BRONX, NY – We all say stuff like this at the end of every calendar year, but I mean it when I say “Good riddance to 2014.” This has not been an easy year for me and my family, as well as several good friends. Most of us are still drawing breath, which is awesome, but a few (including some great ones) are not. Those losses aside, there were no shortage of depressing sports situations, particularly for those of us living in New York. Let’s just call a spade a spade and state that pretty much every single one of our local sports teams stinks on (and off) ice right now. Giants? Stink. Mets? Stink. Yankees? Stink. Islanders? Not so stinky, but still the potential to skew towards putrid. Jets? Whoa ho! Reeking! Nets? In Brooklyn and their smell is currently being masked by the Knicks and the Gowanus Canal. Speaking of the Knicks… they are the bloated god-awful Limburger cheese of all of New York’s sports corpses right now. Let’s spray some pine-scented Glade air freshener in this joint and look towards 2015.
Order Restored to the NFC East. Next year will see the Cowboys become the exact team everyone expected them to be this year, the Eagles playing .500, the team from Washington still sucking, and the Giants winning their division and putting up the most points in franchise history. Think of this as you watch Dallas dismantle Detroit to start the New Year.
Solid Gold! To mark the 40th anniversary of their last NBA title, the Golden State Warriors, and league MVP Steph Curry, will hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy after taking down the Chicago Bulls in five games. Book it.
The Mets Will Still Get it Wrong. Even though they’ll enter the new year with one of the most talented young pitching staffs in the game, the New York Mets will somehow find a way to under-perform, get injured, and in general just screw things up. ***News Flash*** The Mets aren’t even waiting until 2015 to be stupid. My brother (photo with me, left) reports that they just sent out a missive saying that they are changing a Fireworks Night game against the Yankees from 7:05 to 1:05 and canceling the fireworks. Instead lucky fans who already bought tickets will receive Mets Thundersticks. Wheee! Someone needs to stick a roman candle up Jeff Wilpon’s ass and light it.
Rugby Rules! In 2015 rugby becomes even more popular, if that’s even possible, and ESPN purchases Rugby Wrap Up. That’s the good news. The bad news is they change the name to Rugby Rapz, replace Johnathan Wicklow Barberie with Stuart Scott, and fire Junoir Blaber for insubordination, replacing him with something called Rugger the Robot. In their final move they hire DJ Eberle as VP of programming for the entire network.
Short Matt Marries, Pigs Fly, and Hell Freezes Over. Not necessarily in that order. As of this writing we are already very close to the first flying pigs.
Yankees Go Home. This summer the New York Yankees will use every method at their disposal to get Alex Rodriguez to quit baseball including, but not limited to, never playing him, making him ride Greyhound Bus to road-trip cities, asking him to room with Randy Levine, stealing his lip gloss, making him dance to YMCA with the grounds crew, hiring Jose Canseco as his personal hitting guru, and locking him in a room with a naked Sterling & Waldman. When none of it works, the Yankees quit the season en masse in August.
MTM Hits the Big Time. This site finally gets some honest-to-goodness notoriety in April when staff writers Al Sternberg and Walter Hynes challenge each other to a Hamilton-Burr Duel in midtown Manhattan. Both men survive, but they manage to mortally wound a man in an Elmo costume and injure several others dining in a nearby Chipotle.
That’s all for this week. Have a great New Year’s! Nurse your hangover tomorrow with the stylings of Big Al Sternberg/Fake Sandy Alderson.
