12/27/2014-The following story was published in the Sierra Vista Herald on 12/27/2014 by Matt Hickman

When looking back on the areas top sports stories in 2014, the ones that rise to the top tend to be of the disappointing variety. That said, there were definitely some triumphs, but at the top of the list are a pair of familiar stories that echoed all the more resonantly this time around, in part because their outcomes seemed so unlikely from the start.

In terms of sheer news value, the latest disaster involving the Buena football program and its inability to keep a head coach, but that storys getting to be rather old hat.

Instead, for No. 1 sports story of 2014, were going to go with another venture that had all the right ingredients for success, but didnt turn out that way.

After all, Buena will hire a new head football coach in the coming weeks, and that coach may or may not be here a year from now.

But the opportunity missed in Bisbee is one that may never come again.

1. Pecos League pulls out of Bisbee and Douglas after one season.

Professional baseball hadnt been played in Historic Warren Ballpark for 11 years when Andrew Dunn, owner of the Pecos League of Professional Clubs, decided it, as well as Copper King Stadium in Douglas, would be a good spot for the next two expansion teams in his stable, even thriving league that was headed into its fourth season. Almost from the outset, Douglas was a bust, but Bisbee, which 11 years earlier, turned out in droves to watch the Bisbee-Douglas Copper Kings of the Arizona-Mexico League in its three weeks of existence, didnt turn out very well either. In Bisbee, Dunn found that forming a front office was difficult and that prospective sponsors, still stung from losing their investments 11 years earlier, were unwilling to jump on the bandwagon. As Dunn put it, "Its like they think were going to steal from them." One bright spot was that the Pecos League did finish its one professional season in Bisbee and Douglas, but right after the season Dunn pulled plans of returning to Douglas. Without a second team to make the road stop economically feasible, it was really just a matter of time before the Pecos League was going to pull out of Bisbee, and in November, it did just that.

Though Dunn will continue to own the Blue, the team will play as a college summer league squad - the same level its played at for most of the last 11 years - this failure means minor league ball may never play at Warren Ballpark again.