You might have mentioned that history of another sort was made in Detroit. The Lions became the first NFL team ever to go 0-16. The '62 Mets were nearly mediocre by comparison.

Q: How do you keep lions out of your back yard?

A: Put up some goalposts back there.

He was acquitted, but just to be safe, ban him for life anyway? Good thinking.

I have no idea if he did it or not. Neither do you.

However, if he was found guilty of rape, then, yes, he should have been banned.

I thought you might have forgotten who won the World Series. Three paragraphs about the shenanigans from the Yankees and Mets, and you don't have room to mention the name of the team that won the series? Boooooooooooooooooooo.

King didn't blow it because MLS is a minor sport that didn't merit inclusion. He can't possibly cover every sporting triumph or disaster in a single piece. This one went 4 pages and he didn't have room for it. How long do you want the article to be? He didn't even get to include a story about curling and he LOVES curling!

I disagree with him frequently, but claiming he "blew" an article because he didn't include your pet fave minor league sport is just silly. He didn't include lower level college football, minor league baseball, women's professional football (http://www.womensprofootball.com/ http://www.womensfootballcentral.com/), women suing the olympics to get included in ski-jumping in 2010, badmitton, indoor volleyball, any of the motorized "sports" (which I don't consider sports anyway), ice skating, cricket (arguably the most popular sport in the world), ping pong, judo, boxing, fishing, competitive eating, field hockey, etc...

Great, your team had a nice season after sucking for a long time. Why not post your own mini-article about it in the comments or on Open Salon? Instead of doing that, you chose to whinge unreasonably that King didn't include a story about what you wanted in an article that was already 4 pages long.

regardless of how you feel about MLS, soccer, or curling, the STORY (isn't that what journalists write) of the Crew this year was a good one and King blew it.

I have given up on the NBA, myself. They let a person like Kobe Bryant play after sexually molesting a young woman. I know he was acquitted but it goes to show that the NBA has no shame when it comes to protecting players. Theis also shows to the world that as long as you are good at sports you can get away with anything.

To me they should have banned him for life.

Can you imagine caring what one of the thousands of sports writers in the world did or did not include in his not necessarily comprehensive year end review? (unless he included formula one, in which case that's totally lame).

I think the most glaring omission was Lolo Jones.

crumley Did you see the SI year end wrapup "The Best Year Ever" ? Before or after you finished your piece?

I saw the headline when I was about halfway through writing, meaning I was about 4/5 of the way through working on it, if that makes sense. I didn't read it, though, and still haven't.

I can imagine, though, being halfway through writing a piece, having something similar come out and being quite annoyed by the misfortune.

Nah. Only if I were working on a reported piece, the basis of which was some kind of scoop or some advancement of the story that was uniquely mine. But this kind of thing, where I'm writing a year in sports piece where I say "Wow, great year," and someone else writes a piece saying something similar? Well, of course that's going to happen unless I'm being ultra-contrarian.

XJS AND ME Too bad king gave himself away about his hope that the Hawks/detoilet new years day game will be cancelled by his freudian schliiiiiiide, "were".

So, aside from me writing after the 2003 outdoor game that they should do that again toot sweet, and then writing after the 2008 outdoor game that that was fantastic-o-rama and why don't they do it every year, what gave it away that I was hoping this year's outdoor game would be cancelled?

You're the second person who seems to have been confused by this sentence, so perhaps I should explain:

"The Chicago Blackhawks were to host the Detroit Red Wings at Wrigley Field, though unseasonably warm weather was threatening to delay the game."

It's a journalism convention to use this tense -- uh, I don't know what tense it is, something something conditional or something -- when you're writing about something that hasn't happened yet, but will have happened, if all goes as planned, by the time most or all people read the piece.

So in your morning newspaper, which is published around midnight and which you probably read at 9 a.m., it might say, "The governor was to speak at 7 a.m."

One doesn't say "The Chicago Blackhawks WILL host the Detroit Red Wings if it's possible that that won't happen. You say [As of this writing,] the Chicago Blackhawks were to host ..."

That's it.

King,

Did you see the SI year end wrapup "The Best Year Ever" ? Before or after you finished your piece? It is an obvious angle since this was a very good year, and for all I know there could be dozens of similar year end pieces already out their. I can imagine, though, being halfway through writing a piece, having something similar come out and being quite annoyed by the misfortune.

Anyway, a nice finish to a good year of writing on your part. See you on the other side.

Please ignore the letter writer who suggested you start paying attention to Formula One. Good lord, man. Admitting for argument's sake that one could find some sort of entertainment value in watching cars drive in a circle, what could possibly be written about the event?

No cancellation of 2009 AFL?

Kaufman wrote:

The Arena Football League, hailed just a few years ago as the next big thing on the North American sporting scene, shut down.

You can't even get that rigth and then treat us to nonsense about someone "sanctioning" human/animal fights? Go up your meds.