The Big Book of Senior Moments Read online

  On a third-and-goal play from the 1, he had rolled out of the pocket looking for a receiver. When he saw a clear path in front of him, Frerotte dashed toward the goal line and just managed to get into the right front pylon of the south end zone ahead of two Giants defenders.

  Frerotte kept running toward the corner of the stadium. First he spiked the football against the wall, then he stopped momentarily and continued celebrating his team’s first score by butting the top of his helmeted head into a padded wall. He clearly recoiled after the impact.

  As Frerotte trotted back toward the bench area, he winced as he tried to get his helmet off. Several trainers and a team doctor also saw his discomfort, and worked on him as he sat on the Redskins bench during the Giants’ next possession.

  At halftime, Frerotte underwent X-rays in a facility underneath the stadium. A team spokesman said the X-rays were negative. As a precaution, Frerotte was taken to Prince George’s County Hospital by ambulance, accompanied by an unidentified team doctor, during the third quarter.

  He was given a CAT scan, the results of which were negative. Frerotte left the hospital midway through the fourth quarter wearing a neck brace. “I feel all right,” he said, but declined further comment.

  “I went to the doctor today with severe headaches. He asked me if I’d suffered any memory loss. How would I know?”

  —Anonymous

  “The worst thing is short term memory loss … the worst thing is short term memory loss …

  —Larry King

  Follow the Rules

  Hospital regulations require a wheelchair for patients being discharged. However, while working as a student nurse, I found one elderly gentleman already dressed and sitting on the bed with a suitcase at his feet who insisted he didn’t need my help to leave the hospital. After a chat about rules being rules, he reluctantly let me wheel him to the elevator. On the way down I asked him if his wife was meeting him. “I don’t know,” he said. “She’s still upstairs in the bathroom changing out of her hospital gown.”

  Eyes of Texas

  Rather than dribble the ball up the floor to try and give himself a better chance at burying a game-winner, former Texas Longhorn Roscoe Smith heaved a shot from about three-quarters length—with nearly ten seconds left in the half. He did it again in the second half. Too many energy drinks at halftime?

  “I keep myself right at the (professional) level, in case somebody feels froggy and says, ‘I think I’m going to whup the old man,’” he says. “And they’d be shocked.”

  —Evander Holyfield

  The Moroccan Flash

  While international soccer fans adore Ronaldinho for his bright personality and on-field flare, Khalid Askri is giving the Brazilian playmaker a run for his money in Morocco.

  Askri’s clutch saves in an extra-time quarterfinal victory over Mexican club Monterrey helped Raja advance to the semi-finals, where the Moroccan team will face the Copa Libertadores winners.

  For a player dubbed “the unluckiest goalkeeper in the world,” Askri gave Raja chance of becoming the first African team to reach the 2014 Club World Cup final.

  Askri earned the title in September 2010 when a pair of mistakes cost his then club FAR Rabat. First, celebrating a penalty save, he tossed the ball, only to have backspin carry the ball into goal to his shock. He followed that up weeks later with an embarrassing giveaway that led to a goal. After which he ripped off his shirt and stormed off the field despite pleas from his teammates to continue.

  “I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father.”

  —Greg Norman

  Nice Block(head)

  An unusual lock in a game between powerhouse Florida and underling Georgia Southern some much-needed comic relief.

  “I thought it was comical,” senior offensive guard Jon Halapio said after the game.

  “We were all in the locker room joking around about it.”

  On the first play of the second half and senior wide receiver Solomon Patton took a jet sweep off right tackle. Senior center Jonotthan Harrison pulled and got locked up with junior wide receiver Quinton Dunbar. The two Gators remained engaged throughout the play, seemingly unaware of each other’s orange-and-blue uniforms.

  “Perfect technique and everything,” Halapio said. “[Harrison] should have [pancaked him]. He got in his way.”

  Florida offensive coordinator Brent Pease saw the play while reviewing game film on Sunday.

  “Sometimes you have to laugh,” he said, still chuckling and shaking his head in disbelief. “I mean, I’m just like, that is … c’mon.”

  “If I’d known I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.”

  —Mickey Mantle

  Once a Bonehead …

  You can’t put a price on all of the laughs we’ve shared while watching replays of the time that a ball bounced off Jose Canseco’s head and over the wall for a home run.

  You can, however, put a price on the cap that Canseco was wearing that day.

  An auction listed the Texas Rangers cap Canseco was wearing when he misplayed a fly ball at the old Cleveland Stadium in a game in 1993. The ball bounced of Canseco’s head and over the wall for a home run. Canseco refuses to call the play a home run and insists on calling it a four-base error instead.

  But I Was Only Going One Way

  On June 23, 1963, veteran outfielder Jimmy Piersall stepped to the plate for the New York Mets facing Phillies pitcher Dallas Green to lead off the top of the fifth. Piersall swung on Green’s offering and made solid contact—home run.

  This wasn’t just any homer for Piersall but a milestone homer. It was career homer No. 100, and he celebrated the milestone in a memorable fashion.

  He decided to run around the bases backwards. Oh, he touched the bases in order: first, second, third, and home. That’s not the part he did backwards. He just faced backwards. He backpedaled all the way around the infield.

  “The Mets just had their first .500-or-better April since July of 1992.”

  —Ralph Kiner

  Disco Fever

  Bill Veeck was sixty-two years old—old enough to qualify for near-geezer—when he approved a promotion on July 12, 1979, that mocked disco music and incited a crowd of ninety thousand to trash Comiskey Park and storm the field, forcing umpires to declare a forfeit for the White Sox.

  In the 1970s, the ubiquitous disco music craze annoyed many, including popular DJ Steve Dahl, who ranted against disco and blew up—symbolically anyway—disco records for radio station WLUP. Mike Veeck, son of White Sox owner Bill Veeck, who was famous for combining baseball with inventive publicity stunts, hatched the idea with Dahl and WLUP’s station manager to cash in on the increasing hatred of disco with a Disco Demolition Night promotion. The event attracted an estimated ninety thousand people to the fifty-two thousand-seat stadium, leaving tens of thousands roaming around the stadium trying to get in. The smell of pot was in the air and the beer was flowing.

  One reporter later wrote: “They were vulgarians who came to Comiskey Park to be ruffians.”

  The players completed the first game nervously as fans tossed records onto the field like Frisbees, or threw fireworks. With the crowd chanting “disco sucks,” Dahl walked out to center field dressed in military regalia and set off an explosion of disco records. Many in the crowd took this as a cue to storm the field, and they began tearing up grass, scaling foul poles, starting fires, and overturning the batting cage.

  The understaffed police were helpless. Veeck and (Harry) Caray pleaded for calm, and organist Nancy Faust played “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” to help quiet the crowd. Chicago police finally restored order after about 37 minutes, but the umpires ruled that the field was unplayable, forcing the White Sox to forfeit the second game.

  “I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid.”

  —Terry Bradshaw

  Beer’s On Us, and You

  In 1974 the Cleveland Indians staged ten-cent beer night: ten-ounce cups of
beer for only ten cents at a game against the Texas Rangers. Management’s senior moment? Forgetting that drunk people get crazy restless. More than twenty-five thousand fans showed up for the event, most of them already tipsy at the gate. Among the more tame incidents was a woman who flashed the crowd from the on-deck circle, a father-son team mooning the players, and fans jumping on the field to meet and shake hands with the outfielders. In the bottom of the ninth, the Indians tied the game, but never got a chance to win. Fans started throwing batteries, golf balls, cups and rocks onto the field and one even took the glove of the Rangers’ right fielder. As the player rushed into the stands to get his glove back, fans starting swarming the field to stop him and threw chairs to block his way.

  The Indians were forced to forfeit the game and nine fans were arrested. The AL president forced the franchise to abandon the promotion idea after understating “There was no question that beer played a great part in the affair.” Really?

  “Even Napoleon had his Watergate.”

  —Danny Ozark

  Good Things to Throw

  Los Angeles Dodgers fans in 1995 were treated to “ball night” for a game against the Cardinals. Fans entering the game were given a souvenir baseball. The senior moment? Forgetting that baseballs are pretty convenient things to throw. In the seventh inning, fans threw balls at an opposing outfielder when he bobbled a play. In the bottom of the ninth, though, Dodger Raul Mondesi and manager Tommy Lasorda were ejected for arguing a strikeout call, inspiring about two hundred fans to throw their promotional balls onto the field. The umps urged the Cardinals to stay on the field, but finally decided to end the game after more fans decided to contribute their gifts to the game.

  The Dodgers were forced to forfeit the game, the first forfeit in the National League in forty-one years.

  “The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”

  —H. L. Mencken

  A Minor Mishap

  In 2006 the West Michigan Whitecaps, Detroit’s class-A affiliate, had a helicopter drop $1,000 in various bills from a helicopter after a game. The senior moment? Forgetting that people love money more than they love other people. Two children were injured scrambling for the cash. A girl received a bloody lip being pushed to the ground, while a seven-year-old boy was bruised when he got trampled in the fray.

  The boy was taken to the hospital, but released after treatment. The team management summed up the incident by reminding everyone that they had signed waivers.

  “I don’t generally like running. I believe in training by rising gently up and down from the bench.”

  —Satchel Paige

  A Big Fat Mistake

  In 2007, the Dodgers decided to promote obesity by opening up a section of all-you-can-eat seats. Ticket prices ranged from $20–$40.

  Our senior moment here? Failing to understand that not everyone can handle an open buffet of hot dogs and nachos. People ate themselves sick, literally.

  Despite fans vomiting in their seats and elsewhere, the Dodgers declared the promotions a success and it still draws up to four thousand fans a night. Other stadiums have contacted the Dodgers about copying the idea.

  The Incredible Satchel Paige, a Senior Champion

  Though he played baseball for years and excelled, Satchel Paige’s brief time in the major leagues includes what may be the most remarkable feat in baseball history. In 1965, at the age of fifty-nine, Paige (pitching for Charles Finley’s Athletics), started a late-season against the Boston Red Sox and hurled three scoreless innings. Finley, a maverick of sorts, conceived the idea to sign and start Paige as a lark to boost the Athletics’ sagging attendance. He gave Paige a $3,500 contract and Satchel immediately declared: “I think I can still pitch and help this club.”

  Finley, with considerable assistance from Paige, hyped the game masterfully. Before warming up, Paige sat in a rocking chair placed next to but not in the A’s underground bullpen. Paige said: “At my age, I’m close enough to being below ground level as it is.”

  “He’s a guy who gets up at six o’clock in the morning regardless of what time it is.”

  —Lou Duva

  Working It, Part II

  A white-uniformed nurse stood beside Paige to massage his arm before the game while a personal water boy handed him cool drinks.

  Paige’s six children looked on; his wife Lahoma, expecting a seventh child, stayed home. When the game began, Paige dominated. He recorded nine outs on only twenty-eight pitches and allowed just one hit, a double by Carl Yastrzemski. Ironically, during a Long Island semi-pro game a generation earlier, Yaz’s father had hit against Paige.

  Straight Talker

  Journalists were interviewing Molly Holderness, a 103-year-old woman, “Tell us, Mrs. Holderness, what do you think is the best thing about being 103?” the reporter asked.

  Molly smiled and looked straight at the reporter and simply replied, “No peer pressure.”

  Good Old Guy

  George Blanda, a quarterback and place-kicker, played professional football longer than anyone else and retired having scored more points than anyone else. Blanda was a reliable kicker with a strong enough leg to have blasted a 55-yard field goal in 1961 and, nine years later, a 52-yarder. And he was a guileful, gutsy quarterback, a pocket passer who was never known for his arm strength or accuracy, his agility or his foot speed but who stood up to rushing linemen, saw the whole field, and often delivered his best performances when the most was at stake. “Blanda had a God-given killer instinct to make it happen when everything was on the line,” Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis said. “I really believe that George Blanda is the greatest clutch player I have ever seen in the history of pro football.”

  Davis had a firsthand look at one of Blanda’s most famous stretch of games when on Sunday, October 25, 1970, Blanda stepped in for the Raiders’ injured starting quarterback, Daryle Lamonica, and threw for three touchdowns in the fourth quarter to beat Pittsburgh. The next Sunday, against the Kansas City Chiefs, he kicked a 48-yard field goal, salvaging a tie with eight seconds left in the game. The week after that, against the Cleveland Browns, Blanda entered the game with a little more than four minutes to play and the Raiders down by a touchdown. He threw a touchdown pass, kicked the extra point, drove the team into position for the winning field goal and kicked it—that 52-yarder—with three seconds on the clock. The next Sunday, he beat Denver with a late touchdown pass; the Sunday after that, he beat San Diego with a last-minute field goal. Five straight weeks he saved the game. He was forty-three years old at the time.

  The Sporting News once wrote of Blanda, “He just got better. He was the epitome of the grizzled veteran, the symbol of everlasting youth.”

  A Little Pick-Me-Up

  Cocaine can make you feel like you’re virtually indestructible, which makes it a great pick for football players. One of the most visible abusers of Colombian marching powder in the late seventies was Dallas Cowboys strongside linebacker Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson, who already had a reputation for flamboyant antics.

  Henderson would keep a liquid inhaler in his pants filled with a mixture of cocaine and water, which he would spray into his mouth throughout the game. Naturally, this made his behavior even more unpredictable, and during a game against the Redskins in 1979 Henderson actually stopped playing for a little while to wave handkerchiefs with the Cowboys logo at the cameras. He was fired from the team the next day.

  “The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.”

  —Friedrich Nietzsche

  “Nothing is more responsible for the gold old days than a bad memory.”

  —Franklin P. Adams

  Geezers at Play: The Top Ten Oldest Pros

  1. Buddy Helms—87 years of age; auto racing

  2. Fred Davis—78 years of age; snooker

  3. Jerry Barber—77 years of age; golf

  4. Raja Maharaj Singh—72 years of age; cricket
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  5. Skip Hall—64 years of age; mixed martial arts

  6. Albert Beckles—61 years of age; bodybuilding

  7. Saoul Mamby—60 years of age; boxing

  8. Satchel Paige—59 years of age; baseball

  9. Gordie Howe—52 years of age; hockey (tie)

  10. Ron Jaworski—52 years of age; pro football (tie)

  “I have five boys and they’re all named George. If you want to be a good boxer, you have to prepare for memory loss.”

  —George Foreman

  Smile for the Camera

  After the 2008 Summer Olympics, Michael Phelps was one of the most famous athletes in the world. The gangly Maryland-born swimmer took home a staggering eight gold medals and was quickly paired with hot ladies and endorsement deals.

  Unfortunately, Phelps also got close with wacky weed. In 2009, a photograph of him taking a power bong hit at a University of South Carolina party hit the British tabloids, and the world reacted in horror. Kellogg dropped him from sponsorship and he was fined by the USA Swimming organization.

  Considering that weed is legal for personal use in several states now, it’s kind of a shame that this is a big deal—it’s not like he had reefer in his snorkel or anything.

  But I Love the Fans

  Apparently he liked having senior moments all the time. One of baseball’s biggest stoners was Bernie Carbo, a designated hitter from Detroit who played on the totally drugged-out Red Sox team of the mid-1970s. Carbo was a real character, traveling with a stuffed gorilla named Mighty Joe Young and once holding up a game against the Yankees for ten minutes so he could find a plug of chewing tobacco that fell out of his mouth.

  Bernie was even high when he hit the three-run homer that helped the Sox tie up the 1975 World Series at 3–3. In 1978, when new Red Sox ownership hired a detective to find proof of his drug use, after just a day on the job the detective caught Carbo throwing baseballs into the stands for fans in exchange for baggies of marijuana.