There have rarely been years in New York sports more interesting than this one, not just because of the good teams and even surprising ones like the Mets, but the bad ones, as well. As fans, you really can’t ask for much more than that, starting with the highs we got from the Mets and Yankees and Knicks and from the Liberty, too. But it was also the lows, sometimes riveting ones, from Aaron Rodgers’ Jets to the Giants being the worst football team we have seen around here since the Jets were 1-15 back in the ’90s, and the worst the Giants have seen in 100 years.
We even just witnessed the biggest and most expensive big free agent game in New York sports history, between the Mets and Yankees over Juan Soto, who not only made the most money any free agent has ever made, but made it after just playing for the Yankees.
You look back on the year now and it’s as if there was big news just about every day, good and bad but never ever indifferent, just because nobody around here is ever indifferent about sports. And at least, and at long last, we had one team — the Liberty — get the kind of parade we talk about all the time around here and so rarely get.
This was the year of Aaron Judge and Soto turning into Ruth and Gehrig and Maris and Mantle. And if the Yankees didn’t give Yankee fans the ride they wanted up the Canyon of Heroes, they at least gave them one back to the World Series, a ride that really didn’t end until the top of the 5th of Game 5 against the Dodgers (almost called them “Rodgers” there, just out of force of habit), when the Dodgers came from 0-5 down and Judge dropped a ball in center that was the same as him dropping the season in that moment.
Right before that, the Mets had played the Dodgers a tougher and harder series than the Yankees would in the Series, in the National League Championship Series, going toe-to-toe with them for six games. Of course this was a Mets season that saw them at 22-33 at the end of May and then turn it around under a calm, gifted rookie manager named Carlos Mendoza, and become the best team in baseball from there until the end of the regular season. It was only one of the greatest turnarounds in all of Mets history, led by Francisco Lindor, who went to the leadoff spot at the end of May and produced from that spot the way Rickey Henderson, who would play for both New York baseball teams, once had.
“Even when we were struggling early, I always believed we had this in us,” Mendoza told me one day after the Mets had gotten going and going good.
He believed and they believed and so did Mets fans once again, because if you’re a Mets fan, you still gotta believe sometimes, don’t you? Now they have Soto in Queens instead of the Bronx. As soon as Steve Cohen made it happen, Mets fans wanted to start 2025 right now.
In football, it looks like the only thing either of our teams is going to win is the No. 1 overall pick in the draft the Giants are about to have for only the third time in their history, if they don’t make a mess of that the way they’ve mostly made a mess of just about everything else for the past decade, both on and off the field.
The Jets have remained interesting, just because of the way they keep losing games, and around Aaron Rodgers having become as epic a reality series as we’ve ever had for a star athlete around here. He was brought here to be a difference maker, brought here with the same kind of Hail Mary the Jets once threw at another aging Green Bay quarterback named Favre. Only now the Jets won’t even win as many games this season as they did last season when the quarterbacks were Zach Wilson and Trevor Siemian and Tim Boyle. And only once, truly did he do what we was brought here to do, despite all those chances, which means take the Jets down the field to win the game.
The big spotlight, this week and next week and until pitchers and catchers, is squarely on the Knicks, who are playing as if this might finally be the first time since 2000 when they can make it past the second round of the playoffs. But even though they couldn’t make it to the Eastern Conference finals last spring, couldn’t make it up to Boston, boy did Jalen Brunson and the other ‘Nova Knicks bring the Knicks back in the city in such a big and loud and pretty wonderful way.
Now Karl-Anthony Towns has joined up with Brunson and Josh Hart and a new ‘Nova Knick named Mikal Bridges and OG, because we need an OG in the year of OMG. Towns has already established himself as the second and full-fledged basketball star that Patrick Ewing never had back in the ’90s, the last time the Knicks mattered this way and this much; even as Towns is putting Ewing-like numbers into the books, almost on a nightly basis, scoring and rebounding and even giving us the night when he had 32 points and 20 rebounds against his old team from Minnesota.
Really then, the New Year has already started at Madison Square Garden, for the Knicks if not the hockey team whose name must not be mentioned. The Knicks are still a hot team to talk about. We keep talking about Hot Stove baseball as the Mets and Yankees keep making moves. From now until April, Giant fans will even be talking about Shedeur Sanders and Cam Ward. Always a lot to talk about here. Never more than in 2024. Ring out the old now, and not just old Aaron Rodgers. You know the rest. For now, Merry Christmas.
