Go to any event that you also bring your car to, and not only do you have to leave the arena with a crowd of people, you then have to leave the parking lot with a crowd of drivers, inching your way forward to the choke point. It's no fun.
So, very often, people leave venues, particularly sports arenas, a little early, "to beat the rush." This is always a judgment call and rests on your soothsaying abilities to predict that the score as it stands now is not going to change drastically, if at all. The outcome is not in doubt. Hang up that W or L and let's see if we can't make it out of here a little early.
The "leave early" urge usually works out. Until of course if doesn't, and you've missed what everyone will be talking about for years to come. Uh-oh.
Jason Gay is a sportswriter for the Wall Street Journal. That's right, the WSJ has a sports section. When Rupert Murdoch took control of the paper several years sago he introduced Sports and New York news to the paper.
The Sports section is not the typical page of agate results and standings, but instead a few feature stories on personalities, trends and results of games—all kinds of games. Jason Gay is the new type of sports reporter. He's actually a cycling enthusiast who started out writing for GQ magazine, so you know he's a different type of sports reporter who is hardly in the mold of Red Smith or Dave Anderson, both now deceased.
Jason is lively, funny, off-beat and to me has secured his place in sports reporting with his now annual list of rules to follow when the inevitable family touch football game breaks out before the big meal on Thanksgiving. Anyone who can describe Bill Belichick as the 'Grumpy Lobster Boat Captain' has my attention.
Jason's touch football rules could be made into a book, complete with cartoons that would I suspect make at least a seasonal stocking-stuffer. I'm eagerly waiting for the first autographed edition.
Just recently Jason did a story about a family of four who went to the Miami Dolphins-New England Patriots game in Miami and left early to beat the traffic. It seems the father grew up being raised by a father who took him to games, but always felt compelled to leave early to beat the traffic. Matt Yale tells the story that it was years before he ever realized baseball games went past the 5th inning.
At Matt's behest, the family skirted out of the stadium with four minutes to go and New England ahead 30-28, having just scored. The Miami loss looked inevitable. The 'Grumpy Lobster Boat Captain' was going to hang another win to his career record.
What happened in the minutes after the Yales left the stadium is now so well known that the news has probably been translated into Russian for the Space Station. Miami came back to win on a "razzle-dazzle" play that consisted of a long pass reception and two laterals, with the final ball holder making a broken field run to the goal line worthy of someone who has evaded machine run fire.
The Miami Dolphins win, and the Yales are in their car, but not sitting in traffic. They're moving, and quite well at that. They get the news on their car radio what any fan hates to hear when they've left early from what they felt was a lost cause: their team won in SPECTACULAR fashion. Matt later tells those who are still listening to him that they made it home in record time.
The new age of digital sports reporting gives you text and links to YouTube video. Jason's column is a delight to take in and sympathize with (just a bit) the Yales.
But their pain is self-inflicted. They made a conscious decision to leave the game early for logistical reasons. People leave all types of events early all the time. But what if the event leaves the fans early? The Heidi game.
Jason is not old enough to remember seeing the Heidi Game, but I'm sure he knows of it, when NBC terminated its broadcast of a Jets-Raider game in 1968 at exactly the time (7 P.M.) it was due to start the broadcast of the story of Heidi, the lovable orphaned Swiss girl who lives with her grumpy grandfather.
The termination of the football game broadcast was so abrupt that when Margalit Fox did the obituary of the producer of Heidi, Delbert Mann, she characterized the broadcast transition as "ultrapunctual." NBC went from the game to Heidi with space launch accuracy.
I was watching the game and left the house after they went to the Heidi broadcast. Later I learned what everyone else learned: there were two touchdown scores by the Raiders in the waning minutes, that when time fully ran out, the Jets lost the game (43-32) they were ahead in with a minute to go, 32-29. The fans hadn't left the game early, the network left the game.
The Heidi Game is the most famous example of game abandonment by anyone. The Yale family shouldn't feel all that bad.
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