ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, January 19, 1996 TAG: 9601190025
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-11 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
TYPE: COMMENTARY
The dramatic flourish was delicious and too Hollywood to be believed.
Radford University was entertaining its state and Big South Conference rival Liberty University in a basketball game Monday and proceedings had just reached half-time.
Then, with Radford up 30-23 after having rallied from a 15-2 deficit, the electricity went poof and the joint was plunged into an inky blackness ordinary eyes could not penetrate.
Gasps were audible throughout, and a low murmur swept through the audience before auxiliary lights came on to provide an eerie, dim glow.
Perhaps thinking of religiously affiliated Liberty and the Flames' poor play that had landed them on the short end of the intermission score, someone suggested the power outage may have represented divine intervention.
Some 37 minutes later, power was restored and the game resumed (Radford would go on to win 71-65 in overtime). But in the meantime, previous sporting blackouts were recalled by amateur historians court side:
Talk about eerie. They could have played "Creepshow" music and it wouldn't have made those people who remembered the last Dedmon Center outage feel any stranger.
Said journey to the heart of darkness happened precisely two years ago to the very night from Monday's blackout.
The opponent? Liberty.
Actually, that 1994 game had to be postponed because power could not be restored in time. It was just as well. Take it from a Dedmon Center visitor for the occasion. It was colder under that air-supported big top than Saddam Hussein's heart.
Another bitterly cold night in the New River Valley, this one in Narrows, and another blackout.
The date was - more creepy tunes, please - Friday, Nov.13, 1981. The occasion was the opening of the Group AA, Region IV football playoffs (Narrows was in that classification back in those days).
The opponent for the undefeated Green Wave was Tazewell, which was getting the better of the night's events when play had to be halted for 15 minutes or so because the chain on the yard markers snapped during the third quarter.
No accounts of the thinking of the guys on the chain gang could be found, but it is likely that they were so angry at the way the home team was playing (a usually potent rushing attack was held to -15 yards for the game by the Bulldogs defense) that they just wanted to break something and the chain was at hand.
Then half the field was plunged into gloom when a bank of lights on the Wolf Creek side of Ragsdale Field went kaput. More than an hour was consumed as Appalachian Power Co. workmen worked to restore the lights.
In the end, many of the home folks were left wishing the APCO guys hadn't been so resourceful. Final score: Tazewell 28, Narrows 14.
Forget Friday the 13th. Never mind enraged members of a chain gang. A certifiably scary incident happened when the lights went out on a Group A baseball playoff game in 1990 at Grayson County High.
The Blue Devils were playing J.I. Burton; it was the fifth inning of a game that had started at 7 p.m., and Grayson County pitcher Chris Lundy had just uncorked a pitch. At the instant the pitch left his hand, the lights went out.
Words cannot convey how sick one observer felt until it was revealed that a hideous fate had not befallen the batter, the catcher or the umpire.
Once the juice came back on again, the shaken visitors from Norton posed no more threat to any hurled baseballs and lost 5-1.
WRONG PLACE, WRONG TIME: Many of the athletic directors who have done Purple Heart duty with snow-disrupted schedules at their schools would not have been amused by a conversation overheard between two men at a store near the Montgomery County line this week.
Conversationalist No.1: Seen any snow lately?
Conversationalist No.2: Not a bit.
Conversationalist No.1: I lack about a five-gallon bucketful to build a snowman. I ran out before I could finish the head.
Conversationalist No.2 That's too bad.
Conversationalist No.1: I'd like to see a good snow every once in a while.
Conversationalist No.2: Maybe we'll get one soon.
Ray Cox is a Roanoke Times sportswriter.
LENGTH: Medium: 84 linesby CNB