DENVER, CO – If you haven’t pulled yourself out of bed this morning, I don’t blame you. It’s the last Monday of 2014… what a crappy year. A whole lot of stuff happened in the past 12 months, believe it or not, and frankly it’s all blurred together for me. I’ll blame it on a Mile Contact High, while I’m here in Colorado, but will nevertheless endeavor to recap because I bet most of you have blocked most of it from your collective memories. Here’s what I got, see if you can make sense of it:
January: Florida State won the BCS Title without having to go through any kind of logical playoff system… Kiss performed in Dodger Stadium and a hockey game broke out… Richard Sherman became the most awesome person in America by telling us he was.
February: Going for most awesome person on the planet, however, was tougher to cover than Michael Crabtree, but a wily Vladimir Putin put on the Winter Olympics in Russia’s only summer resort, confused foreign journalists with hastily constructed bathrooms, and made homophobia a matter of national pride. Ukraine was so upset at this treatment that they kicked out their own President Putin-Puppet and seceded from the Soviet Union… again.
March: Putin retaliates by shooting down a Malaysian Plane and then hiding it just beyond the reach of a frustrated CNN… Major League Baseball joins the search, sending the Dodgers and Diamondbacks to open the season in Australia a whole week before the season actually started…a clever ruse, as nobody actually watched the games, giving the enthusiastic Zack Grienke extra time to scour the high seas.
April: Lots of stuff going on in the world. Before there was the ice bucket challenge, there was Bring Back Our Girls. But in the world of sports, apart from a Bubba winning The Masters, not so much. Oh, except for Donald Sterling.
May: Michael Sam becomes the first 7th round NFL draft pick to become a household name. California Chrome wins the Double Crown!
June: Oh yeah, there’s a third one of those. Meanwhile the Rangers made it within a couple of games of sipping from the Stanley Cup; and Americans were introduced to two new things to hate: ISIS, and Chris Wondolowski.
July: Short Matt begs everyone he can to listen to the Bobby V podcasts.
August: The Derek Jeter Farewell Tour officially begins to turn from uncomfortable to nauseating. That’s okay, the NFL is gearing up and there’s a potential new Cheech and Chong in Pittsburgh’s LeVeon Bell and LaGarett Blount. One can only imagine the hijinks as the two inseparable running backs spend an entire season together! It doesn’t quite work out that way, but both have better years than Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson, and Roger Goodell.
September: The Magical Jetery Tour makes its final stop in the Bronx, and the rest of the long suffering country get to watch Yankee fans bask in yet another glorious moment, even when they’re 12 games out of first and nowhere close to playoff contention.
October: Long suffering Kansas City Royal fans have to suffer a little longer.
November: Jose Canseco gives the world the finger, and Odell Beckham gives Giant fans an I-was-there moment that negates all the crummy other stuff that happened to them this season.
December: North Korea’s chances of hosting the Olympics anytime soon are illegally downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.
To sum it up, 2014 had an inordinate amount of war, plane crashes, comedians’ deaths, a comedian’s reputation’s death, viral challenges, Ebola viral challenges, and hateful teams winning championships.
Good riddance. 2015 has got to be better, right? Right?
Grinding Ax Walter Hynes, tomorrow.
