What is the most dramatic/traumatic sporting moment you were involved in (as a player, not spectator)?
My best day as an athlete happened when I was 9 or 10 years old. It also ended in disaster which should have told me a little something about my future athletic career. It was a little league baseball game and I was damn good when I was 10. I was on fire in this particular game... I was 3 for 3 (3 doubles) with 6 RBI going into the last inning where we were trailing 10-6. I get up with 2 outs in the bottom of the 6th, bases loaded, as the tying run. The crowd was going nuts (as nuts as you can get for a little league game). I drill the first pitch to dead center and thought I just hit a grand slam to tie the game but instead the ball hits the top of the fence. It cleared the bases to make it 10-9 but I, thinking I'm Ricky Henderson, decide now would be a great time to stretch this into a triple. I wasn't even half way to third base when the crowd went completely silent and I realized that the third baseman already had the ball. I was out by about 30 feet to end the game. I even had one of those weak-*** slides where you come up like 5 feet short because the 3rd baseman was so set for me. I started bawling there on the field like a big puss. LOL... my dad came over to try to console me with the 'You drove in 9 runs today! Every run your team scored! They would have lost 10-0 without you' routine but I wasn't having it. And that's how my most dramatic sporting day was also my most traumatic.
The day my organized sporting career ended was also rough... the day I tried out for my HS baseball team. I was a catcher and was doing well with the drills, then we had to bat and for some reason, I lost all ability to hit a baseball. I have no idea what happened... there were even guys I played little league with trying out for the team there that were trying to encourage me because they knew I was pretty good. But I could not even make contact this day. It got to the point where the coach pitching started throwing me meatballs/lobs to hit and I still couldn't hit it. Holy cow... what a choke job! Quite an embarrassing display.
I knew that was the end of my athletic career that day. I picked up the guitar about a week later and have never looked back.