The most bizarre sports moments of 2019

Game 5 of the World Series saw Gerrit Cole pitch a gem to give Houston a 3-2 series lead, but that wasn’t the part of the game that went viral. While Cole was pitching in the seventh inning, television cameras caught two women behind home plate having very deliberate “wardrobe malfunctions,”— ones that made it past FOX censors and past the broadcast delay. Both women were banned from all MLB facilities indefinitely, but it wasn’t all bad – they got the VIP treatment from the Los Angeles Chargers shortly thereafter.

It was the play that launched 10,000 (conservative estimate) written complaints from Saints fans and ended up bringing about a disastrous rule change to the NFL. New Orleans was poised to slam the door on the Rams in the NFC championship game, when Drew Brees took a shot down the sideline intended for Tommylee Lewis. Robey-Coleman never turned for the ball, blasted Lewis, and…wasn’t flagged for anything. Sean Payton went ballistic, the Saints had to settle for a go-ahead field goal but couldn’t run the clock down to zero, and the Rams tied the game and won it in overtime. The NFL responded by making pass interference a challengeable play, which has been a major disaster.

The Nationals were facing elimination in Game 6 of the World Series, but they held a 3-2 lead in the game when Trea Turner hit a swinging bunt, beat Brad Peacock’s wild throw to first base and then took second on the error. But wait! Turner was called out by home plate umpire Sam Holbrook despite the fact that he was running where he was supposed to. Nats manager Davey Martinez was so livid that he got himself ejected between innings. Martinez was the first manager to get the gate during the World Series since Atlanta’s Bobby Cox in 1996.

Brewers fans must love Miller Park, with its retractable roof and all. Comfort from the chilly early spring weather in Milwaukee, no rain delays; it must really be great. Wait, scratch that last part. There was a rain delay during an Aug. 27 Cardinals-Brewers game, as a storm rolled in and the roof wasn’t closed in time. To add insult to injury, the Brewers lost the game, 6-3.

Antonio Brown’s 2019 has been tumultuous, to say the least, but by far the strangest incident involving the wide receiver featured him suffering injuries to his feet caused by failing to wear proper footwear inside a cryotherapy chamber. Brown posted a disgusting picture of heavily blistered, peeling feet, missed time and then proceeded to do more outlandish things in a successful campaign to get the Raiders to release him. This won’t be his last appearance.

Getting traded is probably a strange thing that 99.9 percent of the population will never experience. Getting traded during a game is probably much stranger, and Harrison Barnes can probably speak to that. Barnes was traded by the Mavericks to the Sacramento Kings with about six minutes left in a contest between Dallas and Charlotte, with the broadcast reporting the trade while cameras focused on a stoic Barnes sitting on the bench. It came out later that Barnes was well aware that such a thing could happen, but it makes the whole thing no less surreal.

The Lakers legend stepped down as president of basketball operations on April 9, during an impromptu press conference, and while his stated reasons — he was tired of “all the backstabbing” and “whispering” going on in the organization, apparently — it’s possible Johnson just wanted to tweet in peace. Within a day or two of his resignation, Johnson was enthusiastically tweeting out some of the blandest sports observations imaginable and seemingly enjoying himself a great deal in the process. Let’s be honest, here: We all wish we could do the same thing.

Joel Embiid and Karl-Anthony Towns got into a scuffle in an Oct. 30 matchup between the Sixers and Timberwolves, and the brouhaha ended up with Towns on the ground under a gaggle of bodies, and Simmons, Embiid’s Sixers teammate, putting the Minnesota big man in some sort of MMA submission hold. That was strange enough on its own, but stranger still was the fact that Towns appeared to tap out, as if that would help him. Simmons was quickly pulled off, and a young season’s wildest moment also managed to yield its most unintentionally funny visual.

Gerrit Cole had a season for the ages and was the most dominant pitcher in the sport for an enormous stretch of time. Stands to reason that the Houston Astros would have him available for Game 7 of the World Series, right? Cole warmed up during the game, but when Zack Greinke got into a little bit of trouble, manager A.J. Hinch instead went to a combination of relievers, and a 2-1 lead turned into a 6-2 loss. Hinch and Cole’s explanation? The “right scenario” never presented itself. OK, guys. Whatever you say.

Ben Simmons is one of the NBA’s most uniquely talented players. Those talents do not include the ability to make jump shots with any consistency. Three-pointers are out of the question. Still, Simmons has been putting in long hours to improve his shot, and during a Sixers preseason game, he was left wide open, and with teammates imploring him, attempted a three. The shot went in, and the crowd and his teammates reacted like Philadelphia had just won the NBA Finals. Seriously, look at those smirks in the crowd. That shot wasn’t a harbinger of things to come, though. Simmons, who is 0-of-17 from three-point range in his career, still hasn’t attempted a trey in seven regular-season games this year.

Want a truly bizarre event? How about something that has never happened before in a seven-game series in any sport? That isn’t a misprint. When Washington topped Houston to win the World Series, it marked the first time in MLB, NBA or NHL history that the road team won every game in a seven-game series. That covers over 1,400 best-of-seven series across the three sports, so it’s safe to say that what we saw this year may not happen again in any of our lifetimes.

NBA stars sitting out high-profile nationally televised games has been an issue for the league for several years, and it came to a head early in the 2019 season when Kawhi Leonard sat out the second game of a back-to-back despite it being a showdown with Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Bucks. The Clippers claimed that Leonard was sitting because of a nagging knee injury, and all seemed fine. But then head coach Doc Rivers intimated that Leonard was healthy and that the star forward was on a “load management” program for the knee. Whatever the case, the Clippers were fined $50,000, and some NBA fans were frustrated that they missed out on a chance to see arguably the league’s two best players battle head-to-head.

Who among us doesn’t love the occasional animal on the field? A black cat invaded a "Monday Night Football" clash between the Giants and Cowboys, traipsing all over the field and eventually running into the end zone before finally disappearing down the tunnel. Fans listening to the game on Westwood One Radio got a special treat, as play-by-play man Kevin Harlan called the cat’s meandering trot as if it was an actual play in the game. The cat brought bad luck to the home team, as red-zone struggles contributed to a Giants loss.

If your team had just lost Game 7 of the World Series, you’d be bummed, right? This presupposes that you viewed yourself as a member of the team mere minutes after the final pitch. Gerrit Cole did not. During postgame interviews, the Astros ace immediately disavowed his club, saying, “I’m not an employee of the team,” when answering a question. Even more surreal was the fact that he did this while wearing a “Boras Corp.” cap — not an Astros one. Houston fans, hope you enjoyed your time with Cole, because it seems safe to say he isn’t coming back.

After his cryotherapy chamber mishap, things with Antonio Brown seemed to have settled down, but all of that got nuked after Brown posted a professionally done hype video that featured a recorded phone conversation between Brown and Raiders coach Jon Gruden. The video immediately made waves, and while Gruden seemed to be the only person who took the whole thing in stride, Brown was released by the team the following day.

The actual players aren’t the only ones who might be a little rusty early in a given baseball season. The business side of things can have its fair share of errors too. The Pittsburgh Pirates proved this to be the case on April 4, when their “Buc Night” promotion, which featured, among other things, $1 hot dogs, went awry. How, you ask? The team ran out of buns. Angry fans flooded Twitter to post pictures of hot dogs topped with condiments, but minus their usual housing. In lieu of using a picture of bunless dogs, here is a comparable failure from Josh Bell. 

Rick Pitino is one of the greatest coaches in college basketball history, but after he was fired from Louisville, he was radioactive. He found a landing spot but had to cross an ocean to do it. Pitino coached Panathinaikos of the Greek League, taking the team to a championship. He left after that, in pursuit of an NBA job. Once that didn’t materialize, Pitino went right back to Greece where he will coach the Greek national team, as it tries to qualify for the 2020 Olympics. At least he’ll have Giannis.

College football is weird. Let’s get that out of the way up front. Teams have strange traditions that date back decades, if not longer. Oklahoma’s Sooner Schooner is one such tradition; the horse-drawn wagon takes a ride across the field after every Oklahoma touchdown. During an Oct. 19 game with West Virginia, the Schooner crashed, flinging riders onto the field while the horses pulling it ran away. No one was injured, the ponies were fine and everything resumed as normal. Still, imagine trying to explain anything about the incident to someone watching their first college football game.

I was in Austin, Texas, for a bachelor party. Where were you when the stunning news of Andrew Luck’s retirement broke? What made the whole thing surreal was the fact that Indianapolis fans found out that Luck was retiring during a preseason game and started booing him as he jogged off the field after the game was over. Luck had an emotional press conference explaining his decision, and with that, the career of one of the game’s brightest stars was over. At least, we’re assuming it is.

The Miami Dolphins have by now won more than one football game this season, so they’re not tanking in the purest sense. However, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were after they delivered a defensive play so bad it defied belief. Winless and facing the Pittsburgh Steelers, Miami jumped out to a 14-3 lead and had the Steelers facing thi ^rd- and-20 from the 45-yard line with less than 30 seconds to go before halftime. Miami inexplicably called an all-out blitz, leaving three defenders in man-to-man coverage, Mason Rudolph hit Diontae Johnson on a quick slant, and Johnson took it all the way for a game-turning score. Even worse? Miami called timeout to set its defense before the play.

Adam Gase’s introductory press conference as Jets head coach was strange, and Gase was the reason. He looked overcaffeinated, to put it kindly, and his wild-eyed stare was darting around the room the whole time. Most coaches are intense on the sideline, but Gase looked like he was about to run through a brick wall despite wearing a suit and tie. Seriously, just look at that stare. That was the man trusted with getting the most out of Sam Darnold. Hard to figure why it hasn’t worked out well so far.

Eddie Pepperell’s time at the Turkish Airlines Open came to an abrupt end for about the strangest reason imaginable. He ran out of golf balls. After hitting as many as five balls into the water on the fourth hole, Pepperell announced to his playing partners that he had run out of balls and then walked off the course. It was as close to “Tin Cup” as real life will ever get. Pepperell may have simply not wanted to play anymore. According to Martin Kaymer, who was in his group, the English pro inexplicably putted with a wedge on the previous hole.

Dion Waiters has already had a rough season. He’s lost playing time to two rookies — Tyler Herro and Kendrick Nunn — and things went from bad to worse when he had a “panic attack” on the team charter. What caused the panic attack? A THC-infused edible that Waiters was unfamiliar with. He was trying to soothe a stomachache that had caused him to miss the previous game. Miami suspended him 10 games, which will cost him a shot at a $1.2 million bonus that required him to appear in 70 of the team’s final 73 games. He’s due $25 million over the next season and a half, so we have to ask: He really couldn’t find more reliable “relief?”

Evander Kane and the Sharks waged an epic seven-game series with the Golden Knights in last year’s Stanley Cup playoffs, and while they won that series, Kane was a big loser at The Cosmopolitan’s gaming tables and apparently didn’t want to pay up. The casino is suing the San Jose winger for $500,000 in an unpaid gambling debt dating back to the time of the series. What’s really impressive here is how quickly Kane managed to lose such a large sum of money. Somewhere, Michael Jordan sees this story and mutters, “amateur.”

Jacksonville Jaguars fans were crestfallen when Nick Foles, their high-priced free agent quarterback, injured his collarbone in the season’s first game. Enter Gardner Minshew. The mustachioed sixth-round pick took over and kept the Jags in the playoff race until Foles could return, playing surprisingly well and amusing observers with his facial hair, headbands and stories of nude or semi-nude stretching routines. Oh, and he also had pictures surface showing him tangling with an extremely large fish. MinshewMania took the league by storm, even if most of us were left scratching our heads at the man who inspired it.