Our year-in-review special looks back at the wacky, weird, and wondrous stories of 2014.

Through the five hole
“He is one of the most known athletes in the world…playing hockey, everyone knows him, from being the type of person he was off the ice and on the ice. But, you know, he changed a lot while he was with us.”—Toronto Maple Leafs goaltender Jonathan Bernier makes a huge mistake while answering a question about deceased apartheid fighter and Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela during a ceremony honouring the former South African president before a Toronto Raptors game

Year of the dry cleaners
“We took the field kind of knowing we were going to win, and the teams we were playing had that feeling too: you could see them in the other dugout just crapping their pants.”—Former Montreal Expos outfielder and power hitter Larry Walker, a native of Maple Ridge, B.C., on the 1994 Expos team that was leading baseball when the player strike wiped out the season. Walker was speaking after a ceremony before an exhibition game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the New York Mets in Montreal last March

Backtracking b-baller
After St. Louis Rams draft pick Michael Sam became the first openly gay NFL player in May (and shared a kiss with his boyfriend on national TV) former Ole Miss college basketball star Marshall Henderson tweeted homophobic comments about the broadcast. After an uproar about his tweets, he offered the unlikely explanation that he was really conducting a psychology experiment for an unnamed gay friend’s college project.

Been down so long it looks like up
The owner of the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers, Joshua Harris, called his team’s 2013 season—which ended with the league’s second-worst record, at 19-63, and included an NBA-record-tying 26-game losing streak—a “huge success” because it put them in a good position for an early pick in the 2014 NBA draft.

Politically profane
“This is a big fucking day.”—Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti speaking in front of 19,000 fans and TV cameras while celebrating the L.A. Kings’ second Stanley Cup win in three years

Channelling Yogi the Berra
“Football is like chess, but without the dice.”—German national-team soccer player Lukas Podolski after Germany won the World Cup in Rio de Janeiro

When minds collide
Two players died during this year’s Chess Olympiad, the most prestigious international chess tournament. Horrified spectators in Tromsø, Norway, and television watchers saw Kurt Meier, 67, of the Seychelles team collapse during his final match; hours later, a 46-year-old player from Uzbekistan, Alisher Anarkulov, was found dead in his hotel room.