Welcome to the club
Bone-headed plays are as old as sport itself
IF J.R. Smith is lucky, if fate is as kind to him, he will live a life similar to the one Roy Riegels lived in the many decades after he made what, for many, remains the signature gaffe in the history of American sports.
Riegels was a two-way center for Cal Berkeley, one of the best football players in the country, when his Golden Bears faced Georgia Tech in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1, 1929. In the second quarter of a scoreless game, Riegels jumped on a fumble by Tech’s Jack “Stumpy” Thomason at the Yellow Jackets’ 30-yard line. Riegels grabbed the ball, started to make a glorious dash for the end zone …
And somehow, someway, unforgettably, got shoved by a tackler and instead of falling down found himself headed in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until he was caught by his teammate, Benny Lon, at the Cal 3-yard-line … and then joined by a gang of Tech players who tried to shove him into the end zone but instead brought him down at the 1. Cal tried to neutralize Riegels’ mistake by immediately punting … but of course the punt was blocked for a safety. It was 2-0, Tech. It ended 8-7, Tech. And for the rest of his life, Riegels had a new middle name. To his dying day of March 26, 1993, he was known eternally as “Wrong Way Riegels,” the man who’d made the dumbest mistake anyone ever saw on the biggest stage of all. Funny thing, though: Riegels not only owned his goof, he decided he would make the most of it. He never declined an interview about it. He always poked fun at himself.
When Tech playfully offered him a membership card to the school’s Letterman Club 42 years after his run, he graciously accepted and said, “Believe me, I’ve earned this.” In a comment J.R. Smith might want to pay attention to, Riegels once said: “You run the wrong way with a football in front of 60,000 people, and it’s pretty hard to lie your way out of it.”
More importantly, whenever he saw another athlete suffer a similar fate in his lifetime, he immediately reached out. When the Vikings’ Jim Marshall famously did the same thing in 1964 (without a teammate to stop him from completing the safety himself) he receivedd a telegram from Riegels that said, “Welcome to the Club.”
It seems like Smith will probably live freed from the burden of feeling too devastated by his brain-lock moment the other night, when he clearly thought the Cavaliers were ahead after he snared a key lategame rebound (though he foolishly insisted otherwise later, after a nation of lip-readers had already seen him indict himself).
In truth, it’s probably the best way to be because being able to laugh at yourself is one way to walk out of such an embarrassing moment with your self-esteem somewhat intact. Take Garo Yepremian, the Dolphins kicker who made the ill-fated attempt to throw a pass after he had a field goal blocked late in Super Bowl XII, saw his wounded duck intercepted and brought back for a touchdown by Washington’s Mike Bass, and briefly imperiled Miami’s perfect 1972 season. Within weeks, Yepremian was a guest star on “The Odd Couple.” He kicked another six years with the Dolphins, nine overall in the NFL, and even made All-Pro the very v next year. All you have to do is see s the reactions of his teammates in i the Super Bowl video to know they wished he suffered in the moment as much as they did.
Fred Merkle received one of the unforgettable f names of all time — “Bonehead” — because his failure to touch second base late in the 1908 season cost the Giants the NL pennant. The resulting and lasting description of that play — Merkle’s Boner — has thrown generations of 13-year-old boys into hysterics whenever they come across it in a baseball history book. Merkle had a terrific 20year career, but when he died in 1956, that two-word description was in the first paragraph of every obituary.
Then there is Chris Webber, whose terrific NBA career helped him overcome calling the timeout he didn’t have at the end of the 1993 NCAA finals. Of course, since his Michigan team and its banners were all vaporized by the NCAA enforcement committee a few years later, did that ever really happen at all? Smith should only be that lucky.