All right, it’s official. I can handle the Yankees winning the World Series, or the Steelers winning the Super Bowl, or the Penguins “winning” the Stanley Cup. But not all three in the same year. And when Shane Victorino grounded out off the Fruit Bat to put the finishing touches on the Yankees’ 27th championship, he cemented 2009’s status as a sports fan’s worst nightmare.
As all three of you who have read this column before are probably aware, I am a proud Baltimorean and devout Orioles, Ravens, and Capitals fan—making the results of the NFL and NHL postseasons even worse, if that’s possible. (Some would also argue that the presence of Mark Teixeira, our new Public Enemy No. 2, on the Bronx Bombers’ roster would add another layer of frustration to their championship. But being the son of a Red Sox fan, I’m going to defer to the Nation on this one.) But every true sports fan should be on the brink of atheism after the events of the past year.
Let’s start at the beginning—the Steelers’ Super Bowl championship. In and of itself, this is the least troublesome of the four major sports championships of 2009. However, most commentators conveniently ignored the fact that Pittsburgh beat a team—my beloved Ravens—that had its bye in Week 2. Yes, not Week 8 or Week 9. Week 2. The Ravens’ game against the Texans, which was scheduled for Week 2, was postponed to Week 10 (the Ravens’ bye week) due to damage to Houston’s Reliant Stadium caused by Hurricane Ike. And while the Steelers have the NFL’s unquestioned cheap-shot leader, Hines Ward, their title isn’t necessarily disastrous in and of itself for those outside of Charm City.
But fast forward a few months, to early June, when the Penguins “won” the Stanley Cup. First off, never in a million years will you convince me that NHL commissioner Gary Bettman—who is barely qualified to run a custard stand in Milwaukee, let alone a professional sports league—wasn’t calling the shots behind the scenes. Just look at the penalty disparity between the Penguins and their opponents. In addition, the Penguins boast the NHL’s most overrated, one-dimensional player, Sidney Crosby. If you disagree, just take a look the next time he opens his mouth on the bench and note how many teeth he shows. ’Nuff said.
But that’s not all! A year after the Celtics rewarded a generation of Boston fans who had suffered through the beginning of Danny Ainge’s tenure as GM with the team’s NBA-record 17th title, the Lakers came through with a championship of their own (their 15th). In the interest of full disclosure, I will note that I pretty much couldn’t care less about the NBA, and consider it easily the least exciting of the four major sports leagues. However, it was quite refreshing to see the Spurs and Pistons of the mid-2000s win the title and show that there was still a place for defense and team play in the world’s preeminent basketball league. But all of that went up in smoke last June, after the Larry O’Brien Trophy returned to Tinseltown. The Lakers have hands-down the best player in the NBA, Kobe Bryant—and no one else. With all due respect to Lamar Odom and Pau Gasol, the Lakers are unquestionably Kobe’s team. And unlike the Spurs of David Robinson, Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, and Bruce Bowen, or the Pistons of Ben Wallace and Rip Hamilton, the Lakers just give the ball to Kobe and hope for the best. The Lakers’ 2008-09 title validates this team-second style of offense and is almost certain to perpetuate the one-on-one style of play that has taken over the Association. And yet the pundits wonder why it took the U.S. eight years to return to its gold-medal glory days.
And now we have the Yankees putting the finishing touches on an abomination of a sports year. I’m not even going to get into this one—everyone already knows that the Yankees finally figured out how to turn their annual half-billion-dollar offseason spending sprees into a championship. Funny, though, how no Scott Boras clients have announced they’ll opt out of their $252 million contracts in search of a better deal, even though Game 6 ended almost a full 24 hours ago as of this writing.
So that’s that. There are 56 days left in 2009, and those eight weeks can’t go by quickly enough. Whatever 2010 brings in the world of sports, it seems a safe bet that no matter who your favorite team is, it can’t possibly be any more upsetting than the events of the past 365 days.
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