In a sports year often interrupted by sorrow and scandal, more than ever some deserve a Thanksgiving Day thank-you:

■ All those who emerged from the April marathon bombings as “Boston Strong,” the motto carved into the Fenway Park outfield grass, where the Red Sox rallied to win the World Series.

■ The Grambling football players, whose one-game boycott over budget cuts put the university’s fiscal problems on public view.

■ Tatyana McFadden, the 24-year-old wheelchair racer who grew up in a Russian orphanage with spina bifida, which left her paralyzed below the waist. She became the first to win four major marathons in the same year (Boston, London, Chicago and New York).

■ Tim McCarver, televised baseball’s Ph.D., for his decades of educating viewers on the whys and wherefores of the game.