SURPRISES were hard to find in all of the sustained excellence of 2005.
The Patriots won the Super Bowl for the third time in four years and the Spurs the NBA title for the second time in three. USC’s football team has won 34 straight games. North Carolina had the most future pros in college basketball, so it was time for Roy Williams to finally win a national championship.
Even the one event of seeming cosmic significance, the White Sox winning the World Series for the first time since 1917, didn’t boggle the mind as it would have even two seasons earlier. The Red Sox taught us in 2004 that there is are no such things as curses, and besides, Chicago’s one loss over three series suggested even inevitability as well.
Probably the year’s best attempt at novelty, the Colts’ run for the NFL’s first undefeated season since 1972, fell short by three games. We knew too well it would be too hard, especially in a year shockers were a tough find.
There was one, Giacomo at 50-to-1 in the Kentucky Derby. But even in the most heart-stopping event of the year, the Belmont Stakes, Preakness winner Afleet Alex’s death-defying recovery from a stumble reaffirmed that the horse nipped at the Derby wire was the best three-year-old all along.
Rumors of Tiger Woods’ decline were squashed with majors Nos. 9 and 10 at the Masters and British Open, while the LPGA’s dragon lady, Annika Sorenstam, won 10 more tournaments and two majors. Someone else can now win the Tour de France Lance Armstrong took for a seventh time before retiring.
Meanwhile, Roger Federer was going 81-4 en route to wins at Wimbledon and Flushing Meadows. It was a matter of time that Kim Clijsters, set back by injuries and four previous losses in slam finals, would break through for her first major at the U.S. Open, but the Williams sisters, who now dabble at tennis like a hobby, were still talented enough to win a major apiece.
Nothing new there, or when walking time bombs Terrell Owens and Ron Artest wore out further welcomes and were banished. Nevertheless, do not count on 2005 being remembered as the year the owners took back sports from overindulged players because there will always be teams with holes bigger than the ones in Owens’ and Artest’s heads.
Another seeming managerial triumph was the capitulation of the hockey players to a salary cap following a season-long lockout. But television rights remain relatively worthless and despite artificial attempts to jack up scoring by turning the games into power-play contests, clubs suffering for attendance re-opened no better off.
The best-run league, the NFL, lost a conscience in Wellington Mara, as did New York a beloved patriarch. After one of the last owners whose business was only his team passed on, partner Robert Tisch did too, but the team will stay in the hands of John Mara and his pioneering family, reassuring in a year when so many immortals went to final rest.
The toll included George Mikan, the NBA’s first great big man; Jim Parker, one of the first stars of the offensive line; Army Heisman Trophy winner Glenn Davis; plus icons of both harness racing, Stanley Dancer, and bowling, Dick Weber.
Innovative Hank Stram, immortalized by a Kansas City Super Bowl triumph that reaffirmed the equality of the AFL even as it was being absorbed, died, as did Dr. John McMullen, who brought the Devils to New Jersey and owned them through two championships. Max Schmeling, forced by his times to play the villain and make America look at Joe Louis, a black heavyweight champion, as less the heavy, passed away, as did Al Lopez, the manager of the only two teams that interrupted the Yankees’ Fifties dynasty.
Donn Clendenon, forever associated with the miracle 1969 Mets, needed one in his long fight with cancer and didn’t get it. Gene Mauch carried two of baseball’s greatest collapses to his grave like Mickey Owen of the Brooklyn Dodgers did a fateful World Series passed ball.
Inspirations like Sam Mills, the linebacker and coach, and Steve Courson, who spoke out against steroid abuse from his own experience, unlike Jose Canseco for profit, died too soon. So did Hawks center Jason Collier and George Best, once the best and most flamboyant soccer player in the world; as well as jack-of-all-trades sportscaster Chris Schenkel, championship Jets corner Johnny Sample, and Alex Shibicky, a Ranger who invented the slap shot and willed their 1940 Cup on a broken ankle.
A golf course, appropriately St. Andrews, saw Jack Nicklaus play his final competitive round. Football fields lost both the NFL’s all-time rusher, Emmitt Smith and receiver, Jerry Rice; and the basketball courts said goodbye to the NBA’s third-all-time leading scorer, Karl Malone. The hockey lockout multiplied losses like Mark Messier, who delivered in 1994 and became the most beloved Ranger of all time, and Scott Stevens, the future Hall of Fame bellwether of three Devil Cups.
For one year, that’s a lot of losses, but among them was not our innocence. The scandals of 2005, like its championships, didn’t drop jaws. To winks and nods, Mark McGwire essentially pleaded no contest in Congress to steroid use. And when the finger-pointing denials of Rafael Palmeiro, who had just passed 3,000 hits, exploded in a positive test, it only confirmed what big torsos were trying to tell us all along.
Under threats from grandstanding congressmen, baseball toughed suspensions and naively declared its drug problem solved, even though the Olympics have proven that there can be no ultimate triumph in that war. Back in 2006 will come Barry Bonds, whose chase of Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron was delayed by knee problems, to make baseball uncomfortable again in its own skin and reaffirm 2005 as relatively perfunctory.
jay.greenberg@nypost.com
PERFORMER OF THE YEAR
Tiki Barber bears only 200 pounds and, even after nine seasons of pounding, an incredible responsibility for the Giants’ resurgence. Never seems to get tired, much unlike waiting for American League MVP Alex Rodriguez to come through in big playoff moments.
DUD OF THE YEAR
Carlos Beltran, Jaret Wright and Doug Jolley made this was quite a field of bad dreams. And why limit it to newcomers since, following Stephon Marbury’s December 31 declaration of himself as the NBA’s best point guard, the Knicks went 24-56 (not counting Friday’s game) for the calendar year. Still nobody created a bigger hole on his team than did Carl Pavano, a $40 million pitcher against whom opponents batted .315 before a June shoulder shutdown.
TEAM OF THE YEAR
So far, the Giants haven’t won anything more than the bare playoff spot the Yankees did. But football expectations were lower, making the rise seem higher.
FIND OF THE YEAR
The Rangers’ Petr Prucha was a 240th-overall choice, but many picks prove incorrectly slotted. Whenever has a pitcher nine years removed from his last major-league win gone 10-0 as Aaron Small did?
GAME OF THE YEAR
The Giants went to Wellington Mara’s funeral, then buried Washington with their emotions. But Mara was 37 years old in 1953, which was the last time they cut a win closer than the 24-23 victory over Denver on Eli Manning’s touchdown pass to Amani Toomer with five seconds remaining.
ROOKIE OF THE YEAR
Channing Frye has obvious adjustments to make. And a little too much air showed up in the head of Robinson Cano. Henrik Lundqvist is giving the Rangers a chance at a season absolutely nobody thought they would have.
PLAY OF THE TEAR
Tiki Barber broke six tackles, including two by Sammy Knight, in a 41-yard touchdown run against Kansas City. Considering the Giants’ battered state and the import of the game, that beat even visual stunners like Vince Carter’s 360-degree spin and finger roll at the Staples Center on Jan. 18, Derek’s Jeter’s back-to-the-diamond catch and dive over Cano at Yankee Stadium on May 25 and David Wright’s over-the-shoulder, falling, barehanded grab in San Diego on Aug. 9.
MANAGEMENT MOVE OF THE YEAR
The Antonio Pierce signing by Ernie Accorsi restored the Giant defense while taking a key player off a division rival. Pedro Martinez provided the Mets a needed personality, but not yet contention.
MANAGEMENT BLUNDER OF THE YEAR
Pavano and Jaret Wright will give the Yankees innings long before Isiah Thomas provides logical justification for five years of Jerome James at $33 million, $60 million counting the luxury tax.
MANAGER/COACH OF THE YEAR
From 11-19, Joe Torre kept his hands calmly on the wheel, no thanks to (or from) George Steinbrenner. But a smarter, more supple Tom Coughlin has reinvented himself and the Giants probably a year ahead of expectations.
TURNAROUND OF THE YEAR
Jason Giambi had three homers and six RBIs after 27 games, slugged 29 and 81 in his final 112. We’ll still go with old dog Tom Glavine, who has never cheated baseball or himself, learning new tricks at age 39 to record the third-lowest ERA (2.22) of any pitcher in baseball after the All-Star break.
EXECUTIVE OF THE YEAR
All Omar Minaya has proven so far is that he can sign big names by giving them more money and years than probably they can earn. Ernie Accorsi works under a cap he feathered in 2005 with Pierce, Plaxico Burress, Jay Feely, Kareem McKenzie, and even retread Kendrick Clancy.
FIASCO OF THE YEAR
Gary Sheffield and Bubba Crosby collided and a do-or-die game Game 5 rolled away, a fate more self-imposed than Chad Pennington and Jay Fiedler going out for the season seven plays apart. Dishonorable mention to the Knicks for blowing a seven-point lead in the final 48 seconds of February loss at Sacramento.
HEARTWARMING SIGHT OF THE YEAR
Shea’s nightly outpouring for Mike Piazza, who wasn’t coming back, edges Yankee Stadium’s September lovefest for Bernie Williams, who will return. The best story was Giant Rich Seubert’s return more than two years after his leg shattered. Occupational hazard, like offensive linemen never getting standing ovations they deserve.
WRENCHING SIGHT OF THE YEAR
Mike Cameron and Carlos Beltran down and Cameron not getting up. At least Lenny Wilkens, reading a forced, phony resignation statement in a trembling voice, could walk away with more wins than any coach in NBA history, plus every penny.
UNFATHOMABLE SIGHT OF THE YEAR
Marek Malik, with 27 career goals in 491 games, ended a 15-round shootout by scoring between his own legs, then shrugged as if to say: What else did we expect?
