2015 in 15 Quotes

In the immortal words of Borat Sagdiyev, 2015 was a “great success. Very nice.”

New York saw some of the greatest storylines of the past 365 days in sports. It truly was a roller coaster year, there were the highs of playoff races, the lows of teammate quarrels, and everything in-between. An historic year like 2015 surely dished out its fair share of quotes as well. These snippets will always remind us of the Big Apple’s big year in sports. The quotes are in no particular order.

  • “He struck him out! Tears of joy for the 2015 Mets!”-Gary Cohen

An extremely appropriate call of the Mets’ division-clinching final out against the Cincinnati Reds in September. After 9 long years filled with tears of agony, this team was special. After acquiring Yoenis Cespedes and Tyler Clippard, this team rolled through the second half of the season right into October, where they beat the Dodgers in a scrappy 5-game series and swept the Cubs at Wrigley Field to win their first pennant in 15 years. They lost the World Series in 5 games but gave fans hope for the future.

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The Mets were the best New York sports storyline of 2015. (Photo: Getty Images)

  • “It just went off in my hand” -Jason Pierre-Paul

It was a strange year for Jason Pierre-Paul. He blew off parts of three fingers on his right hand in a July 4th fireworks mishap, and poignantly stayed silent on the details of the accident for months. He finally opened up this month to Michael Strahan in a Fox Sports interview and this quote just about sums up his situation. Pierre-Paul missed the first half of the season for the Giants, who will miss the playoffs for the fourth consecutive year.

  • “Going forward, we’re going to be a tough team. We’re going to be an intelligent team. We’re going to do things the right way.” -Todd Bowles

In a drastic regime change, Jets owner Woody Johnson fired the boisterous Head Coach Rex Ryan and General Manager John Idzik and hired the reserved Todd Bowles and Mike Maccagnan. After missing out on the playoffs the last four years, Bowles and Maccagnan have the Jets in position to earn a wild card berth with a Week 17 win against Ryan’s Bills. Maccagnan has pushed the right buttons, acquiring Pro Bowl receiver Brandon Marshall and gritty quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick to complement their tenacious defense. Bowles has gotten his team to play inspired football after calling them out for a lack of hustle mid-season.

  • “This is hard.” -Derek Fisher

In his first year as the Knicks head coach, Derek Fisher could only sum up their 65-loss season in three words. They didn’t have the roster depth to be competitive in 2014-15, and Phil Jackson unsuccessfully tried to implement his Triangle Offense. Carmelo Anthony played in only forty games before knee surgery shut him down. It wasn’t all bad for the Knicks, though, as they used their high draft pick to select Kristaps Porzingis, who has helped to turn the fortunes of the team around (see below).

  • “Hitting home runs doesn’t make you a good father, it doesn’t make you a good friend, and it certainly doesn’t make you a good teammate.” -Alex Rodriguez

After sitting out the entire 2014 season due to a suspension for performance-enhancing drugs, Alex Rodriguez seemed to have found the Fountain of Youth. In his age 40 season, he bashed 33 homers and had an OPS of .842 in 151 games, easily his best season since 2008. He kept a low profile off the field as well, straying away from scandals or weird magazine photo shoots. He was a key part of the Yankees’ run to the AL Wild Card game.

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Alex Rodriguez hit 33 homers this year, including his 3,000th hit. (Photo: Getty Images)

  • “Holy S***!” -Victor Espinoza

While not a New York sports team story, it happened on the dirt track of the Big Apple, so it fits right in. Racehorse American Pharoah won the first racing Triple Crown since Affirmed in 1978. Pharoah led wire-to-wire in the Belmont Stakes in Elmont, winning by over five lengths and giving trainer Bob Baffert his first Triple Crown on his fourth try. Espinoza, the jockey in the final race, was caught candidly expressing his elation over his triumph ny national TV cameras.

  • “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”-Yogi Berra

An iconic expression from a baseball legend, Berra passed away this September at the age of 90. Berra, a three-time MVP and 13-time World Series champion, was known for his off-color witticisms as well as his stellar on-field production. The Hall of Famer hit .285 over his 20-year career, managed both New York teams, had a cartoon bear created in his honor, and left us with sayings like “It’s deja vu all over again,” and “when you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

  • “Wow. It’s great to be home.” -Chris Mullin

The Golden Boy of the Red Storm returned this spring. Mullin, a Hall of Fame basketball player and the greatest player in St. John’s history, came back to his alma mater to become its next head coach. It will be an uphill climb for Mullin with no prior coaching experience and no recruiting foothold in the five boroughs, but he enlisted in the help of fellow HOFer Mitch Rochmond and recruiting genius Barry Rohrssen. The young Red Storm have played well in a win against Syracuse and a tough loss against Indiana.

  • “Well, you’re not going to do anything about it.” -Geno Smith

The phrase heard ’round MetLife. After supposedly improving his game all offseason, Geno Smith uttered this sentence to IK Enemkpali over not paying a $600 plane ticket, which led to Enemkpali breaking Smith’s jaw with a right hook. This led to Ryan Fitzpatrick’s coronation as the starter, and his consistent play has led the Jets to double-digit wins. Smith, meanwhile, has rode the bench since recovering from his injury and doesn’t look like a part of the team’s future plans. Enemkpali, meanwhile, was cut by the Jets and signed by the Bills, led by, of course, Rex Ryan.

  • “They thought, skinny white guy, he’s not going to be physical. But I still fight for those rebounds.” -Kristaps Porzingis

After the dismal season last year, the Knicks drafted Porzin-God, who is playing like the Rookie of the Year and a breakout star in the league. The team is playing competitive basketball in the Eastern Conference along with a healthy Carmelo Anthony. Porzingis so far has averaged 13 points and eight rebounds per game, and the Knicks are within four games of a playoff spot at this point.

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Kristaps Porzingis is outplaying every rookie so far this year for the Knicks. (Photo: Brad Penner/ USA Today)

  • “We didn’t always agree, but we never departed from one another without a hug and a handshake. I’m going to miss him, I won’t forget him.” -Bill Torrey

Torrey, the former General Manager of the Islanders, said this about legendary coach Al Arbour. Arbour passed away this August at the age of 82. He led the Islanders to four straight Stanley Cups in the early 80’s and is hailed as a legend by Islanders fans. It came as the Islanders were about to move from their original home in Uniondale to their sparkling new digs at the Barclays Center. Arbour will forever be linked to the original Islanders, and the lore of his dynasty will be forever remembered in the rafters of the arena.

  • “Being an adult means being accountable. Being a baseball player means that others look up to you.” -CC Sabathia

In an announcement that shocked the baseball world, CC Sabathia announced at the end of this season that he would check himself into an alcohol rehab facility. Sabathia finished with a 5.90 ERA in 2015, but a weekend road trip to Baltimore with the team let the wheels fall of for him. The baseball community should be proud that a fallen star, like the former Cy Young Sabathia, was able to step away from the game and see a bigger problem for himself. Manager Joe Girardi has said that he sees Sabathia in the rotation for 2016.

  • “We just ran out of juice” -Derek Stepan

That’s exactly what the Rangers did in the 2014-15 playoffs. They won and lost each of their first 13 games game by one goal, winning their first two series 4-1 and 4-3. However, they lost the conference finals to the Tampa Bay Lightning in 7 games, and looked pretty tired doing so. Their final two losses were shutouts at home to give the Lightning a berth in the Stanley Cup. The veteran defensemen have led the Rangers to the sixth-most pints in the Eastern Conference this season and a 14-5-1 home record.

  • ” I think we can truly give something for the fans in New York City to cheer about.” -Josh Saunders

If you don’t know who Josh Saunders is, that’s understandable. He’s the goalie for NYCFC, who played their inaugural season this season at Yankee Stadium. They played to an audience that was top-five in the MLS in attendance, and gave the established Red Bulls a true rival. While NYCFC failed to make the playoffs, they have star power in Frank Lampard and David Villa. The Red Bulls were one step away from the MLS Cup Final, showing that soccer is one the up-and-up in New York for the first time in a long time.

  • “I know it’s been 15 years since the Bills made the playoffs. Well get ready, man, we’re going.” -Rex Ryan.

Rex Ryan stayed in state after being fired from the Jets in January, going to the division rival Bills and bringing his braggadocio with him. An improved roster in Buffalo (they added star running back LeSean McCoy to go along with big-play threat Sammy Watkins) and a quarterback change led to a glimmer of hope. This season hasn’t really gone as planned for Ryan and Buffalo, thought, who will miss the playoffs yet again. However, he does have a chance to play the ultimate spoiler role when he faces the Jets in Week 17 while they vie for a playoff berth.

There you have it. 2015 was a great year and, in the words of DJ Khaled, Let’s hope for “another one.”

When a Friendly meets Hostility

Leon Trotsky once said, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”

Tragedy struck the city of Paris, France in the same vein on Friday. Radical militants attacked six different locations in and around the city, killing over 120 people. The bloodbath is the largest attack on France since World War II.

One of the sites that faced a spine-chilling, life-threatening scenario was outside Stade de France in Saint-Denis. During an international friendly between France and Germany, two suicide bombings and a third explosion went off just outside of the stadium. The match ended in a 2-0 victory for France, but by that time hundreds were already dead.

Sporting events are supposed to be a sort of safe haven for the human race. In these instances, we’re allowed to forget about the myriad problems that we face on a daily basis, not to mention those that loom larger than us that are out of our control. What happened on Friday night is nothing short of a cataclysm on all fronts, but the very fiber of life that keeps millions of us level-headed was ripped, just a little bit, for a short time.

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While the soccer match continued, an unfathomable horror went on outside the gates of Stade de France.

When the explosions were heard inside the stadium, around the 15th minute, it was met immediately with an uproar from the crowd, a mixture of excitement, fear, and a pure adrenal reaction that comes from an event of that nature (a video can be seen here). President Francois Hollande was taken away from the area. From there, it wouldn’t be long before the fans inside the confines of Stade de France were aware of what was happening so harrowingly close to them. The haven of sports, if only for a split-second, was breached by something unimaginable.

Then, match officials and executives made a controversial, but what turned out to be ingenious, decision. They decided to withhold information about the attacks on Paris from the players and fans until the match concluded. They decided to use the inherent comfort, a virtual bubble secluding the match from the outside world, to their advantage to prevent fear and panic from striking the fans and players. They made it seem as if  nothing was happening, and the fans went along with it, cheering and booing normally and appropriately, even doing “The Wave” at one point. Officials saved their fans from clouding their own heads with nightmarish scenarios of what was happening, and let them enjoy themselves as much as they can.

After the match was over, the blinders that shade spectators from reality retracted, and everyone in the stadium knew of the sheer horror that, at that time, fully infected the entire country. Some exited under their own volition, players retreated into their locker rooms to check in on family members and friends, but something interesting happened. Many fans flooded the pitch and stayed there long after the match ended. They hugged one another, checked cell phones, and generally loitered under a haze of controlled panic.

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Thousands of fans went on the field after the game in reaction to the attacks on Paris.

The safety net that sports naturally provides is on full display. Instead of attempting to wrap their head around what just happened in their city, they stayed inside the arena, conferred with fellow fans, and decided to sidestep real-life tragedy, just for a little while longer. In that moment, the human race needed sports as much as sports needed the human race. A soccer friendly turned tragic became friendly again, with thousands of fans helping each other cope.

We have seen it happen before. Sports have an uncanny ability to heal in times of tragedy and loss. Whether it’s Mike Piazza’s go-ahead home run in the first game after the September 11th attacks, David Ortiz’s “Boston Strong” speech after the Boston Marathon bombing, or Steve Gleason blocking a punt and scoring in the first game in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, sports can soften the blow of extreme adversity.

I, and everyone sound of mind and spirit, feel the pain of the massacre in Paris. During the pain and suffering, soccer provided an alternative for several thousand people. I hope everyone affected by these attacks has something to lean on to lighten the immense weight of loss that they carry.