The Miscellaneous Musings Sports Report

Wow, it's been some week for sports, hasn't it?  The week's biggest highlights:

American Pharaoh became the first horse since 1978 to win thoroughbred racing's Triple Crown - the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness ,and Belmont.  What sort of a horse wins all three prestigious races in a single year?  It's a horse that is expertly trained and paired with a jockey - Victor Espinoza - who knows him like a friend and knows how to ride him.  It is not a horse who hangs around with Hannah Davis and lets his handlers overdub an Englishman's voice onto his image to make him sound like a gentlemanly Mr. Ed.

The U.S. men's soccer team did three incredible things this past Friday - they beat the Netherlands for the first time ever, they beat the Dutch as the visiting team, and they did it after coming back from a two-goal deficit.  Trailing 3-1 at the beginning of the second half, Danny Williams of the United States tied the game at around the 88th minute and Bobby Wood followed up almost immediately to score the winning goal.  This was only an exhibition game, so it didn't count, but it gave the Americans a much-welcomed psychological boost.  (I couldn't help but wonder whom Louise Vyent, the Dutch model living in New Jersey, was rooting for, until I realized the answer - the winner! ;-) )

And, also . . ..  I understand a famous athlete who won the Olympic decathlon as a man became a woman.  But you know what?  I don't really care.  If Caitlyn (formerly Bruce) Jenner has decided she's a woman, I'm cool with that.  But never mind that a lot of people didn't know Jenner was a trans-woman.  Here are some things you may still not know about her:

• Bruce was Jenner's middle name when she was a man. Her full name was William Bruce Jenner.
• Jenner is a graduate of Graceland College (now a university) in Iowa. The school is a affiliated with the Community of Christ, a by-product of the Mormon reformation that was formed when a band of Mormons who wouldn't follow Brigham Young to Utah because they didn't think he should be the church's leader decided to stay behind in the Midwest. Jenner himself - umm, herself - is not a member of the church.
• Jenner won the decathlon at another sporting event before the 1976 Montreal Olympics, the Pan American Games in 1975, but no one noticed because no TV network in America bothered to cover it. 
• One other thing - Jenner is a Republican. Okay, Cruz, Huckabee, Rubio, how are you going to explain away your LGBT-phobia now? (Rick Santorum delightfully surprised me with his "live and let live" attitude in response to the news.)