Monday, 4 a.m.
We have seen our successes. We have danced in our confetti.
We have seen Andrei Vasilevskiy in Game Seven. We have seen Ronde Barber mute all of Philadelphia. We have seen Marty St. Louis in Game Six. We have seen Mike Brousseau take Aroldis Chapman deep. We have seen Tom Brady lift the Lombardi Trophy. We have seen moments that have inscribed themselves on the soul of the city.
But there have been other times, too, times when the promise fails to deliver, times when the wrong team was celebrating. Times when a call went the wrong way, when the hero of the night was wearing the wrong jersey, times that left us scarred and wounded.
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Here, as the championship window seems to be closing, we have it. The top 10 most disappointing moments in Tampa Bay Sports history.
- 1921-22 Stanley Cup finals: The Bolts had a two-year championship run end in a Game Six loss (2-1) to Colorado. It was getting to the point you didn't think the Bolts would ever lose again. Colorado made it happen.
2. 1999 NFC Championship: To this day, you can get into an argument over whether Bert Emmanuel caught the pass deep into Rams' territory late in the game. None of us know if the weak Bucs' offense could have finished the deal, but the loss lingers.
3. 2021 NFL Division playoffs: A comeback put Tom Brady within striking distance of one more Super Bowl, but the Bucs failed to cover Cooper Kupp in the closing minutes and the Rams pulled it out.
4. 2020 World Series: Can anyone yet explain why the Rays pulled Blake Snell out of Game Six for a tired Neal Anderson? The Rays lost 3-1.
5. 2001 NFL regular season: A lot of us are convinced the Bucs would have won the Super Bowl if they beat Green Bay and earned a bye and a home game. Instead, the Bucs missed a chip-shot field goal to the Packers and went to Philadelphia and lost 31-9.
6. 2008 World Series: The Rays seemed to have a good shot at beating the Phillies in their first World Series. In Game 5, however, Scott Kazmir gave up two runs in the first inning of a 4-3 loss.
7. 2018-19NHL playoffs: The Bolts had their finest regular season, winning the President's Cup as Vasilevskiy won the Vezina and Nikita Kucherov won the Ross. However, the Bolts were swept in four straight games to Columbus.
8; 1979 NFC Championship game: The Bucs had their worst-to-first season, but it ended in a 9-0 loss to the Rams. Doug Williams was injured in the game, and the offense ran out of magic.
9. 2014-15 Stanley Cup finals: The Bolts lost their third straight game to Chicago, the decoding one by a 2-0 score. It was merely a case of a team not being ready to win yet.
10. 2022 NFL playoffs: The Bucs' first-round loss to Dallas didn't take a lot of people by surprise after the underachieving season they had. Still, it was the game that Brady bowed out, and some fans tried to believe until the last loss. It was the final disappointment of a forgettable season.