The Chicago Cubs and the city of Cleveland won championships in 2016, making this officially The Year of Frozen Margaritas in Hell.
Pigs flew. The sun rose in the west. Chardonnay married prime rib. And the Cubs won a World Series.
Meanwhile, there, longingly, was Atlanta. (Motto: Resurgens, which loosely translated from the Latin means, “New stadiums for everyone”).
Team-building remained problematic here, even as building-building boomed. If only hotel guests and rental car customers could be soaked for something truly needed, like an edgy defensive tackle.
The construction cranes rose around us like dandelions after a summer rain, as work on the Braves and Falcons new digs reached critical stages. The Hawks will be staying put, instead unveiling a Bruce Jenner-scale remodel of Philips Arena.
Long-sufferers in many precincts except Atlanta were made whole, though, in 2016.
Which leads us to the theme of the year.
The Once-Every-Centennial-Or-So Championship
Reversing 108 years of comic/tragic history, the Cubs provided the signature moment of 2016. They overcame both Joe Maddon and a 3-1 deficit to Cleveland and bagged themselves a World Series. Thus did this franchise ruin a carefully cultivated image as the lovable loser. Homer Simpson is not supposed to get his MBA, but that’s kind of what happened in this case.
Weep not for Cleveland. The World Series would have been overkill. The Mistake on the Lake hadn’t won anything since Jim Brown was in shoulder pads (1964). And then LeBron James, after a front-running fling on South Beach, came home and mended fences. His Cavs rallied over Golden State in the NBA Finals and for about 36 hours Cleveland was a garden spot.
The madness spread overseas, where Leicester City won the Premier League (that’s soccer) despite going off at 5000-to-1 to start the season. Among those things considered more likely to happen, according to the London Daily Mirror, was Hugh Hefner admitting he was a virgin (just 1,000-to-1).
The team had never won anything and had about 1/10 the payroll of the rich clubs. We soccer illiterates over here were told this championship was akin to the U.S. Olympic hockey victory over Russia in 1980 — if the U.S. had put skates on a Fort Lauderdale high school pep band.
After such landscape-altering events, it was difficult for alternate themes to compete for attention in 2016. But here are some that gamely tried:
The Big Eulogy
Saying goodbye is never easy. Especially so with the death this year of a trio of the greatest sports icons of our time.
“My friends, only once in a thousand years or so do we get to hear a Mozart, or see a Picasso, read a Shakespeare. Ali was one of them, and yet at his heart, he was still a kid from Louisville who ran with the gods and walked with the crippled and smiled at the foolishness of it all. He is gone, but he will never die.” — Comedian Billy Crystal at the funeral of Muhammad Ali, June 10.
“I simply ask you to remember when Arnold Palmer touched your life, touched your heart. And please don’t forget why.
“He was the king of our sport. And he always will be.” — Jack Nicklaus at the funeral of Arnold Palmer, Oct. 4.
“He always looked so effortless, whether he was skating, swinging a golf club, chopping wood or wielding his favorite tool, a sledge hammer. Even in his last years, as his balance waned, the few times that he fell, he rolled gracefully and popped back up with a grin.” — Son Murray Howe at the funeral of his father, Mr. Hockey, Gordie Howe, June 15.
The Strained Goodbye
Here was the Braves’ great conundrum: How to bid a heart-felt farewell to Turner Field when the team had produced no stirring championship memories there and organizationally they wanted nothing more than to abandon the place for their sweetheart stadium in the suburbs? It was like trying to throw a good-bye party for someone you just dumped by text message.
The Braves put on a nice show for the home crowd. Each game was marked by a ceremonial countdown, in which someone took down a number representing the games left in the doomed place — like ripping off a Band-Aid 81 times.
For the final home game, the team went all out, wringing one last sell-out from the place before throwing it away, filling it with every dignitary except the one for whom the place was named (Ted Turner). Showing next year’s customers the only certain way to deal with the traffic, Hank Aaron had a police escort as he delivered home plate to the new Cobb County stadium.
In a related good-bye: Cobb County voted out the commission chairman, Tim Lee, the magician most responsible for bringing a whole ballpark in through the back door.
The Reminder: This is Why We Watch
Sometimes you may wonder about all the time you spend watching other people play. People often making more in a week than you will in a half a lifetime (some college athletes excepted). People whose flaws seem to be on human growth hormone. People who consider it your privilege to gaze upon their many splendors.
Then Henrik Stenson and Phil Mickelson engage in one of the great golfing duels at the British Open (Stenson shooting 63 to win his first major, bettering Mickelson’s Sunday 65).
Then, through limited contributions of his own, Peyton Manning goes out on top, winning a Super Bowl before retiring to a life of annoying us during every commercial timeout.
Then Alabama closes out yet another national championship with a wild back-and-forth win over Clemson. Is a combined 40 points in the fourth quarter enough for you, short-attention-span America?
Then Usain Bolt races the wind and wins. Again. Twice (not counting the Olympic relay). Wow.
Then we are reminded that greatness conforms to no one template. Whether it was 4-foot-9 dynamo Simone Biles clearing every towering expectation on the way to Olympic gymnastics all-around gold (with four other medals weighing her down as well). Or 6-5 aquaman Michael Phelps finishing off his collection of 28 Olympic medals with six more fished from the Rio pool. His final, drop-the-mike, gold medal swim was a dominant butterfly leg in the 400-medley relay.
Then America reasserts its long-lost dominance in team golf, winning the Ryder Cup for the first time since 2008 and for only the third time in two decades. A real one-two punch for those Europeans. First Brexit then that.
Then the Falcons’ offense becomes a flashing, ringing arcade amusement, or Kris Jenkins beats the buzzer to lift Villanova over North Carolina for a basketball championship or the UConn women become the most dominant basketball brand of forever, or Jimmie Johnson wins a seventh series championship in big-time racin’, tying the accomplishments of two fairly familiar drivers, Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt.
And you take a deep breath and say, “Oh, that’s why I watch,” and sink back down into that warm dent in the couch.
The New Sheriffs in Town
In his first season as the flagship college coach in Georgia, Kirby Smart was undefeated with the state legislature, helping to inspire a change in the state’s open records law, making it just a little bit tougher for you or the recruiting coordinator in Knoxville to snoop into his business. As if his methods were launch codes.
He was somewhat less effective with the SEC. The Bulldogs gave up a Hail Mary against Tennessee, lost for the third consecutive year to rival Florida and committed football’s ultimate sin: Losing to Vanderbilt. All topped off with a loss to Georgia Tech. Call this Smart’s redshirt year.
The Braves stumbled out of the gate, and at 9-28, fired manager Fredi Gonzalez. Come on down Brian Snitker, one of the all-time company men, 40 years performing various inglorious tasks in secondary cities before being named interim manager. His young team with the dubious starting staff finished 59-65 and, lo, the Braves removed the interim modifier from Snitker’s title. Sometimes the good guy gets his.
Technological institutes must cope with constant, rapid change, else they go the way of the flip phone. Thus it was at Georgia Tech, where athletic director Mike Bobinski suddenly left for Purdue, to no chorus of praise (the kazoo was more the instrument of choice). His replacement was named within a month — a man with Tech microchip built into his soul, Todd Stansbury.
In another staffing move, Tech hired an endless, alternative source of energy named Josh Pastner to be its men’s basketball coach.
The Activist Athlete
Colin Kaepernick was a formerly formidable quarterback who had forgotten how to play soon after signing a big contract and was benched by his wretched team at the start of the NFL season.
And then he sat, and then knelt, during the National Anthem.
Suddenly Kaepernick was a national figure, who made the cover of Time, posing on one knee. He promised to continue his no-standing stance until “there’s significant change and I feel like that flag represents what it’s supposed to represent in this country.” As punishment, he eventually recaptured his starting job, and found it equally difficult to stand behind the San Francisco offensive line.
This sparked a sweeping soul-search among our players, many of whom devised various displays during the anthem. It’s not supposed to be that hard, but just standing and rocking impatiently for two minutes was so 2015.
And while all these voices no really cared to hear were raised, the one voice we’d listen to forever if we could — that belonging to Dodgers announcer Vin Scully — retired.
The Wrong-Headed Media
Boy, did we get the big story wrong in a big way.
Media reports in advance of the Summer Games in Brazil painted it as an impending health, ecological and societal disaster. When in truth, Rio came off as not nearly the Zika-ridden, crime-ravaged open sewage drain that it was made out to be.
The big story of the Summer Games was that there was no big story to validate the media fears.
Oh, and there was that election thing, too.
The Homecoming
It was a very good year for the hometown-themed feel-good story.
After a wasted half season, Marietta’s Dansby Swanson and his hair was called up to the big-league Braves. He immediately became one of the leading personalities on the team. And it turned out he could hit a little, also.
Atlanta’s Dwight Howard and his biceps were signed by the Hawks to add some interior substance to the recipe. He was as tall as advertised but otherwise results are pending.
They know your pain, Atlanta fans. But can they do anything to alleviate it?
The Usual Dumb Stuff
At the NFL Scouting Combine, Falcons assistant Marquand Manual asks Ohio State’s Eli Apple: “Do you like men?” Apologies rained following what could have been a violation of both federal employment law and NFL anti-discrimination policies… Demonstrating the affects that too much exposure to chlorine can have on the brain, swimmer Ryan Lochte manufactures a tale of being robbed in Rio during the Games, creating an international incident, all to mask some of his own hijinks… A Green Bay fan marries a woman named Packer and takes her last name… Serena Williams makes herself ill after taste-testing her dog’s gourmet canned food just hours before reaching the quarterfinals of the Italian Open. “I thought, ‘What the heck, I’m gonna try a piece, it looks good,’” she explained. Thankfully she doesn’t own a pet snake, because dislocating her jaw to swallow the mouse whole would definitely throw her off her game… Tom Brady serves his four-game suspension for using an under-inflated ball and otherwise irking NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. The Patriots go 3-1 in his absence and Brady scores a Foot Locker commercial subtly mocking the whole thing. Face it, he can’t be beaten… Former Cardinals executive Christopher Correa is found to have hacked the Houston Astros personnel data base back in 2013…Further proof that technology is the great leveler of us all: Ole Miss lineman Laremy Tunsil drops in the draft after Twitter images of him smoking dope in a gas mask and incriminating messages between himself and a Rebels staffer go public…The Warriors’ Draymond Green is revealed to be a serial crotch-kicker. Contrary to everything they’ve been coached to do, opposing big men are advised to play with their hands protectively low.
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