Recapping 2018

What can I say about the last 12 months in sports?  Just like any other year, 2018 was memorable in its own right.  We saw the continuation of an NBA dynasty, an all-time great team in Boston, the greatest inaugural season by an expansion team ever, and long-suffering fan bases finally get to celebrate championships.  After thinking we might never see another Triple Crown, we had our second in five years.  And two all-time greats rose back to the top of their respective sports.  Oh, yeah, there was an Olympics and a World Cup, too.

January was kinda uneventful.  New York hosted the Winter Classic, Alabama won its 35th consecutive College Football Playoff National Championship and Caroline Wozniacki finally became a Grand Slam champion.  Roger Federer, meanwhile, defended his Australian Open title on the men's side.

Then came February and a play called the "Philly Special."  Every Super Bowl has its defining play, and that was certainly it in Super Bowl LII.  A touchdown pass to the quarterback that lifted the Eagles to their first Super Bowl title!  Less than a week later, the Winter Olympics started, and PyeongChang provided plenty of memorable moments.  The two I'll always hold above the rest are the USA men's curling team's gold medal and that wonderful victory scream by Jessie Diggins.  Russia also won (but not really) the NHL-less men's hockey tournament that saw Germany make it all the way to the gold medal game.

March was also somewhat quiet.  My girlfriend Sandi Morris did win her first World Championship, at World Indoors in Birmingham, but the Madness didn't really get that mad until the end of the month/beginning of April, when Notre Dame's Arike Ogunbowale had one of the most insane Final Fours ever, hitting the game-winner against UConn in the semis before winning the national title with a buzzer beater against Mississippi State.  And Loyola-Chicago made the men's Final Four.

Tiger Woods didn't win the Masters, but he was in contention, which was the first indication that his injury issues might be behind him.  He may not be the Tiger of Old.  But, for at least one year, he was relevant again.  The NHL regular season also ended in April, and the Vegas Golden Knights closed out their inaugural year as the Pacific Division champions.  Desiree Linden won the Boston Marathon in the rain, becoming the first American woman in 33 years to do so.  April ended with the NFL Draft, and the Browns began their ascent back into being an actual professional football team by taking Baker Mayfield first overall.

Justify got May underway by winning the Kentucky Derby.  That was just the start of a magical five-week run that ended with the 13th Triple Crown in history.  Clay Boy also began his run to his 29th straight French Open title, while Simona Halep followed Woz's lead and won her first Grand Slam crown on the red clay of Roland Garros.  And Will Power made me look smart by winning the Indy 500 after I picked him to for like the fifth year in a row.

NBC calls late May/early June "Championship Season," and it's easy to see why.  Justify finished off the Triple Crown in June.  And Alex Ovechkin won the award for Celebration of the Year after clinching the Stanley Cup in June...against a Golden Knights squad that had an inaugural season that shattered all expectations and set a new bar for all future expansion teams.  The Warriors also won their annual NBA Finals matchup with LeBron in June.  Also in June, Brooks Koepka became the first repeat U.S. Open winner in 30 years.

Wimbledon had a historic 11-hour semifinal Friday before crowning Angelique Kerber and Novak Djokovic as champions.  That crazy month-long soccer tournament in Russia ended the same mid-summer weekend as Wimbledon.  In an unpredictable World Cup that saw all of the favorites fall by the wayside early on, France, which was the best team all month, emerged as champions over an entertaining and inspiring Croatian squad made an impressive run to the final.  The United States wasn't there, but was announced as the primary host of the 2026 event, which softened the blow a little bit.  The Rugby World Cup Sevens was held in San Francisco like a week later, and the stands were packed all three days.  Meanwhile, the MLB All*Star Game in Washington featured 10 home runs by 10 different players.

August is usually a pretty hectic month, but, this being the non-Olympic even year, August 2018 was actually pretty light.  That doesn't mean nothing happened, though.  The United States qualified for the first Olympic softball tournament in 12 years by winning the gold medal at the World Championships.  We also had one of the most bizarre Hall of Fame inductions ever when T.O. decided to (surprise, surprise) make his all about himself and hold his own ceremony instead of joining the rest of the Class in Canton.

A lot of headlines were made at the US Open.  Serena Williams was at the center of the controversy with her little temper tantrum in the women's final that completely overshadowed Naomi Osaka's dominant performance.  There was a lot of hope that the Americans would finally win a Ryder Cup in Europe for the first time since 1993.  Those hopes were quickly dashed.  The United States did, however, continue its reign in women's basketball, winning the World Cup for the third straight time.

October, of course, means, first and foremost, playoff baseball.  The Boston Red Sox put together a season for the ages, winning 108 games in the regular season.  Their postseason was just as dominant, and they capped their historic campaign with their fourth World Series title in 15 years.  The 2018 World Series also gave us an incredible Game 3 marathon that took 18 innings and seven-and-a-half hours before the Dodgers won.  Speaking of LA, LeBron left Cleveland for the second time and signed with the Lakers.  We'll have to wait until 2019 to figure out how he'll represent the Eastern Conference in the Finals for the ninth straight year.

Also in October, the U.S. women made sure they wouldn't have the same issue as the men's team by securing their place in the 2019 Women's World Cup.  Simone Biles returned to competition and picked up right where she left off, winning four golds, a silver and a bronze (in six events) at the World Championships.

As usual, the NASCAR champion was crowned in November.  This time it was Joey Logano clinching the title with a victory in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.  Other than that, things were generally pretty slow in November and December, as we look forward to the Women's World Cup and all of the other events ahead in 2019.  The biggest news over the last two months has been Seattle getting an NHL expansion team to start play in 2021-22 and the 2026 Winter Olympics coming down to bids from Italy and Sweden.

Sadly, some of the issues that plagued sports in 2017 continued into 2018.  Russia was suspended from the PyeongChang Olympics because of its doping problems.  Doping problems that still linger.  Larry Nassar's victims were finally heard and began to get justice, while Colin Kaepernick and the NFL anthem controversy still hasn't gone away.

We also mourned the losses of history-makers (Roger Bannister) and pioneers (David Pearson), Olympic champions (Irina Szewinska) and Hall of Famers (Jim Taylor, Willie McCovey, Stan Mikita), coaches (Chuck Knox) and team owners (Tom Benson, Paul Allen, Bob McNair), legendary broadcasters (Keith Jackson) and a sports-loving former President (George Bush), as well as a trio of college athletes who died way too young (Tyler Hilinski, Celia Barquin Arozamena, Lauren McCluskey), along with so many others.

That was 2018.  Who knows what 2019 has in store?  But as one year ends and another begins, it's a pretty safe bet that 2019 will provide us with plenty of memorable moments, too.