1-0 Victories in Soccer and Baseball
The United States men's national soccer team
shockingly
failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. They bounced back from that embarrassment by performing surprisingly well in the 2021 Gold Cup including
a 6-1 defeat of
Martinique in the second Gold Cup game. The U.S. scored more goals and allowed more goals in the Martinique game than in their other five Gold Cup
games combined as they had five 1-0 victories.
In their 1-0 victory against Canada, Shaq Moore scored twenty (!!) seconds into the game. In the
United States' 1-0 victory against their other neighboring country in the Gold Cup Final, Miles Robinson
scored the game-winning goal in the 117th minute.
Scoring a game-winning goal in the 117th minute of a 1-0 game is the soccer equivalent of hitting a home run in the bottom of the 9th inning in a 1-0 game. The Washington
Nationals had the only such home run during the 2021 season. In April, Kyle Schwarber hit a home run in
the bottom of the 9th inning in a 1-0 win against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Scoring a goal in the first minute of a 1-0 game is like
hitting a lead-off home run in a 1-0 game. The day before Shaq
Moore's goal, former Oakland A's outfielder Robbie Grossman became the first MLB player in nearly seven years to hit a leadoff home run in a
1-0 game when he hit one for the Detroit Tigers against the Minnesota Twins. It did not take so long
for the next such home run to be hit: current A's outfielder Chad Pinder
hit one against the San Francisco Giants less than one year later in 2022. It was the first-ever leadoff home run for the A's in a 1-0 game.