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Every day until Dec. 31, reporters and editors from The New York Times will recall the people, teams and moments that made the last year memorable, and in some cases look ahead to 2013.
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Teams Don't Wear Capes and Neither Do the Lakers
By Benjamin Hoffman
As great as Michael Jordan was, it took a number of years, and just the right group of teammates, for him to build a dynasty in Chicago. Even LeBron James and the so-called Big Three in Miami took two seasons, and more help from Mike Miller than anyone wants to remember, to win it all.
But when the Los Angeles Lakers traded for Dwight Howard and Steve Nash, they were immediately anointed a superteam, and were picked by many to claim a championship this season. That Kobe Bryant, Metta World Peace and Nash were aging veterans was ignored. Howard's character issues and recent back surgery were forgotten. The buildup was so intense that the signing of Antawn Jamison was hailed as brilliant and innovative.
Considering that, the moment I am looking forward to in 2013, or at least am hoping to see, is the team's 42nd loss. Nothing short of a losing season will do.
Anointing the Lakers as champions suggested little knowledge of N.B.A. history, and too much thought that fantasy sports principles applied to the real life games. To know how uncertain the Lakers' future was, all you would have had to do was look at the Lakers of 2003-4.Continue reading the main story
That was the year Gary Payton and Karl Malone, future Hall of Famers who had yet to win a title, decided that joining Shaquille O'Neal and Bryant in Los Angeles was their best bet for a ring. Gone were the days of Charles Barkley trying desperately to beat his rival Jordan. In this new era, Barkley would have simply signed with Chicago if he wanted to win.
That group of Lakers lost to a relatively anonymous Detroit Pistons team in the N.B.A. finals. It was a great moment for teamwork, but not enough to convince anyone that the concept of a superteam was flawed. For that to happen, a superteam would have to fail completely.
The Lakers, through their first 23 games, were doing just that. They had seen one coach fired (Mike Brown) and another being torn to shreds for not fixing things (Mike D'Antoni). A little more than a quarter of the way through the season, they were a team in desperation mode.
The Lakers, bolstered by Nash's return from a leg injury, have won six of their last seven to improve to 15-15, and this veteran-packed roster should be able to right the ship enough to round into a playoff team. But should that not happen, if the Lakers finish the season with 42 or more losses, then the idea of a superteam may finally be declared a failure.
For fans who would rather see Nash battle with Bryant than team up with him, that would be a huge victory.
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Wilpon and Katz Retain Control of the Mets
By Richard Sandomir
Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz were smiling in the mid-March sunshine outside the federal courthouse in downtown Manhattan, talking with their legal and public-relations teams. Wilpon tilted his head back, and his grin exposed a perfect top row of teeth.
The sun gleamed off Katz's shaved head.
The men, who own the Mets, looked as if they could have been celebrating a World Series, if only it were October, and if only the Mets were good enough to be in such a position.
Instead, on what was to be the first day of a jury trial in connection to the Bernard L. Madoff Ponzi scheme, a trial whose outcome could have threatened their sports, real estate and investment empire, a judge approved a settlement — and lamented that Sandy Koufax, Wilpon's friend, would not be testifying.
Wilpon said that he was headed back to Port St. Lucie, Fla., the team's spring training camp, bent on "bringing the Mets back to the prominence our fans deserve."
That goal was unmet. The lackluster Mets finished in fourth place for the fourth consecutive year. But Wilpon and Katz still owned control of the team, which they might have lost if a jury verdict had gone against them. Yes, they sold nearly half the team to limited partners to raise money to repay debt and finance large losses.
But they were still in charge — and retained hope that that would be the case for future generations of Wilpons and Katzes.
The settlement was a cause for celebration but it was also a limited victory. The pursuit of Wilpon and Katz by Irving H. Picard, the trustee for Madoff's victims, was over after more than a year. Picard had accused Wilpon and Katz of illicitly profiting from investing with Madoff while acting willfully blind to evidence of his fraud.
Picard initially demanded $1 billion from them. At trial, he was seeking a third of that. Now, the worst was over. Wilpon and Katz would not have to testify about their decades of dealings with Madoff. And the willful blindness charges were dropped, which they felt vindicated their good faith and what they called their lack of savvy as investors.
Still, there was plenty of damage. Wilpon and Katz saw a half-billion dollars of their personal, family and business riches evaporate in Madoff's Ponzi scheme.
They had planned on being reimbursed by Picard for $178 million legitimately lost in some of their Madoff accounts. But they will not get all of that, if any of it.
They are required to pay the trustee $162 million in fictitious profits on their net winner accounts. What Picard found was an almost bare financial cupboard that explained, in part, why the Mets now operate like a miserly middle-market franchise. Picard could not find enough cash in Wilpon's and Katz's bank accounts or enough borrowing capacity to get anywhere close to $162 million. So, the $178 million — or as much of that as Picard can recover from other Madoff winners — is earmarked to pay off the $162 million.
The settlement was nonetheless a high point of another mostly miserable season, along with Johan Santana's no-hitter, the first in team history, and R. A. Dickey's Cy Young Award-winning season. But the angst continued. Attendance kept falling at Citi Field. The popular Dickey was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays. Fans called for Wilpon and Katz to sell. And one limited partner, Steven A. Cohen, a hedge-fund billionaire, has seen his firm become further embroiled in an insider trading investigation by the federal government.
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A Missed Milestone, but Nets Hope, Not a Lost Cause
By Steve Eder
The Brooklyn Nets thought they were going to achieve a milestone during a recent game at the Barclays Center, one that had nothing to do with anything happening on the court.
Before the game, a woman phoned the Nets to ask if she could propose marriage to her girlfriend on the arena's "Kiss Cam."
If the moment had gone off without a hitch, the Nets believed the couple, visiting from France, would have become one of the first same-sex couples to get engaged on the big screen of a major sporting event in the United States.
The Nets were more than happy partake in the event, agreeing to focus their "Kiss Cam" on the couple. But the plans suddenly fell apart when the couple left the game early because a young child who was with them got sick. They were not able to reschedule.
Even though the proposal didn't happen that night, some say it is just a matter of time before the "Kiss Cam" will capture such a moment, as gay rights advocates are making substantial legal headway on marriage equality and as same-sex engagements are being celebrated more publicly.
During November's election, voters in four states passed same-sex marriage initiatives, and Wisconsin elected the first openly gay senator. Earlier this month, the United States Supreme Court said it would hear two cases relating to same-sex marriage.
Recently, a male military officer made headlines when he proposed to his boyfriend at the White House.
"It is about being able to take part in the institution of marriage, and this is analogous, taking part in the American tradition of the 'Kiss Cam' and other cultural moments," said Michael Cole-Schwartz, a spokesman for the Human Rights Coalition, which supports same-sex marriage initiatives. "This is a natural extension of LGBT people living their lives more openly and honestly."
The Nets, like teams across the country, have long been running the cheesy "Kiss Cam" during breaks in game action, with the camera bouncing around, framing up fans seated next to each other, begging them to smooch. Two or three times a month, a fan will arrange with the Nets to get the camera's attention to propose marriage, for all to see. The Nets make it happen in exchange for a $500 donation to the Nets Foundation charity.
Until recently, same-sex couples had not inquired about using the "Kiss Cam" for a marriage proposal, said Petra Pope, a Nets executive for the past eight years, whose job includes overseeing the "Kiss Cam."
Pope said there was "absolutely no hesitation at all to make this happen."
Historically, operators of the "Kiss Cam" in some venues have focused the camera on two men or two women, hoping to get some laughs. Lately, some, including players, have rejected that gimmick as offensive.
Last April, pitcher Brandon McCarthy, then of the Oakland Athletics, raised some eyebrows when he wrote on Twitter: "They put two guys on the 'Kiss Cam' tonight. What hilarity!! (by hilarity I mean offensive homophobia). Enough with this stupid trend."
Some are now hoping a new trend will take hold.
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Coach Barta Retires From Smith Center High School
By Joe Drape
Roger Barta retired as the coach of the Smith Center Redmen in the same manner in which he had coached high school football for the previous 35 years: quietly and for the right reasons.
Barta, 67, told his team at its year-end meeting in November that he had coached his final game. It was time for him to watch his seven grandchildren grow up and play on Friday nights. The oldest of them, Mason, was going to be a sophomore next fall and would be playing for his father, Brooks Barta, at Holton High School in Kansas.
Coach Barta, as he will always be known, let his last batch of Redmen spread the word of his future plans through Smith Center, a town of 1,656 smack in the middle of the country. No one was really surprised by the news.
The numbers Barta put up are impressive: 323 victories, 8 state titles and a 79-game winning streak that remains a Kansas record. He sent dozens of players to college football programs, including Kansas State fullback Braden Wilson. Mark Simoneau, another former player, was a solid N.F.L. linebacker for eight seasons.
Barta's legacy, however, goes beyond the football field. He was also a math teacher, and his students went on to become doctors and teachers, lawyers and farmers. Many of them stayed in Smith Center, but many more moved on. A lot of them are parents now, and they continue to employ the lessons they learned from Barta.
I know I do. I first met Barta five years ago, well past my playing days. It was in the midst of the Smith Center's winning streak, and I went to the heartland to do an article for The New York Times.
I was expecting to find some hard-nosed firebrand in a football-crazy town. Instead, I found a laid-back coach with a walruslike mustache who was a dead ringer for the actor Wilford Brimley. He was a gentle soul who refused to talk about winning and losing and often told his players that he loved them.
"Let's get a little bit better each day," was his daily exhortation.
It was enough to make me curious enough to move my family to Kansas to find out what success was really about.
I got more than a book out of it. I got a master class in love, patience and hard work. Of the many wise things I heard from Coach Barta was the fundamental tenet of his program, repeated on the first day of practice for decades.
"Someone here is the best football player on the team, and someone is the worst," he said. "It's time to forget about that. Let's respect each other. When we respect each other, we'll like each other. When we like each other, we'll love each other. That's when, together, we'll become champions."
It is more than a prescription for success on the football field; it is a pretty great way to lead your life. Coach Barta's victories and championships will be remembered, but the lessons he passed on will be cherished for generations.
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Jewish Team's Plight Effects Change
By Mary Pilon
Until February, the high school boys basketball team at the Robert M. Beren Academy in Houston was like many others — a collection of teenagers who loved to dribble, dunk and create a chorus of sneaker squeals on the court. But when the team advanced to the state semifinals in its league, the accomplishment provoked a question of faith. Beren is an Orthodox Jewish day school in Houston and the players on its basketball team observe the Sabbath. The group that organized the tournament, the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools, had scheduled Beren's game for Friday evening and rejected an appeal from the school to change the time.
As word of the Beren team's story spread, the players received an outpouring of support from an unlikely cast of characters. Jeff Van Gundy, the former coach of the Houston Rockets and the Knicks, left a phone message with association officials expressing his concern. Annise D. Parker, the mayor of Houston, wrote a letter saying she was "very disappointed" in the decision not to reschedule the game. An online petition attracted thousands of signatures.
Then, Nathan and Alyza Lewin, a father and daughter legal team based in Washington, entered the picture. Nathan Lewin has argued several religious freedom cases before the Supreme Court, including some involving the wearing of a skullcap while on military duty and the display of menorahs on public property. The Lewins, along with Richard A. Rohan and Tim Gavin, lawyers with Carrington, Coleman, Sloman & Blumenthal, based in Dallas, agreed to take the case pro bono and teamed up with a local law firm.
After the legal threat and nationwide attention, the association rescheduled the game and the Beren team played Friday afternoon.
In October, the association announced that effective this school year it would change its rules to accommodate religious days of observance when scheduling state competitions.
"No member school," the association's constitution now reads, "shall be required to participate on a day of Sabbath observance or a day of traditional religious holidays."
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Lockout Creates a Void for N.H.L. Fans
By Lee Yarosh
As in all battles, the one between the N.H.L. and its players has caused its share of collateral damage. The news media are full of reports of lost paychecks, layoffs, posturing and ill will.
But the lockout has affected more than the players and the owners. For Bill McGuinness and his 10-year-old son, James, it has complicated their ultimate guys' weekend.
The plan was to fly to Toronto on a Friday afternoon, catch a Maple Leafs game at Air Canada Centre, spend Saturday exploring the Hockey Hall of Fame and fly home that night.
Even as the owners and players continue arguing over contracts, revenue and all manner of things, the McGuinnesses forge ahead. Their "hockey-palooza" is still on for Jan. 18 and 19. But the McGuinnesses, of Pawling, N.Y., are scrambling to fill the first day of their adventure.
The next-best option, the American Hockey League's Toronto Marlies, are away. "This is Toronto," Bill McGuinness said. "There has to be a hockey game somewhere nearby."
The trip was James's idea. He is a hockey fanatic. He plays defense in youth leagues and is a fan of the Rangers, especially goaltender Henrik Lundqvist. So when asked what he wanted for his birthday, the answer came quickly: he wanted to see the Stanley Cup.
That startled his father. "He made me remember how I felt when I first saw the Cup," Bill McGuinness said. "I can't wait for him to experience it."
The authentic Cup is kept at the Hall of Fame.
For now, James is filling the void created by the lockout by watching past N.H.L. games on NHL.com and YouTube. In a few weeks, being able to get up close to the Cup will make the trip worthwhile.
As for Bill, he still has some work to do to fill the hole in their hockey weekend.
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A Star Out Of Nowhere, Then Gone
By Harvey Araton
Players both boisterous and bewildered left the court. Excited fans rushed the exits. Workers began the chore of cleaning up the aisles. All that remained at courtside of a night that straddled the line between highly improbable and unbelievable were the evidence on the scoreboard and an old man leaning precariously on a cane.
"I've been coming here since high school in 1955," he said, standing in the runway where the visiting Los Angeles Lakers had fled the unheralded phenomenon known as Linsanity. "I've never seen anything like this in my life."
The man, Cal Ramsey, had seen and experienced so much across the decades at Madison Square Garden. He was a collegiate star at New York University, but the Knicks cut him after seven games in 1959 because to keep him, a fourth black player, would have been taboo. But he hung around the building in whatever capacity would keep him there, becoming a broadcaster, a community relations representative, a friend to the stars, Knick or not.
A forever fan of the game, he watched the great players of the 20th century come and go, and stuck with the home team through a miserable opening decade of the 21st. And now — "just out of nowhere," Ramsey marveled — here was this Asian-American, Jeremy Lin of Harvard and N.B.A. waiver lists, making Midtown Manhattan again feel like the center of the basketball universe.
A season-saving sensation at the snap of Coach Mike D'Antoni's fingers, Lin had just dropped 38 points on the glamorous Lakers of Kobe Bryant in a 92-85 victory; scored and assisted every which way and carried a team that was missing its brand one-name players, Melo and Amar'e.
"I didn't think it would last, to tell you the truth," Ramsey said, as if he had seen enough after a fifth consecutive victory with Lin at point guard to convince him that Lin, 23, would continue to galvanize a team that for too long had been plagued by what Pat Riley once called "the disease of me."
There was no way for Ramsey, or anyone else, to foresee the plot twists to come, including Lin's unceremonious departure from the Knicks in July and his December return as a Houston Rocket. But that night, Feb. 10, there was magic and amazement at the Garden. There was, with Lin of the Knicks, the power and beauty of sports on display, spreading surprise and joy from the East Coast to the Far East, all of it reflected in the eyes of an old man who had long believed he had already seen it all. What remains to be seen is how much, if at all, Knicks fans will rue Lin's story continuing elsewhere.
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What Next, a Lockout of Roary and Sir Purr?
By Sam Borden
Given the disaster that was the N.F.L.'s use of replacement officials and the numbing sideshow that is the N.H.L.'s lockout, one can only imagine how tired sports fans are of labor disputes. Unfortunately, 2013 will bring little respite.
The next business-side battleground is furry, plush and anthropomorphic, as the collective bargaining agreement between the four major sports leagues and the Mascots and Oversized-animals Organization, known in professional circles as M.O.O., is set to expire at 11:59 p.m. Jan. 21, a date chosen by the mascots as a tribute to the longtime mascot supporter George Orwell, who died on that day in 1950.
Negotiations between the sides have not gone well. One early session was derailed when the Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner stormed out because he was enraged over what he described as Mr. Met's "perpetually snide" smile. Another blew up after the Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was overheard asking a colleague, "Why is Chewbacca here today?" with Gorilla, the Phoenix Suns' fuzzy cheerleader, in earshot. Gorilla then jumped onto the table, did a double-flip dismount and dunked his copy of the agenda in the trash as he stalked away.
Even when bargaining meetings have occurred, there has been little movement on the issues. Several mascots, including the Pittsburgh Steelers' Steely McBeam and Youppi!, the Montreal Canadiens' (and the Montreal Expos' former) spirit beast, reported significant resistance in leading M.O.O.'s push for, in their words, "standardized dressing rooms that recognize the unique challenges of individuals with enormous heads."
Other unaddressed concerns include quiet lobbying from the quadrupeds alliance, led by the Detroit Lions' Roary and the Carolina Panthers' Sir Purr, for a change to the union's "woeful" insurance that covers only two leg examinations, instead of four, a year; a number of retired mascots, including the disgraced Atlanta Braves enthusiast Chief-Noc-a-Homa, seeking an enhanced pension; and a passionate effort spearheaded by the Phillie Phanatic and Seattle's Mariner Moose that calls for increased roadside assistance for "those animals who are required to operate golf carts, A.T.V.'s or other vehicles."
The members of M.O.O. have received informal support from the Syracuse Orange, the Stanford Tree and other college mascots, but cannot receive official backing from those colleagues because N.C.A.A. rules prohibit college mascots from unionizing or profiting in any way. There have also been reports of a rogue group, led by the Orlando Magic's Stuff the Magic Dragon, that is attempting to negotiate separately, though M.O.O.'s president, the Washington Nationals' lovable loser Teddy Roosevelt, said in a statement that "we are united."
If an agreement is not reached in time, ownership has already made it clear that it is prepared to use replacement mascots. The most likely candidates are minor league performers like the Zooperstars, a well-known troupe of athlete-inspired creatures including Derek Cheetah, LeBronco James, Ichiroach and Peyton Manatee.
Captain Jolly Roger, the longtime Pittsburgh Pirate and union leader, gave an audible "aargh, scabs" when the Zooperstars were mentioned, then sniffed dismissively. "We do a lot more than just use a bazooka to shoot T-shirts into the crowd," he said, waving his hook venomously. "Those scallywag owners need to recognize that underneath it all, mascots are people, too."
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Late Meltdowns and Status Quo Shake-Up
By Karen Crouse
If this year taught us anything, it was this: If golf were easy, anybody could pick up a belly putter and excel. Tiger Woods, a 14-time major champion, won three times but also struggled on the weekends when contending, proving his veins are not full of ice water, after all.
Rory McIlroy cruised to an eight-stroke victory at the P.G.A. Championship, which he chased with two FedEx Cup playoff crowns to cement his world No. 1 ranking. However, he went winless for a five-month stretch after his monumental victory over Woods in the Honda Classic in March, his ungraceful play capsulized by a 77 on the Saturday of the Masters in a round so rotten he received a consoling hug from his playing partner, Sergio García.
McIlroy won four times in 2012, matching Stacy Lewis's victory total on the L.P.G.A. Tour. But it was all the defeats snatched from victory's grasp that made the year so compelling. I. K. Kim went to the last green of the Kraft Nabisco Championship needing a tap-in par putt to preserve her one-stroke lead. She missed it, then promptly lost in a playoff to her South Korean compatriot Sun Young Yoo. Kyle Stanley lost the Farmers Insurance Open with a triple bogey on the final hole, then won the next week when Spencer Levin blew a six-stroke lead. Adam Scott relinquished a four-stroke lead over the last four holes to hand the British Open to Ernie Els. The United States Ryder Cup team squandered a 10-6 lead on the final day against Europe.
The winds of change rattled the status quo in 2012, when Augusta National opened its doors to its first two female members and the United States Golf Association moved to ban anchored putting. Led by Lewis, American women experienced a resurgence, with eight tour titles. Led by Yoo, Asia continued its golfing ascendancy, sweeping the four women's majors, producing a 14-year-old qualifier for the 2013 Masters and sending three South Koreans, including the 17-year-old Si Woo Kim, to the PGA Tour through qualifying school.
As this year gives way to 2013, we'll have Lydia Ko, a South Korean-born New Zealander, and China's Guan Tianlang to remind us that 15 is the new 25. In contrast with the 2013 N.H.L. season, which may never begin, the 2013 golf season will seem as if it never quite ends, with the first six events of the 2014 season being held in October and November as the PGA Tour bids adieu to its traditional calendar season.
There will be no change at the top of the world rankings on either the men's or the women's side, as McIlroy will prove his time — no matter what zone — is now and Yani Tseng will bounce back from a year in which she won "only" three times to win the Kraft Nabisco Championship and at least one other major.
What we'd like to see in 2013: García winning his first major; Woods embracing the news media the way he has McIlroy; and the U.S.G.A. and the Royal & Ancient deciding to leave the anchored stroke alone and taking aim at the real threats to the game's integrity, including the balls that travel forever, the drivers with the grapefruit-sized heads and the lawyers poised to defend technology to the game's death.
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Slugger's Son Comes Home Just in Time
By Steve Eder
There's an image etched into the collective memory of Detroit Tigers fans. It's of a young boy with a big smile who often hung around the clubhouse at the old Tiger Stadium. Prince Fielder was just a child, but he could smack the baseball into the upper deck.
His father, Cecil Fielder, was a superstar whose unlikely, but successful, quest for 50 home runs during the 1990 season made him the story of the summer in Detroit. Tigers fans, loving Fielder's power, called him Big Daddy. And Big Daddy's talented young son was often at his side.
In January 2012, the son, now a major league superstar in his own right, came home to Detroit to help the Tigers to one of the team's most memorable seasons in its long history — a campaign that included an appearance in the World Series and a rare triple crown by his teammate Miguel Cabrera, the American League's most valuable player.
Prince Fielder's route back to Detroit had twists and turns.
A decade ago, the Tigers missed out on drafting Fielder when the Milwaukee Brewers took him one pick ahead of them. In Milwaukee, he became an elite hitter, teaming with Ryan Braun, the 2011 National League M.V.P.
After the 2011 season, Fielder, now 28, was a free agent, and a player of his caliber in the prime of his career would have many suitors and demand a hefty payday. His résumé already included five straight seasons with at least 30 home runs — including one in which he hit 50. Tigers fans could dream, but with a high payroll and a solid team returning, they were not considered a serious contender for Fielder's services.
That all changed in mid-January when Victor Martinez, one of the Tigers' best players, was lost for the 2012 season after being injured during agility drills while preparing for the start of training camp.
Buzz about the possibility of the Tigers' signing Fielder immediately surfaced, particularly among fans who remembered him from his youth but also had seen what he'd done in the big leagues. But it didn't make financial sense, and the Tigers already had Cabrera playing Fielder's position, first base.
Almost as soon as Tigers fans dismissed the idea as fantasy, the owner Mike Ilitch — who bought the team in 1992 when the elder Fielder was on the roster — gave his approval to sign Prince Fielder, bringing him "back home" with a $214 million contract. Cabrera shifted to third base to make room for his new teammate, setting up a powerful lineup.
In late January, when the Tigers announced Fielder's signing during a news conference at Comerica Park, where they now play, Fielder's own 7-year-old son was sitting next to him.
It was a familiar scene.
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A Free Fall That Has Yet to Reach Rock Bottom
By Juliet Macur
This year began so well for Lance Armstrong.
A month into 2012, after nearly two years of his wondering and worrying, federal prosecutors said they were no longer investigating Armstrong for possible doping-related crimes, including fraud, money laundering and drug trafficking. The United States attorney leading the inquiry had dismissed the case.
For Armstrong, a weight had been lifted.
"It is the right decision, and I commend them for reaching it," he said in a statement that day, Feb. 3. "I look forward to continuing my life as a father, a competitor, and an advocate in the fight against cancer without this distraction."
But in fact, his year was not on an upswing. Quite the opposite. Armstrong was about to have one of the most precipitous, unceremonious downfalls in the history of sports.
By the end of October, he was stripped of his record seven Tour de France titles and was barred for life from competing in Olympic sports. His sponsors, even the longtime supporters Nike and Oakley, abandoned him. He closed out 2012 pegged as a liar and a cheat who had to step down from his own cancer charity, Livestrong, to keep it from drowning alongside him.
All that misfortune came at the hands of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, which did not back down from its fight with Armstrong, even when the federal criminal investigation fell apart.
In June, the agency announced that it had opened a doping case against Armstrong, who later chose not to fight the charges. But it was too late for him to save his reputation as a cancer-surviving hero to millions.
By mid-October, the agency had made public a 202-page report that said Armstrong was at the heart of the most sophisticated, well-organized doping program in sports. In that report, 11 of his former teammates said they had doped and that doping on Armstrong's teams was widespread and expected if riders wanted to succeed at the sport's highest level.
Riders who had been Armstrong's closest friends and confidants had pointed their fingers at him. And while his lawyers called the report "a one-sided hatchet job," Armstrong did something many did not expect: he did not fight back.
Within weeks, he retreated from his hometown, Austin, Tex., to Hawaii, away from the stares and the vocal criticisms. There, he rode out the initial tumult.
Now back in Austin, Armstrong awaits a new year. It could not be worse than the last. Yet it is likely to be rocky.
The Department of Justice is still considering joining a federal whistle-blower case filed by Floyd Landis, one of Armstrong's former teammates. Landis has claimed Armstrong and management of the United States Postal Service team defrauded the government by using taxpayer dollars to finance the squad's doping program.
Also, a Dallas-based insurance company that awarded Armstrong bonuses for winning several Tours is looking for its money back. Armstrong owes it at least $7.5 million, a lawyer for the company said.
What Armstrong, a father of five, will do next is anybody's guess. One thing that is not likely on his to-do list to ring in the new year: celebrate his good fortune.
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For U.S. Track Team, Strides in Right Direction
By Tom Connelly
You know your sport is in ratings trouble when the stunning performances of your current Olympians in London finish a distant second to the extracurricular exploits of a stunning former Olympian in Las Vegas. Or when its most recognizable face belongs not to the chiseled Mr. Bolt but to the whittled Mr. Kardashian.
Or maybe not.
For failures organic and self-inflicted, track and field in the United States long ago ceded the first tier of the sporting hierarchy to the broadcast friendly Big Three. It now ricochets like a wayward atom in the vast chasm between the poles of women's gymnastics and curling. Its popularity is roughly equivalent to that of domestic soccer, which bid farewell to Beckham this year and awaits Messi in 2025, and the dysfunction that is professional boxing, which will never again care about universal popularity as long as there is a pay-per-view cash cow to milk.
Still, because a dominant Olympic track performance that, for those scoring at home, assured that the United States would win the overall medal count, there is hope for a higher national profile, if indeed that is even what the sport's genuinely quirky aficionados truly seek.
Credit especially goes to the American milers, specifically the men. Their event — together with the sport's metric equivalent, the 1,500 — is track's marquee attraction. The 100 gives us the World's Fastest Human, but it is short and brutish and pales aesthetically against the other pure sprints: the 200 and its powerful and stirring turn, and the 400 and its long-striding elegance on the back straight. The 800 — apologies to the exquisite David Rudisha — is an underloved hybrid for those whose hamstrings don't twitch quite fast enough and hearts don't beat quite slow enough. But the mile/1,500 is close to perfect, requiring a balance of speed and strength and tactics, short enough to hold us rapt but not so long that we can return from a bathroom break and expect to pick up pretty much where we left off.
There have always been great American milers. Glenn Cunningham was the best of the 1930s. Wes Santee, Jim Ryun, Marty Liquori, Steve Scott, the naturalized citizen Bernard Lagat and others could always be counted among the global elite. But the mile has rarely been dominated by Americans.
The last time the United States won Olympic gold in the 1,500 was 1908. And until Leo Manzano finished second in London, Ryun's silver in 1968 was the last medal taken by an American. Now, though, Manzano's astonishing kick to silver and the almost-third-place finish by Matthew Centrowitz, four months after knee surgery, teases at an American renaissance heading into the summer's world championships in Moscow. Maybe it won't be a match for the 1980s British troika of Sebastian Coe, Steve Cram and Steve Ovett, but throw in Andrew Wheating — and, who knows, even a refocused Alan Webb — and there is the potential for an interesting season ahead for those who care to pay attention.
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Going About the Business of Creating Magic
By Steve Reddicliffe
Nothing seemed to faze the Loyola (Maryland) men's lacrosse team last season, not even being left out of the preseason top 20.
Coming off an 8-5 season in 2011, the senior co-captain Scott Ratliff said: "We knew there probably wouldn't be a whole bunch of hype behind us going into last year. We mentioned it, we talked about it one day, and then we kind of just went about our business."
Nobody went too crazy after Loyola decisively beat Duke, a preseason No. 2, in early March, although midfielder Davis Butts, also a senior co-captain, said, "I can tell you that definitely gave us a little boost for the rest of the season."
And nobody stewed too much when Loyola, after starting the season 12-0, lost to its Baltimore rival, Johns Hopkins, in overtime in late April.
"When we set goals, it was to win the conference championship and then go on to win the national championship, so we knew that we had all those goals still in front of us," Ratliff said.
Loyola did win the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference title, defeating Denver, a preseason top-five team, for the second time in a month in the semifinal and Fairfield in the final. And in the N.C.A.A. tournament, the Greyhounds beat Canisius, Denver again (by one goal for the second straight time), and Notre Dame before facing Maryland in the championship game.
The Terrapins had been there the previous year, losing to Virginia by two goals, but Loyola was pretty cool about that game, too.
"We had the slogan, 'The best team will win,' " Ratliff said, "and we felt that would be us, and it worked out."
Loyola won, 9-3, for the program's first N.C.A.A. Division I title; the margin was comfortable enough that Coach Charley Toomey changed his goalie and got a bunch of players minutes in a championship game. Toomey himself had been the goalie for Loyola in a national title game in 1990, losing by 21-9 to Syracuse. He said he did not pass along any lessons from that experience.
"This is their time," Toomey said. "We stuck to what we know, the extra preparation, the scouting reports, being smart with your downtime. And really just enjoying the moment.
"You can coach your whole life to have a special team of guys like this and from senior leadership to freshman buy-in, to the on- and off-the-field success that our kids had, that is something I will hold onto for a long time," he said.
Loyola's first game of 2013 is Feb. 16 against Delaware.
"It's a completely different team," Toomey said of the current Greyhounds. His tone was matter-of-fact, with perhaps a hint of urgency, but nothing over the top. It was an attitude that sounded familiar.
* * *
U.S. Women's Soccer, Between Dramas
By Jay Schreiber
On Memorial Day weekend, the United States women's soccer team played a sweet lullaby of a game on the banks of the Delaware River outside Philadelphia. As a sunny afternoon eased into dusk, the Americans, in a warm-up for what lay ahead, beat China, 4-1, before a celebratory crowd of nearly 19,000 that filled every seat at PPL Park.
Afterward, half the crowd lingered in the stands and all of the American players remained on the field. The women sat and stretched and gulped water and energy drinks and then, in their dual roles of athletes and ambassadors, headed for all points of the stadium to patiently sign dozens and dozens and more dozens of autographs.
At that moment, the Americans were between dramas. They had produced one of the great moments in the history of women's soccer the previous summer when Megan Rapinoe launched a long, curving dead-on pass that Abby Wambach headed into the Brazil net with the United States down a player and a goal in the final seconds of overtime in a World Cup quarterfinal.
The United States won that game on penalty kicks, only to lose the same way to Japan in the World Cup final, a loss that stung even more because the Americans twice surrendered late one-goal leads.
Now the Summer Olympics in London awaited, and a chance for this same group of players to kick away all that pain and disappointment. But on that peaceful May night in Philadelphia, in the calm before the roar, the team could still breathe easy.
I thought of that scene two months later as the Americans battled in a desperate Olympic semifinal against an underdog Canadian club intent on ambush. Three times, the Canadians took a one-goal lead; three times, the United States women battled back to tie the score. Now as overtime wound down, and penalty kicks loomed again, it was Rapinoe who raced like a madwoman to inbound a ball that Canada had kicked over the line.
It was easy to see that she wanted no part of the lotterylike randomness of penalty kicks, when anyone might score or miss, when the Americans could just as easily lose as prevail. Win it now, win it now, you could hear Rapinoe saying to herself. And the Americans did, with Alex Morgan heading in the winner in the final moments of overtime, just as Wambach had done the summer before.
In the gold medal final, the Americans faced Japan again, and nearly gave away the lead again, with Hope Solo making a full-out, lunging save to preserve a 2-1 victory. So over two summers, the American women put together four intensely memorable games, broadened their following and created enough momentum for a third effort to create a professional league.
Maybe this time a league will succeed, or maybe it won't. And maybe, at some point next spring or summer, the American women will come back to the banks of Delaware for an encore, this time in triumph.
* * *
The Greatest Fight That Never Was
By Greg Bishop
The fight that mattered most, the one certain to shatter pay-per-view records and make boxing relevant to the mainstream sports fan again, if only temporarily, became less likely in 2012. To say the chances of its taking place in 2013 are improbable would be to acknowledge a sliver of a chance, like that line from "Dumb and Dumber":
So you're telling me there's a chance?
No, there is none.
Back in January, the superfight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao was already unlikely, already a pipe dream, which befuddled fans of sports, where the best teams and best players actually face off. But this is boxing, and those three words manage to explain everything, to summarize all the chaos and confusion that have come to define a classic sport.
All anyone who ever watched a boxing match wanted was for Mayweather to step inside the ring with Pacquiao. Here were the two very best boxers of their generation, in the same weight class, on paths that seemed destined to collide. For that fight, three million P.P.V. buys seemed possible. So did total revenue of more than $200 million.
Yet these fighters, again, in the same weight class, continued to fight the same opponents, on parallel paths that remained just that. If this strategy doesn't make sense, it's not supposed to. This is boxing.
Then came 2012. Mayweather went to jail after he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery domestic violence. The incident reportedly took place in front of his children. This is boxing, though, so Mayweather fought and beat Miguel Cotto in May. The same Cotto that Pacquiao demolished in 2009 on his rise to global icon.
Pacquiao lost twice in 2012. Timothy Bradley beat him first, in a fight that nobody, not even Bradley if he's being honest, felt he won. But where Bradley did not succeed — in the court of public opinion — Juan Manuel Márquez did. In their fourth fight, Márquez knocked Pacquiao out cold.
There lay the champion, the fighter of the decade, face down on the canvas, as Mitt Romney — yes, that Mitt Romney — sat only a few rows away, his face registering but one emotion: shock. For once after a Pacquiao fight, no one mentioned Mayweather, or the megafight that was said to have the potential to redefine their sport.
So here we are. The best boxer in recent memory, Mayweather, has fought five times since late 2007 and spent more time in 2012 behind bars than in the gym. His most anticipated challenger may retire, if not now, then soon.
For the past year or two, it always felt improbable, the possibility of Mayweather against Pacquiao. It seemed as if they would box when they were old, when one or the other needed money, when the fight that mattered most mattered far less. Now even that seems like a fantasy boxing matchup, one in which Mayweather clearly would be favored.
As 2012 turns to 2013, it seems safe to say that the fight that never was now will never be.
This is boxing.
* * *
A Fine Night to Appreciate a Mets First
By Andrew Keh
Two things they told me when I was beginning as the beat writer covering the Mets, just over a year ago:
1. No Mets pitcher had ever thrown a no-hitter, a fact that became more sad and significant and comical with each game, so be prepared to write about the first one.
2. Nights off at home, for a baseball writer, are rare. Enjoy them, if you can.
These thoughts collided on June 1. That night, the Mets were playing the St. Louis Cardinals in Queens, and I was ducking into a subterranean izakaya in Manhattan. There was no cellphone reception. Baseball seemed distant.
But after a few bites and a couple of beers, there appeared Johan Santana, the veteran Mets lefty, on a soundless television screen mounted against a distant wall. It showed him inducing three routine outs before the station cut back to the original program.
"Strange highlight" was my first thought. My second came quickly, frantically: "No-hitter!"
Alarm bells went off. Here was a major event developing on my beat. But what could I do? I assumed — correctly, it turned out — that the reporting duties were in capable hands. Tim Rohan, an intern on one of his first assignments, went on to write an elegant game story. So I took the rare opportunity to watch from afar, as a casual observer.
The check was settled, and my friends and I surfaced back to street level and hustled to a nearby sports bar, getting there during the top of the eighth inning, stepping into a room abuzz. Each out recorded raised the volume of the place.
With his 134th pitch, Santana, with his surgically repaired shoulder, recorded the final out, and after 8,020 games, the Mets had their first no-hitter.
On-screen, Santana screamed and was mobbed by teammates. In our bar, patrons whooped and smiled.
There was something strange about seeing this, a postgame celebration involving the Mets. It was charming, of course. But it also brought to mind how scarce such celebrations have been for the team in recent years.
And there was something strange about the scene inside the bar. We were away from the rumble of Citi Field and its die-hards, but people applauded and raised their beer glasses. Some were Mets fans, others casual sports fans. All seemed surprised and happy to have a tangible reason to salute the team.
Over several weeks, the afterglow of the night would fade, giving way to another dreary season for the Mets, another fourth-place finish. R. A. Dickey, a charismatic knuckleballer, enlivened things at the end, winning 20 games and a Cy Young Award. But his glow was extinguished, too, when he was traded this month to the Toronto Blue Jays, a move to benefit the future.
So who can say now when the Mets will play another meaningful game? Who knows when the next on-field celebration for the Mets might occur?
Until then, June 1, 2012, will be fondly remembered. It was a fine night to be off the baseball beat.
* * *
Quiet World Cup Groundwork for the U.S.
By Andrew Das
What if the easy part was the hard part?
Two years out from the World Cup in Brazil should be quiet time for the United States national team and Coach Jurgen Klinsmann, who coasted through 2012, losing only twice in 14 games. Sure, the early-round World Cup qualifiers on the schedule were important, and there was a hairy moment or two. But the Americans' finishing in the top half of a group with Jamaica, Guatemala, and Antigua and Barbuda wasn't really heavy lifting, and many fans weren't always paying close attention anyway. The friendlies were generally low-risk (Venezuela, Scotland, Canada) or high-reward (Brazil's Olympic team). A first-ever win in Italy was a bonus, and a similar feat in Mexico was an even nicer surprise. Even the goals started to come: five one night in Jacksonville, three in Tampa and Jamaica, two more on a frozen field in Russia.
But Klinsmann was doing his heavy lifting behind the scenes. He tinkered with positions and personalities and, at times, nationalities. He leaned on goalkeeper Tim Howard while trying out defenders who didn't always protect him. He integrated midfielder Michael Bradley, the frequently scowling son of the coach he replaced, into the heart and soul of his team, and then surrounded him with a mixture of German muscle and homegrown hopefuls. He pushed striker Jozy Altidore to take his game more seriously and nudged Clint Dempsey to find a bigger club. All the while, he taught those he sent to the field — 49 players over the course of the year — how to stop falling behind, and how to fight their way out when they did.
According to the script, the next stage — the bulk of the Americans' 2013 schedule — should be the hardest: five regional rivals, home and away. Honduras. Costa Rica. Mexico. Jamaica. Panama. Places where it's just as well that you don't speak the local language, especially the words for "mother" and "sister." Places where they hurl not only insults — though there are plenty of those — but also coins and batteries and bags filled with urine.
The Americans must survive that gantlet to claim one of the region's three guaranteed places in the 2014 World Cup. The core of the team has done this before, the most recent part of a run of six straight World Cup trips, an active streak longer than even Mexico's. The question of 2013 will be whether that experience will make it easier this time.
Klinsmann will start the journey with a spine of World Cup veterans like Howard and Carlos Bocanegra and Bradley and Dempsey running through his team. He'll enter it with other players toughened by games in the Champions League, even if that experience came with Anderlecht and Nordsjaelland, not Arsenal and Milan. He will enter it, as the American coach often does, with the burden of leading one of the favorites. What may be missing for the first time in years is Landon Donovan, who is seriously considering a break from the game, perhaps permanent.
The discussion they will have will be difficult for Klinsmann, to be sure. But some of his toughest work is already behind him.
* * *
Redemption in Left Field: A 9-Act Play
By Peter Lattman
On a Sunday afternoon in late August, I found myself home alone in the sweltering city, my family away at the beach.
Since misery loves company, I turned on the Mets.
After a solid first half, the Mets were in the throes of an epic late-season collapse. But they were better off than their opponent, the visiting Astros, owners of the worst record in baseball. It was a train wreck of a matchup.
Yet for the Flushing faithful, the game had compelling subplots. There was the return to the lineup of Lucas Duda, a powerful young slugger whose personal struggles embodied the Mets' woes. Duda had held such promise early in the year, but after an abysmal hitting slump and defensive miscues in right field, the Mets demoted him to the minors. He had spent the past month playing for the Class AAA Buffalo Bisons, trying to resuscitate his swing and learn a new position, left field.
Another young Met, the rookie right-hander Jeremy Hefner, took the mound that day in what would be his best outing of the season. In a taut pitching duel with Lucas Harrell, the Astros' rookie standout, Hefner took a 1-0 lead into the ninth inning. After he gave up a leadoff single, the next batter, Marwin Gonzalez, hit a low liner into left field.
Duda chugged toward the foul line and slid but couldn't make the catch. The base runner scored. Hefner's shutout slipped through his glove. Though a tough play, it was a makable one. The broadcasters knocked Duda's fielding. The television camera fixed on him, alone in left field, a pained expression on his face.
But two batters later, he got another chance. The Astros' Ben Francisco hit a grounder past the shortstop for a base hit. A determined Duda charged the ball with abandon, scooped it up on the run and threw a bull's-eye to the Mets' catcher, who tagged Gonzalez as he tried to score from second.
The tie was preserved. Sweet redemption for Duda!
With one out in the bottom of the ninth, Ike Davis hit his second home run of the game. Mets 2, Astros 1.
This is a franchise that has caused its fans serious heartache, with the past season especially distressing (and the next one loaded with uncertainty). But on a Sunday afternoon in late August, the Mets were a blissful 2-hour-19-minute distraction. The stakes could not have been lower, but the game could not have been better.
* * *
After Flash of Failure, Phelps Secures His Place in History
By Lynn Zinser
For a night or two at the London Olympics, it looked as if Michael Phelps's storied career would end in a fizzle. He had been routed in a race he had once dominated, the 400-meter individual medley, and the look on his face betrayed bewilderment. Losing was not something Phelps had ever had to learn how to do.
As everyone granted him second-class status behind the new hero Ryan Lochte, the instant caterwauling about Phelps's disappointing demise ignored one thing: whether or not Phelps is the best Olympian ever, he may be one of the best competitors. Four gold and two silver medals later, Phelps's familiar crooked grin was back, and Lochte was reduced to background noise. In what he says was his final Games, Phelps became the most decorated Olympian, finishing with 22 career medals, 18 of them gold.
Live-blogging the events for The New York Times, I was watching every last stroke from afar, laughing while writing the latest feats of the Phelps epic. I had been in Sydney in 2000 when Phelps swam in his first Olympics as a 15-year-old, a shy, gangly kid who was welcomed to the world of big news conferences with a question about whether he had ever kissed a girl. (The non-offending reporters cringed at that one.)
That first Olympics was rather forgettable — Phelps finished fifth in his only event, the 200-meter butterfly — but by 2004, Phelps was the star his sport would begin to orbit around. I sat in the stands in Athens next to Phelps's mother, Debbie, as he won his first gold medal, in world-record time in the 400 I.M. She was bubbling over with emotion, and even the relentlessly even-keeled Phelps let a few of his dream-come-true thoughts play out on his face. His era had begun.
For his heroics in Beijing, I was a mere spectator, off covering other Olympic events, which was a good thing because I had probably run out of words to describe him after 2004. Nothing he did surprised me because, watching Phelps swim, it's possible to believe he can do anything. Unlike in other sports, the truly magical competitors in swimming appear to be expending so much less energy than anyone else. Phelps glides through the water as if propelled by some supernatural force.
The magic of 2012 was that he had to work for it, really work for it, and the effort was visible this time. No longer was winning those races a given, and as he pulled himself out of the pool each time, every ache showed. The superhero was indeed human, but underestimating him was never wise.
* * *
A Superstar Goes Down, but the Yanks Fight On
By Patty LaDuca
On the afternoon of May 3, my Times colleague David Waldstein delivered the news on Twitter: "Mariano Rivera appears to have been injured in outfield during BP. He is being taken off the field on a cart. Looks bad."
My heart sank.
The Yankees, about to start a four-game series against the Royals in Kansas City, were 13-11 and in fourth place in the American League East. This news seemed like the end of hope for the season and perhaps the end of Rivera's illustrious career.
We soon learned that he had torn the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee while chasing a fly ball, an activity he had always enjoyed but now seemed foolish. Before he could have surgery to repair it, a blood clot developed in his calf, a common complication in older patients like Rivera, then 42.
The most dominant and durable closer in baseball history, he was the glue that held the Yankees together for 15 years. How could they make up any ground after losing him for the rest of the season, let alone make the playoffs?
Turns out that they could. Rafael Soriano filled in ably in the bullpen, posting 42 saves and taking his place in my book among the pantheon of Yankees closers like Dave Righetti, Sparky Lyle, Goose Gossage and John (Walk the Bases Loaded, Then Strike Out the Side) Wetteland. The Yankees won 95 games and the American League East title.
In the playoffs, relief pitching was the least of the Yankees' problems. Their bats were feeble (.211 average) as they squeaked past Baltimore in a five-game division series and went silent (.157) as Detroitswept them in the A.L. Championship Series.
It turned out the injury would not mean the end of Rivera's career either. He announced in no uncertain terms that he would return in 2013, rested and ready at 43.
"I'm coming back," he said the day after his injury. "Write it down in big letters."
My heart sang.
* * *
Giants, Again Needing Hero, Find One Along the Sideline
By Ben Shpigel
The Giants have this thing about artistic, brilliant, darn-near-impossible fourth-quarter catches in Super Bowl victories against New England. Mainly, they make them. And mainly, the catches are made by receivers who in the moment demand a formal introduction to the public at large — but only then, never again.
Say the name Mario Manningham to most any football fan, and there is instant recognition, followed perhaps by wonderment: how did he haul in that pass while keeping both feet inbounds?
Like David Tyree before him, Manningham had a sense of occasion that February night, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, where the Giants toasted another improbable championship, their second in five seasons. They defeated New England, 21-17, because of Eli Manning's arm and a stingy defense and a reluctant touchdown by Ahmad Bradshaw, but mostly because Manningham's feet stopped growing when they did.
They are size 11. Anything bigger and, he said afterward, "I would have been out." He was not exaggerating, either.
The Giants trailed, 17-15, with 3 minutes 46 seconds remaining. The ball was at their 12 when Manning, with Vince Wilfork's hand in his face, heaved an arcing, perfect pass down the near sideline, the Patriots' sideline, where Manningham was running, having beaten safety Sterling Moore at the line of scrimmage.
"Step up," Manningham said he told himself. "Dig deep."
Across the field stood Tyree, the Giants' talisman. He entered franchise lore by pinning the football against his helmet in the Super Bowl four years before, extending the winning drive. On this night, Manningham needed only his fingertips and toes, no helmet. As another safety, Patrick Chung, closed in, Manningham reached out his hands. The ball, lofted over his shoulder, fell in. His right foot touched the ground first, and then his left, his size 11s both inbounds but barely.
Eight plays later, the Giants scored what proved to be the winning touchdown. A raucous celebration soon followed, and the afterglow lasted for weeks. By mid-March, though, Manningham was no longer a Giant, off to San Francisco, to play for the 49ers. He was gone, yes. But forgotten? Never.
* * *
A Triumph for Zambia Near the Site of a Tragedy
By David Waldstein
Perhaps it was destiny's hand that guided Zambia to one of the most remarkable victories in the history of the African Cup of Nations last February, or maybe it was just poetic coincidence.
The emotional championship was secured just a few hundred yards from the site of the plane crash off the coast of Libreville, Gabon, that killed a previous Zambian team 19 years earlier, and it produced a moment of long-awaited joy for the impoverished southern African nation.
It was the first time the under-regarded Zambians, known as the Chipolopolo (copper bullets), won the title in the 55-year history of the tournament, and it was also the first time the tournament was held in Gabon. It took 15 penalty kicks to ultimately vanquish a powerful Ivory Coast team, which boasted stars like Didier Drogba, Yaya Touré and Salomon Kalou.
On April 27, 1993, the Zambian national soccer team was on a flight from Lusaka, Zambia, to Senegal for a World Cup qualifying match when its plane plunged into the ocean off the coast of Libreville. All 30 people on board, including 18 members of a strong team, died.
That team held great promise for Zambia, with legitimate hopes of winning that year's African Cup and qualifying for the 1994 World Cup. Some of the players were on the team that stunned Italy, 4-0, in the 1988 Olympics, the first thrashing of a European power by an African team in any major competition. The electrifying Kalusha Bwalya, who scored a hat trick in that game, went on to be called the best player in Zambian soccer history. At the time of the crash he was traveling to Gabon from the Netherlands, where he played for the Dutch powerhouse PSV Eindhoven, so he was not on the plane.
A year later, almost single-handedly, Bwalya led the decimated Chipolopolo to a second-place finish at the 1994 African Cup in Tunisia, and later coached the national team. He later became the president of the Football Association of Zambia and was on hand in Libreville when his team finally won the cup.
Two days before the Feb. 12 final, the team visited the beach near where the plane crashed offshore, an emotional moment for everyone, but particularly for Bwalya, who lost so many teammates that night.
"I say here that their dreams are our dreams," Bwalya said. "They are smiling down on heaven as we take part in this tournament in Gabon."
In the tense, hard-fought game, all seemed lost for Zambia when the Ivoirians were awarded a penalty in the 70th minute. But Drogba shot high, and the game eventually went to penalty kicks. After 14 kicks, the sides were even, but on the 15th, Stoppila Sunzu sizzled one into the top corner. Zambia had an incomparable 8-7 victory.
For some back in Zambia, the spirit of the 18 lost players clearly had a hand in the outcome.
"We know what we wanted to honor this evening," Zambia's coach, Herve Renard, said afterward. "It was a sign of destiny, written in the sky; there was a force with us."
* * *
Finding Hope in Football, and Providing It
By Jeré Longman
Kickoff for the Pennsylvania state championship game was minutes away. Music and a taped inspirational speech filled the Clairton High School locker room. But Terrish Webb sat outside on a set of concrete steps. He wiped tears from his eyes.
"I miss my dad," Webb, 17, told his close friend and teammate Robby Boatwright, who gave him a hug.
"I got your back," Boatwright said. "I love you."
Six years earlier, almost to the day, Webb's father had been shot to death as he drove his car in the late afternoon near the football field in Clairton, a frayed steel mill town south of Pittsburgh. Webb was 11 at the time. The case has never been solved.
"When you have tragedy like that in your immediate family, some kids tend to go the wrong way," said Wayne Wade, a former star quarterback at Clairton who is now the team's defensive coordinator. "They can't handle it. They start to question themselves. Why me? They look into different avenues to go, which are negative. Terrish found a positive one in football with a lot of his friends. They vowed a long time ago that they wanted to win state championships and they did all the right things to do it."
Clairton fell on hard times when the steel industry collapsed in the 1980s. Much of its downtown is abandoned, boarded up. But football has provided a glimmer of hope amid the civic gloominess. Webb caught a 21-yard touchdown pass in a 20-0 victory in the Class A title game on Dec. 14 at Hersheypark Stadium, helping Clairton to a fourth consecutive state championship and its 63rd consecutive win, the nation's longest current winning streak.
A 6-foot-1 receiver and cornerback, Webb caught 16 touchdown passes, rushed for 4 touchdowns and intercepted 8 passes this season. He is also the senior class president and ranks second in his class with a 3.8 grade-point average. He is considering playing college football at Kent State, Pittsburgh or Toledo.
"That's a special person who can come back from such adversity," Tom Nola, Clairton's coach, said of Webb. "He's the best student on the team. He's going to college. He's going to make something of his life. My hat's off to him."
Nola credited Webb's mother, Tinisha Webb, who works as an administrative assistant at a hospital in suburban Pittsburgh, with keeping Terrish from despair and stressing the importance of education. His friends, too, vowed that they would not succumb to the temptations and violence of a city where nearly a quarter of the 6,796 residents live below the poverty level.
"People think this is just football," Webb said. "This is more than football to us. This is the way out from where we come from."
* * *
In Pictures | Football
* * *
Bid to Win Triple Crown Ends in Barn at Belmont
By Melissa Hoppert
It was a sun-drenched Friday morning at Belmont Park, and with an elusive Triple Crown on the line, the employees and even the horses seemed to have an extra bounce in their step.
One day stood between I'll Have Another and the history books: he had a chance to be the 12th Triple Crown winner and the first since Affirmed in 1978.
It had already been a magical run for the underdog colt and jockey Mario Gutierrez, who had won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes in thrilling fashion.
Not many people were at the trainer Doug O'Neill's barn at 9:30 a.m. that day, but those who were appeared in good spirits, hardly letting on that something was amiss with the champion colt.
O'Neill was said to be dealing with the arrival of his family, but in hindsight, he had bigger worries than travel arrangements.
By 11:30, O'Neill had confirmed on the Dan Patrick radio show that I'll Have Another was out of the Belmont Stakes with a tendon injury.
As word began to travel around Belmont Park, and the news media swarmed the detention barn, people were in a state of disbelief. One track worker called home: "Did you hear that? They scratched the horse!" Another said, "I hear that he's never going to race again." A horseplayer threw his program and shouted, "Unbelievable."
Jimmy Crennan of nearby Williston Park, Long Island, who had been to every Belmont since 1980, was sitting in the backyard area. His thoughts? "Shock and disappointment."
"It's like the air comes out of the balloon," he said. "I got here today, and I was in such good spirits.
"I'm sure there will be 30,000 less people here tomorrow now."
Steve Wolfson, the son of Louis Wolfson, the owner of Affirmed, said: "What a disappointment. It's just such a daunting task, and then for this to happen. I really feel bad about it, for the horse, for Doug O'Neill and Mario Gutierrez and for the public. It's really sad."
The race went on, however, and a crowd of 85,811, the largest on a non-Triple Crown day, watched as Union Rags charged past Paynter to capture the Belmont Stakes.
I'll Have Another is now standing stud in Japan. But perhaps the story is not finished. His former owner, Paul Reddam, and O'Neill have another Derby contender for 2013: He's Had Enough.
* * *
A League's Ruinous Battle Against Itself
By Jeff Z. Klein
Bill Daly, the N.H.L.'s deputy commissioner, is a man not normally given to purple public statements. But when he said "the hill we will die on" during a news conference Dec. 6, he angrily summed up where the N.H.L. went in a ruinous 2012.
Daly used that phrase while standing next to Commissioner Gary Bettman, who was visibly shaking with rage, as they explained why they had just rejected the players' latest proposal and extended the N.H.L.'s lockout.
"Term limits on player contracts, which is the hill we will die on," Daly said.
It was a telling choice of words — an utterance so evocative of gallant sacrifice and heroic last stands, yet made in connection with a mere business issue.
But that is how Bettman, Daly and the N.H.L. owners seem to view this lockout: as a kind of apocalyptic battle in which the players union must be defeated, even if the world must be brought down to do so.
Some blame Donald Fehr, the head of the players union, for the impasse. But Fehr was not around for the N.H.L. lockout in 1994-95, or the one that wiped out the 2004-5 season — nobody in the union leadership was.
The only people in leadership positions during all three lockouts are on the league side: Bettman; Jeremy Jacobs, the Boston Bruins' owner; and Bob Batterman, the Proskauer Rose lawyer known for directing sports lockouts. (Daly was a key player in the last two lockouts.)
Lockouts are now a habit with the N.H.L., and this one will continue into 2013, even though the players have made most of the concessions and Bettman is excoriated by figures as diverse as Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey ("This is the third time this has happened in recent memory — you know, that's bad management") and the president of the Kontinental Hockey League, Alexander Medvedev ("How egotistical the N.H.L. is — financial issues trump the development of the game for them").
Even if a settlement is reached in the weeks to come, the damage has been done: many avid fans have lost interest, and the N.H.L. has slid back into the near irrelevance in the American sports landscape that it only recently escaped after so many years of struggle.
Daly was talking about contract lengths when he used the ominous phrase, but in the larger sense, he was right. This lockout may indeed be the hill the N.H.L. will die on.
* * *
Losing Marathon, and Heart
By Ken Belson
A wise editor once said, It takes years to build trust and a minute to erase it. He was talking about the news business, but he could also have been talking about New York Road Runners.
The group has spent decades turning its five-borough race, the New York City Marathon, into a 26.2-mile international celebration that unites millions of New Yorkers in the streets every November. It has become one of the city's most heartwarming events.
But much of that good will was swept away after Hurricane Sandy pummeled the city. Rather than cancel the race, which was scheduled for less than a week after the storm, and give its food, water and supplies to the newly homeless or ask runners to donate their entry fees to relief efforts, the running group, egged on by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, forged ahead.
"It's a great event for New York, and I think for those who were lost, you know, you've got to believe they would want us to have an economy and have a city go on for those that they left behind," Bloomberg said that week.
The decision backfired. Instead of bucking up the city's spirits, the race became a lightning rod for critics — including many runners — who saw Bloomberg and Mary Wittenberg, the chief executive of New York Road Runners, as callous elitists more willing to host out-of-town athletes than to help shivering residents on Staten Island.
When political rivals took aim at him and protesters threatened to disrupt the race, Bloomberg was finally persuaded to call off the race, leaving Wittenberg to repair the event's tattered image. In waiting until the city reached full boil, the mayor and Wittenberg had many asking, What were they thinking?
Institutional inertia was partly to blame. New York Road Runners spends a year preparing for the race; no doubt Wittenberg was reluctant to throw all that work away.
But hubris played a role, too. Did the mayor really believe it was a good idea for police officers, emergency medical technicians and other public workers to man a road race instead of caring for the city's neediest? Did Wittenberg really think the average Joe in Brooklyn was in the mood to cheer for runners who had plenty of food while others scrounged for a meal?
With Bloomberg leaving office in a year, it will be up to Wittenberg to do the tough work of rebuilding the Road Runners brand and winning back the city's heart. Perhaps the hard lessons learned after the storm will not be forgotten.
* * *
In Pictures | Soccer: Olympics, Euro 2012 and Beckham
* * *
Stretching the Invisible Borders of a Sport
By Juliet Macur
Gabby Douglas, the spunky, fresh-faced gymnast once held back by self-doubt, was not supposed to win the gold medal in the all-around at the 2012 London Olympics.
She was what the United States women's team coordinator Martha Karolyi had called "an average national team gymnast" who was not even expected to beat a teammate, Jordyn Wieber, the reigning world champion in the all-around. To Karolyi, Wieber was the second coming of Nadia Comaneci, and Douglas was just a sidekick, too inexperienced and unfocused to perform when it counted the most.
But the 16-year-old Douglas skyrocketed to the top of the sport in a matter of five months.
With uncanny steadiness and precision, she won the all-around title at the Olympics — the first black gymnast to earn the top spot and only the fourth American woman to do so. Afterward, she let out her trademark giggle and said, "Wow, I believed in myself!" as if she even amazed herself that she had pulled off what was once unthinkable.
As she stood atop the Olympic podium, Douglas beamed at her family members in the arena as they wiped away tears. Her mother, Natalie Hawkins, a plucky single mother of four, and Douglas's three siblings hugged one another and said, again and again, that all their sacrifices were worth it.
The biggest sacrifice was losing Douglas for nearly two years. In 2010, at age 14, she left her family in Virginia Beach, Va., to train in Iowa with Liang Chow, the coach who had helped Shawn Johnson win an Olympic gold medal in 2008. Douglas lived with a host family because her own family could not afford to pay for her housing.
Though that family, the Partons, was kind and generous, with four young daughters who soon looked to Douglas as a big sister, Douglas felt awkward at first. She missed sleeping in her own bed. She missed her two dogs. And she missed the beach, where she loved to go boogie boarding. She nearly quit the sport because she was so homesick.
But her resolve to stick with it paid off. In March, Douglas recorded the highest score in the women's all-around event at the American Cup, beating Wieber, the favorite to win the Olympic gold. Douglas's score didn't count, though, because she had competed as an alternate. So she stood back to watch Wieber accept the prize.
By July, Douglas had won the Olympic trials, dealing Wieber only her second all-around loss in four years. The next step: the Olympic gold.
Now Douglas has gone big time. She was featured on Corn Flakes boxes and the cover of People magazine. She was named one of the women of the year by magazines like Essence and Glamour.
Douglas had a feeling that this would be her fate.
"I have an advantage because I'm the underdog and I'm black and no one thinks I'd ever win," she said two months before the Olympics. "Well, I'm going to inspire so many people. Everybody will be talking about, 'How did she come up so fast?' But I'm ready to shine."
* * *
Every Move and Throw Under Watch
By Judy Battista
In any other camp, with any other quarterback, it would have been a simple game of catch while the cool morning mist burned off. But it was Peyton Manning and it was Denver — Denver, that was strange enough, and John Elway was milling somewhere around those practice fields. And so there were notes to take and charts to keep, a half dozen or so reporters looking on, trying to decide if the touch was still there on the short fade routes Manning tossed over and over to receivers he was just getting to know.
Manning's recovery from four neck operations took the N.F.L. wire to wire in 2012. There were the occasional jabs he threw at the Indianapolis Colts in January as they fired one after another of the people Manning had known for years — he said then that he was walking on eggshells. Then came his tearful news conference at which his release became official, and a coast-to-coast free agent odyssey, with helicopters and blacked-out car windows, and finally his remarkable on-field resurrection.
Manning was the dominant player of the year, given the sort of scrutiny that usually attends the vicissitudes of royal romances. We saw the video as the Colts removed the building-high pictures of him from the side of their stadium. Then we saw the video as he met surreptitiously with teams — did the orange sweater mean anything to Manning, a former Tennessee Volunteer, on his visit to the Tennessee Titans? And then we saw the video as Manning barked at his new teammates during a game. Same as it ever was.
From the start in Denver, Manning gamely tried to lower expectations for his play, to no avail. He is still, now, with his team on the cusp of securing a playoff bye, insisting that he has much work to do — defensive coordinators are probably sick of hearing that — and he bristled at the dissection of his passes that accompanied his return. But it was Eric Decker, one of the receivers with whom Manning was doing extra work on the side that day in August, who may have given the best indication of what was to come months later.
"I've never seen a guy demand so much out of himself or his teammates," he said. "He throws a football better than I've ever seen a quarterback throw a football. He allows us so many greater opportunities."
In 2013, Manning may have an opportunity that even he, when he tried to throw a pass to his friend Todd Helton last year that nose-dived into the ground, might never have imagined he'd have again. The Broncos will enter the N.F.L. playoffs as one of the highest seeds, with a top-five offense supported by a top-five defense. From the nadir of his career, Manning has worked himself all the way back — to be on, maybe, the best team he's ever had.
* * *
States Feed the Spread of Sports Wagering
By Joe Drape
Huey Long, as Louisiana's governor, promised a chicken in every pot. New York's Andrew M. Cuomo wants table games in as many corners of the state as possible, and New Jersey's Chris Christie hopes to build brick-and-mortar sports books and to make the Garden State a hub for online gambling.
They are hardly alone. From Kansas to Massachusetts, there is a gold rush by some states to embrace all forms of wagering to shore up their shrinking budgets.
Think of 2013 as a roulette wheel and a host of states with marbles in the game. New York intends to lay the groundwork for seven casinos. Ground is also likely to be broken in Massachusetts for three, including one in the Boston area.
And with Nevada having already approved online poker and begun preparing sites to be operating in early 2013, Governor Christie is certain to have the fate of Atlantic City, as well as the state's horse racing industry, in his hands as two bills continue to gather momentum.
An online gambling bill has already passed the New Jersey Assembly and Senate, and one of Internet gambling's top sites, PokerStars, is negotiating to acquire the Atlantic Club casino on the Jersey Shore.
This would be no less than a portal to the 22nd century and perhaps a mother lode for new tax revenue.
Christie has also vowed to defy a federal ban on sports wagering, and New Jersey's Legislature enacted a sports betting law in January, paving the way for sports books in Atlantic City casinos and the state's horse racing tracks.
The N.C.A.A. and three professional leagues argue that gambling hurts the integrity and perception of their games. This is an especially rich argument coming from the National Football League since two of its earliest owners, Art Rooney and Tim Mara, were gamblers. In 1936, Rooney, whose family still owns the Pittsburgh Steelers, turned two prescient days at the racetrack into $300,000. In 1925, Mara, a bookmaker, paid $500 for the Giants.
The N.F.L. injury report and betting lines certainly exist for a reason, and it's no accident that the league accounts for nearly 55 percent of the more than $1.3 billion wagered on football in Nevada in 2011.
So the leagues have done pretty well for decades alongside legalized sports gambling in Nevada, with billions more of illegal betting in bar rooms, fantasy leagues and offshore Web sites.
Now, the question being asked in state and federal courthouses is: why not take the sports book national, or even global?
* * *
After the Storm, Brooklyn's Moment
By Benjamin Hoffman
Everything had gone right for the Nets. Their new home in Brooklyn was complete, their apparel had become a huge hit among fans, they unexpectedly retained their signature star, and they were going to be able to show all of that off in a season opener against the Knicks.
Then Hurricane Sandy hit.
With the city's tunnels flooded, gasoline becoming scarce and the subway system shut down, suddenly the opener, scheduled for Nov. 1, had to be postponed and all of the excitement seemed to wither away.
Two days later, with the transit system still a mess and the city in a fierce debate over the cancellation of the marathon, it was decided that the Nets would go ahead with their scheduled game against the Toronto Raptors, a far less exciting opponent than the Knicks, risking empty seats in what they had hoped would be their grand debut.
A message posted to Twitter by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo that morning got things going in the right direction as he announced that the 4 and 5 trains would resume service, meaning that the large number of people in Manhattan hoping to see the game (including this reporter, who lives in Brooklyn but found himself working in Times Square that morning) would not have to brave the long lines for slow shuttle buses or break out their swim trunks for a jaunt across the East River.
As people shuffled onto the train at Grand Central Terminal, more than a few Nets hats were visible as everyone seemed somewhat unsure that the subways could really be back. Just days before, people had been walking to work across the Brooklyn Bridge and through a mostly abandoned and powerless downtown, but now the city was starting to feel more like itself.
Come game time, the crowd had filled out nicely, helped by a last-minute surge in ticket sales through online marketplaces like StubHub, and the Nets took the floor with Jay-Z watching and BrooklyKnight rappelling from the ceiling.
It was not a pretty game, with the Nets falling behind early and then struggling to catch up, but a strong second quarter led to the first major Brooklyn sports team since 1957 winning, 107-100.
Considering everything that had gone into the move from New Jersey, and the conditions surrounding the season's start, the actual basketball was the easy part.
* * *
A Stoicism That Can't Be Cracked
By Naila-Jean Meyers
A single clap. Andy Murray had just broken Novak Djokovic for the second time in the fifth set of the United States Open final, and all he got from his coach, Ivan Lendl, was one measly clap. In the previous set, when Murray won an exhilarating 30-shot rally and the nearly 24,000 fans at Arthur Ashe Stadium erupted, Lendl did not see fit to join that ovation either.
It was hard to take my eyes off Lendl that Monday night as the captivated crowd surrounding him gasped and roared at every lunging forehand and ripped backhand — even with the distraction of Sean Connery sitting nearby, wrapped in a blue blanket and pumping his fist for Murray, his fellow Scot.
As a summer's day became a blustery night, as Djokovic and Murray took turns muttering to themselves, Lendl was the model of stoic calm — awkwardly dressed in a red sweater and white shorts, often hunched over, elbow on knee, chin in hand.
But that's why he was there. That's why the mercurial Murray chose Lendl to be his coach this year. Lendl knew what it was like to come so close and fall short over and over. He knew, as Murray knew, as Britain knew. There would be no cheering until it was over.
Murray took us along on his emotional roller coaster in 2012. The heartbreak of his loss in the Wimbledon final, when he had Roger Federer on his heels, then the rain came, the roof closed, and it ended with Murray tearfully saying, "Getting closer." The leap for joy one month later when Murray dismantled Federer on the same court for the Olympic gold medal, part of the crescendo of British athletic greatness at the London Games. The relief — the word Murray chose when asked to summarize his feelings — when he outlasted Djokovic that September night for his coveted first Grand Slam title, becoming the first British man to capture a Grand Slam singles championship since Fred Perry in 1936.
When it was really, truly over, Murray was holding the trophy and thanking his coach in front of the crowd, saying, "I think that was almost a smile."
The match itself was a roller coaster. Murray won the first two sets, including a 12-10 first-set tiebreaker, then saw Djokovic fight back. They played for 4 hours 54 minutes, on the 15th day of another United States Open tormented by bad weather.
For the record, it wasn't even the longest Grand Slam final this year: that was Djokovic's 5-hour-53-minute victory over Rafael Nadal at the Australian Open. It was a can-you-top-this year for men's tennis. Djokovic, Nadal, Federer and Murray each won Grand Slam tournaments. Federer reclaimed the No. 1 ranking for four months and won his first major title in two and a half years. Djokovic won six titles, returned to No. 1 and was the player of the year. All that was missing was a full-strength Nadal, who succumbed to bad knees after winning the French Open.
A liberated Murray. A persistent Djokovic. A determined Federer. A (hopefully) healthy Nadal. It's shaping up to be a 2013 season that might make even Lendl stand up and cheer.
* * *
Finding Security In a Different SEC
By Brad Smith
When I first moved to New York in 1981, I was pleasantly surprised to learn how much New Yorkers loved college football. As I moved from the South, where Saturdays in the fall rival Sundays for the holiest of days, my belief that it was a regional sport was put aside.
Virtually every day in the paper and on the news, there was a mention of the SEC. Being loyal to my own Southeastern Conference team (Florida), I was happy to know that I was living in the Greatest City in the World, which in turn was equally infatuated with the Greatest Conference in the World. But because of the Ivan Boeskys of the world, I soon learned that the Securities and Exchange Commission was not the SEC I grew up rooting for. New York's S.E.C. was not my SEC.
When I hear SEC today, thankfully, Wall Street is not at the front of my thoughts. I'm thinking of Gainesville, Tuscaloosa and Athens. And while there are similarities between the two (much of the country loathes both, for example), I'm forever locked into the one that throws the pigskin for a long gain, not the one that looks for long-term gains on pork futures. Besides, to paraphrase Babe Ruth, my SEC had a better year than that S.E.C. As a matter of fact, six in a row.
Starting with the 2006 Bowl Championship Series title game between Florida and Ohio State, the SEC has won six consecutive national championships, with four teams. (Florida, Louisiana State, Alabama and Auburn). This past January, much to the disappointment of 99 percent of the country and a television network, two SEC teams played for the title (Alabama and L.S.U.). This year, Alabama is again carrying the torch for the conference of (my) choice, and Notre Dame carrying it for, well, the other 10 conferences and the other 109 teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision.
Division I college football has been dominated by one conference, one I'm proud to be a die-hard fan of for four decades. As I look at my increasingly small savings account, it's quite obvious I've spent way too much time following Barrett Jones rather than Dow Jones. For me, it was money well spent.
* * *
Cricket Rivalry of Nations, All for a Six-Inch Trophy
By Victor Mather
For much of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, there were fewer sure things in sports than the result of the Ashes, the cricket series held every two years between Australia and England.
Regular as clockwork, the Australians drubbed their rivals, winning eight straight series from 1989 to 2003.
But that changed in 2005, when England pulled off an upset that pushed soccer off the London tabloids' back pages. After an Australian win in 2007, the English have seemed to take over dominance with wins in 2009 and 2011. The series resumes this summer, with anticipation high in both hemispheres.
Cricket has been booming in many parts of the world, thanks to a new fast format known as Twenty20, in which matches can be completed in less than the time of a baseball game.
But the Ashes is old school. The teams play a series of five matches, each lasting five days, with six hours of play or more each day. A single player may bat for hours or even all day, gamely hitting defensive shots (something like fouling off pitches in baseball) in hopes of securing a draw. It is not for the casual fan.
But for the aficionados, there is nothing like the Ashes, especially when played, as it will be this summer, at the hallowed English grounds like Lord's and the Oval.
Most English cricket fans can tell you every detail of the match in Leeds in 1981 when their team rallied from a hopeless position (they trailed by 227 runs after one innings and bowled Australia out for 111!). And Australians love to crow about their 5-0 series sweep of 2007, the first since 1921.
The Ashes dates to 1882, when after an Australian win a newspaper published a mock obituary proclaiming the death of English cricket and stating that "the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia." A few weeks later, an English team went off to Australia and its captain, Ivo Bligh, vowed to return with "the ashes." An Australian team presented him with a tiny urn symbolic of the Ashes. At about six inches, it is surely the smallest major sports trophy in the world.
Under a new captain, Alastair Cook, and with the mercurial superstar Kevin Pietersen back in the fold after a text messaging controversy, England is the clear favorite.
In the storied history of the series, Australia leads by 31-30. Wouldn't the English love to even that up this summer?
* * *
Falling Apart After Getting It Half Right
By Bill Pennington
Tiger Woods came off the 18th green after his second round in the 2012 P.G.A. Championship at Kiawah Island tied for the lead. Again.
It was the third consecutive major championship that Woods was in or near the lead at the halfway point.
This had once been a familiar sight — missing maybe for a couple of years, but for more than a decade before, the golf world knew exactly how Woods looked in command of a big tournament. And fans worldwide knew the frequent outcome: 14 major victories.
But in 2012, as good as Woods could sometimes be, there was one Woods on the weekdays of major tournaments and an altogether different Woods on the weekends, especially the last three.
His average score in the first two rounds of this year's majors was 70, while his average score in the final two rounds was 72.9. It was worse than the statistics indicated — no weekend round under par and three rounds of 74 or higher. In the final three majors, Woods's average weekday round was even lower (68.8). His weekend average was 72.8.
This was Tiger Woods, golf's ultimate closer?
Not insignificant, it was notable who stole the show from Woods on the final days of the P.G.A. As the third round began at Kiawah Island in early August, Rory McIlroy birdied five of his first nine holes. Well aware of McIlroy's fast start, Woods answered by going three over par in his first seven holes — holes he had played in three under during the first two rounds.
Woods was not just off his game, he was having trouble keeping the ball in play. With a 15th career major on the line, he yanked tee shots onto adjacent holes, hit one shot into the crowd, flew the green on a par 3 and, at one point, hit three consecutive, dreadfully wayward shots.
In the final round the next day, McIlroy shot a 66 to win by eight strokes. Woods shot a 72 and settled for 11th. Who would have ever thought Tiger Woods would settle for anything in a championship moment?
"I've got to just keep putting myself in a position to win, and if it happens often enough, then I will win," Woods said afterward, uttering a line that sounded as if it came from an up-and-coming rookie waiting to break through on the PGA Tour. Except Woods turns 37 on Dec. 30.
This is not to say that Woods will not win another major. He may win two in 2013 and two more the year after that. It is certainly more promising for him that he came close three times in 2012, which was a departure from his middling performances in 2010 and 2011. But the cracks in the armor are breaches apparent to all at this point. Even as he finished the second round at the P.G.A. Championship in August — with a chance to take the outright lead — what did Woods do?
He three-putted the 18th green.
It may all be a part of the process that Woods likes to talk about these days. Every revival has its incremental steps forward. And every retreat has its incremental steps backward.
In time, we will see which way Woods is marching. But throughout this year, it was odd to watch him fall apart so routinely because he was the one golfer you once could routinely count on to do the opposite.
* * *
Upon Further Review, the Truth Is Revealed
By John Branch
The following story is not true — yet.
After years of experimenting and increasing the use of instant replay to weed out errors in officiating, several American sports will no longer be held live, but entirely on replay, to ensure that there were no mistakes.
In the N.F.L., for example, the hope is to eliminate delays caused by the persistent huddling of indecisive officials and the frequent departure of the referee to watch the replay in a private sideline viewing chamber.
Now, the game itself will be the replay.
"We have to work out some of the logistics," N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell said. "For example, how do we have a replay before we have an actual game? But we're optimistic that we'll solve it. We're the N.F.L."
Replay reviews, while appreciated by those who want near perfection in officiating, have been the source of much frustration for N.F.L. fans in particular. Many insist that they have better things to do than waste an extra two or three minutes of a Sunday after having already set aside their day in three-, six- or nine-hour increments.
The N.B.A. may create a model for others to follow. It will initially conduct all its games at empty arenas, then re-enact them in front of fans so officiating crews will not be met with surprises.
Any last-second baskets, or long jump shots made with a toe imperceptibly close to the 3-point line, will have been rehearsed. That will prevent the familiar momentum-killing sight of officiating crews bent over tiny sideline replay monitors while fans around the globe are forced to wait, as if they have time for that.
Now, the outcome of the play will be known before it happens.
"We really feel this will speed up our games," N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern said in a statement.
Major League Baseball finds replay useful mostly in determining whether a ball lands over a large fence or in front of the fence, or on one side of an enormous neon-colored pole or the other. Rather than relying on replay, baseball is considering whether to gauge home runs by watching to see if the ball goes over the large fence and on one side of the nearest enormous neon-colored pole.
The N.C.A.A. may eliminate the use of instant replay. The outcomes of the games are not important, an N.C.A.A. spokesman said, because what matters most is that the athletes get a good education. Human fallibility is a worthy lesson, he added.
The impetus for all the changes came from last summer's United States Olympic track and field trials, during which Allyson Felix and Jeneba Tarmoh tied in the 100 meters. No number of replays — or discussions over the exact location of the torso — could discern a winner.
The delay was not minutes, but days. Finally, the answer came straight from the schoolyard: a do-over.
Alas, a runoff never happened; Tarmoh declined to take part.
Still, it made sports executives realize that if we simply had the final answer in the first place, fans would not be forced to wait for the result. The solution, in front of us all along, is simply to make replay the game itself.
* * *
What Might Have Been, or Still Could Be
By Barry Bearak
When Derrick Rose went down with a torn-up left knee, it was hard not to contemplate the career he might never have: the lost Most Valuable Player awards and the never-to-be-won N.B.A. titles. The Chicago Bulls announcer Stacey King liked to describe the electrifying Rose as "too big, too strong, too fast, too good."
Was he now to add "too sad"?
The post-Michael Jordan Bulls were a dismal, star-crossed team, suffering a decade of mediocrity until a gust of good luck blew their way. In the 2008 draft, the team vaulted from the No. 9 spot to No. 1, hitting the jackpot when they had only a 1.7 percent chance to win the lottery.
Rose, a 19-year-old point guard and Chicago native, became the rookie of the year and then an All-Star, then the league's youngest M.V.P. ever, leading the Bulls to the N.B.A.'s best record two years in a row. He was also likable in a Windy City sort of way: not a preening, partying prima donna, but a guy who squared his big shoulders and quietly went about his business.
In the strike-shortened 2011-12 season, Rose missed 27 of the 66 games with injuries that seemed to skip up and down his lower extremities: the foot, the ankle, the knee, the groin. But he was healthy in April when the playoffs began, and in the first game of the opening series, the top-seeded Bulls were easily beating the Philadelphia 76ers.
Then, with 1 minute 22 seconds left and Chicago ahead by 12, Rose moved toward the hoop with the ball, cutting right in his customary whirligig fashion, though this time awkwardly planting his left foot on the floor. He heard a pop. He had torn the anterior cruciate ligament.
Rose writhed in pain. The arena went silent. And the long months of wondering began. Would a reborn Derrick Rose with a rebuilt knee ever again come gyrating through the lane — too big, too strong, too fast, too good — looking every bit as amazing as the original?
* * *
No Place to Hide When a Ball Comes Back
By Tyler Kepner
It was an ordinary pitch, 91 miles per hour on the outside corner, not much different from the 1,651 others Brandon McCarthy had thrown last season. From the press box at Oakland Coliseum that September afternoon, it looked for an instant like a routine single to center by the Angels' Erick Aybar.
But the ball never got there. It crashed into the back of McCarthy's head. He tried to escape its path but could not react in time. McCarthy, then with the Athletics, crumpled to the ground. It was a moment that made you wince — "It was really hard to see," his opponent, Dan Haren, said after the game — but McCarthy sat up almost instantly, running his hands through his hair, and he walked off the field. Disaster averted.
Again, a wrong assumption, or nearly so. McCarthy was taken to a hospital for a precautionary examination, and soon, he was in surgery. The line drive had fractured his skull and caused an epidural hemorrhage and brain contusion. McCarthy recovered but missed the rest of the season.
The next month, across the bay in San Francisco in Game 2 of the World Series, another tall and lanky right-hander threw another pitch destined for danger. Doug Fister of the Detroit Tigers took a liner off the right side of his head from the Giants' Gregor Blanco. Yet Fister did not even fall. After an exam on the mound, he kept pitching.
"Got a little bump," he said by his locker, casually. "Other than that, there's nothing."
The events were harrowing reminders of the destructive force of a batted ball, and the varying consequences of two hits that may look the same. McCarthy was lucky to be alive; Fister was luckier still. But a first-base coach in the minors, Mike Coolbaugh, was killed by a foul ball in 2007. Now all base coaches in the minors and the majors wear helmets.
After Fister was struck, the Fox broadcaster Tim McCarver raised on the air the possibility of pitchers' wearing helmets. Some players lampooned the idea on Twitter, but in December, ESPN reported that baseball was working with six companies designing protective headgear for pitchers. A selection of prototypes could be available in time for spring training.
Hitters have been slow to accept safer, oversize helmets, and a padded pitcher's cap would seem to face similar resistance. Pitchers depend on precise, repetitive movements and will be wary of anything disruptive. Besides, nobody wants to look funny.
Comfort, style and safety are often competing interests. Sometimes, though, they could come together to save a pitcher's life. Let's hope it happens soon.Continue reading the main story