2010 was one for the ages

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They were all eventful, the years past, chock full of the most memorable this and the worst that. There is always a best movie, there is always a biggest news story, there is always a stand-out game, which as time passes most often fade in memory, because on the big tote board it's all relative.

Here's betting, though, that the sports year just concluded won't soon be forgotten. It was one for the ages.

In this country, that in large part was because of the Vancouver Winter Olympics, an event that was always going to be big by definition, but had an impact that ran deeper than most would have ever imagined.

There is a running theme that links those Games, the New Orleans Saints' emotional victory in the Super Bowl, the complex and ultimately uplifting story of South Africa holding the World Cup - and even the fallout from LeBron James's decision to forsake the Cleveland Cavaliers for Miami, making that announcement in a television special that one hopes was some kind of cultural nadir.

It is the power of home, of identity, of affiliation, even in a crazily fragmented world, even at a time when you watch anything from anywhere at any time with a click.

The reason we care about sport, the reason we follow teams and athletes year after year, often passing that allegiance down through generations, isn't because of the spectacle, isn't because of the superhuman feats. It is because they represent us, sometimes as symbols requiring much suspension of disbelief, sometimes in the most direct way possible - like Jon Montgomery, the Everycanadian, grabbing that pitcher of beer. They represent our tribe, who we are, where we come from, where we live. That's the core of a rooting interest - self affirmation, community affirmation, national affirmation, cheering for ourselves, for home - and that's why some of 2010's best moments will have real staying power.

It helped that the Olympic story arc - from troubled beginning to triumphant climax - was copped straight from Hollywood, and that the Games produced a series of pure, perfect images, featuring athletes who the country had already come to know, thanks to a concentration of broadcasting and new media resources the likes of which we may never see again. Alexandre Bilodeau and his brother at the finish line; Melissa Hollingworth weeping; Charles Hamelin and Marianne St. Gelais embracing; Joannie Rochette; Moir and Virtue; Clara Hughes; the hockey women celebrating; and yes, that beer, and yes, that goal: every one of them inspiration for the greatest public expression of patriotic sentiment in this country outside of a world war.

Cultural historians will long be debating what that really meant, whether it was a kind of mass hysteria, or the dawning of new, confident Canada, or simply a Stanley Cup celebration writ really, really large. The fact is, though, that as we approach the one-year anniversary, you can fall back into that feeling simply by seeing one of those iconic pictures, or hearing a snippet of song, all of which would suggest something very special, and very different than that which has gone before.

The Saints' victory was a local triumph, but it resonated far beyond the Crescent City, a unique and wondrous place beaten down first by nature and then by the indifference and incompetence of those hired and elected to do so much better.

Professional sport doesn't fix what's broken, even though that's often one of the myths employed to make it seem more significant than it really is, and the Super Bowl itself barely has a beating heart, dropped into a neutral site and handed over to corporate interests to the point where the whole fan/team relationship can seem all but irrelevant. But being in New Orleans when the Saints secured a berth in the championship game, being among the residents of that still-shattered city when they took to the streets, was to be in the middle of something real and beautiful.

The myth of quick fixes was cited often in the build-up to the 2010 World Cup, the biggest sporting event to be held on the African continent. Thanks to the movie Invictus, the outside world had become familiar with the story of the 1995 Rugby World Cup, and how Nelson Mandela's embrace of the nearly all-white South African side symbolized the spirit of reconciliation. Playing host to the championship of soccer, traditionally the sport of the country's black majority, at enormous expense was partially justified as a way of furthering those aims, though by now the myriad obstacles to creating a true rainbow nation were obvious to all.

But in the end, though the soccer itself was unsatisfying, the tournament was a triumph. Fears of a great logistical nightmare failed to materialize - the huge undertaking worked just fine, in a distinctly African way. Fears of violent crime also proved to be largely unwarranted - though by the end of the World Cup, the old normal quickly returned.

And there were times, when South Africa scored its first goal, when it appeared it might advance, when Ghana became a surrogate home team, and finally when Mandela made his brief appearance before the final, when the divisions of race and class seemed to fade just slightly, when the country's enormous potential seemed at least temporarily to outweigh its enormous, unbridgeable inequities. The whole world had a rooting interest then.

What those stories had in common was the revelation that even at its most commercial, even when its underlying purpose is to sell cars and beer and soda pop, sport can serve the same function as it did when town folk assembled to watch their guys play the guys from down the road, with nothing at stake but local pride.

The LeBron James saga carried with it a very different message on the same subject: when we decide to build belief systems around those who are mercenary paid entertainers, hearts are bound to be broken. Fundamentally, James did nothing wrong exercising his right to ply his trade where he chose. (What was wrong was when athletes were unfairly denied that right in the past.) But by choosing, in a cynical partnership with ESPN, to "announce" his decision as part of a television special that seemed designed to torture those who had loyally supported him as a Cleveland Cavalier and naively believed he might remain one, he took that core power of spectator sport and made it malevolent.

That's a dangerous path for those who have become wealthy as sport has become this culture's great secular religion. People care because it feels good to care, they believe because they want to believe. And everyone, whether past or present, real or imagined, has a home.

Clevelanders might well have felt even more like Clevelanders in their united hatred for the guy who done them wrong. But sever that bond completely, and it's just another game.