The Backstory: An unbelievable touchdown in the upper deck

Sports, whether they're big-time or small-time, make an awful lot of people happy. They can also push folks to pull some crazy stunts. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you're a football fan, or I guess even if
you're not, you can get really sucked into a game
where something odd happens that throws you off the actual
game itself. Right. How about your team is playing so
badly you leave the stadium early, and minutes later a
plane crashes into the seats you were sitting in. I'm
Patty Steele. The unbelievable touchdown and more. Next on the backstory.

(00:24):
The backstory is back. You may have crashed a party
or two, but have you ever crashed a football game.
We've seen all kinds of crazy events at games over
the years. There was the time Miami and Seattle were
playing in the Dolphins stadium in twenty twelve, but some
genius had left the sprinkler system on the Saturday schedule

(00:46):
for Sunday's game. In the third quarter, it started raining
from the ground up. The players were actually delighted, though
Miami won by the way. And in December of nineteen
eighty two, there was yet another game involving the Dolphin fans,
this time facing off against the Patriots in a very
different climate. It happened in Boston. It's forever dubbed the

(01:07):
snowplow game. It seems that before the game there had
been a driving rainstorm. Then temperatures dropped like crazy and
the turf froze solid. Finally, just before the game got underway,
a massive blizzard moved in, and throughout the game they
had to pause periodically to run a snowplow across the field.

(01:27):
At Super Bowl forty seven in twenty twelve, just after
Beyonce's halftime show, the New Orleans super Dome lost power.
Stadium went completely dark for over half an hour, making
it the longest Super Bowl in history at four hours
and fourteen minutes. They never did figure out why both
electrical feeders providing power to the stadium failed at the

(01:48):
same time. Ultimately, the Ravens beat the forty nine Ers,
but some conspiracy types still think it was sabotaged. Now,
when it comes to what they call spectator interference, we've
seen plenty of that, guys with too much to drink
rushing the field, grabbing the ball, trying to run for
a personal touchdown. And we've seen overserved nude fans run

(02:10):
out on the field just to show off their stuff.
But one of the weirdest moments involved what must have
been really lacked security. Following a game between the Steelers
and the Cowboys, the teams head to their locker rooms,
only so did a fan. But he doesn't just hit
players up for autographs. This guy proceeds to get undressed

(02:31):
and get in the shower with him, and it doesn't
end there. One of the reporters says he was interviewing
a star defensive tackle when this guy comes out of
the shower and starts taking questions from other reporters as
though he was part of the team. They finally realize
he's an outsider and lose interest. So the guy just
starts getting dressed and he leaves the locker room. The

(02:52):
reporter says he and the tackle he was talking to
looked at each other and both said, who was that guy?
To this day, no one ever figured out who he was. Then,
there are other things that happened to games that were
near disasters that turned into more like distractions. In a

(03:13):
game between the Vikings and the forty nine Ers, a
hot air balloon was supposed to be part of a
halftime show, lifting two hundred feet off the ground. Now
the problem is in freezing weather, they couldn't get the
balloon to lift off with a woman inside, so she
hops out and her eleven year old son pops in.
It took off all right, rows up and out of

(03:34):
the stadium when the tether ropes failed. It then went
on a three mile journey with the little boy still inside,
finally landing in an icy river. The kid manages to
swim to shore and was reunited with the team and
then later his frantic parents. Later that same season, another
hot air balloon at the same stadium failed to take

(03:55):
off and fell onto the crowd sixty thousand strong in
the bleachers razingly. Nobody was hurt, but maybe that was
the end of hot air balloon entertainment for the Vikings,
at least finally. One of the craziest events at a
stadium involved a disgruntled fan of the then Baltimore Colts
back in nineteen seventy six. Now, imagine the Colts are

(04:16):
your team and they're playing really badly against the Steelers.
You decide to vacate your seats in the top deck
of Baltimore's Memorial Stadium and hit the road just before
the game ends, like a flood of other disappointed fans.
In fact, so many fans have left. Now the upper
decks are pretty much empty. Moments after the game ends,

(04:37):
a small plane flies low into the stadium, cruising just
over the scoreboard and the north goal post. It looks
like the plane is trying to land on the field,
but then it tries to climb, only to fall into
the now empty seats in the upper deck Miraculously. While
three police officers were injured, only one of them fairly seriously.

(04:58):
Nobody died, including the pilot, Donald Kroner, who was pulled
from the wreckage mostly unhurt. Seems he had some mental
health issues, had his pilot's license suspended, and just the
day before had been fired from his bus driving job.
He was also angry about being ejected from a restaurant
owned by a former player for the Colts, which led

(05:19):
to him trying to buzz the stadium. Ultimately, Kroner served
three months of a two year sentence for malicious destruction
of property and violation of aviation ordinances. The next day,
the Colt's coach said the crash saved him the embarrassment
of having to answer to the press about the team's loss,
since the crash was all they actually wanted to talk about.

(05:40):
So the question is, what is it about being a
sports fan that gets folks so riled up they sometimes
totally lose self control. Well, maybe it's the desire a
lot of us have to try to prove ourselves against
all odds. I want to give a shout out to
Dana August, a terrific listener who suggested we take a

(06:02):
bit of a dive into the stadium plane crash story.
By the way, Dana also does a podcast called Historically
Speaking Sports. I love that much. Appreciated, Dana. If you
have an idea for a story you'd like me to share,
feel free to dm me on Facebook at Patty Steele
or on Instagram at Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele.

(06:29):
The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis
Durand Group and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser.
Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday
and Friday. Feel free to reach out to me with
comments and even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty
Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening

(06:52):
to the Backstory with Patty Steele. The Pieces of History
you didn't know, you needed to know.