The Cheshire Cat got away with one
News you need to get through the day …
I would have loved to have been in that huddle and seen the look on Danny McManus’s face. Actually, correct that. Around a football field the popular quarterback of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats was always inscrutable. So, I’d like to have been inside the huddle, and inside his head. I’m sure it would have looked a lot different in there than on his I-could-be-thinking-anything face. A little background music here: It was late November 1999 at Molson Stadium and the Alouettes, who had finished atop the CFL’s Eastern Conference for the first time since returning to the CFL three years earlier, were on the doorstep of giving Montreal its first Grey Cup appearance in exactly 20 years. They led the Tiger-Cats by five points in the East Final, with just over two minutes to play. The Tiger-Cats sat at third down at the Montreal 38-yard-line, so their season was wholly on the line. Worth remembering in this tale; it was third down and way less than a yard. Not third and miles. Head coach Ron Lancaster sent linebacker Joe Hagins into the huddle with a message for the quarterback he’d had for two years in Edmonton and, at this point, two more in Hamilton. McManus and everyone else in the scrum surely expected the instructions to send powerful running back Ron Williams into the trench for the few centimetres which would extend Hamilton’s season. Or, run the 215-pound linebacker with the ball from fullback where he was lining up. They’d done that a couple of times earlier in the season for touchdowns. Chris Burns, who was playing right tackle, later said that when they heard what Hagins said, every other player was thinking, “What the hell … ?” Hagins one-word message was “Special.” That signified a play the team had practised in secret for five weeks in which an unlikely receiver — Hello Joe — would get downfield 10 yards and be completely open. However, the Alouettes’ future Hall of Fame defensive back Barron Miles was not fooled. Not one iota. With his body between Hagins and McManus he had Hagins blanketed at 10 yards. Also at 20 yards, and at 25 yards. McManus had no other options, other than eating the season, so had to make Cordon Bleu out of chicken droppings. He lofted the ball short of the Hagins-Miles tango. Although Hagins is only six feet tall, he has a 42½ inch vertical leap. He saw the ball thrown to the only place he could be, high, but with Miles’ body in the way. And the officials were calling pass interference strictly, both ways. Hagins suddenly reached right over Miles, without interfering, and snatched the ball away before the Al could make the play that his strong intuition had put him in position to make. It was an extraordinarily athletic sequence by Hagins and one of the most dramatic plays in franchise history. Hagins’ catch surely ranks in the Top 10 of best — and certainly most timely — grabs in franchise history. The Ticats were suddenly at the Alouettes’ 11, with a first down. Three plays later they handed Williams the ball for his third score of the game and Hamilton’s 27-26 victory sent them to the Grey Cup game in Vancouver — where they won for the first time in 13 years and just got in under the wire of taking a championship in every decade of the century. Montreal quarterback Tracy Ham was mesmerized by the guts of a former quarterback and by the Hamilton quarterback’s ability to stay cool, despite a plan which was quite, well, weird. McManus, who has always liked the clear division of duties, loved that Lancaster would always absorb all the angst of making the play call, so he had only to do the athlete’s part. There was some suspicion that coach and quarterback had discussed the possibility of such a play during a time out, but McManus told us, “When I got back to the sideline, (Lancaster) said to me, ‘You probably think I’m crazy.’” McManus may not have thought that (who would know?) … but I did. I told Lancaster an hour later, and the next day, and the next year and every year for the rest of his colourful life that it was probably the worst play call I’ve ever seen in the CFL. He didn’t disagree, but every time we talked about it he smiled like a Cheshire Cat who still had a canary’s tail feathers sticking out of its mouth. He knew he’d got away with one. Thereafter, Hagins has often been referred to as “Surprise,” but unfortunately he injured his left arm badly the following pre-season and was unable to suit up again. “It was a courageous play,” one of the Montreal linebackers mentioned to me through tears of frustration at midfield that November afternoon. “It was an enormous play by them.” The Ticats had called an unnecessarily dangerous surprise play which lost its surprise as soon as the ball was snapped … yet they still executed it, and went on to win the Grey Cup, which tells you about all you need to know about karma and sport. It was enormous, I’ll agree, although I would substitute “foolhardy” for “courageous.” But, as Lancaster liked to smirk over the next decade or so: “It ain’t crazy if it works.” As usual, he was right.
Veteran Spectator columnist Steve Milton has pretty much seen it all in his 40 years covering sports around the world, and, in Being There, he will relive special moments from those stories, from the inside out, every Friday. If there’s a memorable sporting event you would like Steve to write about, let him know at smilton@thespec.com. Chances are, he was there.