The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Cleveland also ends misery in a 2016 of triumph, intrigue and exiting legends.
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-EveryCentennial-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 5,000-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 1,000-1).
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