Sure shots, long shots and once-in-a-lifetime shots - 2004 had them all.

It was an over-the-top, out-of-control year, sensational in both its glorious and scandalous senses.

Halley's Comet comes around every 76 years. The Boston Red Sox hadn't won the World Series in 86 years.

Nobody ever won a World Series or even a league championship down 0-3 in games, much less three outs from a sweep.

A gutsy bettor with blind faith in the Red Sox could have made millions plunking down dough on them at that particularly bleak moment when a sweep by their ancient and annual enemy, the New York Yankees, seemed inevitable.

It took a self-proclaimed team of "idiots," undaunted by history or curses, to flip fate around and make 2004 one of the greatest vintage years of sports.

There is no more enduring image of the year - what it took to win and what it meant to those who did - than the bloodstained sock of Curt Schilling. It gave new meaning to Red Sox and belongs in the Hall of Fame.

Stitched to pitch, Schilling inspired his teammates and lifted the suffering generations of Red Sox Nation scattered around the globe. It was a medical miracle, if not a heavenly one, the very opposite of what Boston's many pessimistic fans had come to expect.

The signs at Fenway read "Believe," and millions did, even if they feared down to the last out that something, somehow would go wrong as it always had since 1918.

Yet Schilling delivered and David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, Jason Varitek, Johnny Damon, Kevin Millar, Orlando Cabrera and the others did the rest, stunning the Yankees and sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals in the most amazing team comeback in sports history.

"All empires fall sooner or later," Red Sox president Larry Lucchino said after the Yankees became the first baseball team to lose a seven-game series from a 3-0 lead.

"1918 is gone forever," Boston outfielder Trot Nixon said when the Series ended. "We're not going to have to hear about that again."

He was wrong, though in a good way. These Red Sox will hear forever how they broke the so-called Curse of the Bambino.

Roll back the calendar to Jan. 1 and imagine betting on the New England Patriots to win the Super Bowl en route to an NFL-record 21-game winning streak and the Boston Red Sox to sweep the World Series in the same year. What would you have won if you parlayed those with bets on the starless Detroit Pistons to win the NBA title and the Sunshine State's Tampa Bay Lightning to win the Stanley Cup?

What if, along the way, you ran up the winnings by betting that a single school would win the men's and women's Final Four in basketball. No school ever had. Connecticut did.

And what were the odds back then that Vijay Singh would win nine times in the year, become golf's first $10 million man, and replace Tiger Woods as No. 1 in the world?

Or that Switzerland's Roger Federer, uncoached, would become the first man since 1988 to win three Grand Slam tennis titles?

"Roger just played too good today," Andy Roddick said after losing to Federer in the Wimbledon final. "I threw the kitchen sink at him, but he went to the bathroom and got a tub."

Singh and Federer weren't huge shocks to rise to the top of their sports after their strong play in the past, but to win on the scale they did was nothing short of extraordinary.

There was far less surprise in seeing Lance Armstrong pedal to a record sixth straight Tour de France, Michael Schumacher win a seventh Formula One title or Kurt Busch capture NASCAR's Nextel Cup in a new championship format.

Michael Phelps imposed himself in such a way at the Athens Olympics, winning eight medals, six of them gold and none a surprise. If Phelps didn't quite match Mark Spitz's record haul of seven individual golds in 1972, he still ruled the pool as no other man since.

Morocco's Hicham El Guerrouj, the greatest middle-distance runner of all time, elevated the games by winning the 1,500 gold after failing twice before, then added the 5,000 - a double that hadn't been accomplished since Paavo Nurmi did it in 1924.

Argentina pulled the upset of the games, winning the gold in men's basketball while a humiliated U.S. team, booed in Greece and lambasted at home, settled for bronze.

It was a year to take pleasure in the overachievement of little Saint Joseph's, No. 1 in the men's basketball poll, and to cheer for Smarty Jones, the Seabiscuit of our times. Smarty Jones won millions of fans in his bid for the Triple Crown, and they loved him still even when he came up a length short in the Belmont.

Peyton Manning's pursuit of Dan Marino's season TD passing mark - 48 in 1984 - has been a wonder to watch, especially seeing him doing it with poise and class and none of the phony celebrations that some other players have displayed to grab attention.

"I thought 48 was something no one would touch or get close to," Marino said, adding that if he had to yield the record to anyone he'd be proud that Manning is the one.

We needed all those good times to get us past the embarrassments, scandals and violence that permeated the sports landscape.

After 15 years of denials, Pete Rose admitted to betting on baseball and his own Cincinnati Reds, but he remained banned from the game and ineligible for the place that would otherwise surely be his in the Hall of Fame.

There was the sexual assault case against Kobe Bryant that was nightly news until the prosecution dropped the charges when his accuser said she did not want to participate in the trial. The 26-year-old Los Angeles Lakers star has said the sex was consensual, but the woman is pursuing damages in a civil case.

Meanwhile, nothing has slowed down Bryant on the court, not even his feud and split with Shaquille O'Neal, the departure of coach Phil Jackson, and a Lakers lineup that is a shadow of what it once was.

Hockey wasn't even a shadow. The NHL was shut down, possibly for the 2004-05 season and beyond, when team owners locked out the players to press their demands for a salary cap.

The BALCO investigation, which began the summer before last, goes on still, with recent allegations by the company's founder that he was secretly juicing up the world's fastest couple, Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery, among others in the Olympics, baseball and the NFL.

"It's embarrassing to baseball," one player, Jeff Kent, said of the continuing steroid saga.

Agreeing on a winner continued to elude college football, which once again had a split national championship when Southern California won one trophy and LSU another. And more argument loomed as the year ended, with three teams from major conferences - Southern Cal, Oklahoma and Auburn - all undefeated going into the holiday bowl games.