All year long, ESPN, in honor of their twenty-fifth anniversary, has been running specials designating the top 25 of absolutely everything remotely connected to sports. As this is my 25th column, I'm inclined to do something similar, but ESPN has already done all the good lists, so I'm forced to resort to my own personal sports highlights. Without further ado, then, the top 25 highlights of my long and storied sporting career.

1. September 21, 1978. While my father and uncle, who are supposed to be watching me, are caught up in a particularly engrossing chess game, I, at 17 months of age, wander happily into a swimming pool and promptly sink to the bottom. A neighbor lady fishes me out. My father and uncle, deeply chastened, beg her not to tell my mother. She tells her anyway. My parents get divorced not long after this, but I'm sure there's no connection.
2. October 2, 1980. I see my first heavyweight fight on T.V. It is the Larry Holmes-Muhammad Ali bout, in which Holmes poked half-heartedly at a clearly impaired Ali for eleven rounds, all the while wearing the unhappy expression of a fellow who has been forced to mug Gandhi. The Miracle on Ice I must have missed.
3. March 13, 1982. While attempting the demanding athletic feat of sleeping, I roll out of bed and fall onto a hardwood floor and break my collarbone.
4. May 11, 1983. While rocking back and forth on a tall stool, I lose my balance and fall several feet onto a tile floor. I break my collarbone again.
5. October 9, 1984. It's the Colts' first season in Indiana, but they aren't very good, and I am more concerned about Reagan's imminent reelection. In second grade, I engage in violent political debates with a nasty little Thatcherite British exchange student. During the course of one of these, he jumps off a jungle gym and lands on my shoulders, predictably breaking my collarbone.
6. June 28, 1985. Against my will, I join a soccer team. As a protest against forced globalization, I kick the ball out of bounds whenever it is passed to me. This protest is widely misinterpreted.
7. March 30, 1987. The Indiana Hoosiers win the NCAA basketball championship with a one-point win over Syracuse. This marks the last time any of my teams won a championship. So it goes.
8. April 12, 1988. Having relocated to Seattle, I attend a three-day camp with my fifth-grade class, where I inexplicably excel at archery and spend a lot of time with a pretty redheaded girl. This presumably leads to my lasting weakness for redheads, but the archery has no noticeable effect.
9. March 5, 1989. In sixth grade, I begin posting odds on school sporting events. Soon, all of my homework is being done by students trying to work off their gambling debts.
10. November 4, 1990. Back in Indiana, I bowl my all-time best game. I forget exactly what the score was, but it was high. Really high. Higher than that game you just bowled, I can assure you. I'm sure I'll never match it.
11. October 17, 1991. I am forced to play soccer for the first time in nearly six years. This time, I drop my protest. I play like Pele.
12. May 15, 1992. I attempt to replicate Ty Cobb's feat of bunting a ball slowly and directly down the first base line, in order to "accidentally" crush the pitcher's hand with your spikes when he goes to get it. I have nothing against the pitcher, and am not wearing spikes in any case, but just want to see if it can be done. After bunting nine pitches foul, I give up and swing away. The ball hits the pitcher in the face and puts him out of the game. I know there is a moral here, put I'm not sure what it is.
13. December 10-11, 1992. I play Risk for so many hours in a row that I forget what the real geopolitical world looks like. I realize that I don't mind.
14. May 22, 1993. I TKO Michael Dokes in the first round at Madison Square Garden. No, wait, that was Riddick Bowe. I mix us up sometimes.
15. November 8, 1994. I win ten dollars from my friend Daniel betting that George W. Bush will beat Ann Richards in the Texas gubernatorial election. Hello, karma. How've you been?
16. June 19, 1995. I play roulette with rich drunk French women at the Grand Casino in Monte Carlo. I win $300, and suggest to my father, who has just finished losing at blackjack, that I should probably quit while I'm ahead. "No way," he says. "You're on a roll." I lose all my money. He later claims that he did this on purpose to steer me away from gambling, but I do not believe him.
17. January 26, 1997. I listen to the Green Bay-New England Super Bowl on a car radio driving back to college in Ohio from Charleston, South Carolina with my roommate and my girlfriend. Well, actually, strictly speaking, she wasn't my girlfriend at the time. As I recall, my girlfriend was in Indiana, but I doubt you want to hear that story. Just chalk it up as more bad karma.
18. October 26, 1997. My roommate and now-official girlfriend watch Game 7 of the World Series, rooting perversely and enthusiastically for the Florida Marlins, much to the irritation of all the Indians fans in the room, typical of our north-central Ohio alma mater. When Cleveland finally loses, they all get very depressed, and we feel sort of bad. I still collect my bets.
19. May 3, 1998. I go with my girlfriend to a White Sox-Indians game at Jacobs Field. I get ripped off by a scalper and my girlfriend spills her Coke all over some Indians fans. The White Sox lose, of course.
20. October 21, 1998. I attend game 4 of the World Series in San Diego with my father. We had tickets to game 5 too, but, of course, there was no game 5.
21. June 1, 1999. I move to Chicago allegedly to go to law school, but mostly just to go to White Sox home games. The Sox reward me by going 75-86.
22. January 14, 2000. I win $52 playing poker with fellow future lawyers. Good times. Not good enough to make me want to be a lawyer, though.
23. November 7, 2000. I win another $10 from my friend Daniel betting that George W. Bush will beat Al Gore in the presidential election. I'm sorry already. This bet, incidentally, takes a long time to collect.
24. August 31, 2002. The International Olympic Committee turns down my application for a strange flipping thing that I can do with a pen or pencil to be a medal event in Athens.
25. December 18, 2003. The otherwise seemingly sensible people at Knotmag give me a sports column. Incidentally, I just counted, and it turns out that this is only my 23rd column, but I needed a hook. See you next week.