I saw this morning that Dan Shanoff from The Sporting Blog had a list of things that sports fans should be thankful for from the past year. I’ll take his idea and convert it to Chicago’s version, at least for this fan.

January: Denis Savard may not be the coach of the Blackhawks anymore, but we will always remember his words from January of 2008: Commit to the Indian.

“I think they forgot last summer or two summers ago or three summers ago what we gave them (contracts). We committed to them. They were very happy when they signed it. Well, commit to us, commit to the jersey, commit to the people here. They don’t want to commit to the Indian, let’s go upstairs and get them out of here.”

February: February left me thankful for lots of laughs. As a Cubs fan, my favorite was this delusion from Tony La Russa, during an interview with Bryan Burwell:

“Wait a minute, Tony. You still don’t believe McGwire used performance-enhancing drugs?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Come on.”

“Absolutely not,” he said. “If you see Mark today, he still looks like he did then.”

March: This one is easy: Opening Day and the excitement of Fukudome’s homer.

April: The Cubs finally discovered the power of getting on-base. All of their regulars were near .400 throughout most of April, and it made a huge difference: in 2008 the Cubs scored more runs than any other NL team. Click the link to read the other 8 months!

May: Carlos Quentin continued to dominate, proving that his hot April was not a fluke. He became a “can’t miss” at-bat when the Sox were on.

June: The Bulls select Derrick Rose and the dawn of a new era in Chicago hoops.

July: Jim Hendry scores a major trade for the A’s Rich Harden.

August: Jim Edmonds homers against the Cardinals. What I wrote about it then: “He hit it, he knew it and he watched it for a bit before heading to first for his trot. After he began to trot he then did a bat flip toward the Cards’ dugout and took a measured stare at the bench and TLR. I replayed it about 50 times”.

September: Jam-packed month. Big Z’s no-no. The Bears beating Indy after a horrid preseason gave all of us fans some hope. And of course, the Cubs and White Sox both clinching their divisions.

October: The solidification of Kyle Orton as a true NFL starting QB.

November: Watching Derrick Rose continues to remind me of some other Bull that used to play here…

December: Hopefully it will be a Bears division title.

[tags]Chicago, Derrick Rose, Chicago Bulls, Chicago Bears, Denis Savard, Kyle Orton[/tags]