YEAR IN REVIEW
Sun sports reporters reflect on favorites of 2017
I hadn’t seen the image until one of the four Puerto Ricans on the UMBC women’s volleyball team mentioned it near the end of an hourlong interview, after they’d talked about the sport and their friendships and President Donald Trump.
Before a Sept. 29 match between Towson and Hofstra, the teams’ Puerto Rican players stood together for a special rendition of the U.S. territory’s anthem, a flag between them. The Retrievers’ own contingent, visiting for the night, joined them on the court. It was hard not to cry, a few later said. A photograph, shared on the NCAA volleyball’s
Less than two weeks earlier, on Sept. 20, Hurricane Maria had made landfall on the Caribbean archipelago. Winds of nearly 150 mph cut off power to 3.4 million citizens. The official death toll is well under 100, but studies suggest that the total might be over 1,000.
At Towson and UMBC, the seven Puerto Ricans who would stand together followed the developments with life-and-death attention. The Tigers’ Carola Biver, a San Juan native, didn’t hear from her mother for four days. UMBC’s Paola Rojas, of San Lorenzo, waited almost a week for a message from home.
“Every time someone said, ‘I just reached out to my family,’ it was like the best,” UMBC’s Krytsia Negron said. “Everyone jumped and screamed, and it was like the best thing ever.”
Though the seven Puerto Ricans played for different teams, they all came from the same place, all feared the worst and wanted the best for their homeland. They raised money, food and supplies to send back. They thought of their family every time they stepped onto the court.
And when the Puerto Rican anthem played at SECU Arena that day, they were reminded of what they’d left behind and what they hadn’t. The land they left had changed, but their love for it, for one another, was stronger than ever.
It’s perhaps bittersweet to use a year-end celebration to reflect on an obituary. But more than any of the rising stars, fast horses or football games I covered in 2017, the loss of Frank Deford will stick with me.
When news of the great writer’s death emerged on Memorial Day, I immediately went to my basement to pull several collections of his work from my shelves. As I began combing the old Sports Illustrated “bonus” pieces in search of material worth quoting in Deford’s obituary, the stories and the man telling them sucked me in as if I were reading for the first time.
Irascible tennis star Jimmy Connors springing from the love of his mother and grandmother. Bob “Bull” “Cyclone” Sullivan making his small-town Mississippi football team scrimmage in a pond. Boxer Billy Conn finding a love that defined him more than his classic loss to Joe Louis.
Deford rendered these stories with a style that could not be imitated but that inspired generations of would-be writers, including me. It didn’t hurt that he grew up in Baltimore and graduated from Gilman, just as I did.
But those facts were incidental measured against the magnitude of his work. I called Deford for interviews a few times over the years. He often answered his home phone in Connecticut and was as gracious, eloquent and charming as a fan might hope.
After his death, numerous writers spoke about the counsel Deford went out of his way to dispense. To many other people, he was the erudite voice on NPR who made sports more accessible for the non-fan. No matter how you knew him, he was a voice for the ages.
For a few days in the middle of June, soccer and an amateur club sponsored by a Ferndale liquor store for 20 years, Christos FC, took over the sports page.
The team consisted of a bunch of friends — ages ranging from 23 to 30 — who mostly played weekend ball and drank beers after. But they all had impressive soccer resumes at the youth, high school and college levels — several played together at UMBC — and it led to an improbable run in the prestigious 104th Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup.
So there was Christos FC, the last amateur team standing in the fourth round and having already blanked three opponents including United Soccer League’s Richmond Kickers, holding its own against Major League Soccer’s D.C. United at a packed Maryland SoccerPlex in Boyds.
It was Apollo Creed vs. Rocky all over again.
Rocky got in the first big punch when former McDonogh and UMBC star Mamadou Kansaye gave Christos a stunning 1-0 lead midway through the first half. D.C. United, which didn’t start most of its starters but still featured a lineup from the country’s highest professional division, got a tying goal later in the half.
After back-and-forth play for much of the second half, Christos understandably tired and D.C. United scored three goals in the final 10 minutes to advance with a 4-1 win.
With Baltimore steeped in soccer tradition for more than 100 years, Christos added one of the most amazing and impressive chapters before its players went back to their day jobs.
By September, almost everything about the Orioles and their 2017 season was a disappointing afterthought. However, over the first four days of May, as they battled it out with the Boston Red Sox, the Orioles took their place in the national spotlight the way they hardly ever do.
The reasons varied, though the fact that the Orioles finished the first month of the season seven games above .500 added to the stakes against the defending American League East champions. Before the series, Buck Showalter had poked fun at the Red Sox for an illness that swept through their clubhouse; Boston had taken issue with a slide by Orioles third baseman Manny Machado that injured their second baseman, Dustin Pedroia; and Red Sox pitchers had tried to hit Machado with a pitch but failed.
All that seemed to be happening on that first, chilly night in Boston was a simple Orioles win. Then center fielder Adam Jones relayed some of the racist taunts he heard from the crowd, and the game — and series — came to mean a lot more.
The following day was one of condemnation for the fans at fault, praise of Jones for the way he handled the situation, and a conciliatory tone between the teams. Jones got a standing ovation in his first at-bat, then when Boston ace Chris Sale threw a pitch behind Machado, the next batter, the old tensions flared up.
Machado went on a profane tirade after the game, and both teams were warned, which led to a silly ejection when Kevin Gausman lost a breaking ball and hit a batter in the second inning of the third game.
The teams got back to baseball on the fourth night, a somewhat forgettable conclusion to a series marked by a discussion about racism, a condemnation of baseball's unwritten rules and a capricious punishment.
Over the summer, Melvin Keihn, a defensive end for the Maryland football team and a former Gilman standout, returned to his native Liberia for the first time in 14 years to surprise his mother, Satta. He had not seen her since he was 8.
His emotions
He thought about little things — bringing over-the-counter medicines for his relatives who didn’t have access in Liberia and showing his mother highlights of his football career on his iPad.
He formed bonds with young children while volunteering during his trip — some Keihn continued to communicate with after he left.
Those are good reminders to me, and hopefully to the readers, to appreciate not just what athletes are capable of doing in their sport, but also to understand that their lives extend beyond the box scores and their statistics.
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