Sidekicks Never Say Die - MISL 1987 - Part 3/9

After an up-and-down season, the Sidekicks make the MISL Playoffs.

To read Parts 1 and 2 of this series, click HERE…

After the first month of play, the team was an underwhelming 6-6. Then, from December 26 through mid-January, they didn’t lose a game. At the All-Star break, everything collapsed.

The team’s sponsor was the Yo-Yo.

They played eight games against playoff teams, going a not-so-inspiring 3-5. On March 24, they lost 8-0 against the Minnesota Strikers. Then the Yo-Yo went back up. On April 2, they headed into overtime against the Cleveland Force, a semifinalist in the previous season’s playoffs.

“It was a very important game for us. We had to prove we could beat Cleveland,” Tatu said.

Tatu bicycle-kicked a deflection off the boards into the goal to win the game. By April 15, they had qualified for the playoffs.

Then, the Sidekicks lost five of their last six games at the end of the season. We humbly refer the distinguished reader to the aforementioned Yo-Yo.

“We had qualified for the playoffs, but we had a marvelous opportunity to go one or two in the league and we kind of let it slip. The performance in the first half of the last game of the season against LA was a disaster,” Gordon Jago said, “I know I was furious, which is not normally me. At halftime I made the players very much aware of how I felt. I felt it wasn’t us. I felt we were going through the motions. And that’s not the Dallas Sidekicks.”

The team’s final regular season record? [off-key fanfare plays] 28-24. Not bad, but not all that great either. The goal differential: Dallas, 209, their opponents, 197.

Tatu kept the team in a lot of games. He won the scoring title and was awarded the league MVP award. Balthrop remembers that at one point in the season, Tatu scored an impossible bicycle kick that so mesmerized the Dallas-Ft. Worth area that Scott Murray, the channel 5 sportscaster, showed it four or five days in a row.

“[Steve] Žungul was still the Lord of All Indoors, but Tatu was gaining ground quickly,” Balthrop said.

Though heading into the playoffs on a losing streak couldn’t have helped team morale, the improbability of the Sidekicks’ very existence as a franchise, coupled with a winning record, kept the team believing in itself.

“Just getting into the playoffs was a tremendous accomplishment considering the amount of time we had to prepare for the season,” said Wes McLeod, the Sidekicks’ ace Canadian defender.

Despite a mediocre record, the Sidekicks managed to beat every team in the MISL during the regular season. Even more impressively, they won at least once in every other arena in the league. But the only reward they would get would be a first round playoff matchup with a Baltimore Blast team that only barely missed out on winning the MISL’s Eastern Division.

The Blast’s strategy was to lock down Tatu, double-teaming him at times. He would always be marked by a top defender throughout the series.

“Bruce Savage, Baltimore’s legendary defender, shadowed [Tatu] so much in that playoff series that at one point, Tatu stepped onto the field for no other purpose than to see if Bruce Savage would step on the field. Tatu took a step on, Savage took a step off his bench, and then Tatu stepped off again just to see if that’s what was going to happen. And it did,” Balthrop said.

Dallas found itself down 2-1 in the five-game series thanks to an Andy Chapman goal in Game 3. An overtime win in Game 4 kept Dallas alive. They finished off the Blast on May 1, 1987 with a road win at Royal Farms Arena.

“Throughout the season we always came back from the dead. Why not once more? And that’s what we did. Throughout the playoffs we played together and that’s what it takes to be a winner,” Victor Moreland said.

But the Sidekicks had no time to savor their first playoff series victory. Just two days later, their division finals series began in Cleveland. Jago had to throw rookies and reserve players into the lineup to give his starters a rest, Balthrop said.

“We weren’t really ready for that series to start that quickly,” said Sidekicks midfielder and Canadian international Mark Karpun.

The Sidekicks opened the Eastern Division championship campaign with a 5-3 defeat in Cleveland against the Force. With Game 2 also in Ohio, a loss would have stuck them in a hole. But they stole a road win and returned to Dallas with momentum.

“You could sense this air of quiet confidence starting to appear,” Gordon Jago said.

Game 3 in Dallas brought another win. But just as importantly, it brought an ineffable sense that the team was building something special. Balthrop remembers Victor Moreland being quoted as saying the Cleveland players were arguing with each other on the field. As one team fell apart, the other came together.

“Cleveland definitely didn’t [take us seriously],” Balthrop said.

The 2-2-1-1-1 format meant Game 4 stayed in Dallas. Balthrop sat on the red line at the bottom of the arena, hoping to catch a Tatu jersey. Balthrop was disappointed in that respect: he never caught one. But as he looked around the arena, he realized it had never been that full.

“It was a tradition back then to announce the attendance at the break between the 3^rd and 4^th quarters. The announcement was, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you might want to be quiet for a moment. Look around you. This is the largest crowd of the MISL playoffs this year and it’s also the first sellout in Dallas Sidekicks history.’ And you couldn’t hear anything else for two minutes,” Balthrop said.

The players fed off the energy.

“The desire to play is heightened so much. You don’t fatigue as easily. You feel a sense of purpose because now you have a community that has come out to watch you perform. And we felt we had to give them their money’s worth,” Doc Lawson said.

Mark Karpun scored the game winner to put the Cleveland Force out of their misery and win the series 4-1. Dallas was heading to the finals. And Gordon Jago began to think that, like a jigsaw puzzle, each little piece was falling into place.

Next Week: Part 4 of “Sidekicks Never Say Die”