SOMETIMES IT PAYS TO LOSE

The Boston College Eagles football team had an 8-0 record and was number one in national polls going into the final game against traditional rival Holy Cross. Led by the ramrodding fullback Mike Holovak and brilliant quarterback Charlie O’Rourke, both future NFL players, B.C. looked unstoppable.

Holy Cross had won only three games in 1942,⁴⁴ and the annual contest played at Fenway Park was predicted to be a laugher. B.C. came out overconfident, even cocky, and flat. The Cross (led by future college and pro Hall-of Fame lineman George Connor), with nothing to lose and nothing expected, came out charging, pushed B.C. all over the field, and swamped them 55-12 in one of the epic upsets in college football history. The 43-point margin represents the largest by which an unranked team has ever defeated a #1-ranked team.⁴⁵

B.C.’s improbable loss wasn’t the only disaster to occur in Boston on November 28, 1942. Something gruesome beyond imagination was about to happen.

. . .

AFTER DARK ON THAT FATEFUL DAY over a thousand people jammed into a downtown Boston nightclub called the Coconut Grove. At the height of the festivities, highly flammable decorations caught fire, and the blaze raced through the overcrowded room. Panicked customers bolted for the exits only to find some locked. Revolving doors at the front-door exits jammed and people desperately trying to get out were trapped, with many smothered. Nearly five hundred people perished, and scores more were burned, mutilated, and overcome by smoke in one of the worst fire tragedies in imagination was about to happen.

The Boston College football team had scheduled their season-ending victory party at the Coconut Grove that evening, but it was cancelled when they lost to Holy Cross a few hours earlier.

(This story was excerpted from Guts in the Clutch: 77 Legendary Triumphs, Heartbreaks and Wild Fnishes in 12 Sports, with a Foreword By Drew Olson of ESPN.)

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