No Question, Sports Made Statement in 2008

There is a premise all gamers agree on, which is that play is not really play, but the Final Battle For Our Souls. What us frantic, obsessive cataloguers of final scores understand is that games, despite their cost and hype, drag us out of a state of mental lethargy imposed by the hard news. Anyone looking for reassurance on this subject, or who needs backup when they get caught perusing stats at their desk by their superior, need only turn to philosopher-theologian Michael Novak's "The Joy of Sports," in which he states that we get the work-is-serious, play-is-trivial equation all wrong. "Play is reality," he asserts. "Work is diversion and escape."

The year-end retrospectives are out, and while their selections differ widely, they all share the same theme: 2008 was one of the most momentous years of competition ever. All across the globe, sporting events were of such a scale that they commanded our attention even in the midst of the presidential election and the financial crash. Records fell, and seldom have athletes and their choices, right and wrong, seemed to matter so much.

This sensation was not mere escapism on our part. In the midst of the Beijing Olympics, a reverend named Joanne Sanders gave a sermon at Stanford University in which she remarked, "Their power to exhilarate or depress is far greater than that," and confessed to going sleepless in order to watch the competition. It wasn't our imagination that so many games seemed to test, to quote Novak again, "somehow, one's entire life."

It wasn't strictly about the winning and losing, either, and in fact there were some runners-up as worthy as the victors. As the wits at FreeDarko.com observed, we reserved "our right to be amused by non-champions." Such as: "Players with inscrutable Superstitions; Players with genetically improbably Body Types; Players whose Emotional Baggage is visible during play; and other Interesting Players."

The following is a list of the top five events of the year, ranked not so much by prestige or triumph, but by how meaningful they were, and how much insight they provoked.

1. The Beijing Olympics: The visually eye-catching and without-a-hitch Summer Games were evil at the core. You half expected the dark red eye of Lord Sauron to open in the smoky sky and stare down on the human rights violations by the Chinese government, and failure of moral courage by the International Olympic Committee. The Beijing organizers broke every human rights promise they made in procuring the Games, they jailed and tortured dissidents, razed homes to put up stadiums, and censored the press, especially on the subject of food and the environment, and IOC President Jacques Rogge accepted it all without a murmur. We can only hope he was rewarded with a lot of Chinese cream in his coffee.

Nevertheless the great-hearted Chinese volunteers presented an epic, and nothing could curdle the competition itself. Michael Phelps, so ordinary and dull out of the water, flashed like a lure underneath it, and his eight gold medals in swimming, such variations in rhythm and pace, may never be equaled.

Usain Bolt was a different brand of greatness altogether with his unprecedented three world records in the sprints, which felt like thunderclaps. The son of a rural grocery store owner in Trelawny, Jamaica, set a new mark in the 100-meter dash running sideways at the finish line, with childlike pleasure and an untied shoelace. Following his victories, Bolt made another celebratory gesture, donating $50,000 to the child victims of the earthquake in Sichuan province.

2. The Triple Crown horse racing season: Each race was a morality play. Catastrophe and exuberance ran side by side at the Kentucky Derby, won by Big Brown while Eight Belles finished second on two broken ankles and had to be euthanized on the track. Big Brown's connections were an unsavory collection of cheats and dopers, and his performances were overshadowed by the cries for reform to better protect the animals.

The right thing happened in the end. In the Belmont, jockey Kent Desormeaux pulled up Big Brown when he realized his horse was reluctant to run. "Something was wrong, I took care of him," Desormeaux said, proving that rules are no substitute for good conscience.

3. The U.S. and British opens: Tiger Woods won the most difficult and laudable victory of his career in the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, wincing on a ruined knee that required reconstructive surgery. But stirring as Woods's victory was, Greg Norman almost equaled it with his emotion-driven charge at the British Open at Royal Birkdale. Norman, at 53 years old, on his second honeymoon after marrying Chris Evert, led through three wind-whipped rounds and finished tied for third, proving something we hardly thought possible: Innocence can be regained. "I've probably got the most beautiful balance I've ever had," the love-struck Norman said.

4. Wimbledon: The longest men's final in history, a nearly five-hour epic between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal was a deadlock of opposite personalities, physiques and approaches. Internals sparred with externals, Nadal's headlong expressionism finally winning out over Federer's elegance and self-containment in the twilight, 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (7-5), 6-7 (10-8), 9-7. It hardly mattered in this sweet duel between two men who are as good-natured as they are great.

5. Kevin Garnett wins an NBA title with the Boston Celtics: Other greats enjoyed more money, attention and support over the years while Garnett was stuck in a no-win situation in Minnesota, but he never whined or lost his perspective, steadfastly remaining one of the most principled players in the NBA. Finally he took his devotion to Boston and was rewarded with a championship after leading the Celtics to a monumental 24-point comeback in Game 4 of the NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers.

"Even in Minnesota, when things weren't going right, he didn't cry like most superstars and say he wanted out," teammate James Posey said. "He stuck there, and you knew what you'd get out of him every night and he gave it his all."

Any number of other performances could be included on this list, curtailed only for space, from the gold medals of American gymnasts Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson, to Eli Manning's duck-and-throw to David Tyree that helped deliver the most exciting Super Bowl upset in history to the New York Giants, to Spain's first European Cup victory in 44 years, to the American triumph in the Ryder Cup despite the absence of an injured Woods.

They all shared the same quality: a looseness yet coherence of movement, and a near-sacred dedication of purpose that got at some of our most important questions. They reminded us that ordinary humans are capable of witchcraft. As the short-lived baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti observed, they showed us how "to be free and to be complete and connected, unimpeded and integrated, all at once. Through sport, we re-create our daily portion of freedom, in public."