2015 The Year In Review

2015 was quite a year in sports. A horse named American Pharoah won the first Triple Crown in 37 years. Two tennis players and one golfer almost won Grand Slams. The four major sports of baseball, basketball, football and hockey produced some solid, worthy champions. All in all, it was a pretty good sporting year.

Major League Baseball

Last year’s World Series losing team, the Kansas City Royals, won the 2015 World Series with the most come from behind wins during the playoffs of any team in playoff history. They did it with a combination of okay starting pitching, great relief pitching and timely hitting that featured more singles and aggressive base running than it did power hitting. It showed that a team that could put the bat on the ball and keep the ball in play could rally and beat other teams that had more big bats and thumpers than they had. They became the success model that most teams next year will try to copy.

Pro Basketball

LeBron James and his new team the Cleveland Cavaliers were in the finals again. What else is new? He could probably lead any Eastern Division team into the finals. His problem is that there are about four or five teams in the Western Division that are as good as his Cavs. The Golden State Warriors advanced to the finals, after beating out the Clippers, Spurs, Grizzlies and Rockets. There the Warriors lost two of their first three finals games before sweeping the final three from Cleveland. To prove that it was no fluke, the Warriors have won 28 of their first 29 games so far this season. Their next opponent is history, as in being in the best team of all time conversation.

College Basketball

Kentucky spent the entire 2014-15 season as an unbeaten team that was talked about as if they were one of the greatest teams in college basketball history. They were so much better than everyone else, some people thought they would waltz to the championship. There were probably only two teams that could stand up to Kentucky and beat them. Wisconsin and Duke. Well, in a shocker, Wisconsin up and beat Kentucky. Then Duke, in the finals, beat Wisconsin and won another title. Duke and Kentucky get the best recruits every year. Chances are they will be there again when the next Final Four arrives.

Pro Hockey

In 2015, the Chicago Black Hawks showed why the sport of hockey knows that they are the team to beat each and every year that they enter the playoffs. They did not finish with the best record in the league and they did not have home ice advantage for some of their series. All they did was bump their game to a higher level than any of the other teams. All they did was become an unbeatable team (over a series) once the playoffs began. All they did was win their third Stanley Cup in the last five years.

Golf

2015 was the year that Jordan Spieth jumped right to the top of the men’s world rankings, ahead of Rory McIlroy, who started the year at number one, and Jason Day, the guy that was so hot at the end of the year that he won the PGA and three other events in a six tournament span. The three golfers, all young and in their 20’s, jumped out there in the forefront of golf to become a new age “Big Three” to remind people of the great days of other such “Big Three’s as Hogan, Snead and Nelson, or Palmer, Nicklaus and Player. Golf fans cannot wait for the new season to see what happens next.

Tennis

We all know how Serena Williams dominated women’s tennis, winning her three majors and just missing out on completing the Grand Slam. We also saw Novak Djokovic finish the year out as the number one player in men’s tennis, with him winning three out of the four majors and showing in hia head to head matches with Federer that the Federer – Nadal duo at the top of the pyramid has just been replaced by a new sheriff in town. Every time Federer seemed like he might win a major, Djokovic smacked him down and put him in his place. Nadal, beset by injuries, was nowhere to be seen in the majors.

Boxing

Ronda Rousey kicked everybody’s ass in women’s mixed martial arts for most of the year. She was starting to get talked about as the most unbeatable fighter in sports. Then, she fought someone named Holly Holm and got HER ass kicked in what was described as a huge upset. So much for unbeatable. Floyd Mayweather Jr. stayed “unbeatable” as he fought Manny Pacquiao in a hyped up “fight of the century” that turned out to be a lot of moving, dancing and fancy footwork from Mayweather (which produced a unanimous win by decision), and not a whole lot of forceful punching, with boxing once again proving that it’s not always who kicks the other guy’s ass, but rather who knows how to win by not getting hit. Floyd Mayweather seems more at home on “Dancing With The Stars” than in the middle of a fight.

Soccer

The United States won the Women’s World Cup. In the rest of the world, more than a billion people still love the sport of soccer. Oh, and the leadership of FIFA became an even bigger embarrassment. For the longest time, FIFA Presdient Sepp Blatter has fired damn near every underling in his organization for the bribes, payouts and all around racketeering and corruption they have been dabbling in. Now, Blatter has been busted. If you look in a dictionary and look up the word slime, you would see Blatter’s picture. FIFA continues to suck big time.

Other Sports

2015 was a non-Olympic year, so it was more of a training-type of year for athletes to get themselves ready for things like the Rio Olympics in 2016. Two Olympic legends, track star Usain Bolt and swimmer Michael Phelps both had their moments in 2015, with Bolt winning another trio of World Championships of track 100/200 meters (and 400m relay) gold medals and Phelps winning a couple of his favorite events in fast times at a major U.S. National swimming event to show that both stars are on track to be major factors at the next Games.

College Football

Early in the year, Ohio State won the collegiate football national championship in a playoff system of four teams (that included Alabama, Florida State and Oregon) that finally produced a champion on the field, and NOT a mythical national champion that won out in a poll of voters. This year’s college football season has produced a final four of Alabama, Clemson, Michigan State and Oklahoma, who will fight it out to produce the next champion in early 2016. Funny how you could have looked at the powers of college football in the 1970’s and seen a whole lot of highly ranked, championship teams from Alabama and Oklahoma. The more things change in college football, the more they stay the same.

Pro Football

The New England Patriots defeated the Seattle Seahawks in an ultra exciting Super Bowl that truly came down to the last play of the game. Trailing 28 to 24, the Seahawks drove all the way down the field to the New England one yard line, and with just a few seconds (and a time out) left, they seemed destined run the ball in and score the winning touchdown to win the game. They instead surprised everyone by throwing a slant pass at the goal line that was intercepted by New England to preserve the Super Bowl win. New England spent the entire off season as Super Bowl champions when they should have spent it as the Super Bowl losers. Sometimes, it all comes down to one play.

And such is the way of sports. You play the games. People make plays. There are winners and losers. Everybody wants to win, but somebody has to lose. There’s not that much difference between the two. No matter how much people want to claim they are experts, it still comes down to which players on the field of battle makes the plays and produces the shots that determines who wins and who doesn’t. You can’t always predict it. THEY decide it on the field. And that’s what makes it fun.