Jan. 1, 2010

Weird world of sports will surely get stranger in 2010

By Ray Ratto | CBSSports.com Columnist

And so ends 2009 with the perfect sendoff -- two Washington Wizards drawing down in the locker room.

We always think that each completed year is the weirdest ever and never to be topped, because our imaginations are limited by what we just read, heard and saw. I mean, after Tiger Woods, what's the next frontier?

Could sports news get any more bizarre? That really isn't a head-scratcher, Gilbert Arenas. (US Presswire)

But that's nothing at all, because within days we get Mike Leach and the growing blood feud with Adam James, of course. That's got legs for months, right?

But wait, that's not good enough yet, because now we've got Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton reportedly pulling and aiming their pieces at each other in the Washington Wizards' locker room over Crittenton's claim that Arenas was welching on a gambling debt.

We've already learned that the Wizards allowed Arenas to store unloaded weapons at the arena, because the Wizards have admitted as much. Now that's not stupid at all, because you never know when a gun show will pop up at the Verizon Center. And it's impossible to get ammunition past no guards at all, right?

But now we get this story, as offered us by the New York Post and Yahoo.com, and we realize that 2010 has an even higher mountain to climb than it did when Tiger's reputation wandered into the swamp.

But we realized this about 2009, too, and 2008 before that. The weird wheel spins faster and faster for no better explanation than the fact that it does, and if there is a sociological explanation that covers this phenomenon, it is no more complicated than this:

People of power, influence and fame will do anything and everything they desire that they can't be prevented from doing.

And that's not much of a revelation at all.

The knee-jerk reaction comes now, from, those who will shriek that the Wizards should never have been so lax about letting Arenas have a $200 million publicly financed gun locker, or that the players should have had to go through a metal detector to enter the arena.

Yeah, fine, that makes sense because the story isn't that two teammates pointed heat at each other but where they did it. That makes tons of sense.

But we're not talking about morality here, because if we really have to explain why teammates pointing guns at each other is a bad idea, then we as a society need to give up and go live in the forest.

We're talking about the bizarre nature of the story, and that's where the locker room comes in -- because teammates, gambling debts and guns aren't enough to hook us this year ... er, weren't enough to hook us last year.

So yeah, here's to 2010, you poor unlucky bastard. You better bring your A-game if you want to top 2009, and when you actually do, we'll be amazed next New Year's Day all over again.

And when we say A-game, we're thinking cannibalism at the Olympics. We're thinking human sacrifice at the NCAA tournament. We're thinking the earth swallowing up Augusta National. We're thinking the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series, the Detroit Lions in the Super Bowl, the L.A. Clippers in the NBA Finals and Notre Dame firing Brian Kelly to hire Leach, with Craig James as the new running backs coach.

What, it can't happen? You say that knowing what we just saw in the last month of 2009? You think weird isn't winning, and by wider and wider margins every year? You want to bet 2010 isn't going to be stranger than 2009?

And if you do want to bet, be prepared to pay off. We have guns, and we're not afraid to wave them around like idiots.

Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.