Today in 1982, the St. Louis Cardinals made baseball history when they won the World Series.
But they also celebrated their big win in a way the major leagues had never seen before: a big and potentially painful team-wide dogpile.
Teams are excited when they win, that’s not a surprise.
And for decades, the same scene, more or less, has played out at the end of so many big victories.
The players on the field or the court run to each other and hug, shake hands, crowd around.
Sometimes fans join them, everybody cheers and yells and enjoys the moment.
At other times teams go a step further: they not only rush together, they actually jump on each other.
And that can be trouble for the players at the bottom of the pile.
Those who have been there say they’ve actually blacked out because there’s so much weight on them that they couldn’t quite get a full breath.
Others have said they’ve been inadvertently punched, kicked, elbowed and otherwise clobbered by excited teammates.
Some players have admitted that they’ve made their way over to the dogpile more slowly so they wouldn’t end up under a bunch of other players!
But even the ones who did end up underneath everybody else have said they don’t regret it.
They say they got to celebrate a dream coming true, and that was worth a few seconds that didn’t feel quite right.
Their advice if you’re at the bottom of a dogpile: curl up and protect yourself as well as you can, and wait for the other players to unpile thesmelves.
Today in 1973, the opening of the Sydney Opera House.
Possibly its strangest ever moment came in 1980, during a performance of the opera Boris Godunov.
There were live chickens in the show, and one of them ended up dropping off the stage and ending up on top of a cello player.
They installed a net above the orchestra pit after that.
UVA Baseball Players Attest: Dogpiles Come With Temporary Pain, But Forever Joy (University of Virginia)
The art of the dogpile (ABC News)
Interesting facts about the Sydney Opera House (Sydney Opera House)
Crowd sounds courtesy Pixabay
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Photo by mookiefl via Flickr/Creative Commons
