America Loves Countdowns

Countdown #25: Biggest Fan Sucker-Punches

Being a loyal sports fan requires one to sign an honorary contract. The fan's role is to support the team and invest heavily in following them. The team in turn should play and manage itself to the best of their abilities to serve their customers, who are much more emotionally invested in them than, say, a Wal-Mart customer is to a Wal-Mart store. Sometimes owners, coaches, and league executives betray that trust leading to increased cynicism, less support, or all out crushing heartbreak for the fans. This week's America Loves Countdowns® series looks at ten instances where loyal sports fans were sucker-punched. The common theme on this list is that often more than one party was to blame, but the result still remained the same: the fans were always the victims.

Baseball Cancels World Series
Twice in the past two decades, a major sports league has not handed out its annual championship due to labor issues between players and owners. However, the results of those situations could not have been more different. In 1994, Major League Baseball had to cancel the World Series when the two sides could not come together on a new collective bargaining agreement. In 2005, the NHL had to cancel the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the same reason. But in the NHL's case, the pain was well worth it as the players and owners implemented a stable economic system which allowed for every team to compete. Baseball on the other hand never resolved anything. They just decided to start playing again, and the reverberations are still being felt today. Only the big market teams are able to consistently compete in baseball, while everyone else simply serves as a development program for them. So the moral of the story is this: if you are going to screw over your fans, at least have a purpose.

Washington Bullets Change Name
The political correctness police got to the brass of the Washington Bullets NBA franchise in 1997, claiming that the team name was "insensitive" and carried "violent overtones". The idea was that bullets kill people, so a team being named after something deadly was too insensitive. Nevermind the fact that numerous people have also been killed by Lions, Rockets, Sharks, Hurricanes, Jaguars, Predators, Pirates, Avalanche, Panthers, Bulls, Cowboys, Vikings, Raptors, Indians, Bears, Tigers, Flames, Coyotes, Timberwolves, and Lightning. That wasn't enough to convince Washington not to change their name to "Wizards" and hose all of their fans who owned suddenly defunct Bullets paraphernalia.

NFL Limits Crowd Noise
The "No Fun League" has tried many times over the years to suck the joy out of the game, but no attempt was more egregious than when the NFL instituted a rule prohibiting fans from cheering too loudly for their team! The rule, which was created in 1989, says that if the noise reaches a certain "unacceptable" level, then the official can charge the home team with a timeout or charge them with a 5-yard penalty. Thankfully, this rule has almost never been enforced. The only time I can remember it even being tried was during a pre-season game years ago in the Kingdome where Seahawks fans became more and more encouraged to "break" the rule as timeouts were being charged to their team. But the fact that the rule is still on the books is a slap in the face to fans, who have every right to help their team by cheering.

White Sox Throw World Series
In 1919, the Chicago White Sox made a deal with gamblers to intentionally lose the World Series. It's a famous story which has been documented many times before. The players had some semi-legitimate reasons, mainly that they were being screwed over by team owner Charles Comiskey, while folks on the other side argue that no reason is good enough to sacrifice the integrity of the game. Lost in this story was its impact on the fans. First off, Chicago fans who had followed the team all season and mourned when they lost at the end had to deal with the fact that they were stabbed in the back. Secondly, fans outside of Chicago had to wonder if their team was playing in legitimate games. To his credit, commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis sensed the fan anguish and dealt swiftly and strongly with the offending players.

The Wayne Gretzky Trade
Edmonton Oilers star Wayne Gretzky dominated the NHL during the 1980's and led his team to four Stanley Cup titles. Right before the 1988-89 season, Oilers owner Peter Pocklington shocked Edmonton fans (and Canadian fans in general) by sending "The Great One" to the Los Angeles Kings for several players as well as $15 million in cash. There is some debate over who was most responsible for this move. Some say that Pocklington simply wanted to cash in on Gretzky's fame while he could (and he certainly did by receiving $15 million from the deal). Others say the league in effect needed its star player in a place like LA (and that definitely did boost the NHL's popularity in the United States). Still others claim that the trade was orchestrated by Gretzky himself, whose soon-to-be wife Janet Jones wanted to further her acting career in Hollywood (and she was able to do that). So regardless of who was responsible for it, the result was still other parties benefiting at the expense of heartbroken Edmonton fans.

Rogel up the Middle
In the 1950's, the Steelers offense had become so predictable that the fans were always able to call out the first offensive play of every game. They chanted, "Hey diddle diddle, Rogel up the middle" - a reference to the fact that head coach Walt Kiesling always ran FB Fran Rogel up the middle to start every game. The fans made an impact as team owner Art Rooney ordered Kiesling to open a 1956 game at Forbes Field with a pass play instead. But Kiesling wanted to show all the fans that he was smarter, so he told one of his offensive lineman to jump offsides on the play. Of course the play worked brilliantly - Steelers QB Jack Scarbath threw a TD pass to Goose McClairen because the opponent was playing run all the way - but it didn't count due to the penalty. The next play was Rogel up the middle. Kiesling sacrificed winning just to stick it to the fans. It's no wonder that the Steelers stunk for their first four decades in the league.

Dodgers Move to LA
In the 1950's, Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley became embroiled in a bitter fight with New York City politicians over his desire to build a new stadium to replace Ebbets Field. Greed and stubbornness from both sides eventually led to O'Malley relocating the franchise to Los Angeles in 1957. Once again, it would be the fans who would be the ultimate losers in this battle, and many put the blame squarely on O'Malley. There was a running joke in Brooklyn that the three greatest villains of the 20th century were Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Walter O'Malley. People were asked who they would shoot if they had to be locked in a room with all three and had a gun with only two bullets. The answer was always that they would shoot O'Malley twice.

Personal Seat Licenses
Imagine if you were going to a local movie theater every week for 30 years. You always purchased your ticket to see a movie. Sometimes you were entertained while other times you were disgusted, but your consistent support helped keep the movie theater in business. Then imagine if after 30 years of you buying a movie ticket each week, the theater instituted a $5,000 "license" that you would have to purchase just for the "right" to continue to buy movie tickets from them. You still have to pay for the ticket - in fact, they raise that price each year - but in order to have the right to pay, you first have to buy a license. Seems pretty ridiculous, right? Well, tell that to NFL owners who invented this absurd tactic on season tickets in order to further pad their pockets.

Pirates Pass on Matt Wieters
The list of horrible personnel moves that the Pirates have made in the past 16 years is so long that it couldn't even make up an America Loves Countdowns® list because there would be about 50 items on it! But one move topped them all. In June 2007, the Pirates held the 4th spot in the draft and were fortunate enough to be in position to grab Matt Wieters, a star catcher from Georgia Tech who was unanimously regarded as the best hitting prospect in the draft. However, the Pirates didn't want to pay the signing bonus they knew Wieters would command or deal with "super agent" Scott Boras, so instead they took a lower-rated relief pitcher! After two decades of constant losing, signing bad free agents, not paying their current players, and raising ticket prices, this blatant "F you" move to the fans proved to be the last straw for the many who were still supporting the Bucs.

Art Modell Moves Browns
Browns owner Art Modell had a legitimate beef with the city of Cleveland in 1995. The city had ensured that pretty much every entity in town other than the Browns were taken care of with shiny new facilities. However, Modell's anger at being snubbed caused him to pull one of the most shocking moves in sports history when he announced that he was taking the Browns to Baltimore. In the process, he ripped the heart right out of the long-suffering Cleveland fans, stabbed a knife through it, and tossed it in Lake Erie. After years of supporting his team, Modell apparently did not feel like he owed the fans anything. It was the ultimate sucker-punch - one that the Browns fans never saw coming. Like the Black Sox scandal, the effects reverberated beyond Cleveland as fans around the country had to fear losing their favorite teams and were thus held hostage to the gun of public stadium funding. After all, if the Browns could leave Cleveland, then anything was possible. The fans were once again the losers.

Honorable Mentions:

• The NFL Network: Although I love most of their programming, I still have to admit that it really was a back-stabbing move to essentially force fans and cable companies into paying more money to see essentially the same NFL programming and games that they had been seeing already.
  
  
• Colts Move to Indianapolis: Robert Irsay's decision to move the Colts to Indianapolis was bad enough. His decision to literally sneak out in the middle of the night made him an all-time villian for football fans in Baltimore. Years of tradition and pride were carried out of town by Mayflower trucks while everyone was asleep.
  
  
• Penguins on Pay-Per-View: In 1993, Pittsburgh Penguins owner Howard Baldwin had a two-time defending Stanley Cup champion and decided to use that good fortune to drain his fans of every last dime. The worst offense was the fact that he put several of the Pens games that year on pay-per-view, including a key game during the team's record winning streak. What a slap in the face to the fans!