2020

 

2020: A Year of Unusual Sports

Don Mattingly, manager of the Miami Marlins, greeted Joe Girardi, right, manager of the Philadelphia Phillies before a game in Philadelphia on July 24.Chris Szagola/Associated Press

Sick of the word “unprecedented” yet?

So are athletes, teams and fans as they’ve limped along through a year of cancellations, postponements and a whole lot of empty stadiums.

It was the year of the bubble and of players forcefully demanding racial justice. Social activism and the coronavirus pandemic dominated 2020, and the sports world responded in kind.

Through it all, our reporters were there. We asked them to shared some moments that stood out to them. Here are some of our favorites.

You can read the full article here.

Baseball: A Rough Start to a Shortened Season

“Imagine the pandemic as a menacing, monstrous pitcher, flinging high heat at Major League Baseball in the top of the first inning,” Tyler Kepner writes. “That was the challenge for the league in the first weekend of its truncated 60-game season, when the coronavirus tore through the roster of the Miami Marlins.”

N.F.L.: No Bro Hugs, but Plenty of Boos at This Draft

“When the pandemic shut down the sports world in March, the N.F.L. was preparing for its glitziest college draft ever on the Las Vegas Strip in six weeks’ time,” Ken Belson writes. Instead, he continues, “Roger Goodell, the league commissioner, started the proceedings on April 23 from the basement of his home in Bronxville, N.Y., by saying that the Cincinnati Bengals were on the clock.”

N.B.A.: In a Turbulent Season, One Loss Stands Out

“So many things happened in the basketball world in 2020 that will stay with me for a lifetime,” Marc Stein writes. “Yet I also say, for all those unforgettable chapters, that no memory will have the staying power to rival the tragedy that struck the league on Jan. 26.”

Soccer: A Familiar Sound Rings True

“It was the simplicity, the familiarity, the constancy of the sound that made it so reassuring,” Rory Smith writes. “The day soccer came back to Europe, May 16, had no shortage of strange. All those things we would grow so used to over the subsequent seven months still felt new and alien and intimidating: the empty stadiums, the mosaics of fans, the socially distanced substitutes.”

Tennis: An Errant Shot Leaves Its Mark

“It was the shortest tennis season since World War II, with a five-month hiatus and no Wimbledon,” Christopher Clarey writes. But the most bizarre tennis development, he says, happened at a Grand Slam tournament that actually took place on schedule.