It's okay to take sports seriously now and then. We all have our favorite players, and we root for our favorite teams. We want to see our team win the championships, and we fervently watch each game with excitement and anticipation. For many, sports are a serious part of their lives, and that's perfectly okay. However, there are a few hilarious facts you might not know about nearly every sport; here are a few of our personal favorites.
Baseball: An Explosion of Feathers
On March 24, 2001, during a spring training game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Francisco Giants, Randy Johnson threw one of the most unforgettable pitches in baseball. This fastball never even made it to the home plate but instead caused an explosion of white feathers after a bird flew in front of the pitch.
The pitch wasn’t counted as a strike or ball and was stricken from the game. Years later, Johnson would use a dead bird with floating feathers around it as the logo for his photography business.
Tennis: The Longest Tennis Match Took Three Days
The 2010 Wimbledon match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut started on June 22 and ended on June 24. While the official match time clocked in at eleven hours and five minutes, the match itself spanned three days due to lost daylight hours.
Basketball: Figure in the NBA Logo
Basketball has a lot of interesting trivia behind it, and the NBA logo is one of the most recognized icons in sports history, but do you know who the figure in the logo is? The NBA logo uses a silhouette Laker’s player Jerry West. However, fans have created several movements to change the logo, possibly to Kobe Bryant.
Football: Robot Mascot
One of the most hilarious sports facts you might not know is that the Pittsburgh Steelers used to have a robot as their mascot. In the mid-90s, someone thought the “steel” in Steelers should be literal and designed a wacky robot to serve as the team’s mascot. These days, the Steelers mascot is Steely McBeam, a hard-working blue-collar man, but we’ll always miss that robot.
Hockey: The Internet Changed the Rules
In 2015, the NHL wanted to incorporate the online community of hockey fans to vote for a player who would become an All-Star. However, for the sake of inclusivity, they let people write in players' names, and the internet being the internet, voted for John Scott from the Arizona Coyotes.
John Scott was primarily known for violently punching other players and only scoring 11 points over an eight-year career. Needless to say, the NHL was not happy about the thought of Scott playing in the All-Star game, but the fans had spoken. While Scott was allowed to play, the NHL adopted the John Scott rule to ensure something like this would never happen again.
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