STEPHEN CURRY IS writhing in pain underneath the basket.

It's Oct. 30, the fourth game of the season for the Golden State Warriors -- just the second inside San Francisco's brand-new Chase Center. And with 8 minutes, 31 seconds remaining in the third quarter, the home team is staring at its third blowout loss in seven days.

Curry's left hand has just borne the weight of Aron Baynes, the 260-pound Phoenix Suns big man collapsing on top of the Warriors' two-time MVP after a driving layup attempt.

A few tense seconds passes as more than 18,000 fans hold their collective breath. Curry finally uses his right arm to signal he is ready to be helped off the floor.

Warriors guard D'Angelo Russell and forward Eric Paschall spring to action, but it is forward Draymond Green who emerges, pushing through his teammates to be the first by Curry's side as he is gingerly helped off the hardwood.

Less than 20 minutes later, as the rest of the NBA world waits for an official diagnosis, general manager Bob Myers appears from the tunnel to deliver the message first to Green and Klay Thompson.

Myers leans over toward his two stars sitting at the end of the bench: It's a season-altering fracture to Curry's left hand.

Thompson tilts his head back and laughs at the absurdity. After all, Golden State had already suffered Thompson's ACL and Kevin Durant's Achilles tendon tears in the NBA Finals just four months prior.

As Green hears the news from Myers, his response is succinct.

"I just said, 'Damn, that's f---ed up," Green says now. "That's just f---ed up."

"That five-year run is just exhausting. And so literally everybody else is getting to recharge their batteries, one way or the other, but here's Draymond. I call him the lone survivor."

Warriors head coach Steve Kerr

Curry and Thompson are both injured. Durant and Andre Iguodala had already changed teams in the offseason. The famed "Hamptons Five" lineup was no more. Before Curry's injury, Golden State had held out hope that two of the five remaining healthy members of the franchise's Death Lineup -- immortalized in framed drawings lining the Chase Center hallway -- could help navigate the Warriors back to the playoffs after five consecutive Finals trips.

Now, Myers returns to his seat behind the Warriors' bench as Green stares across the court, his new reality unfolding in front of him as the last healthy leader left for the five-time defending Western Conference champions.

The Hamptons One.

GOLDEN STATE HAD lost every game but one in the two weeks after Curry suffered his hand injury. Green and the Warriors had already sunk to last place in the West by the time they arrived in Los Angeles for a mid-November game against LeBron James' Lakers.

After all the years of high-stakes battles against James, this matchup feels flat as the Warriors spiral down the standings, while the Lakers roar out of the gate led by the familiar brilliance of James and Anthony Davis. Still, Green insists his preparation isn't going to change.

"I got the same mental preparation for a game that I've ever had," the 29-year-old says. "It's the same. I don't [prepare differently] in terms of who's playing, who's on the court."

With Davis sitting this night due to a sore right shoulder, James needs only 23 points in 26 minutes to help dispatch a Golden State squad that provides nothing more than a speed bump in 120-94 rout.

After the game, coach Steve Kerr sheds light on just how much things have changed for Green and his younger teammates.

"We had a shootaround today that might have qualified as a training camp practice for last year's team," Kerr says.

"We went through defensive drills and got after it a little bit [with] pick-and roll-coverages. So we've changed our routine quite a bit this year to try to help guys catch up. ... We're throwing them into the fire."

In the hallway outside the visitors' locker room, a small smile creeps across Green's face as he tries to explain how much differently the morning workout unfolded. "It was crazy," Green says.

"It's different, but you've got to teach. And the thing about the NBA is you don't have a ton of practice so I kind of teach on the fly."

Despite another early beatdown, the frustration of the season hasn't set in yet. Green even debates his favorite pasta spot with two Warriors staffers. (For the record, the spicy rigatoni at Carbone in New York and Las Vegas is Green's choice.)

As the Warriors continue to grapple with life without the Splash Brothers, it is Green who seems the least rattled.

"You can't have the same expectations [after the injuries]," Green says of the Warriors' choppy early season. "That's not realistic. So you got to adjust, same way you got to do with anything else in life."

Green has won at every level, so he takes a moment to remember the last time it didn't happen.

"Last time I lost? Probably my junior year of college," Green says, recalling the 2010-11 season, when Michigan State actually went 19-15. "We still made the [NCAA] tournament, but we had a bad year. But other than that I've never really lost in my life."

It's an adjustment that has sparked interest both within the Warriors' organization and all over the league: How will a player as accomplished as Green handle a season in which the Warriors are headed for the draft lottery?

"I think he's handling it just fine," Kerr says. "He's a realist like I am. Nobody is preordained to get to play in the Finals every year. It just doesn't work that way.

"So I think we sort of look at it the opposite way in that how lucky we've been to be a part of this group over the last, for me five years, for Draymond the last seven years, and have this wild success.

"And maybe we were due for a year like this."

WARRIORS PLAYERS AND coaches huddle in the film room inside the Chase Center practice facility, where four rows of theater-style seats face a huge flat-screen TV. On this morning, though, every set of eyes in the room is fixed on Green.

He needed to say something the day after the Warriors had blown a fourth-quarter lead to Chris Paul and the Oklahoma City Thunder on Nov. 25. It was their fifth loss in six games since being routed by the Lakers, and it sent Golden State's record plummeting to 3-15.

"We need to step up," swingman Glenn Robinson III says of Green's message. "We can't control what's being talked about in the media, we can't control the fans, anything [other than] how we approach the game. ... Ignoring the negativity and just competing."

"I've never really had anybody sit us down and talk to us like that," rookie two-way guard Ky Bowman says. "Just to help us understand what was happening."

Green, who impressed his younger teammates by not being afraid to call himself out to play to a higher standard, wasn't taking aim at individual teammates, according to those in the room. His message, though, was clear: Getting this team full of young, inexperienced players on the same page was key if they were going to get out of this rut.

"Most guys in general struggle with communication," Green says. "It's kind of amplified when you're dealing with younger guys.

"Half the battle is just getting people to say something."

Damion Lee, another two-way guard, calls Green the "heartbeat" of the team. During last season's run to the Finals, Lee watched as stars such as Curry, Durant, Thompson and veterans such as Iguodala and Shaun Livingston led alongside Green.

Now that Green is in a leadership role by himself, Lee says Green's greatest ability is being able to connect with teammates from every corner of the locker room.

"We have a lot of guys that are introverts. Not a lot of guys talk up. So the way that Draymond's leading this year is more guiding guys along." Lee says.

In the Warriors' gap year, it is Green who has become another coach on the floor and a sounding board for his teammates.

"The coaching staff's voice can get kind of tired sometimes," center Kevon Looney says. "They want the best for us, but when you hear it from a player, [there is] more accountability ...

"He wasn't a guy who was highly touted as a superstar like maybe a KD or a Steph or even a Klay. He was a guy that was a role player that made himself into an All-Star, into one of the best players in the league, so having him as a role model means a lot more.

"He's been in our shoes, he knows what we're feeling."

Some around the league wonder if Green is on his best behavior this season because he just signed a four-year, $100 million extension in August, but those who know Green best within the organization all agree that he has taken his new leadership role to heart. He appreciates the responsibility he has to help his younger teammates grow.

"Draymond is the most, in a sense, relatable person that we have on the roster," Lee says.

Less than 24 hours after Green's impromptu words of encouragement inside the film room, the Warriors put Green's charge into action, using a 16-2 fourth-quarter run to close down the Chicago Bulls. Golden State walks off the Chase Center floor with its fourth victory of the season.

GREEN'S LOCKER IS farthest from the media room and, more important, closest to the private players' exit.

There are theoretically nights when star players around him would've taken the opportunity to sneak out the back -- as he did in recent years at Oracle Arena. Those days are gone.

Green has become the de facto public -- and postgame -- face of the franchise this season alongside Kerr.

After a two-point overtime defeat to the lowly New York Knicks on Dec. 11 -- the second leg of a five-game losing streak -- Green, wearing a green hoodie and sipping from a cherry smoothie, leaves his seat and makes the 14-step journey up the stairway to the Warriors' media room.

Now, game nights don't end until Draymond talks.

"A loss is a loss," Green says, delivering the type of clichéd playerspeak he hasn't exactly been known for throughout his eight-year career. "It doesn't matter who it's against."

Warriors senior vice president of communications Raymond Ridder has privately praised Green for how he has handled himself in this setting. Green has long been one of the NBA's most quotable players but has never carried the responsibility of giving a nightly state-of-the-team address after each painful loss.

"He wasn't a guy who was highly touted as a superstar like maybe a KD or a Steph or even a Klay. He was a guy that was a role player that made himself into an All-Star, into one of the best players in the league, so having him as a role model means a lot more. He's been in our shoes, he knows what we're feeling."

Warriors center Kevon Looney

Green can take solace, though, that the locker room he oversees still has an air of ease, even after the disappointment of falling to the worst team in the Eastern Conference and seeing Golden State's record fall to 5-21. Players and coaches credit the franchise's stalwart for keeping the team together as the losses pile up -- even with seemingly no end in sight to an injury-riddled season after years of success.

"Draymond's the one guy who hasn't been able to kind of decompress after the five-year run," Kerr says. "Everybody else -- Shaun [Livingston] retired, Andre [Iguodala] hasn't played -- they would all tell you the same thing: That five-year run is just exhausting.

"And so literally everybody else is getting to recharge their batteries, one way or the other, but here's Draymond.

"I call him the lone survivor."

CHRISTMAS DAY MIGHT have delivered the two loudest moments in Chase Center's brief history.

With chants of "Let's go Warriors" reverberating from the crowd, Green, camped out in the corner in front of the Houston Rockets' bench, had just delivered the 3-pointer that put Golden State up by six with 5:48 remaining. The arena erupts.

Green sprints past the bench with a confident swagger on his way to give Kerr a low-five, then jumps into the waiting arms of Curry as the Rockets call a timeout.

As rehab schedules and doctors appointments pile up, it's rare that both Curry and Thompson have been together on the bench to witness their team's games, but both beam at the sight of Green and the rest of their teammates bringing more pain to a Rockets group they have owned in previous seasons.

Minutes later, with Curry, Thompson and the Golden State bench now nearly spilling onto the court -- Green takes a pass from Robinson at the top of the 3-point line with Rockets guard Russell Westbrook closing out.

Dagger.

Green drills the jumper with 1:54 remaining to put an exclamation point on the Warriors' 116-104 victory, their season-high third straight.

Green sprints down the court, hands behind his back and tongue out as he gazes into the crowd. "I was actually looking at [Warriors owner] Joe [Lacob], celebrating with Joe and [co-owner] Peter [Guber]," Green says.

Fittingly, it is Green with the ball in his hands as the clock expires. Handshakes and high-fives are exchanged as Green picks up assistant coach Bruce Fraser, who warms him up prior to every game, with a giant bear hug.

Green finishes the game with a season-high 20 points, 11 rebounds and 3 assists, adding the kind of defense that has become a calling card throughout his career. Green pauses for a postgame television interview and signs a ball for a fan before making his way off the floor to roaring applause.

"I think Warriors fans are used to just seeing him do that," Kerr says.

Green takes pride in this particular win because of whom it came against, and whom it came without. He rejects the idea that teams are overlooking these Warriors because of the injuries to Curry and Thompson and the offseason departures of players such as Durant and Iguodala. Opponents are just returning the favor.

"For five years or so, we've been kicking a lot of people's ass," Green says. "Now that we don't have certain guys out there, they don't care. ... They see a Warriors jersey and they want to attack us."

Down the stairs from Green's postgame news conference and inside the locker room sit personalized bottles of 2011 Coup de Foudre Cabernet Sauvignon for each player, including Curry and Thompson, delivered pregame by Lacob and his wife, Nicole. A holiday message written in gold pen graces each label.

On this night, it's a time for celebration for Green and his Warriors teammates. During this trying season, there haven't been many.

From an American perspective, two of the most memorable things about the year 1919 were baseball events: Babe Ruth was traded from the Red Sox to the Yankees, and the White Sox threw the World Series. (Also: the Anarchist bombings, the Great Molasses Flood and the Treaty of Versailles.) What's interesting about those two events is that neither would have been known to the average baseball fan at the close of 1919: Ruth's deal wasn't made public until the first week of 1920, and the White Sox weren't investigated until September 1920.

So, as always, we very humbly acknowledge that the search we're about to embark upon -- to determine what, from the 2019 baseball season, will be well known to the average baseball fan many decades from now -- is beginning at least 20 years too early. To reinforce that point: The most lasting memory from the 2017 season is likely to be the World Series champion Astros banging trash cans in a high-tech/low-tech sign-stealing scam. We learned about that just this fall.

We once again use as our road map The Definitive Guide To What Gets Remembered, our survey of the sport's most resilient stories, from Murderers' Row to Mazeroski's walk-off to McCray running through a wall. That guide gives us the seven categories of not-forgotten things of the past to organize our search.

Category 1. Incredible achievement, usually captured by a single number or concept

The last time home runs spiked, in the 1990s and early 2000s, there were a bunch of new individual home run records. But the nature of this year's power surge -- a livelier ball that seems to benefit almost every player equally, rather than a few players disproportionately -- kept any individuals from demolishing previous offensive standards. And the emphasis on home runs ruled out any other extreme performances -- nobody is going to steal 100 bases, or bat .400, or goodness gracious set many pitching records, when home runs come as cheaply as they did this year.

So while there were great seasons -- Christian Yelich was the 29th player in the past century to win the slash-stat triple crown, Mike Trout set career bests in power stats, Gerrit Cole broke the record for strikeouts per nine innings -- there wasn't a single number that jumps and stays out. The best candidates:

• Pete Alonso's rookie record 53 homers. It's a bit less exciting coming just two years after Aaron Judge broke the previous record (in another rabbit-ball season). It hurts, too, that Alonso didn't stick out, as a visual and a phenomenon, like Judge did. Judge was, by the end of that season, the most popular player in baseball, and Alonso is not. It is, on the other hand, a legitimate record (rather than mere fun fact), and Alonso's emergence as a juiced-ball denier might extend his baseball Q score, as future generations continue to debate what exactly was going on in this era.

• Stephen Strasburg's postseason performance: a record-tying five postseason wins, 47 strikeouts against only four walks. It suffers in comparison to Madison Bumgarner's superior-by-any-measure postseason in 2014, and in comparison to Bumgarner's larger body of postseason work, and because Strasburg didn't get to pitch that all-important (for historical purposes) seventh game. On the other hand, Strasburg is a more famous pitcher than Bumgarner, and his whole career is more likely to be remembered generations from now.

• Mariano Rivera being unanimously elected to the Hall of Fame. If he is somehow still the only unanimous inductee many decades hence, this is probably the correct answer for the whole article. But he won't be. The shift in voting norms -- and Rivera breaking the seal -- probably heralds a bunch of followers: Who'll vote against Ichiro now that we've disposed of the tradition of withholding votes on the first ballot? Who'll vote against Kershaw? Nobody could conceivably vote against Trout.

• Trout's contract extension ($426 million-ish) or Gerrit Cole's free-agent contract ($324 million). Each is a record -- Trout's for biggest contract and highest average annual salary, Cole's for a pitcher -- and each will probably remain the record for a half-decade or more. And now that fans process so much of the game through the GM's lens, many of us know player salaries more precisely than we know their stats. On the other hand, though, salaries almost always go up, and Trout and Cole will both be dwarfed within decades and devalued by our collective inability to adjust for inflation. The only modern contract that seems broadly remembered decades later is Alex Rodriguez's $252 million deal in Texas. Otherwise, we have to go back to the era when fans could still be shocked by players' (relatively modest) salaries -- Ruth making more than the president, Joe DiMaggio cracking $100K -- to find numbers that were still repeated a generation later.

Category 1(b). Incredible team (often captured by a nickname)

The Astros were, by talent, an all-time great team, with the highest third-order winning percentage since at least 1950, which is as far back as Baseball Prospectus tracks the stat. But the Astros didn't win the World Series, and third-order winning percentage is invisible to the average fan (and likely to be, along with all advanced stats, redesigned or replaced by more advanced stats in decades to come). If we're just thinking of the 2019 Astros as a group that played together in 2019, this is not a season on its own that will survive history.

If we think of the 2019 Astros as part of the Astros-in-the-2010s story, though, this was another memorable season. It was the year they became, clearly and nearly universally, the villains. Their trash-can-banging scam from 2017 was exposed, and turns out to have been so obvious that clips of it happening (THUMP! THUMP!) will air on baseball history segments for years. It was the year their assistant GM celebrated the pennant by taunting women reporters about the team's closer, who was arrested and charged with assaulting a woman in May 2018. That scandal might fade from memory, but it might also survive as a sign of a culture in need of correction, the same way Al Campanis' racist comments about black managers are still remembered three decades later.

Alongside all that, they really were an incredibly talented team -- Verlander and Cole alone! -- and their story arc seemed to reach completion: peak talent, peak villainy. This is the team everybody copied in the 2010s, and it felt at times like a team whose influence and mindset we needed to resist. There is absolutely no doubt there will be great books written about the Astros from 2011 through 2019, and even if 2019 was not the season they'll be most remembered for, it's a huge part of why they'll be remembered.

Category 1(c). Incredible single play or sequence of plays, often aided by iconic photo or video images

The home run that Howie Kendrick hit in the seventh game of the World Series -- turning a one-run deficit into a one-run lead, ultimately winning the title for Washington -- was the 10th biggest hit in baseball history, according to The Baseball Gauge's championship win probability added. But that's not enough to guarantee immortality. The biggest hit ever -- a Hal Smith homer -- is, most likely, new to you. Can you remember a Hal Smith homer? Have you ever heard of Hal Smith? (His was a home run that came an inning before Bill Mazeroski's, in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series. Mazeroski's walk-off was displaced from the No. 10 spot, on the cWPA leaderboard, by Kendrick.) Of the nine hits ahead of Kendrick's, I'd estimate only three are broadly "famous" in 2019 -- and those happen to be the three most recent ones.

Kendrick's other hope is his homer will go down as the biggest foul-pole homer ever. Nothing tells baseball's "game of inches" story quite like an entire season coming down to a ball hitting the foul pole. But (A) Kendrick hit the screen that extends out from the fair side of the pole, rather than the narrow cylinder itself, so it wasn't quite like kicking up chalk, and (B) Carlton Fisk already hit the foul pole, in the 1975 World Series. His homer didn't have the same effect on championship win probability, but Fisk's arm-waving produced a far more iconic game-of-inches visual. Fisk's foul pole was renamed after that homer -- the Fisk Foul Pole -- while Kendrick's, in Houston, will very much not be.

Category 2. The moment the timeline begins/the moment modern baseball begins

Earlier this year, I imagined the unlikely but plausible future in which the Home Run Derby splits off into its own sport and surpasses baseball in popularity. The catalyzing event for the rise of the Derby would be the $1 million prize that was added this year, which gives the Derby stakes it never had before -- particularly for young, salary-restricted players. And then, the players gave us one of the most entertaining Derbies ever -- Vlad Guerrero Jr. setting an all-time dinger record, Alonso effortlessly dominating the finals -- so it's obligatory to include it here.

It's unlikely the spread of the infield shift will be traced back to any single year, and if it is it'll probably be one of the years early in this decade, when a small number of teams started making it common. But as Ben Lindbergh first noted, two teams this year -- the Dodgers and Astros -- actually shifted on more than half of all pitches. In other words, for those two teams it was the traditional defensive alignment that now represents a "shift" -- the new alignment is now the default. Leaguewide that isn't true yet, but it still feels like a significant moment.

Category 3. Bloopers and/or extraordinary failures

It's a bit like a blooper: Yasiel Puig angrily fighting (and getting suspended for fighting) the Pittsburgh Pirates moments after he'd been traded to Cleveland, but before he knew it.

The clip's legacy will suffer a bit because Puig didn't do much more than jaw in it. Amir Garrett produced the punches in the brawl -- Puig made the punches in an earlier 2019 brawl against Pittsburgh, one that inspired a memey T-shirt he later wore -- but nevertheless, it's a story that'll be told and retold. And it succinctly tells a story of its own, about the arbitrary but inexorable power of a uniform. Puig hated the Pirates because he was a Red. He fought them because his team was fighting them. And the delightful irony of what we were watching was in him not knowing what we knew, which was that in about 10 minutes he would have no strong emotions against the Pirates (or in favor of the Reds) again. Indeed, we all kind of know that if Puig had been traded to the Pirates that day, and found out about it in the middle of the brawl, he probably would have switched sides right then and there and started yelling at anybody with a "C" on their cap. Perhaps nothing holds sports together like team identity, and the underlying arbitrariness of it all is the comedy that sneaks out in a moment like this one.

Chris Davis' hitless streak concluded this year -- 54 at-bats -- but unless MLB takes major steps to thwart strikeouts, I'd be shocked if that's still the record six decades from now.

Category 4. Pathos

Decades are often remembered for their drug trends, drug panics and drug crises, and in a larger, nationwide sense the 2010s will be remembered for the opioid epidemic. Tyler Skaggs -- an affluent Santa Monican in seemingly great physical condition -- is not the decade's emblematic opioid victim, but deaths like his scale the crisis for people who weren't already intimately affected by it. We still don't know whether opioid abuse is common in professional baseball -- there are some troubling hints -- so we don't yet know whether Skaggs' death will be a watershed moment. We can say, though, that the no-hitter his teammates threw when his spot in the rotation came up will be remembered as the most emotional combined no-hitter in history.

Category 5. Disruption of baseball's equilibrium

Two years ago, when considering whether 2017 would be remembered as the year of the juiced ball, we wrote this:

But whether we remember 2017 as the juiced-ball year depends on whether things go back to normal in 2018. If they don't, then 2015 -- as the start of the home run timeline -- will probably be remembered as the change year, and some future season in which even more home runs get hit will be remembered as the peak Year Of The Dinger. However, if the seams rise slightly and home runs dip by 20 percent next season, 2017 will be remembered as the year it reached absurdity, and decades of future fun facts will end with "... since 2017."

As it turned out, homers dipped by almost 10 percent in 2018 -- but then came back and more so in 2019, and it's now pretty much a lock that 2019 will be mostly remembered as The Juiced Ball Season until it gets surpassed. Nobody hit 74 homers, but almost any collective record that could be set was set: The year produced the top four homer-hitting teams ever, with the Twins blasting past the old record by 40. Half of the league's teams set franchise records for homers. Half of the league's pitching staffs did the same for homers allowed. The league set records for home runs at every position except first base (second all time) and pitcher. There were 34 games with at least six homers this year -- the previous record was 18. There were more 20-homer hitters than any season in history, and more 30-homer hitters, and more players with three-homer games, and -- in Philadelphia on June 10 -- the most homers ever hit (13) in a single game. Unless the home run spike goes up further, you will hear the words "the most since 2019" in broadcast fun facts until the end of time.

But it's not just that. This was the first year the fans all knew what was going on in real time, and in more detail than MLB seemed to know. Broadcasts were talking about the work of Meredith Wills -- who studied the minute physical characteristics of baseballs past and present -- and Rob Arthur, whose clever method of using pitch-tracking data to measure drag can detect changes just a handful of games into a season.

Because of that, the most significant thing that happened this year might be that fans and writers realized the extent to which the ball is, as Zack Kram wrote this month, "an unreliable narrator." Balls vary from batch to batch, and from ball to ball within batches, such that two fly balls hit precisely the same might land 5, 15, or even 30 feet apart. We realized we were living through the home run boom in a sort of quantum uncertainty. It was the first postseason, I think, when every home run or deep fly out was treated to a round of "juiced ball" or "dead ball" tweets. It was the first offseason in which transaction analysis ran into the wall of not knowing how next season's ball will fly. And it was the first time many of us wondered about the past: How much of baseball's history would have changed if the umpire had pulled a different ball out of his pocket? When we've been joking about "the baseball gods," have we been talking about drag variations the whole time?

Assuming this is beyond the power of Major League Baseball to clarify completely, we have decades and decades of pondering ahead of us. It's plausible we'll be talking about this openly, as text rather than subtext, a generation from now: After a home run one-row deep, the broadcaster will note the pitch location, will note how close the outfielder came to catching it, and will recite a boilerplate caveat: "With a different ball, perhaps ... "

Category 6. When the larger world intersects with baseball, or vice versa

Major League Baseball going to war with minor league baseball is a potentially huge story, and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders jumping into it provides the intersection, but the shuttering of teams next season is probably more of a 2020 story that will be remembered decades hence. Indeed, that is probably the 2020 story. Check back a year from now to see.

A sleeper in this category is the Nationals' use of "Baby Shark," which seems now like a passing memory of a passing fad. But imagine that "Baby Shark" isn't a one-time fad, but in fact has an every-10-years revival for each new generation of preschoolers: Remixes and covers, a movie franchise built around it, a Christmas version that can be synced to residential light displays, a sugar cereal, an amusement park ride, a celebrity naming their child after it, 1,200 choreographed dancers at an Olympics opening ceremony, toddler shoes that play it when they're walked in, etc. Imagine that in 100 years, "Baby Shark" is the most famous song from this decade. Quite possibly, in that scenario, we'll know everything about it, including that during the year it broke out as such a huge worldwide smash, the Nationals used it as their spirit jingle. It'll be part of the "Baby Shark" legend that the song good-luck-charmed a team to a championship.

Category 7. By being weird, by being almost literally unbelievable or inexplicable

Every World Series game being won by the road team is a solid weird fun fact, and those tend to get cited for decades whenever another team approaches them. However, this one was so weird, so statistically unlikely, that very few series will even make it to Game 4 without a home win. Which means this fun fact won't have cause to be cited all that often. I don't think it's strong enough as a fun fact alone.

But the Nationals as a champion were almost literally unbelievable and/or inexplicable, too. There was the 19-31 start, which even generations from now will quite likely still be the worst start by an eventual champion. Then there was the postseason run: Down in the wild-card game, down in the NLCS, down in the World Series, comebacks in each. And there is the strength of postseason competition: By wins, or by more advanced measures, the Braves/Dodgers/Astros combined to be the most talented vanquished opponents in the division era, and that's without even considering the Nats' extra challenge of winning the wild-card game. That this team had quite possibly four Hall of Famers -- including Max Scherzer, who gutted out a Game 7 victory with sub-Scherzer stuff after a Game 5 scratch -- will add to their legacy. They were all-time giant slayers.

All of these will be remembered by some segment of baseball fans. Nothing is ever truly forgotten anymore, and baseball fans constantly rediscover the charms of the sport's past. But if we're talking about broad and popular knowledge of 2019 baseball, I'd guess the top contenders go:

1. Juiced ball.

2. Astros' peak talent/peak villainy season.

3. Pete Alonso's 53 homers as a rookie.

Thanks to Craig Goldstein, Zachary Levine, Meg Rowley and Matt Trueblood for consultation.

The decade is just about over, though it's been in the books for baseball for weeks, ever since the Nationals finished off the Astros in Game 7 of the World Series back on Oct. 30. That's given us plenty of time to produce All-Decade teams and such, which is always fun to do. But I've got a more fundamental question to pose today: What just happened?

On the field, the game has changed. We can debate how much this is actually apparent when watching any given contest, but you can't deny that baseball is different. More homers. Lots more strikeouts. Fewer singles. Longer games. But is it that different? Has the rate of change in these areas and others actually accelerated?

To put a little bow on the 2010s, that's the line of inquiry we'll follow today. Using league-level statistics from baseball-reference.com, I sliced per-decade numbers into as many different shapes as I could conjure. These are some of the highlights, shared in the form of a kind of All-Decade team, but one that features players who embody some of the changes we've seen.

Before we jump into that, there is a general observation to be made about these data. While we're at record levels (high and lows) in several categories, there is no category in which the game has transmogrified over the last 10-year period. The rate of change varies by category, but the shifts mostly tell a longer story about how baseball has continuously evolved over the last 150 years. We'll touch on that.

The 2010s were also very much a tale of two decades, with metrics in a few areas looking quite different from the first half of the decade to the second. As we compare the decade overall to those that came before, we'll keep an eye out for some of the startling numbers that have come out of the last half-decade of play.

For the members of my all-decade team, you'll notice a reference to "Decade Index." This refers to an ad hoc version of my Awards Index formula, created for this piece. Like AX, the number represents how much better the player is as compared to the average player, based on a mash-up of leading metrics. The number represents how many standard deviations the player was above or below the overall player pool.

Statistician Peter Matthews’ assessment of athletics form and achievements

These merit rankings of British athletes (of which this is the 52nd successive year) are an assessment of form and achievements during the 2019 outdoor season.

The major factors by which the rankings are determined are win-loss record, performances in major meetings and sequence of marks. Both indoor and outdoor results are considered.

This year the major targets for top athletes were the World Championships and for younger athletes the European U20 and U23 Championships.

Below you will find the top three in each men’s event. The full British top-12 lists for every event (except in those events where there were insufficient British athletes producing adequate performances), including the details of athletes’ seasons and a more detailed explanation, are featured in our December 19 end-of-year review special issue, which is available to buy and read digitally here or order in print here.

The top three in the UK women’s rankings and international rankings are to follow.

100m
1 Zharnel Hughes
2 Adam Gemili
3 Ojie Edoburun

Hughes, with four sub-10 times and a place in the world final, retains his top ranking.

200m
1 Adam Gemili
2 Zharnel Hughes
3 Miguel Francis

Although disappointed not to have broken 20 seconds, Gemili returns to the top ranking he had in 2012-14 and 2016.

400m

1 Rabah Yousif
2 Matthew Hudson-Smith
3 Cameron Chalmers

This was a modest year for UK 400m running with Hudson-Smith our fastest for the fourth successive year, but able to compete only rarely. Yousif is top, as he was in 2015.

800m
1 Jamie Webb
2 Elliot Giles
3 Kyle Langford

After a previous high of fourth in 2016 Webb heads a closely-matched group for top ranking with Giles second for the fourth successive year.

1500m – 1 mile
1 Jake Wightman
2 Josh Kerr
3 Neil Gourley

Fourth-ranked Charlie Da’Vall Grice ran a faster time (at Monaco) than the three Scots, who excelled to make the world final and they are ranked in their finishing order there.

5000m
1 Andrew Butchart
2 Ben Connor
3 Marc Scott

Butchart returned to be top ranked for the first time.

10,000m
1 Ben Connor
2 Marc Scott
3 Nick Goolab

Scott and Connor broke 28 minutes, but while Scott had marginally the fastest time, Connor takes top ranking by dint of his UK title.

10 miles – half-marathon
1 Mohamed Farah
2 Callum Hawkins
3 Dewi Griffiths

Farah won the Great North Run for the sixth successive year and is top for the ninth year at these distances.

Marathon
1 Mohamed Farah
2 Callum Hawkins
3 Dewi Griffiths

This was an excellent year for British marathon running as 10th and 50th marks were 2:14:38 and 2:23:30.

3000m steeplechase
1 Zak Seddon
2 Phil Norman
3 Jamaine Coleman

Seddon remained easily Britain’s No.1

110m hurdles

1 Andrew Pozzi
2 David King
3 Cameron Fillery

Pozzi is top for the fourth successive year.

400m hurdles

1 Chris McAlister
2 Dai Greene
3 Jacob Paul

McAlister leaps up from seventh to top ranking and had 10 times inside his pre-season best of 50.36.

High jump

1 Chris Baker
2 Tom Gale
3 Allan Smith

Baker and Gale were closely matched. Indoors Baker beat Gale 2-0, but outdoors they were 2-2.

Pole vault

1 Harry Coppell
2 Charlie Myers
3 Adam Hague

Myers and Coppell each cleared 5.71m and each won a UK title.

Long jump
1 Jacob Fincham-Dukes
2 Daniel Bramble
3 Timothy Duckworth

Fincham-Dukes had an excellent year in the USA and held his form reasonably back home to take a narrow top ranking.

Triple jump
1 Ben Williams
2 Nathan Douglas
3 Julian Reid

Williams returns to the top ranking that he had in 2017.

Shot
1 Scott Lincoln
2 Youcef Zatat
3 Samuel Heawood

Lincoln is top for the fifth year.

Discus

1 Nicholas Percy
2 Gregory Thompson
3 Zane Duquemin

Thompson had easily the best throw of the year. His distances fell away at the end of a busy year and he was beaten 3-1 by Percy.

Hammer

1 Nick Miller
2 Taylor Campbell
3 Osian Jones

Miller was quite unlucky at the Worlds, but maintained his position at world-class level and so is UK No.1 for the fifth time.

Javelin
1 Harry Hughes
2 Gavin Johnson-Assoon
3 Joe Dunderdale

After a year out Hughes returned to be clearly Britain’s best at this event.

Decathlon
1 Timothy Duckworth
2 John Lane
3 Andrew Murphy

Duckworth retains his top ranking although injury prevented him competing at the Worlds.

20km walk

1 Tom Bosworth
2 Callum Wilkinson
3 Cameron Corbishley

Bosworth is top for the seventh time.

50km walk
1 Cameron Corbishley
2 Dominic King

Corbishley takes over top ranking from Dominic King.

On 7 July 2013, Andy Murray ended Great Britain's 77-year wait for a Wimbledon men's singles champion. In the latest in a series recalling some of the greatest sporting moments of the decade, former BBC tennis correspondent Jonathan Overend, who was commentating on the winning moment, describes what it was like to be there.

When I look back at that men's singles final between Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray, the top two seeds, my mind races, helplessly stuck on fast forward.

It races through the build-up, the walk-ons and the knock-up. Fast forward.

It dashes through the first game (Murray the first three points), the first set (Murray 6-4) and the second set (Murray 7-5, from 4-1 down). Fast forward.

It even swiftly spins through the third set with Murray again recovering from a break down to sensationally conjure a 5-4 lead. And pause.

Andy Murray, 26, from Dunblane in Scotland, was about to serve for the Wimbledon title after almost three hours on centre court and I think it hit us all.

"It" hit us. That very unique sporting sensation. You've felt it, right? The abstract sense of the imminent unknown. "It" had most definitely arrived.

What on earth was about to happen?

The noise at the changeover was incredible. Words can't do justice to noise at great sporting venues, you need to hear it, you need to feel it. This, from the Centre Court Chorus, was a cacophony of support, elation and fear.

That noise, in those 90 seconds, will never ever be heard again. So loud, so impassioned, it was like Murray was about to play the final game of his life.

I couldn't talk in the commentary box, needing to gather my thoughts. John Lloyd and Richard Krajicek shuffled anxiously beside me. "Time!" bellowed Mohammed Layani from the umpire's chair, playing up to his role, increasingly-exuberant calls laced with a similar sense of anticipation.

Time, indeed.

"Andy Murray of Great Britain is serving for the Wimbledon title..."

I first met Andrew Murray when he was 16 and vividly remember his first Davis Cup trip in 2004, juggling tennis balls with both feet to the amusement of Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski in a Luxembourg leisure centre. It was immediately obvious this was a story, as a journalist and commentator, you dreamed of reporting.

Things moved quickly the following year; an extraordinary Wimbledon debut, bravely qualifying and winning a round at the US Open, a first ATP tour final in Bangkok, a victory over Henman in Basle to become British number one. Yet domestic dominance was of no interest. He wanted to take on the world and we witnessed, as we started to get to know him, that incredibly single-minded ambition first hand.

With a small bunch of the British media following his every turn, the story was building. The ranking climbed, attention grew, pressure intensified. At times it was tricky to tell the story from the frontline because we could see his faults - and with every defeat came analysis of the faults - yet we could see they were far outweighed by his strengths.

We knew this was a story of lifetime. There were ups and downs in the player/journalist relationship but one desire remained constant; to tell this story through to a logical conclusion.

And that conclusion was the Wimbledon title.

So here we are, back on Centre Court. Gone 5pm. The noise, the nerves, the moment. Serving for the title. The sun still raking down.

Murray wins the first three points only to lose the next three. Fizzing anticipation almost blows, but not quite.

They were match points, by the way, championship points, history points.

40-15, 40-30, deuce, advantage Djokovic. Four points in a row. Djokovic thought he had him. Sneaky grin. Bond villain time.

A ridiculous sequence of see-sawing ensued.

The deuce points were fine, pressure off. Even the break points for Djokovic were manageable. Murray played some of his finest tennis at those key moments. Joy and relief all round.

We were all feeling it. As a commentator, you're neutral. But I was willing him over the line because, like everyone else, I knew this was it. He had to win it here.

The hardest point to win is the last, so the maxim goes, and I firmly believe the closest Murray came to defeat was when he lost a third match point.

Imagine, just imagine how that must have felt. On the brink of victory yet also the brink of defeat. Make no mistake that's where he was.

Match points lost, mind racing, body rushing, arm shaking. His racket arm literally shaking before his sweat-masked eyes, the peak of his baseball cap protecting him from the glare of 16 million people, one serve from greatness.

And that's why this story is such a compelling one, the achievement so great. Not so much the history, the 77 years, the ghost of Fred Perry. Very simply how, Andy Murray - how on earth - did you win that match in that insanely frazzling situation?

After a nerve-defying serve to the Djokovic backhand, the ball flew up defensively and the crowd gasped collectively. Some yelped, as if stung. "Here it is, here it is" I remember saying. "Murray forehand, Djokovic backhand... into the net! Murray's the Wimbledon champion!" It was such a relief to utter those words.

Breathe.

Ever the dull professional journalist, I'd only ever shaken Murray's hand after victory. Even after his first Grand Slam title at the US Open 10 months earlier. "Well done, congratulations."

Not this time. There was delirium tinged with disbelief behind the scenes. The champion emerged around a corridor corner in a white tracksuit, looking ready for sets four and five.

"Do I get a hug for that?" he said with his usual sarcastic drawl. Sure thing. He then insisted on holding my microphone for a photograph. It wasn't plugged in, he wanted to hold it anyway. We were all a bit doolally by that stage.

Murray won Wimbledon again, in 2016, but nothing will ever pierce our emotions in the same way as that day.

I suppose if he were to do it a third time, with a metal hip, having recovered from multiple near-career-ending surgeries, I'll revise my judgement. He's such an incredible human, anything's possible.

But even then, would it surpass the first time? That time?

Sunday, 7 July 2013 will be forever etched in British sporting history. The day of the decade, perhaps, and for men's tennis the day of seven decades, plus.

It was the day we all bonded over a dream and a celebrated together as a nation. The day sport truly touched our souls. The day we all felt like winners.

Exeter boss Rob Baxter does not want the salary cap row to detract from his side's preparation for their Premiership meeting with Saracens.

Chiefs lost the last two Premiership finals to Saracens, who have since been docked 35 points for breaching the salary cap over the past three seasons.

Sunday's game is the first time the two have met since June's final.

"What I don't want is guys stewing or overthinking the game and burning up their nervous energy now," Baxter said.

"But I think come the end of the week it's probably the right thing. If there's anything that particularly needles you or aggravates you or motivates you - Saracens will use them all in their personal motivation - there's nothing wrong with our lads using it in their personal motivation as well."

Exeter were one of the clubs most aggrieved as a result of Saracens' transgressions - chief executive Tony Rowe called for the champions to be relegated, while in the aftermath Baxter said Saracens had beaten Exeter in two finals "unfairly".

"It was interesting before and it's even more interesting now," Baxter added to BBC Sport about Sunday's game.

"We're in that period in the run up to this game where we've got to lock down and really focus on ourselves.

"We do that really well in most other games and we've got to make sure that's what we do this week, we've got to lock down and focus on ourselves."

But the Exeter boss hopes the Sandy Park crowd are respectful of their opponents as they look to beat Saracens for a fourth successive time at home.

"For the sake of what's good in rugby I would like to think our supporters are civil and welcoming to the Saracens supporters, but I kind of know they will be," Baxter added.

"Over the years the amount of emails and letters I've received from visiting supporters who've dropped something into the club to say what a fantastic day they've had - and most of them have lost, so they're not saying it because they've come here and won - they've said they've enjoyed coming to a proper rugby club and mingling with proper rugby fans.

"Those part of things should never change. That should be what rugby's about. That's probably why we as a club are a little aggravated by what the salary cap investigation has pointed out because that's not what rugby's about."

Arsenal midfielder Granit Xhaka has told the club he wants to leave and join Hertha Berlin in January, his agent has said.

The 27-year-old was dropped and stripped of the club captaincy in November following an angry reaction to being booed by his own fans after he was substituted during the Premier League clash with Crystal Palace.

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Sources close to Hertha told ESPN last week that talks between the Bundesliga club and Xhaka were ongoing and the Switzerland international's agent has now said his client is looking to leave the Emirates.

"Let's say it like it is: we have agreed terms with Hertha Berlin and would like to go there," Jose Noguera told Swiss outlet Blick. "That's what we told Arsenal club boss Raul Sanllehi and sporting director Edu Gaspar, as well as the new manager Mikel Arteta."

Noguera said that, despite Arteta's public backing of Xhaka, the new Arsenal boss told the ex-Borussia Monchengladbach man he is not part of his plans beyond the summer.

Noguera added that Arsenal are aware of Xhaka's desire to return to the Bundesliga and the clubs must now decide on a fee for a player who joined Arsenal for €45 million in 2016.

Xhaka had been installed as club captain at the beginning of the season, but was replaced by Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang following the incident against Palace.

Hertha are in a battle to stay in the Bundesliga and hired Jurgen Klinsmann as interim manager until the end of the campaign.

In November, the club sold 49.9% of its shares to investor Lars Windhorst for €224m and he wants to become a permanent fixture in Champions League over the next decade.

MANCHESTER -- Paul Pogba has said he asked his Manchester United teammates to wear anti-racism wristbands because of "ignorance" leading to growing levels of abuse aimed at players.

The United players wore black and white bands with slogans "no to racism" and "we are one" ahead of the 4-1 win over Newcastle on Boxing Day.

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It was Pogba's idea after incidents of abuse involving Jesse Lingard, Fred, Napoli's Kalidou Koulibaly and Chelsea's Antonio Rudiger this season.

"Basically I was thinking about doing this for a long time," the France international said. "I mean, a lot of players in a lot of leagues -- not only in Premier League, in Italy, Spain, everywhere -- and we keep hearing this.

"I don't want to do president, I don't want to do a political guy. We are just football players, we want to enjoy that. The fans need to enjoy coming and seeing some nice football and that's it.

"So, this is to show that we're against that [racism]. I don't want to go and make interviews but just I know that it will make people talk. We are just for football, enjoying football. We do what we love.

"We give joy to the fans, to everyone, to all the spectators and that's all we want to see in the stadium. I think it's ignorance. Ignorance and stuff like that, and just to show people that you are all one. We are all one."

Pogba has also experienced racist abuse on social media this season after missing a penalty during the draw with Wolves in August and the midfielder suggested it was the duty of the players to use their platform to make a stand.

"I don't want to go through UEFA or FIFA, I have done it myself," he said. "I think we have the chance to have this power to show things in football, on TV.

"People see it so I think that will make people understand some things. We keep seeing it again and again in a lot of stadiums.

"It's just to show that, to give support to all the players -- I mean, black or white or Chinese or whoever you are. But there is only one race.

"And just to show respect to everyone. Like I said, we are all one. We all came here to enjoy football, to enjoy ourselves and to do what we love."