Vive La France!

France . . . World Cup champions.

Croatia . . . Better luck next time.

But hey, you got farther than people thought you would be beating England, and that second goal you scored in the final was amazing.

And to the American team, which never even made the 2018 tournament . . .

Yo, could I see you clowns in my office??? >:-( 

CUBS WIN!

Congratulations to baseball's Chicago Cubs, World Series champions for the first time in 108 years.  :-D :-)

The Last Shall Be First

Wow.  Just . . . wow. :D

Baseball's Chicago Cubs, who haven't won the World Series since Roosevelt was President - Teddy Roosevelt - won their first National League pennant since Harry Truman was President . . . specifically, since Truman's first year in the White House (1945).  The Billy Goat curse placed on the Cubs when a fan wasn't allowed to bring his pet goat to a 1945 World Series game at Wrigley Field (the Detroit Tigers won the World Series that year) has only been partially reversed, though.  Because now, of course, the Cubs have to win Major League Baseball's ultimate championship when they play the winners of the American League pennant in the World Series.

That would be the Cleveland Indians.

The Indians haven't won the Series since 1948, but they'd thrice won the American League pennant since then - in 1954, 1995 and 1997.  Now the Tribe, as their fans affectionately call them, seek to reverse the curse that has dogged almost every major-league sports team in Cleveland.  But the Cavaliers won the National Basketball Association championship earlier this year, so if the Indians win this championship, the city will really go full tilt boogie in its celebrations. 

I'm rooting for the Cubs, because they've suffered more and been through more than the Indians.  It just may be that the prediction from Back To the Future II that the Cubs would win the Series in the twenty-first century wasn't wrong, just one year off. :-D  Either way, though, the winning team of this Major League Baseball championship will make history like no team has ever made baseball history before.   Here we are - a Great Lakes Series, pitting the City By the Lake against the Mistake By the Lake. :-D Bring it on! :-)    

Spanish Tide

Yesterday's World Cup championship game was one of the most tedious and poorly played soccer games I have ever seen. The overall quality of the play was far more mediocre than I expected from two national teams that had never won the Cup before, especially when the Spanish team was playing for the FIFA championship for the first time in the tournament's history. The biggest miracle in Johannesburg was that anyone scored at all.

That said, I'm glad the Spaniards won with that goal at literally the last minute. Spain played diligently and arduously throughout the tournament; they deserve the victory. Some people might be tempted to compare this to the New Orleans Saints winning the Super Bowl. It's not that big. It's bigger.

The Netherlands? I'm kind of glad they lost. The Dutch playing style in this World Cup was aggressive to the point of being nasty. I don't care if they were in their third championship game and lost yet again; I come from a country that was in the same boat with Spain until now. Besides, it's hard to get excited about the Dutch. Because apart from founding New York City, giving the world Rembrandt and Van Gogh, cultivating tulips, building levees and dikes that don't collapse, perfecting wind energy, and reclaiming land from the sea, what have the Dutch really done for Western civilization? ;-)