Oh, that one game when a 22-year-old LeBron James scored 25 straight points and Detroit had no idea it was happening. Double overtime at The Palace. Cavs and Pistons had split four games, none decided by more than six. Over the final 16 minutes LeBron scored 29 of Cleveland's 30 points, including the last 25 in a row on 11-of-13 shooting. Game-winning layup with 2.2 seconds left in the second OT. 48 points, 9 rebounds, 7 assists, 50 minutes. Rip Hamilton said the Pistons didn't realize what had happened until they got to the locker room — they figured he'd hit maybe 10 in a row. Cavs won 109-107, took Game 6, and went to the first Finals in franchise history. When Cleveland played that clip on the jumbotron this past January, LeBron cried on the bench. 🏀

Oh, that one night — 15 years ago today — when four teams played the last game of the season at the same time and two seasons died within minutes of each other. On Sept 2 the Red Sox led the AL Wild Card by 9 games and the Braves led the NL by 8½. Both collapsed. Boston went 7-20. Atlanta went 8-17. Both woke up on the final day tied. Rays down 7-0 to the Yankees in the eighth. Longoria hits a three-run shot to make it 7-6. Two outs in the ninth, last strike, Dan Johnson — a September callup hitting .108 — hooks one off the right field foul pole to tie it. Baltimore, 12:02 AM. Papelbon strikes out the first two, then blows it. Robert Andino lines one in front of a diving Carl Crawford. Boston's first loss all season when leading in the ninth. They'd been 77-0. Three minutes later Longoria lines a walk-off over the lowered section of the left field wall in the 12th. In Atlanta the Braves blew a ninth-inning lead and lost in 13. The Cardinals had already finished off Houston 8-0 and popped champagne watching it. Those Cardinals went on to win the World Series. ⚾️

Oh, that one play that ended a playoff game with a walk-off touchdown — the first one in NFL history. Vikings up 17-0. Brees brings New Orleans all the way back and Wil Lutz hits a 43-yarder for a 24-23 lead with 25 seconds left. Minnesota's ball at their own 39. Ten seconds. No timeouts. ESPN had them at a 2.6% chance to win. Pat Shurmur calls "Seven Heaven." Keenum just heaves it toward the sideline. Diggs goes up over rookie safety Marcus Williams, who ducks his head and whiffs on the tackle entirely. Diggs lands on his feet, stays in bounds, and runs 61 yards untouched. Vikings 29, Saints 24. The team practiced that play every week and Diggs had never once caught it in practice. He nearly passed out under the pile in the end zone. Keenum on the broadcast just saying "oh my God" over and over. 🏈

Oh, that one game when a freshman point guard walked into Rupp Arena and beat the No. 1 team in the country. Lonzo Ball's UCLA was 8-0 and scoring 97 a game. Kentucky was undefeated and No. 1 in the country with Fox, Monk and Bam. 23,976 in the building. UCLA led 49-45 at half and never let go. Final: 97-92. Nobody had ever hung 97 on a Calipari-coached Kentucky team. It was only the fifth home loss of Cal's entire UK career, and the first time since 2012 the Wildcats lost at Rupp to a non-conference opponent. Lonzo went 14 points, 7 assists, 6 rebounds, and honestly he forced some shots — 2-for-8 from three. Didn't matter. Calipari said afterward UCLA manhandled them. He'd finish the year with 274 assists, a UCLA record, and the first Pac-12 player since Jason Kidd to average 14/6/7. 🏀

Oh, that one night when the whole sport stopped for a guy who just kept showing up. Cal Ripken Jr. had not missed a game since May 30, 1982. Fourteen years. Lou Gehrig's 2,130 had stood for 56 years and everyone called it unbreakable. Sept 6, 1995. Clinton and Gore in the building. Bruce Hornsby and Branford Marsalis played the anthem. Ripken homered in the fourth — Clinton was in the radio booth and called it live. Then the Angels made the third out in the fifth, the game went official, and the banners on the B&O Warehouse flipped from 2130 to 2131. The ovation went 22 minutes. ESPN never cut to commercial. Chris Berman and Buck Martinez just stopped talking for 19 of them. Palmeiro and Bonilla physically shoved Ripken out of the dugout to take a lap. He shook hands the entire way around the warning track. He'd called the idea dumb beforehand. This was 13 months after a strike canceled the World Series. A lot of people think that lap is what brought fans back. ⚾️

Oh, that one game that's still called the best college football game ever played. Two undefeated teams. USC going for a third straight title with the top three Heisman finishers on the field — Bush, Leinart, and Vince Young. 93,988 in Pasadena. Keith Jackson on the call. USC up 38-26 with 6:42 left. Young accounts for all 69 yards on the next drive himself. Texas stops LenDale White on 4th-and-1. Then Young gets them to the 9 and throws three straight incompletions. 4th-and-5, 26 seconds. Shotgun, flushed right, nobody touches him. Walks into the corner of the end zone. Runs in the two-point conversion too. 467 total yards. 267 passing, 200 rushing on 19 carries, three touchdowns. ESPN later ranked that run the greatest moment in college football history. 🏈

Oh, that one game where the last two minutes were better than most entire seasons. Three lead changes in 120 seconds. Mahomes hits Tyreek Hill for 64 yards with 1:02 left. Allen answers with a 75-yard drive in six plays — Gabe Davis in the end zone for his fourth touchdown of the night, a playoff record. Bills up 36-33 with 13 seconds on the clock. Some guys on the Buffalo sideline were already laughing. Josh Allen sat there stone-faced: it's Mahomes on the other side. Andy Reid to Mahomes before the drive: when it's grim, be the grim reaper. Two plays. Hill for 19, Kelce for 25. Ten seconds. Butker from 49 as time expires. Chiefs win the toss, go 75 yards, Kelce walks it in. Buffalo never touches the ball. 42-36. 25 points in the final two minutes of regulation — second-most in any game in Super Bowl history. The NFL changed its overtime rules that offseason because of this game. 🏈

Oh, that one entrance that makes the ground shake. Literally. August 27, 2000. Virginia Tech installed its first videoboard in Lane Stadium and needed a walkout song. It came down to three: Enter Sandman, Welcome to the Jungle, and Sirius — the Bulls song. Metallica won. The first time they played it, a thunderstorm rolled in and the game got canceled. Lee Corso's rental car was struck by lightning. The jumping started by accident. December 2001, freezing night, Miami in town ranked No. 1. One Marching Virginian started hopping to stay warm. The band joined. Then the student section. Then everyone. Now 66,000 people jump in unison and seismographs around Blacksburg pick it up. It's registered in 2011 against Miami, in 2015 against Ohio State, and again in 2021. Metallica finally played Lane Stadium themselves in May 2025. The crowd set off the seismographs for them too. 🏈

Oh, that one game when Jack Morris threw TEN shutout innings in Game 7 of the World Series and refused to come out. 126 pitches. Nobody has thrown ten scoreless innings in a postseason game since. Nobody has come close. John Smoltz went 7⅓ scoreless on the other side. The Braves loaded the bases in the eighth and Kent Hrbek started a 3-2-3 double play to kill it. Tom Kelly tried to pull Morris after nine. Morris told him no. Kelly let him go back out and he retired the side in order. Bottom of the 10th: Gladden doubles, Knoblauch bunts him over, Atlanta walks Puckett and Hrbek to load it. Gene Larkin — pinch hitting, bad knees, seventh at-bat of the whole postseason — hits the first pitch over the drawn-in left fielder. Both teams had finished last in their division the year before. Five of the seven games were decided by one run, three went extra innings. Still called the greatest World Series ever played. ⚾️

Oh, that one play when the marching band came onto the field before the game was over and a guy ran through them for the win. 85th Big Game. John Elway's last college game. Down 19-17 with 53 seconds left and facing 4th-and-17 from his own 13, he converts it and drives Stanford to a 35-yard field goal. 20-19 with four seconds left. Joe Starkey on the Cal radio: only a miracle can save the Bears now. Squib kick. Cal takes the field with ten men because nobody counted. Five laterals — Moen to Rodgers to Garner back to Rodgers to Ford back to Moen. Halfway through it Stanford thought Garner was down. Their sideline emptied and all 144 members of the band walked onto the field. Kevin Moen catches the last one at the 25 and runs through the horn section, flattening trombone player Gary Tyrrell in the end zone. Cal 25, Stanford 20. Elway called it a farce. Stanford fans still argue about Garner's knee.

Oh, that one play when a 5-foot-10 quarterback beat the defending national champs on the last snap of the game. Day after Thanksgiving. Rain at the Orange Bowl. Flutie and Bernie Kosar combined for 919 passing yards — Flutie 472, Kosar 447. Miami scored with 28 seconds left to go up 45-41. Six seconds, ball at the BC 48. The call was "55 Flood Tip" — three receivers run to the same spot and Flutie throws it up hoping someone tips it to someone else. He scrambles back to his own 37 and throws it 63 yards in the air. Right over the heads of three Miami defenders. Gerard Phelan — Flutie's roommate — catches it on the ground in the end zone. Flutie thought he'd overthrown it. He only knew they'd won because the Miami players were standing still. BC 47, Miami 45. Heisman voting had already closed. He won it anyway. 🏈

Oh, that one night a baseball promotion turned into a riot and the White Sox had to forfeit. 98 cents to get in if you brought a disco record. DJ Steve Dahl was going to blow them up between games of a doubleheader against Detroit. They expected maybe 20,000. Nearly 50,000 got in and thousands more climbed the fences. Fans were flinging records onto the field like frisbees during Game 1. Dahl detonated the crate in center field. Then roughly 7,000 people came over the walls. Bonfire in center. Batting cage destroyed. Bases stolen. Home plate ripped out of the ground. Forty minutes before riot police cleared it. Harry Caray was on the PA begging people to go back to their seats. 39 arrests. Home plate couldn't be re-measured properly, so Game 2 was forfeited to the Tigers — one of the only forfeits in modern MLB history. ⚾️

Oh, that one game when a 16 seed finally beat a 1 seed — and it wasn't even close. Virginia was 31-2, the No. 1 overall seed, with the best defense in the country. 16 seeds were 0-135 all time. Tied 21-21 at half. Then UMBC dropped 53 in the second half on a defense that hadn't allowed 74 in a single game all season. Jairus Lyles: 28 points, 9-of-11 from the floor, 23 of them after the break. K.J. Maura, all 5-foot-8 of him, firing an imaginary bow and arrow after every three. Three years earlier UMBC won four games total. Ryan Odom took the job and turned a program that had lost 21+ games seven straight seasons into the biggest upset in the sport's history. 🏀

Oh, that one game when Mark Whiten hit FOUR home runs and drove in 12 runs in a single night. He went hitless in the opener. The Cardinals blew a ninth-inning lead when Whiten misplayed a line drive to lose it. Joe Torre said he was buried in his locker between games. Then: grand slam in the 1st. Three-run shot in the 6th. Another three-run shot in the 7th. Two-run bomb off Rob Dibble in the 9th, 441 feet, his longest of the night. All four came on fastballs. Cardinals 15, Reds 2. Twelve RBI tied Jim Bottomley's record from 1924 — still the most ever in a game. About 2,000 Reds fans were left at the end. They gave him a curtain call. ⚾️

Oh, that one dunk contest when Vince Carter ended the conversation in about six minutes. Perfect 50s on three of his five dunks. A 49 and a 48 on the other two. Reverse 360 windmill. Between-the-legs off a bounce pass from his cousin Tracy McGrady — Isiah Thomas literally climbed onto the scorer's table. Then the honey dip, where he threw it down so hard his arm went into the rim to the elbow and he just hung there. Kenny Smith on the broadcast: "It's over." Beat McGrady and Steve Francis. 26 years later people still measure every dunk contest against this one. 🏀

Oh, that one game when a rookie Randy Moss caught three passes and scored three touchdowns. Thanksgiving in Dallas. 3 catches. 163 yards. 3 TDs. Every ball he touched went for a score, and every one went over 50 yards... 51, 56 and 56. The Cowboys had told Moss they'd take him at No. 8 in the draft. They took Greg Ellis instead. He fell to Minnesota at 21. Vikings 46, Cowboys 36. Moss finished the year with 17 touchdown catches which is still the rookie record and the Vikings went 15-1 🔥

Oh, that one game that ended on a botched punt with ZERO seconds left. #12 Michigan up 23-21 on #7 Michigan State, 10 seconds to go, 4th-and-2. Harbaugh burns a timeout to set up the punt. Just kick it and go home. Blake O'Neill gets a low snap, bobbles it, spins to punt anyway, gets hit. Ball floats up. Jalen Watts-Jackson catches it out of the air and goes 38 yards. Watts-Jackson broke his left hip getting tackled into the end zone. Spent the night in the University of Michigan hospital. Had surgery the next day. The scoreboard still read 17 seconds on the play clock and 0:00 on the game clock. Sean McDonough's call on ESPN is worth the rewatch alone. 🏈

Oh, that one at-bat when a 42-year-old pitcher Bartolo Colón hit the only home run of his 19-year career. Second inning, two outs, man on, 1-1 count. James Shields leaves a 90-mph fastball over the middle. Big Sexy turns on it and puts it in the left field seats. He watched it the whole way. Didn't drop the bat until he was past first. Statcast clocked the trot at 30.6 seconds. He came into that night hitting .093 for his career, 0-for-9 with six strikeouts on the season. His teammates hid in the tunnel to give him the silent treatment. Mets 6, Padres 3. Oldest player in MLB history to hit a first career homer. ⚾️