My top five sports stories of 2008:

1. Celtics win the NBA Championship and raise banner 18.
2. Red Sox win game 5 of the ALCS, coming back from a 7-0 deficit against the Rays to stave off elimination (until game 7).
3. Jon Lester pitches a no-hitter against the Royals.
4. Michael Phelps and all those gold medals.
5. Matt Cassell emerges to lead the Patriots to within a hairs breadth of a playoff berth.

And the worst sports moment: the Patriots lose the Super Bowl with 35 seconds left. There were some other bad ones (Brady's injury, the Sox elimination, the whole Manny saga in July), but really, does anything else come close?