October 3, 1984, 40 years ago: Soccer Bowl '84 is played at Varsity Stadium in Toronto. Playing Soccer Bowl '83 in Canada (albeit all the way across the country in Vancouver) didn't help the Toronto Blizzard the year before, and playing on their actual home field doesn't help them now, as they lose 3-2 to the Chicago Sting.
The Blizzard -- who won the North American Soccer League title in 1976, as "Toronto Metros-Croatia" -- trailed 2-0 after 70 minutes, but scored twice in 3 minutes to equalize. But Patricia "Pato" Margetic, the Argentine striker who'd scored the Sting's 2nd goal, scores in the 82nd to win it.
Attendance at the 21,739-seat Varsity Stadium is just 16,842. No one knows it yet, but this is the last game that the original NASL will ever hold.
The Sting, who had also won the title in 1981, had already announced that this would be their last season in the League, as they had already been admitted to the Major Indoor Soccer League -- which played soccer in arenas on hockey rinks covered with artificial turf, with the boards ensuring the ball wouldn't go out of bounds unless it went over the boards, resulting in higher scores. It was exciting, but it was a bastardized version of the sport, something that no one would have called "The Beautiful Game." Instead, it was called "pinball soccer."
Clive Toye, who built the New York Cosmos' dynasty, and also the Sting's '81 champs, was now running the Blizzard, and made postgame comments that Sting coach Willy Roy and striker Karl-Heinz Granitza -- both Germans, and the latter would later honor his Chicago experience by running a bar in Berlin named State Street -- were "cheats," and that the Sting were "unworthy champions."
During the ensuing off-season, NASL President Howard Samuels died, and Toye was named interim President. Then the Cosmos folded, due to striker/part-owner Giorgio Chinaglia's mismanagement. Without the flagship franchise, the League was doomed, no matter what Toye did, and he did try.
The Blizzard -- who won the North American Soccer League title in 1976, as "Toronto Metros-Croatia" -- trailed 2-0 after 70 minutes, but scored twice in 3 minutes to equalize. But Patricia "Pato" Margetic, the Argentine striker who'd scored the Sting's 2nd goal, scores in the 82nd to win it.
Attendance at the 21,739-seat Varsity Stadium is just 16,842. No one knows it yet, but this is the last game that the original NASL will ever hold.
The Sting, who had also won the title in 1981, had already announced that this would be their last season in the League, as they had already been admitted to the Major Indoor Soccer League -- which played soccer in arenas on hockey rinks covered with artificial turf, with the boards ensuring the ball wouldn't go out of bounds unless it went over the boards, resulting in higher scores. It was exciting, but it was a bastardized version of the sport, something that no one would have called "The Beautiful Game." Instead, it was called "pinball soccer."
Clive Toye, who built the New York Cosmos' dynasty, and also the Sting's '81 champs, was now running the Blizzard, and made postgame comments that Sting coach Willy Roy and striker Karl-Heinz Granitza -- both Germans, and the latter would later honor his Chicago experience by running a bar in Berlin named State Street -- were "cheats," and that the Sting were "unworthy champions."
During the ensuing off-season, NASL President Howard Samuels died, and Toye was named interim President. Then the Cosmos folded, due to striker/part-owner Giorgio Chinaglia's mismanagement. Without the flagship franchise, the League was doomed, no matter what Toye did, and he did try.
But when the time came to prepare for a 1985 season, only 2 teams -- the Blizzard and the Minnesota (formerly Fort Lauderdale) Strikers -- were still interested in playing, and the League folded, after 17 seasons. North America was without a "first division" in soccer for 11 years, setting the sport in the United States back a generation. The damage was incalculable.
Another league named the North American Soccer League played from 2011 to 2017, but it was never more than a second division, behind Major League Soccer, founded in 1996. The Chicago Fire would win the MLS Cup in 1998; Toronto FC, in 2017.
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There was another, much-more-watched, sporting event involving a Chicago team on October 3, 1984. The Chicago Cubs, playing in their 1st postseason series since the 1945 World Series, beat the San Diego Padres, playing in their 1st postseason series since their founding in 1969, in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series. The game, at Wrigley Field in Chicago, ended 4-2 in the Cubs' favor.
The Cubs now needed just 1 more win to win their 1st Pennant in 39 years. It would take them another 32 years to win that Pennant.
The fact that ABC got great ratings for this series in the Chicago area, but lousy ratings everywhere else, led to a decision from the new Commissioner of Baseball, Peter Ueberroth: From now on, all postseason games would have to be played at stadiums that had lights, because the team owners wanted the revenue that came from games on prime-time TV. And Wrigley was the last stadium that didn't have lights.
Ueberroth ruled that, the next time the Cubs made the Playoffs, they would have to play their "home games" at the next-closest stadium in the National League Eastern Division, which they were in. But that would have been Busch Memorial Stadium, home of the St. Louis Cardinals, their arch-rivals. Why not Comiskey Park, home of the crosstown Chicago White Sox? Ueberroth didn't say.
So the process for putting lights up at Wrigley Field began. In 1988, the 1st night game was played there. In 1989, the next time the Cubs won the NL East, they hosted night games in the NLCS. In 1990, they hosted the All-Star Game there, which they also wouldn't have been allowed to do without lights. Game 4 of the 1984 World Series remains the last World Series game to be played entirely in daylight.
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