La Salle guard Tyrone Garland banks in a lay up with two seconds to go to beat Ol’ Miss, 76-74, in a third round NCAA Tournament game. La Salle reaches the Sweet Sixteen for the first time in, like, forever. Next game: Thursday, versus Wichita State.

This year that is fast disappearing will not be remembered in these quarters with very much warmth. It was a fairly hideous, sickening year, the year that I felt I got old. But like all good things, the bad ones come to an end as well, and thanks to some much appreciated end of the year action by Richard Plepler, Steve Koepp, David McCormick and others, we begin 2013 on an upswing, and with hopes for better times to come. In the meanwhile, here are some jewels, personally chosen and wholly idiosyncratic, recovered from 2012:
1.) Love for Levon. Without a doubt, everything about the tribute concert to Levon Helm–reporting the story, meeting the people involved, attending the event, the reception to the article, what may happen yet–turned this into the best thing that I was involved with this year.
2.) Searching for Sugarman. This modest documentary about a real-life Cinderella made my heart leap with joy. A very inspirational story.
3.) Call Me Maybe. Carly Rae Jepson‘s unassuming, sweet, girlish, flirty hit was attractive enough, but the way it went viral and enveloped everyone from the US Olympic Swim Team to Colin Powell was delightful. The song never failed to bring a smile to my lips, especially in Jepson’s collaboration with Jimmy Fallon and the Roots.
4.) The dauntless, rain-drenched performance of the young people of Royal College of Music Chamber Choir during the flotilla of the Queen’s Jubilee was simply stirring, especially when they sang “Land of Hope and Glory.”
5.) The presidential campaign as a whole this year was a fairly tedious affair, but the rousing Democratic convention, driven by one splendid speech after another culminating in Bill Clinton‘s masterful dissection/deconstruction/destruction of the GOP position was fairly brilliant, just as the Republicans’ ceaseless rhetorical self-destruction–“Oops”, “Nine, nine, nine”, “I like to fire people”, “legitimate rape”, “the 47 percent”–was the best long-running comedy series on TV.
6.) The Giants Win the Super Bowl. Just as in 2009, the inconsistent Giants managed to win four–or in this case, six–games that they could win but were not likely to, and managed, one play at a time, to walk off with the hardware.
7.) The Hour. A splendid, sophisticated, intelligent BBC series about a ground-breaking TV news magazine being produced in the early fifties. I love the way they can combine news judgment, inside baseball, and messy personal situations. Dominic West, Ben Whislaw and Romola Garai are just terrific. We also liked the posh Downton Abbey and the relentlessly vulgar The In-Betweeners. (I must say, I haven’t seen Homeland yet.
8.) Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel. Having loved Wolf Hall, I feared its sequel would suffer by comparison. I shouldn’t have worried. Other enjoyable books this year: Watergate, by Thomas Mallon; Passage of Power, by Robert Caro; The Long Road to Antietam, by Richard Slotkin.
9.) I went to Lincoln fearing a Spielbergian historical romance, full of longing gazes and quivering lips and swirling strings. But while there was some of that, it wasn’t enough to sicken the whole deal. I give total credit to screenwriter Tony Kushner for his decision to hang this pageant on a moment that has been largely overlooked by historians, the passage by the House of Representatives of a constitutional amendment outlawing slavery. Historians undercut the importance of that moment because there were other ways to accomplish Lincoln’s end, but that’s not the point: whether or not the vote had significant is irrelevant, it is a perfectly splendid motor for an historical drama.
10. Superstorm Sandy. “There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at with no result,” Winston Churchill once said. I have no reason to dispute him, but I can tell you this: it’s a humbling thing to realize that the killer hurricane has come and gone and that you’ve been missed.

Fifty years ago, my Dad took me to the Baltimore Colts training camp in Westminster MD–and took these overexposed photos as proof! From left to right: the immortal Johnny Unitas, Gino Marchetti, Lenny Moore, Art Donovan and RC Owens. Four Hall of Famers–not bad!

Liverpool’s famous racist Luis Suarez launches a nearly fifty foot chip shot and scores against Norwich on Saturday’s English Premier League action.

I doubt that anyone but me cares, but 35 years ago tonight, I saw the most exciting hockey game of my life. MY beloved Philadelphia Flyers were facing the estimable Toronto Maple Leafs in the Stanley Cup quarterfinals. This was one of the terrific but star-crossed Leaf teams featuring Daryl Sittler, Lanny McDonald, Borje Salming, Ian Turnbull, Mike Palmateer, Tiger Williams and others worthies. The year before, the teams had literally brawled through a seven-game quarterfinal series in which the Flyers prevailed enroute to the Cup Finals, and this year, Toronto seemed determined to avenge the loss. They came into the Spectrum and won the first two games, placing the Flyers at a huge disadvantage going back to Maple Leaf Gardens. In a very fine Game Three, though, the Flyers won 4-3, on a Rick MacLeish goal in overtime, which set up Sunday night’s pivotal Game Four, where either the Flyers would knot the series coming back to Philly, or the Leafs would gain a stranglehold.

The Flyers held the edge early on a first period power play goal by Bobby Clarke, but soon the Leafs came back. McDonald scored twice and Salming added a power play goals, and though Reggie Leach (my favorite) added one for the Flyers, the second period ended with the Leafs ahead. In the third, the Leafs pulled further ahead, with the phenomenal McDonald scoring in the sixth minute and again in the twelfth. Down now 5 to 2, the Flyers became unhinged, and veterans Gary Dornhoeffer and Ross Lonsberry took cheap, nasty penalties. With seven minutes left, the Flyers looked a way that they seldom looked–discouraged, frustrated, beaten.

Then the amazement began. A suddenly roused Flyers began a relentless attack. Clunky Mel Bridgman, never a big scorer, put one past Palmateer at 14:11. Not sucha big deal, but the Flyers kept fighting. At 18:11, Tom Bladon, the defenseman with the heavy slap shot, scored from the point. A mere sixteen seconds later, the indomitable Clarke poked one from a scramble in front of the net, and the Flyers had tied the score.

The overtime period was terribly tense, end to end action with each side taking eight shots. The Flyers even had to kill a penalty when Bob Kelly went off for tripping. But with the period almost over, Leach and MacLeish broke down the right wing, and from the right circle, Leach blasted a shot past Palmateer. Incredible.

The Flyers took the next two games and the series, before losing, alas, to the Bruins in the semi-finals. We were sorry not to have our rematch with Montreal, but for 35 years, we have had the amazing Game Four, and the overtime blast by The Rifle.

My poor girl Cara had to work during the NCAA Finals last night, but as she says, thank God for streaming. And thank God, also, that the post-victory party was still going on after she got off work. Here she is, left, with her roommate Nicole, celebrating in Lexington. As she put it on Facebook, “YES NCAA MENS BASKETBALL CHAMPS!!! I LOVE MY SCHOOL AND I LOVE MY CATS!!!! BEST WAY TO FINISH UP MY FRESHMAN YEAR!” Not to be a buzzkill, dear, but I suppose it’s my job: the year is over when finals are over.

Ahmad Bradshaw hatches the winning touchdown in the Giants 21-17 victory over the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI. The Patriots had decided to allow him to score in order to conserve time for the offense to mount a comeback. As Bradshaw was running in, Eli Manning was yelling “Don’t score! Don’t score!”, hoping to run more time off the clock and to force the Patriots to use their last time out. My question is, How was it that Coach Coughlin did not make his wishes in this matter clear?

This is the undefeated cap which my daughter Cara gave me for Christmas. With the magic conjured by the combination of this cap and my head, the Giants beat the Jets and the Cowboys to close out the regular season, and then beat the Falcons, Packers, 49ers and the Patriots to win Super Bowl XLVI. Tomorrow, I shall offer it to the permanent collection at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

I must say, I still can’t quite believe that the New York Giants won the Super Bowl yesterday. All season long, they looked like a good team that could go toe-to-toe with anybody. During the regular season, they beat such other good teams as the Eagles, Cowboys and Patriots, and narrowly lost to other good teams like the Packers, Eagles and 49ers. But moral victories and narrow defeats are just strokes in the loss column, and after 14 weeks, the team was 7 and 7 and on the verge of missing the playoffs entirely. But then they turned it around and beat the Jets and Cowboys to get into the playoffs. They were the fourth seed, and from where I sat, it looked like they could beat any team in the playoffs except the Saints, with whom the matched up poorly. Well, as it turned out, the Saints were eliminated, and the Giants, improbably, ran the board. Yesterday they topped the Patriots 21-17, a come-from-behind last-minute victory. Some skeptics have said the Pats more lost the game than the Giants won, and in truth, on at least three occasions, Tom Brady failed to connect with receivers in what would have been long, fortune-changing gains, if not actual touchdowns. Well, maybe. But Eli Manning played wonderfully, and his receivers caught the ball (most especially Mario Manningham, in what is surely his career-defining reception), and the defense was stout when it had to be, and it says here that the New York Giants are the winners of Super Bowl XLVI.

Isn’t it kind of divine that in the same week that Tim Thomas, the goalie of the Boston Bruins, refused to attend a White House reception in honor of the team’s championship last spring, Buckingham Palace released the names of 277 people who between the years 1951 and 1999 declined to accept one of the Queen’s Honors, including, in some cases, knighthood, and with it the right to be be called Sir or Lady. Among the refusniks were Roald Dahl, Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, JB Priestley, Lucian Freud, Robert Graves, FR Leavis, LS Lowry, Henry Moore, Philip Larkin and CS Lewis.

In a statement he posted on Facebook, Thomas was plain about his decision. “I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People.This is being done at the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial level. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers vision for the Federal government. Because I believe this, today I exercised my right as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House. This was not about politics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country. This was about a choice I had to make as an INDIVIDUAL.” Thomas has been tut-tutted by such political philosophers like Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser, who on ESPN played establishmentarian court jesters, saying that when one has been invited by the President, one ought to go, out of respect for the office.

Nonsense. First, this has nothing to do with the country. President Obama is merely copying a move pioneered by John Lindsay, who in the midst of tight mayoral race in New York City in 1969, barged into the locker room of the World Series-winning Mets and inserted his head under waterfalls of champagne. (The ploy worked; he won a narrow plurality in a three-way race.) President Nixon soon began rewarding winning coaches with congratulatory phone calls. Now it’s receptions. Clearly these are held as publicity opportunities for the incumbent, and I have no problem with Tim Thomas or any of these other jocks exercising his right to absent himself. The White House is such a bubble, it’s good when this or any president hears some disagreement.

Indeed, I wish it was plainer why the 277 would-be honorees in Britain declined their invitations; no reasons were cited, and the Palace took care in its response to a BBC request to release only the names of people who are dead. Over the years, explanations have been provided by some people who are not on the list. According to the New York Times, the writer J. G. Ballard said he did not want to be named a Commander of the British Empire because the whole thing was a “preposterous charade.” The poet Benjamin Zephaniah (left) refused membership in the Order of the British Empire, saying “Stick it, Mr. Blair and Mrs. Queen.” David Bowie declined a C.B.E. in 2000, saying “I seriously don’t know what it’s for.” (Selling records, duh!) In 1992, Doris Lessing declined a knighthood, saying “Surely there is something unlikable about a person, when old, accepting honors from a institution she attacked when young?” But eight years later, she accepted another title, the Companion of Honor, saying she liked that “you’re not called anything” special.

And that’s the point–we don’t know if these folks were trying to raise an objection, or to avoid being used as a monarchical prop, or simply because they were holding out for a better honor. After all, Alfred Hitchcock turned down a C.B.E. in 1962, then later accepted being named a Knight Commander of the British Empire. But I like what Terence Blacker wrote in the Independent. Noting that the opt-outs “have little in common politically or personally beyond the fact that their work is the product of uncompromising individuality,” Blacker suggests that “Simply by accepting a bauble of thanks from the nation, they would be sacrificing what was best about them – their apartness. Once they became part of the national community, their voice, their eyes, their strength would be changed. They neither accepted the honour nor, in what has become a new form of boasting, told the world that they had rejected it.”