US Elections

The Baylor Lady Bears become the first college basketball team to win forty games as junior Brittany Griner carried her squad to a perfect 40-0 season.

The Miami Heat are NBA champions

Lebron James silenced the doubters as his Miami Heat beat the Oklahoma City Thunder in six games, and brought the NBA championship trophy to South Beach.

Los Angeles Kings win first Stanley Cup

They nearly squandered a 3-0 series lead, but the Kings kept their composure in Game 6 to win their first NHL championship in the team's 45 year existence.

Felix Hernandez throws a perfect game

A careful reader might wonder why I'm singling out Hernandez's performance when there were several other perfectos thrown this year; including one against my beloved Seattle Mariners. Well, it's my list and I'll choose what I want to, and I'm going to pay homage to the Mariner's ace and his incredible achievement. 

Michael Phelps: G.O.A.T.

Michael Phelps won four gold and two silver medals at the 2012 London Olympics, making him the most decorated Olympian of all time with more than twice as many gold medals as his next nearest competitor. And he might not be done yet. There’s been recent speculation that he might come out of retirement to race in the 2016 Olympics in Rio.

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Running on a broken leg

Normally an Olympic track heat heat wouldn't qualify for the top ten sporting moments of the year. But normally athletes don't run the event on a broken leg. Despite shattering his fibula 200 metres into the opening leg of the 4x100 relay,  American Manteo Mitchell managed to complete his lap in a remarkable 46.1 seconds. The US easily advanced to the next round and would go on to win gold in the finals."I pretty much figured it was broken, because every step I took, it got more painful," Manteo explained."But I was out there already. I just wanted to finish and do what I was called in to do."

US Women win Gold in Olympic Soccer

The US team lost in heartbreaking fashion to Japan in the 20011 World Cup and were looking for revenge when the two sides faced off again in the Olympic finals. This time the Americans wouldn't be denied, as Carli Lloyd scored twice to lead the US to a 2-1 victory at Wembley Stadium. 

Replacement refs

With the NFL referees on strike the league had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find replacements. Some of these substitute officials had apparently been let go by the Lingerie Football League, so it wasn't surprising that the first couple of weeks featured a number of questionable calls. The controversy reached a boiling point in a week three Monday Night Football game, with the Seahawks winning on a last second touchdown that should have been ruled an interception. Not surprisingly, the regular refs were back at work the next week.

 Major League Baseball playoffs

The World Series was a bit of a bore but the rest of the playoffs sure weren't. All four of the Division Series match ups went to the maximum five games, and the Giants’ rallied from a  3-1 series deficit in the NLCS before going on to beat the Tigers in the World Series. And there was this crazy Cardinals comeback against the Cardinals:

Lance Armstrong stripped of Tour de France titles

I have fond memories of setting my alarm for six in the morning to get up and watch Lance Armstrong race in the Tour de France. And so while the longstanding rumours of his alleged drug use helped let me down easy, it was still disappointing to hear him announce that he would no longer be fighting doping charges and would hence be stripped of his seven Tour titles. Of course, as Deadspin points out, now we can all laugh hysterically at this Nike commercial:

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Jason Heid (h/t Andrew Sullivan) disagreed: "What she gave us was unique and perfectly appropriate to lyrics that were, after all, written during an uncertain time of war." I don't think Deschanel's performance was great, though it did work as a perhaps unintentional piece of performance. The bellowing take on the song familiar to ballparks across the country usually ends with soaring, triumphant final note. There's a reason Jimi Hendrix's feedback-laden take on it at Woodstock sounded unexpectedly natural — particularly when he transitioned it into "Purple Haze" immediately after. But  Deschanel's weak voice couldn't end the song on a crescendo, creating an anti-climax enhanced on the television broadcast by a shot of military helicopters swooping dark and low over the stadium. It was cold and a bit eerie; compelling, but perhaps not what a nation looks for in an anthem.

But in some sense, the "Star Spangled Banner" is cold and eerie. Erika Villani disagreed with Vargas-Cooper's take on the performance as well, and in doing so she describes marvellously why the song is more than just a synechdoche for national pride:

The national anthem was too sexless for you? You want the national anthem, a poem about crawling out of the darkness of a bloody all-night battle, where you stood sustained by glimpses of the American flag as illuminated by the bombs bursting all around it, to gaze at that battered but still standing symbol of the country you fought for, turned into lyrics and sung to the tune of the enemy’s most difficult drinking song, to turn you on a little more?

The "Star Spangled Banner" is quite a moving tune, and it's only through official adoption and the numbing force of repetition that is has become triumphant. Deschanel might not have been able to effectively realise its emotional qualities, but a talented performer can.

This is a take by Michigan singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens. It may not have swagger and it may not be everyone's indie rock cup of tea, but it is dramatic and impassioned. The quaver in his voice on "O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave" properly conveys the fragility of a fledgling nation. It was this version that first made me notice the song's sentiment, rather than its pomp. 

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The movie, based on Michael Lewis’ bestseller of the same name, tells how Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s captured the American League West in 2002 utilizing a statistical technique known as sabermetrics. Beane was able to best bigger market teams that could attract major stars with higher salaries by focusing on sophisticated metrics such as on-base percentage, runs created, and linear weight, that maximize player success and help refine offensive tactics ...

Is there a reason this happened in Oakland instead of elsewhere? Maybe so. To start with the obvious, it’s a smaller market team with a limited budget. New York, Boston, L.A., and Atlanta are rich; they could care less about this approach, since they can and often do just go out and buy the players they need. But ... [a]long with San Francisco and San Jose, Oakland is one of the three major metros that make up the broad San Francisco Bay Area. And the prevailing culture of the region at the turn of the millennium – fueled by high tech industries from semiconductors and software to biotech and social media – was one that was based on innovative and commercially viable ideas. Engineering values were and continue to be deeply embedded in its DNA.

Running a baseball team like a tech start-up, perhaps? If so, it makes for a neat connection with Aaron Sorkin's movie about America from last year, The Social Network.

Sadly, we won't see Moneyball in Australia until November 10. In the meantime, anyone have any ideas as to the last great American sports movie? It's been a long while since I've seen Any Given Sunday, but I know I enjoyed that. Have I forgotten anything more recent?

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The unemployment rate in Washington as of June was 8.9 per cent, slightly below the national rate of 9.5 per cent. This is a relatively good circumstance compared with states like Michigan and Nevada, which have rates around 13 and 14 per cent. The good news isn't confined to government numbers, either: when I walk around town here I see a number of stores with Help Wanted signs in their windows. And yet even in a relatively prosperous area like Seattle, the reality of the recession is widespread enough in society that it has become a mere fact of life advertisers use to push products.

This is something to keep in mind when looking at the November midterms. America does not feel good about its economic situation right now, and this is going to influence how its citizens vote. If you're wondering why the Democrats are having such a tough time in the polls, don't consider esoteric questions of debt and deficit. Instead, remember that even in states doing better than average, people are scrimping and saving, and are worried about being out of work. The mood in America is improving, but when its citizens attends its national pastime, they still feel like they have to find ways to pinch pennies.

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As Galarraga sought his 27th out on Wednesday night, Cleveland's Jason Donald grounded the pitch and took off for first base. Detroit cleaned the ball up quickly, Donald looked to be certainly out and Galarraga looked to have made history. Joyce, however, judged the Cleveland batter to have made it to first successfully. The Detroit home crowd disagreed sharply with him, as did the video replay. (Major League Baseball does not review umpiring decisions with replays.) And after the game, Joyce recanted as well, apologizing to the Tigers' pitcher and admitting "I just cost that kid a perfect game."

The national pastime will go on, however, and America will return to the kind of news everyone the world over pays attention to - especially considering oil might go on leaking into the gulf until Christmas. And Joyce can count at least one supporter on his side. But the furore over this incident is a nice reminder that the United States, just like every other country, has its own odd little obsessions that do not come up on an outsider's radar.

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