Managing Editor
Having spent a big chunk of my career as a sportswriter, I have learned that the expression “sure thing” really doesn’t exist in competitive athletics.
A racehorse facing 100-1 odds can pull off a stunning upset
and a team on a long losing streak can suddenly put it all together and win
every now and then. I’ve witnessed this time and time again and it’s woven into
the fabric of sports, and to a greater extent, into life too.
Here are a few examples that prove my point:
In 1969, my favorite baseball team, the Baltimore Orioles,
cruised through the 162-game regular season schedule with a record of 109-53.
The Orioles then swept the Minnesota Twins, 3-0, in the American League
Championship Series and were heavily favored to defeat the upstart National
League champion, the New York Mets, in the World Series.
Since their inception as a major league franchise in 1962, the
Mets had endured seven consecutive losing seasons before suddenly winning 100
games in the regular season in 1969 and ousting the Atlanta Braves in the
National League Championship Series, 3-0.
Hosting the Mets in the first game of the 1969 World Series at
the old Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, the Orioles were prohibitive favorites
to win the title, having defeated Sandy Koufax and the Los Angeles Dodgers
three years earlier, 4-0, in 1966.
I stood on the sidelines of a high school football game with
teammates listening on a transistor radio to a broadcast of the game, in which
the Orioles beat the Mets, 4-1. At that point, I was convinced this was going
to be a “sure thing” and the Orioles were headed to another World Series
championship.
Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be. The “Miracle Mets” took the next four games, two of them by 2-1 scores, to claim the title and relegate the “sure thing” Orioles to a place in baseball lore as one of the winningest teams of all-time not to have won the year-end title.
The racehorse Smarty Jones is another prime example of a clear
favorite not meeting expectations when it mattered the most.
In rattling off six consecutive wins to launch his
thoroughbred racing career, Smarty Jones powered to victories in the first two
legs of the 2004 Triple Crown series, winning the Kentucky Derby and the
Preakness Stakes. That landed the chestnut-colored horse on the covers of both
Sports Illustrated and ESPN magazines.
Entering the Belmont Stakes as the favorite to win with jockey
Stewart Elliott aboard, Smarty Jones took the lead midway down the backstretch of the
race and then was sailing through the final turn as the leader with only the
homestretch left to assure the first Triple Crown victory since Affirmed in
1978.
But
jockey Edgar Prado riding 36-1 longshot Birdstone had other ideas. Prado sensed
that Smarty Jones was not as relaxed as in his previous races and seemed to be
tiring in the homestretch. He guided Birdstone to the outside and then took the
lead from Smarty Jones with a furlong left and won the race by a one-length
margin. It dashed the “sure thing” inevitability of Smarty Jones as one of the
immortal horses of legendary racing lore for sure.
During
the 2007 NFL season, one team stood head and shoulders above all the rest and
that was the New England Patriots. Under the leadership of quarterback Tom
Brady, the Patriots had rolled through the regular season unbeaten and then
eliminated Jacksonville and San Diego in the American Football Conference
playoffs to enter Super Bowl XLII with a record of 18-0 and 12-point favorites
over the National Football Conference champions, the New York Giants.
The
Giants were a wild card team that was up and down that year and trailed 14-10
taking possession of the ball with just 2:39 remaining in the game. On third
down from their own 44-yard line, Giants quarterback Eli Manning escaped the
grasp of three New England would-be tacklers before tossing a 32-yard pass
caught with one hand by a leaping David Tyree who kept the drive alive and set
up a winning touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress to hand the Giants an impossible
17-14 Super Bowl victory over the “sure thing” previously undefeated Patriots.
As in
sports, life is littered with failed “sure things.” There’s that famous
photograph of U.S. President Harry S. Truman holding up the mistaken “Dewey
Defeats Truman” Chicago Daily Tribune newspaper on the morning following the
1948 presidential election. In business items such as Google Glass,
hoverboards, or the Arch Deluxe at McDonalds are reasons to discount “sure
things” when investing your hard-earned money.
Perhaps
Scottish poet Robert Burns summed it up best when discussing this topic.
“There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing,” he said.
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