pres. Kerry.
Given the choice between the Pirates winning the World Series and- who the hell am I kidding?
The Pirates are NEVER going to win the WS again.
Gold Star for Robot Boy
Somewhere in this great land of ours, Kent Tekulve and Tim Foli weep.
Sam Hutcheson
I would bet money to doughnuts that if you mapped the brain activity of fans during sporting events and compared that to a similar map of political activists at rallies (or debates, etc.) you’d get very similar maps. I suspect both activities involve the same regions of brain, because both activities are essentially enactments of one of the human animals most basic social functions: tribalism. Sports fandom is little more than rabid nationalism writ small. It almost always centers on either the “local team”, the “team of childhood” or the team someone adopted when they moved to college. The basic sociology at work is the same as that at work on political balkanization. Hell, modern politics even breaks the notion of support down to mascots and colors.
And it’s all perfectly irrational.
SeesThroughIt
I’m sort of like that. I mean, I pull for my teams as hard as possible and I never go against them, even when they seem to be overmatched. But while watching the game, I take every single thing as a harbinger of impending doom. “He only gained one yard with that rush? Fuck! Why don’t we just make it easy on everybody and forfeit! Goddammit!”
demimondian
You’d win the money, then. In fact, having a sports team win, being involved in a successful political campaign, and winning a fight all trigger very similar PET scan patterns, coupled with huge bursts in testosterone levels (in both male and females).
demimondian
By the way, Pooh…Pres. who? BoSox in the series in 2004, bay-bee!
Dave Ruddell
Say Vladi, tell me again who won the Cup in 1993? Too bad about McSorley’s stick havng a bit too much curve, eh?
(It’s bloody difficult being a Habs fan in Toronto, but not nearly so bad as being a Leafs fan…)
Vladi G
Yeah, it was too bad. What’s your point?
The Captain of the O
When the Eagles lost the Superbowl I demolished about four lawn chairs.
morfydd
I thought the term was “yinzer”, as the weird slang was “yinz”. I know, it should be “yunz” from “you-uns”, but I never heard it pronounced that way.
(/pedant)
Thanks for the site, by the way. My only Republican acquaintances any more are my parents, and they tell me that Bill O’Reilly is nonpartisan. They don’t get it that the moral values they taught me are what make me liberal now, and I don’t get why they’re not furious at what the party is doing. Sigh.