Monday Morning Tail Slap: "BATTED DOWN!" - Mike Parker
Remembering October 28, 2006, an important day in Beaver football lore
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As the last few minutes of October 28, 2023 melted off the clock on a steamy night in the desert, the Oregon State Beavers football team felt its grip on the destiny they seemed so surely in control of slipping away. By the time the clock read 0:00, it was nearly midnight in Tucson, and the wee early hours of Sunday, October 29 in several time zones Beaver Nation tuned into the game from.
The Beavs may have been spooked by seeing quite a bit of themselves in the upstart Wildcats on this Halloween Weekend. Arizona, which is in Year Three of what is turning out to be an incredibly impressive rebuilding project under Jedd Fisch, mirrors OSU in several ways from where they were in Year Three under Jonathan Smith. There aren’t many coaches in the land who have done more impressive things with the hands they’ve been dealt than Fisch in the last two and a half seasons of college football.
The 27-24 final score in favor of the Big 12-bound Wildcats dealt a devastating blow to the visions of glory Oregon State fans had in their heads. The Cats deserve their flowers and then some, but I don’t want to spend anymore time on this game in particular right here. I want to talk about a different game. A much older game. A game that unfortunately occurred right before high definition television was ubiquitous and thus is one of the last truly great games to take place that pretty much only has grainy highlights available for consumption. A game I always think about every time October 28 comes around.
Beaver fans, you know what game I’m talking about.
October 28, 2006: Oregon State 33, No. 3 USC 31
Oregon State Dad’s Weekend 2006. Like many OSU students I was in the stands at Reser Stadium that day alongside my dad. Our first Dad’s Weekend, the fall of my freshman year, against the mighty Trojan Empire, a USC team that hadn’t lost a regular season game, conference or otherwise, in more than three years.
Do you remember the conversation between Harry and Dumbledore at the end of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets?
Well, the TL;DR (and spoiler alert, I guess, even though the book is old enough to rent a car and the movie is old enough to drink) version is that Harry saved the day for the second time, but was very much in his feels about all of the obvious similarities between himself and Lord Voldemort. Basically he’s an angsty 12-year-old troublemaker who can talk to snakes, which mirrors the Lord Voldemort origin story.
Harry is moping in Dumbledore’s office about potentially having to turn into an evil, power hungry asshole no matter what he does (he does kind of turn into an asshole…) when Dumbledore hits him with one of his signature knowledge bombs.
“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
This line (worded differently in the movie) has always struck me. For so many reasons, but for one very special reason related to the football team I’m writing about here.
Several years before October 28, 2006, on February 9, 1988, to be exact, I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was just after midnight, the wee hours of the morning as a seasonally appropriate blizzard raged outside.
The parents who brought me into this world grew up on opposite sides of Wisconsin. They met for the first time in college at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. They chose separately to move to Minneapolis, where they reconnected years later, fell in love, got married, and started our family. They had my sister in 1985 and I joined the party a few years later. Just a couple of young cheeseheads raising kids in the middle of Vikings country.
My parents love the Green Bay Packers. So in return for everything they’ve done for me, including and not limited to bringing me into the world, I’m a diehard Minnesota Vikings fan. While my mom and dad did buy me Packer Ownership stock when I was 10, and still clutch to photographic evidence of me supporting the Packers on an occasion or two from my childhood (very early in my childhood, though, don’t get it twisted), I have always bled purple. I don’t have memories that pre-date my Vikings fandom. I can’t remember making the choice to make this goddamn team such an important part of my life.
As soon as I was old enough to audibly pledge allegiance to any cause, our house became a house divided on Sundays. My dad liked to say, “the nice thing about our family is that no matter who wins, at least one person will be happy,” and for a big chunk of childhood, this left me on the losing end of things as the Packers made it to back-to-back Super Bowls, winning one of them. The Vikings weren’t necessarily bad back then, but the Packers were champions and the Vikes were a playoff team a couple pieces shy of being a true contender. Some things never change.
This meant the father/son/football cliche had a different feel for my dad and me. We connected over the game. We played catch. He told me stories of his favorite players and moments growing up, of Jerry Kramer paving the way for Bart Starr to beat Dallas in the Ice Bowl and of Max McGee’s one-handed catch in Super Bowl I. I listened to his stories and I dreamed up my own, but certain parts of the timeless trope couldn’t be manufactured. We couldn’t attend a football game and passionately support the same team, at least not until college rolled around.
When a thick black and orange envelope with “WELCOME TO OREGON STATE!” stamped on the outside arrived at our house in the middle of my senior year in high school, I gasped. I didn’t think I had any chance of getting into OSU, so much so that I almost didn’t even bother applying. My high school resume wasn’t much to write home about. By the time I got the acceptance letter from Oregon State, I had pretty much already figured I’d end up at one of the state schools within a couple hours’ drive of the Twin Cities. At the end of the day, I could count all my acceptance letters on one hand and OSU was the only one that offered the attraction of D1 sports. It was also the only one far away from home.
It wasn’t an easy choice, but that didn’t stop my dad from interrupting my game of Madden ‘06 with some vital information.
“So, it looks like Dad’s Weekend at Oregon State this fall is the weekend they play USC in Corvallis…”
Within the week I made OSU my college choice. Not only for the chance to see the best football team in the land, but that was part of it. I ordered a car decal and when it arrived in the mail I called my parents out to the driveway and let them know the decision had been made by sticking it on the back windshield right under the ‘Barnard College’ decal for my sister’s college choice (her high school resume was something to write home about).
About six months later, on October 28, 2006, there was my dad and I, in the stands on the old west side of Reser Stadium, cheering for the same team, pleading with the football Gods to let us witness the fall of Troy. A day that will live forever in Beaver football lore.
The storylines of the day were fit for mythology. Matt Moore’s redemption in front of the very same crowd that had booed and jeered him that same season. Sammie Stroughter exploding into Oregon State immortality. And perhaps the greatest game-winning call ever from OSU’s legendary play-by-play man Mike Parker, bellowing “BATTED DOWN!!!” as Jeff Van Orsow swatted USC quarterback John David Booty’s game-tying two-point attempt to the Reser Stadium turf. When the day was done, the Beavs had earned one of their most iconic victories of the decade, and the Trojans tasted regular season defeat for the first time in more than three calendar years.
I loved every single second of that game, but one of my favorite moments of the day was recapping the win with my dad that night at American Dream Pizza in downtown Corvallis. We sat there alternating bites with raspy utterings of words like, “wow…,” “incredible…,” and “SAMMIE!” too elated to speak in complete sentences. I don’t think it occurred to either of us that we had never done this before. It definitely didn’t occur to us that 17 years later we’d still be talking about Sammie Stroughter. We had never been so mutually excited about the outcome of a big game and had I not chosen to attend Oregon State, we never would have. My dad even wore Oregon State stuff with me to watch the Beavs take on his previous favorite college football team, the Wisconsin Badgers, at Camp Randall in Madison five years later. Let’s not talk about the outcome of that game, though.
To be clear, I know not everyone ends up at the university they do because of a choice they make. I’m jealous of the people I’ve met who can proudly proclaim themselves as fourth, fifth, and sixth generation Beavers. The longevity of such a familial community is such an endearing piece of the college sports puzzle. As it is when someone goes against the grain and chooses to attend a rival school and create their own divided house (of course I admire this, but remember, I didn’t choose the Vikings, those bastards chose me).
There aren’t a ton of similar circumstances in professional sports that offer the same opportunity that Oregon State gave me years ago and that are given each year to thousands across the country. I love all the teams in my hometown, and maybe one day they’ll even love me back, but Oregon State is the only one who chose to offer me a place within their institution. I chose to accept the invitation and the choice changed my life.
That choice is a big reason why Oregon State will always be so precious to me. For the memories it made and for the opportunities it created. Make no mistake, our house will always be divided on Sundays by a line that’s purple on one side and green on the other, but Oregon State will always cover that line with black and orange on autumn Saturdays.