I had to include this one on my list. It's the definition of shocking. Who expects to hear that news about one of the greatest of all time?

Kerrigan/Harding crossed my mind but we can apply UT's feeling on hockey to US olympic figure skating.

Covid and Kobe were not on the field of play so I didn't count them.

7. The 1994 Major League Baseball Strike 

I vaguely remember this , I was only into baseball for Ken Griffey Jr. for the most part at the time and would mainly watch highlights and was too young to really understand anything about "strikes" other than the sport would be gone. Can't say it really shocked me if I couldn't wrap my head around it.

Looking back I don't know , I'm not expert but the general consensus is that baseball never fully recovered from this strike with it's fans and allowed the NFL especially and maybe even the NBA to overtake them in the states.

Meh, are strikes really all that shocking? I mean, where unions are involved, aren't labor strikes just inevitabilities that are merely a matter of time?

Mar 24, 2020 13:12:37 GMT 🤯 said:

Meh, are strikes really all that shocking? I mean, where unions are involved, aren't labor strikes just inevitabilities that are merely a matter of time?

I think if you take my sentiment and our ages into account - especially young baseball fans that don’t understand it all I can see why people ranked it.

Mar 24, 2020 13:25:08 GMT UT said:

Mar 24, 2020 13:12:37 GMT 🤯 said:

Meh, are strikes really all that shocking? I mean, where unions are involved, aren't labor strikes just inevitabilities that are merely a matter of time?

I think if you take my sentiment and our ages into account - especially young baseball fans that don’t understand it all I can see why people ranked it.

That's fair. Damn me and applying my adult lenses and hindsight to this list!

Mar 24, 2020 13:55:16 GMT 🤯 said:

Mar 24, 2020 13:25:08 GMT UT said:

I think if you take my sentiment and our ages into account - especially young baseball fans that don’t understand it all I can see why people ranked it.

That's fair. Damn me and applying my adult lenses and hindsight to this list!

Yes damn you. Remember your youth you crotchety jerk.

I was 6 when this happened so it didn’t affect me but surely it had a major effect shock value wise. I do wonder like UT mentioned if this was when the MLB was surpassed as America’s sport. Something happened to the sport of baseball where the regular seasons first 150 games is such a bore to watch. Could actually be the strike, the slowness of games or the fact that there is 162 games in a season.

Playoff baseball is a thrill though. Still an exciting time to watch sports.

I was fine with the strike because the Jays got off to a bad start and were going to miss the postseason anyway. The strike made them remain defending champs. :suspic:

I remember the strike but I didn’t vote for it. It wasn’t shocking at first because it was years in the making and it was no surprise that it happened. However, the fact that the postseason and World Series were canceled because of it is a pretty big deal, so I don’t have a problem with it on the list. It was pretty crazy that in mid August the games suddenly stopped and it was obvious there would be no World Series.

Fuck, it brings back some bad memories for my dad, a huge Montreal Expos fan. In 1994, the Expos were the best team in baseball. When the strike happened, it's like baseball in Montreal died along with it. They were never the same again. And a decade later, they left for Washington.

Mar 24, 2020 19:34:37 GMT CM Punk'd said:

Fuck, it brings back some bad memories for my dad, a huge Montreal Expos fan. In 1994, the Expos were the best team in baseball. When the strike happened, it's like baseball in Montreal died along with it. They were never the same again. And a decade later, they left for Washington.

Quebec got so fucked after the Habs won their last Stanley Cup. It’s like the sports gods gave them one more championship then said they would be horrible forever. Between the Expos having their dream season taken away and Quebec City moving to Colorado, they got so screwed over.

I had Coronavirus Cancels Everything at #6 for reasons I already explained.
=====================
Honestly forgot about Kobe. Definitely shocking. Definitely sad. 
=====================
Since I know it won't make the list, the lone death I voted for was Reggie Lewis at #3. That one stands the most to me because it was the first big athlete death that really impacted me. Here was a young man in the prime of his career....The man who was set to replace Larry Bird as the next "Mr. Celtic"... And then BAM! He passes away at the young age of 27. Tragic.

Plus he was a Baltimore Guy. In fact, an older, college-aged guy in my neighborhood growing up claimed to be Reggie Lewis' brother. The older kids, such as Reggie's alleged brother, would attach milk crates to telephone poles in the alley as makeshift basketball hoops. My brother and our friends would occasionally use these makeshift hoops (though we usually used the little 5-6 foot sand-filled basketball hoop in our backyard). Other times we would watch the big kids play, or even join in their games when they let us. Reggie's "brother" was one of these "bigger kids." As well as the "coolest" from what I remember.

We moved out of that neighborhood in 1990 and for at least 25 years I had always assumed Reggie's "brother" was just some random dude messing with a bunch of stupid kids. But I did some research the other day and HOLY SHIT Reggie Lewis' real life brother lived one block up the street from where I grew up! Meaning this guy was legit the entire time. Mind blown! Wish my brother was still around so we could discuss this.
===================== 
MLB Strike Leads To World Series Cancellation was my #1. It wasn't so much The Strike itself that was shocking. I had long been aware of the 1981 MLB strike, 1982 NFL strike, and lived through the 1987 NFL strike as a fan. No. The shocking thing was the fact that the World Series was cancelled. There hadn't been a year without a World Series since 1904! They held the Series during World War I AND World War II! But the World Series could not survive The Strike. All those other strikes lasted about 2 months and then everybody went back to business. Not this time. Super shocking to 1994 me.

Plus the Orioles were in contention to make the playoffs for the first time in my 8 or 9 glorious years as a baseball fan. That made the postseason cancellation even rougher. That playoff race would have been fun. Orioles could have been the first ever AL Wild Card entry.

Anyway, Baseball/MLB was my favorite sport growing up. And while I was wicked pissed about the strike, I did come back pretty quickly due to Cal breaking Gehrig's record in '95, and the Orioles actually being good in 96-97, but I never LOVED baseball quite as much as I had before the 1994 Strike. 1995 was the first year I was definitely more into WWF than MLB. Up to that point it had always been more of a tossup.

Mar 24, 2020 13:12:37 GMT 🤯 said:

Meh, are strikes really all that shocking? I mean, where unions are involved, aren't labor strikes just inevitabilities that are merely a matter of time?

This a 1000x.   People saw the strike coming from a mile away.    As far as baseball goes I would say the steroid hearings were more shocking than this.

Baseball also had an uptick in 1998 with the home run race so the '94 strike's impact was mitigated. Sucks though about the Expos losing their great season.

Mar 25, 2020 0:04:27 GMT Shootist said:

Baseball also had an uptick in 1998 with the home run race so the '94 strike's impact was mitigated. Sucks though about the Expos losing their great season.

It might have helped but revisionist history might tell us that is when football really took over and laid the ground work for the juggernaut it’s become. 1998 might have been a flash in the pan but it never rose to the forefront of sports like it once was.

6. O.J. Simpson Murders His Wife 

Add another one to the tally of 1994 being the craziest year in sports , or sports new with the OJ Simpson trial being all over the news everywhere. Again in the time I was a little young to fully grasp what was going on but I still paid attention even though I didn't know who OJ really was or why he was important.

I do vividly remember watching the Bronco chase too. And I remember the verdict actually being on in school - I don't know why they found it pertinent to show a group of 2nd graders but I guess that speaks to how much it took over the news.

Now with all the docs and movies to come out and me being older , the whole thing was really insane. I had to rank it.

I didn't rank this for stupid reasons but it was definitely shocking and definitely belongs on the list.

Like UT, I also remember watching the low speed Bronco chase. Unlike UT, I was familiar with OJ as an actor, football legend, and talking head on NFL broadcasts.

The subsequent trial was a major news story which permeated pop culture. We watched at least one day of the trial in class.

Wait... But OJ didn't murder his wife, right?

If he did though, I wonder how he would've done it.

No word of a lie, we watched the verdict in class at school. That’s how big this trial was.

A bunch of 6th graders in Ontario, Canada stopped what they were doing and watched the verdict on TV.

I should have ranked this higher on my list. I’m a bit stunned it isn’t higher. I remember knocking it down a little on my list because it didn’t happen in sports, but I put Kobe’s death above it and I don’t think it should have been. Recency bias I guess.

ANYWAY...the Bronco chase was on when I got home from school one day and my dad told me what was happening. Then OJ Simpson dominated the news for months. It was fucking unreal.

Shocked at how low this one placed. Huge deal. I figured top 3, maybe even #1. Would’ve definitely been my #3.

I had OJ as my #1.

Mar 25, 2020 15:55:22 GMT KING KID said:

Shocked at how low this one placed. Huge deal. I figured top 3, maybe even #1. Would’ve definitely been my #3.

I put it at #7 and I should have spent more time on my list. It’s easily top 5 for me, probably higher. I didn’t think about it long enough.

Didn't make my list, but it's definitely worthy. I remember watching the white bronco chase on the news.

Watched the chase and paused school as well for the verdict. More than deserves to be on the list but again for me OJ was inactive as a player and it transcended sports.

If people haven't seen it the 30 for 30 doc on that single day in June is must watch. One of the crazier days in sports history.

I do actually have two events on my list outside the field of play but they happened to guys that were active in their sports at the time.

Mar 25, 2020 14:29:22 GMT 🤯 said:

Wait... But OJ didn't murder his wife, right?

If he did though, I wonder how he would've done it.

Till this day i will always believe his son did it.

5. Wayne Gretzky Gets Traded

My #2. It’s still a national day of mourning in Alberta.

I was pretty young when it happened but I vaguely remember the news breaking and my parents being stunned. And we weren’t even Oilers fans.

I’m going to try and paint a picture for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, because this is one of, if not the, craziest trades in all of sports.

Imagine if just two hours after the first 3peat, Michael Jordan was told he was being traded. This actually happened. Wayne’s father Walter had known for months that the Oilers planned to trade him, and he kept it from him because he didn’t want to upset him. The Oilers won the Stanley Cup (their 4th in a row), then when Gretzky called his dad, his dad told him what he knew.

Now imagine you find out that Jordan is being traded because the owner of the Bulls is in financial trouble and needs money. And Jordan is being shopped to garbage teams. And then the Bulls coach finds out and tries to stop it, realizes he can’t, asks for the other team’s best player in return, and is denied.

Gretzky got traded for some first round picks (that resulted in nothing), a garbage player and a prospect that hadn’t played in the NHL yet and ended up playing for like 9 different teams, and $15 million cash. I don’t even know what I could compare that to in my Jordan analogy.

It would be like the Bulls trading Jordan to the Milwaukee Bucks for Todd Day and some unknown rookie, plus cash and picks that the Bulls eventually traded away or busted on.

There are people in Edmonton alive today that I’m sure plotted to murder the Oilers owner at some point. Gretzky had just completed winning 4 Stanley Cups in a row and the league was making rule changes because of him, and they sent him to LA for nothing.

That’s the most engaging things I’ve ever seen about hockey.

Minus the shot at the Bucks. That was uncalled for.

I don’t have much to add to the picture RT painted. I knew who Gretzky was obviously but that was the extent of it. Don’t even remember the trade but even back then hockey on ESPN made me change the channel.