The Best Things in Sports - 2005

Ah, what a year in sports.

1. Two teams which were not named New York Yankees or the Boston Red Sox played in the World Series.

2. One team, the Chicago White Sox, made the nation's second-most self-absorbed fans, Cubbies, feel even worse.

3. Major league baseball created the "World Baseball Classic" so that Latin American players who play in the U.S. most of the year earning millions of American dollars before millions of American fans could pretend to represent another country for a couple of weeks.

4. It's now possible for me to follow the first few innings of a S.F. Giants road game over the Internet, follow the middle innings driving home on my car radio and catch the conclusion over cable television when I get home; proving that the 21st century knows how to give a man what he really needs (we can cure cancer in the 22nd century, unless a beer commercial is on.)

5. Fans who would boo Santa Claus, in Philadelphia, got to taste the bitter dregs of coming oh, so close, in the Super Bowl.

6. Those same fans had to put up with Terrell Owens, whose individual self-absorption could swallow Boston and north Chicago without burping.

7. Pro football lost a still highly rated Monday night game on universal broadcast and few cared because it's just flipping places with now-almost universal Sunday night cable.

8. The New Orleans Saints promised to not move to Los Angeles; sparing us a name, "Los Angeles Saints", which would be almost, but not quite, as ridiculous as "Utah Jazz".

9. The NBA once again proved it's nothing but a bunch of overpaid thugs supported by clueless overpaid fans.

10. Sacramento, California, still refused to be suckered into spending over a quarter of a million tax dollars so the millionaire owners of the Kings basketball team could pay its millionaire players.

11. There was no professional hockey of any consequence for the first half of the year.

12. Soccer continued to prove that if there's one thing Americans are smart about, it's that kicking a ball back and forth and back and forth and back and forth is a great Saturday morning exercise for your nine-year-old but nothing true sports fans should take seriously.

13. Any population which can afford to spend this much time and money amusing itself through pro sports proves itself truly blessed.