EYE SWEAT MAKES YOU STRONGER: THINGS THAT MADE US CRY, PART ONE

I was stationed at Dover AFB in Delaware on and off for 5 years. It is truly 2500 square miles of nothing.

Harry….Potter….? Holy…freakin…crap…

You know, you could have mentioned the funeral scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral where John Hannah reads the W.H. Auden poem, and it would be less gay….

Gay dude reading poem about another gay dude…in a movie with Hugh Grant…. Still less gay….

That’s why we removed our own eye, Pants.

I’ll give it to the ‘97 game – it was the most exciting game I’ve ever seen in person, and the loudest. The noise was so oppressive, I woke up the next day feeling like I’d been through 12 rounds with Punchout! Tyson and he never blinked before punching.

Course, ’98 was a tear-up, I-love-my-dead-gay-son moment for me. How Midget Marcus Outzen beat Jevon Kearse, Mike Peterson, et al is known only by the Gods.

I didn’t shed a tear during or after the national championship game last year, both of them, but I did wail like a baby in 1997 when Moises Fricking Alou ended my hopes of a World Series Championship for the Tribe in the 11th inning of game 7. Does it get any more heartbreaking than that…err…see any of John Elway’s back-breaking, game-winning drives against the Browns.

Tears, I know them well.

With regards to 97 UF/FSU, was that REALLY Doug Johnson throwing the ball or Danny Wuerffel in disguise?

Inquiring minds want to know.

I remember seeing the clip in the ’91 Orange Bowl.

I was inconsoleable.

Truly a great lesson for a kid in terms of learning that life is indeed unfair.

But jesus how bad that sucked. Same emotions for the bush push, but it was tempered by having to hold my friend back from killing an SC fan a row in front of us.

My always gets me moment –
1992 Olympics, when the runner pulls up lame, is having trouble even walking. He’s crying. Then his Dad runs down from the stands, pushing past security and helps his son make it to the finish line.
I cry everytime I see that. Unless my Dad’s in the room, of course.

• editor’s addition*** Great Call on some manly tears!

first off, that scene in 4 weddings is damn sad. i cry at that. secondly, 1997 rocked. spent new years in new orleans, watch uf beat fsu for the national championship, got my driver’s license and a kick ass car, and then watched fred taylor go crazy in the swamp. also, i was in a really good production of “a midsummer night’s dream” that went to state thespians and we kicked ass.

The entire Weasley family dies in book 7. I’m just sayin…

I cried when urban meyer cried.

Orson,
The “MPAA” rating for EDSBS should make you feel a bit more manly. http://mingle2.com/blog-rating (link found on Deadspin).

Ah, ’97. I remember stumbling down North-South Dr. after the game full of adrenaline and alcohol. Good times.

And American Beauty? A 1970 Firebird and Mena Suvari before she got all weird was nice.

Sorry, Orson, but shrimp fork to the eye? I dunno….

That display requires more of a “disembowelment with letter opener, make intestine lasso and attempt to corral Tom Sizemore on his way to buy meth”

Best of luck, BTW…

I cried during book 4. And book 5.

I think Weasly’s will die, but Ron will make it. He’s the comic relief.

The Comeback against Auburn in 1996. UGA lunging at the Auburn receiver early on and the points we had to make up and the four overtimes. Every aspect of the game was one for the ages. It even caused a rule change.

Tears – Just a turning-of-the-head and twitching-of-the-chin kind of thing. Mist only, no actual tears.

Penance – Incite a pointless drunken bar fight at next year’s game.

I…I have a penis?

1997 FSU/UF = all time greatest game ever played in the Swamp, but I thought for sure you would have highlighted the 1994 Choke at Doak. ;)

The annual hoisting of the Stanley Cup always creates some dustiness in my house.

And I suspect if Texas Tech ever wins the Big 12 title, that would cause flooding not seen since, well, last week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6-MZdAcLbk&mode=related&search=

Barstoolio—your eyes, oddly enough, are connected to your brain, an organ of unknown value and utility.

Kevin—that was more mute shock, actually.

Phew! I was about to start some 2002 Rose Bowl-style blubbering.

Was Sebastian “Can I pay the fine now?” Janikowski unaware of the premature echompulation effect? Hey Sebastian…you suck…Jackass!

Adam Taliaferro: the kid from Penn State who was paralyzed and told he wouldn’t walk again.

When that kid walked, then hopped and ran onto the field against Miami barely a year later I was a wreck.

http://espn.go.com/ncf/s/taliaferro.html#

“fuck your face with your own face’s ass” is now my new favorite insult/curse. Thanks for that.

I still get pretty sweaty in the occular area when Apollo 13 makes it through re-entry.

Ah, the hilarity of penis eye-sweat makes me cry. Thanks for being so fucking awesome at life.

I know they honored the 1996 team last year with the 10th anniversary of the national title and all, but since FSU is in Gainesville this year, they really ought to have some kind of pre-game commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the 97 game. They’d have to invite Johnson, Green and Taylor, and have them re-enact the final drive. Hell, even Spurrier can show up (we need an excuse to get him back to Swamp at least three times just like last year), and re-enact his tugging of the goalposts on the way out.

Of course the coup de gras would be to get Janikowski to commence the festivities by doing a mock-chomp (was that the first documented case of premature echompulation?). We should be able to lure him out for it with a case of GHB.

“. . . somehow cons coach Bobby Pruett into letting him continue . . . .”

One suspects that wasn’t difficult. I admire Leftwich’s courage, but Pruett was a grown-ass man who should have known better than to let a kid do that, and I lost any scintilla of respect I ever had for the cheatin’ bastard that day.

i found that the last two miles of my first marathon came down to a battle to keep myself from weeping uncontrolably.

I can’t stand American Beauty. Half of the movie works reasonably well (Kevin Spacey & the teenagers) and is actually played semi-realistically, the other half is over-the-top Middle-America-sucks cliches that piss me off no end. Annette Bening nearly won an Oscar for that crap? Chris Cooper did the best he could with the material, but that character was a bad joke. (And not that it really matters, but having Alison Janney waste her time in a nothing role of Cooper’s terrified wife is a crime.)

If you think that movie actually says something profound about suburban life, you need to get over your self-satisfied hipster ass right now.

Whenever I see that Byron Leftwich clip, I shed a tear when I think about how Marshall’s backup quarterback must have felt.

Sappy stories always get me as soon as you throw sports in the mix for some reasons. Two examples would be the video of that autistic J-Mack kid hoisting 3’s while the entire crowd was going bonkers as well as seeing clips of the father/son “team” in which the father has been dragging his wheelchair-bound son through marathons and triathlons.

Kordell Stewart and Michael Westbrook also make me cry, but in any angrier “Knock it down, Ty!!!” kind of way.

I cry every time I think about the ‘97 game, but only because I got a virus the night before and was so sick that I couldn’t go to the game and ended up watching it on tv. It still hurts to think that I missed that game.

But Dude, the suburbs are all like plastic and soulless and shit. And everybody’s got, like, secrets and stuff, and there’s gay weightlifting pot smokers. And there’s… hey! is that a plastic bag? I gotta find my vidcam…

Devin—we just get mad because it suggested we couldn’t pull a Lester and not get shot by our neighbor. Damn dreamkilling movie….

#28, Devilgrad: most of this crowd had torched their scintillas following the aforementioned ’94 Choke at Doak, which Mr. Pruett unwittingly masterminded to be the blueprint for the [Name Redacted] era….

Re #29: I got sympathy leg cramps just reading that. And I’ve been there, too — finished an Army Ten Miler one year by limping through the last three miles fully in belief that someone had thrown handful of sand into what used to be a perfectly good knee joint.

My self-satisfied hipster ass says fuck your philistinism, McCullen. I won’t go so far as “profound,” but the remains of my pretentious late-teen spirit still vouches for that movie (so, somehow, does my super-Republican stereotype, Halliburton-employed uncle, who thought it was hilarious). I will grant you Alan Ball has no understanding of the kind of person he tried to represent in Chris Cooper’s character. Or in Janney’s ridiculous zombie, to the extent she’s a character at all.

Anyway, Ball (Oscar for the script) is responsible for the gay under/overtones there, not Mendes. It’s Ball’s story. Judging from their later work – the manlier “Road to Perdition” for Mendes, the very Beauty-like “Six Feet Under” for Ball – Mendes was the better half of that collaboration (though he does have a thing for gratuitously shooting his protagonists in the back). In the DVD commentary, he talks mostly about the lighting. Ball seems many times more insufferable.

COw: I couldn’t agree more about the father/son triathlon team. They had a segment on Real Sports a couple of weeks ago (it was the Joakim Noah profile) about them. Sends penis-eye tears shooting straight up the vas deferens/alimentary canal.

I never cry, but I have wept first tears of joy and tears of rage OHio State and Michigan in consecutive weeks in 2005. PSU fans it was the best of times it was the worst of 2 seconds.

I cried the first time I saw when Rudy made the play…for the opposite reason.

#30, Les Miles agrees with you for no other reason than the fact that Hailey Lafontaine’s family likely falls into your “over-the-top Middle-America-sucks” generalization.

I’m willing to bet 100 COCKTAILS that Hailey has been the root of Les’ tears a time or two. Any takers?

Summer Olympics, 1992 in Barcelona. Sprinter Derek Redmond pulls up lame in the middle of the the 400. He had been forced to withdraw from the same event in ’88 just minutes before the race. He had an excellent chance to medal.

So when his hammy gave way he was crushed, lying on the track. All of a sudden this guy runs out and tries to console him. At first he won’t have any of it but then he realizes…it’s his father. His Dad picks him up and carries him around the track so he can finish the race.

He’s bawling, his Dad is stoic. Oh…my…God. Most unforgettable tear-inducing moment that didn’t involve Al Michaels.

I once saw a little leaguer help another kid up after he tackled him…joyous and about as relevant as Byron Leftwich….

Its just freaking Marshla.

I’ll nominate the Chuckie Mullins story as always reminding me I need to dust more.

When the Cubs lost game 6 in ‘03 after the Bartman thing, tears were close. We the Marlins came back to win game 7, the tears wouldn’t stop coming.

Also, when Henne hit Manningham with no time left to beat undefeated Penn State two years ago was the greatest sports moment I’ve witnessed in person. I cried, but I think it’s because my 280 pound friend tried to hug me and fell over and crushed me.

As a Mississippi State fan, tears have long-since been replaced with laughter. But the gut-wrenching, tear-inducing memory for me is having a two touchdown lead with five minutes left in death valley at LSU in 2000, only to lose in overtime.

Damn you, Jackie Sherrill.

And for #4, I have no doubt that Ben Hill was loud in ’97, but my head still hurts to this day as a result of the noisy explosion in death valley after that game in 2000.

Derek Redmond…are there onions in my desk?

If only the tears shed when we hear Brent Musberger’s voice contained dopamine…

Scene: The HBO Real Sports piece about the Army dad who carries/pulls/pushes his son with him during marathons and triathlons.

Gushometer: 10 second deluge with mouth contortions and a few encouraging cuss words.

Compensation: I call my mama.

Jim Valvano giving the original version of famous his “Don’t ever give up speech” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQDem4-z3kg

Everytime I watch that video I tear up.

Penance: being an NC State fan for eternity.

March 26, 2005: Michigan blows a three-goal lead to Colorado College in the Midwest Regional Final in Grand Rapids, allowing the Tigers to advance to the Frozen Four. It was their first victory against Michigan in the tournament since 1957.

Oh and November 22, 1997, Michigan beats Ohio State 20-14 to secure an undefeated regular season and a Rose Bowl berth. But that was mostly from the pepper spray that wafted up into the stands.

As a fan of Kansas football there haven’t been many tear-inducing moments that didn’t involve fourth quarter (or even first quarter) collapses, but one thing that always reduces me to sobs is watching blue collar linebacker Kevin Kane’s interception return to put the icing on the first victory over Nebraska in 36 years.

It’s moments like that when you realize that maybe the humiliating defeats and other embarrassing moments you had to sit through were maybe worth it just to get to see something like that.

This guy gets me every time. I defy you to watch this in its entirety at work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqok5mWHSMs

#45: Two seconds.

#51: Hehe, nice to see a Michigan fan having to go back to the 19th century to find good memories of battles against their betters.

Oh yeah, Holy Buckeye.

Ah yes, Derek Redmond. One of my favorite sports stories ever. Makes me hate NBC and the overcommercialized Olympics all the more.

The movie the Color Purple, where Shug reunites with her daddy. I may have father issues. Makes me hate the Oscars even more for Spielberg not winning Best Director.

I see this is filed under “cyring like a bitch.” Since I am a “bitch” — or more precisely Raider Red’s “bitch” - I don’t need an excuse or penance, so I pretty much cry at anything, especially when sports related (see, e.g., “One Shining Moment” or for some unknown reason every time I see the dotting of the “i” in Ohio). Seeing a man cry makes me particularly weepy (and horny). Of course, if Raider Red’s team loses to his “bitch’s” team on September 3, we’ll both be crying -- for different reasons.

tOSU -

It’s been a while, but I think it was Edgar freakin’ Renteria, not Moises f’in Alou, that crushed your Tribe world series dream in ’97.

As for the Leftwich game, I clearly remember that because it’s the only time I’ve ever told a stripper to get out of the way of the TV.

Non-sports, when that father came back from Iraq and surprised his son in school.

Eyes welling, nose running…

Damn Eye Allergies Dept:

1. 47 – Could not get through that Youtube video bit without the eye allergies attacking.

Great post.

What gets TCOAN most eye leaky?

Magglio Ordonez’s 3 run walk off home run in the bottom of the ninth vs. the Oakland A’s last year. My dad spent all summer for decades watching the moribund derelict of a baseball franchise play some semblance of the sport he loved, and only a year after he died they make it back to the world series. I watched the game at home, alone, because I knew what was going to happen if the Tigers won.

In non-sports-related items, I’ll admit to weeping through the final chapter of Steven King’s quixotic epic The Dark Tower. Roland calling out the names of his fallen comrades as he neared the end of his long, bloody quest for the tower was too much for me. I cried because Roland couldn’t – he was too badass for that. I mean, King took a dash of The Man with No Name and then made him a little more badass. A guy like that doesn’t HAVE penis-eye sweat.

Crying? No no no…there’s uhhh……just something in my…oh what the hell, yeah, I cried.

Sorry, Orson, I thought about putting a disclaimer in there. I completely understand where you’re coming from (although my dream would be much geekier). Like I said, I thought Spacey’s part of the movie worked pretty well. I just have my anti-Beauty rant set on auto-download and had never launched it here before.

If you didn’t cry at the end of “The Champ” with Ricky Shroeder, then you should quit your day job and go into 3rd World Dictator Training.

First, the 97 game… incredible… I literally could not speak above a whisper for the next four days. This was a problem in my public speaking class two days later. My speech consisted of, “I went to the game Saturday. I’ll do my speech next week.”

The entire class silently nodded to themselves, the professor said, “OK, let’s move on,” and we did.

Two best lines in that entire clip:

“Well, I guess God still smiles on the Gators.” Greatness to this freaking day.

Less realized but equally awesome is Sean McDonough, “Busby is running for his life.” Anytime you hear that, life is good.

This still brings a tear:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=OaJscTikcfo&mode=related&search=

The first time I saw that, and for the next 20 or 30 times I heard “Fix You,” my eyes began to have issues. Now, there’s this one:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=oZgUIgSNv1A

Easily, when my alma mater North Carolina won the basketball title in ’05, thinking of everything Jawad Williams, Jackie Manuel and Melvin Scott had been through in those four years.

On a personal note, I went nuts watching the ’97 UF/FSU game, even though all my friends in college were pissed because it cost Carolina a shot an invite to the Sugar Bowl.

And how can no one have mentioned the end scene of “Field of Dreams,” when Costner and his dad have a catch?

Saving Private Ryan gets me every time – beginning, end, random spots in between. But the end – “Earn this.” My God. Every. Single. Time.

My Dad, a man who I had never seen cry, cried when Paterno got his 300th win – he and all the old farts were tearing up like pre-teens at a Sanjaya concert – I was amazed – it was very cool.

1. Tyrone Prothro shattering his leg in the 4th Quarter against Florida in 2005. I’ve never seen 80,000 people go so deathly quiet in a heartbeat. The site of him being carted across the field with the chants of “Prothro” ringing through the stadium got the “eye sweat” flowing freely. Damn you Mike Shula to hell for calling that play up 31-3.

#69
Damn..Pro’s injury made me a little bitch… cried like a baby.

Another Bama moment was when Wesley (The Pride of Cullman, AL) Britt broke his leg against Tenn. Thinking about his arm pumping as he was being carted off gives me chills and wets the eyes even now..

oops, meant #70

Maggs last year…sorry, give me a minute. Ahem. That, and anytime Maurice Clarett gets bonded out. I cry for the safety of harmless Coscumbus school children/meth mules.

I don’t generally get weepy about sports…

However, you did get me to thinking about the last time I nearly had eye sweat in public, a couple of days after my father had a stroke last summer and I was sitting 2500 miles away in a booth at the local Chipotle with my daughters next to me.. and I felt like shit because I wasn’t with my folks (my brother went first), the girls could tell something was wrong and stayed very close, and that was when I realized that in 30 years they will be me, probably, worrying about their aging father on a Saturday afternoon.

Which I mention only because I was thinking about that and then I watched the Derek Redmond video clip, and I very nearly broke my rule about no eye-sweat related to sports.

@71 I would cry if I lived in Cullman, Alabama. Can’t even buy booze.

Where the Red Fern Grows … to this day makes El Presidente have to sweat a little from the eyes.

Henry V with Kenneth Branagh – when he finds the boys killed by the French, and now after watching it, I find myself looking away from my wife (or whoever else is the room) whenever I see the Saint Crispin’s Day speech bit as well.

Same parts in Saving Private Ryan that BiB mentioned also.

@75
That’s why everyone buys their booze @ Wayne’s package store in Warrior on their way home from work in B’ham

Warrior>Cullman. Hancesville, however is even more rockin.
As far as crying goes, nothing beats the scene in Castaway when Tom Hanks loses Wilson. Wilson!!! Aww fuck wilson Im sorry. Im crying as I write this.

Oh, I forgot about Wilson.

#79
I think you mean Hanceville…While growing up, I consumed many rootbeer floats @ the pharmacy/soda fountain there..

http://www.co.cullman.al.us/hanceville.htm

Garden City>everything

Fly Away Home, it gets me every time.

Watched “For A Few Dollars More” two nights ago for the first time. The scene where Lee Van Cleef and the bad guy face off was intense. Especially with the chimes. You can see the hurt and manly rage in Lee’s eyes, esp when he knows he has no chance in hell of avenging his sister.

That is, until Clint shows up.

Watch it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2l4IKz3m7c

Compensation: none.

the miracle on ice. there is no comparison. to this day i can still remember what it felt like to witness that match on the tv when it happened. every transcendent glorious moment i’ve ever experienced watching a sporting event – those close enough to sublime that nothing but tears can express the feeling – is measured in comparison to that semifinal match in the 1980 olympics.

#27

You’re on to something. How about we have football reenactor teams? We could start one. I’ll start the 2003 LSU Tigers reenactment team, get together with the 03’ Oregon State team and replay how we dodged the bullet.

This post is coming a little late for all of you to be able to appreciate my tears, but when I watched the Hines Ward video just now, I cried when some ass clown threw Stu Scott a football.

Seeing the end of Cowboy Bebop where Spike Spiegel dies after having been cut across the abdomen by a katana strike from his former friend now arch nemesis Vicious, at the same instant that Vicious is fatally shot by Spike. Also at the end of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero I become a little weepy.

The move Glory makes me bawl like a 3 year old. I can’t watch the end of that without copious eyesweat. Certain parts of Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers make me a bit misty, but that’s it.

Sports related, I mist up whenever I’m in ND stadium and here the band start playing the Victory March.

The Swamp after the third quarter, when you put your arms around a fellow Gator and Sing We Are the Boys From Old Florida….. Shit sounds cheesy but sometimes it gets to ya.

I cried when I knocked Stan White’s brains out with a golf ball at a charity tourney.

I will freely admit to springing a soul oil leak at the ends of both Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix. Probably more for Book 4 because it was so damn unexpected. I think “five minutes” may be a tad excessive, but … yeah. Can’t deny it.

#85

I thought that LSU v Oregon St. game was 2004, the infamous Cerna extra point game.

Oregon State controlled the game for four quarters and somehow lost. It was disheartening to say the least.

As an OSU alumni I often saw Alexis Cerna on campus and was always consumed with an overwhelming urge to punch him in the mouth and curb him. Or just step on him, dude was like 5 foot 5.

It was also little consolation that he miraculously turned into one of the best kickers in the nation after that.

Re: Byron Leftwich

 Weren’t they carrying him during a two-minute drill, to boot? I seem to remember them basically running down the field with Leftwich on their shoulders.

 Most emotionally-charged sporting event I’ve ever been to was the ’99 A&M-texas game aka The Bonfire Game.
 Watching QB Randy McCown bawling on the field after the game is over, Brian Gamble raising his hands, pointing to Heaven after recovering the fumble to seal the deal, Chris Valetta talking in a postgame interview, the names of the 12 written on his undershirt, it gets me misty every time.

1.  I remember the OSU vs. LSU game quite well and like you I find it hard to understand that Serna becomes an award winning kicker afterwards. Thinking about that makes me sad. :(

WFVU (I prefer USPAM- University of Southern Pennsylvania At Morgantown) fans will cry on and on about how they don’t “care” about Marshall, but I’m relatively certain that #44 spends half his day on the Herdnation.com smack forum. Their obsession is cute.

1. It wasn’t exactly a 2-minute drill, but they were running as they were trying to come back from a multiple TD deficit in the 4th quarter. Leftwich was actually at an Akron hospital during parts of the 2nd and 3rd quarter.

1. Marshall’s backup QB (Stan Hill) did fine the very next game. He ran in for a TD with 4 seconds left to beat Roethlisberger and Cryami Ohio.

#95, you forgot “after two of the most bogus pass interference calls in recent history” at the end of your second point. But tom-ay-to, to-mah-to…

And Leftwich’s “courage” was all about him trying to save his then-flagging Heisman campaign, a mere attempt to mitigate the fatal blow of his team getting kicked in the teeth by Akron. Pruett, a guy who is crooked to the core, almost certainly went along with the plan because he correctly figured he’d get a little Sportscenter air time out of it…

Children’s books. And optical penile fluid flows while reading Harry Potter? Clearly you’ve never read Where The Red Fern Grows nor watched “Old Yeller”. For shame, Orson…for shame.

Yes…, Everyday should be a Saturday