World Cup, WNBA Drama, Cubs at the 1/2-way point

World Cup Fever

The World Cup play is continuing with games happening all this week, wrapping on Sunday.

This week starts the Semi-Finals, with Spain v France on Tuesday and Argentina v England on Wednesday.

It's been fun catching what I can.  Jamie became involved, and it's been a good time watching with her.  We've had some friends and Steanso over for a game.

I've not had a preferred team this whole time.  It's just fun to watch play at this level and with this much passion from players who are proud of what they're doing and who they're representing.

As was bound to happen, we've had some scandals over reffing.  I'm not any expert and will just accept what the refs decided.  I do not think that as, like, president of the United States, I would call FIFA and ask for them to change a red card.  You'd have to be a blithering idiot who knows nothing about FIFA, international fair play, and sports in general, to think that was a good idea.

I'll miss teams like Cape Verde who absolutely stunned on a world stage.  You just don't get that in pro-sports, or division-ranked college sports.  The narratives that run through a World Cup can be a real delight - and I was so happy that Egypt's team was welcomed home with a huge crowd.  

I've also loved seeing so many people in the US showing us they're, in fact, good people.  We are so easily led to believe otherwise, just as they seemed to think they were coming to one endless shoot-out.

Sometimes sports is good, y'all.

WNBA Drama

There was an article I absolutely cannot find, but the basic gist was this: 

The WNBA is not looking for legitimacy at this time.  Not when *the* headline that people will think about when they ponder the W from the outside is a woman choking another woman and the refs missing the call.

And, this weekend, someone tossed a shoe to their colleague, missed, and hit an opposing player.  It was assumed it was a malicious act, and now that's a whole thing.

It gets tiresome.  But it's also the result of bad management and bad reffing.  

Mostly, I get frustrated that the conversations aren't about the teams or games.  They're around all the hoopla.  And people seem to eat it up - really engage with that stuff in ways I find baffling.  

I think what people think is just "physical play" is sometimes not, and they need to readjust their expectations and recognize a penalty when they see it instead of cheering on what is essentially bad basketball where people get injured.  And the weird parasocial relationships people have with players makes no sense in a team sport, especially one where players could be on that other team you slagged off for two years.

There's plenty to love in the WNBA.  A wide cast of real personalities from players and coaches.  People with break out games and seasons.  Young players in their first season blowing minds and stats sheets.  And players showing heart enough they pull off minor miracles on the court.

That.  That's what you can enjoy.  Just... watch the damn games and get excited.  Feel a little bad when your team loses.

Now, I'm not entirely pure of heart - I have opinions and whatnot.  There's players I dislike, and I side-eye the reffing plenty.  

I just don't think making it my personality is the best option.

If I do have a beef with the WNBA I'll air publicly, it's that TV coverage never shows the players' names below their faces on the chyron when they're on screen for close-ups or - more importantly - at the free-throw line.  It's literally bad television.  The commentators will spend all game talking about two players, so I have no idea who that person is who just subbed in and I don't sit with an old-school facebook open to identify the players.  

Casually dropping a name in passing ain't gonna do it for us visual learners.  Especially for those of us with "everyone under 30 looks like the same person to me" face blindness which is why I never know who young actors and Rachel McAdams are.

Cubs at the All-Star Break

I'm having a lot of fun watching the Cubs this season - minus the multi-game skids we've had alongside our two winning runs of ten-games each.  The offense can be electric, and the defense is really what I'd hoped for in past seasons and didn't see.  

Expectations around Bregman at third base were cartoonish.  I'm just enjoying having a really solid third-baseman who also can bat.  Is he blowing me away?  Yes, in a way.  He's consistent, seems to be improving things that didn't work, and he's *reliable*.  A .241 is not bad.  It's not great, but not worrisome.  He's just not batted as well as in prior seasons.

The big story of the season is Pete Crow-Armstrong, who has been dynamite on both sides of the game.  He's hitting .291, and his OPS is at .917.  And he's out there in center field catching dang-near everything.

But we're also a Seiya Suzuki household, and he's found his bat after last season, hitting for .269.  He's got 48 RBI.  And he's played hard in the outfield.  

I don't think this is a World Series team, but maybe a Wild Card team.  We'll see.

The Onion Kinda Nails the Fourth of July Docs for 2026

250 years since Declaration.final.FINAL.lastversion.docx

 yeah, it is the 4th of July.  I guess this is our 250th.

We had a good run.

Pink Hat Guy Merges With The Infinite

Baseball is a sport that takes place over 160 games per season, at three hours-ish per game.  Not all of the games are a thrill-per-minute, and so it gives you some time to notice things other than what's happening on the field.

You can start focusing on some kind of funny things.  Some folks focus on a slow-boiling hate for announcers (I personally cannot stand Ken Rosenthal) or your favorites (I have many, but Elise Menaker killed it in the booth this week).  Even on TV, you will become familiar with what's going on in the stadium - see the Cup Snake that forms in the bleachers at Wrigley. 

But, also, the fans are on-camera - especially behind home plate.  They're usually not aware of the cameras, just going about their business, and generally no one is trying to embarrass anyone. Behind home plate, you're just going to be on camera.  In this way, over the course of a game, you may notice particular people, like an excited kid or people not paying attention as they chat away in the stands.  Less often do you note "regulars".  

But very early on in our Cubs-watching, we noticed "Pink Hat Guy".

His seat was directly behind home plate.  He never wore Cubs blue, but always wore a bright pink cap.  

You knew two things:

Father's Day, World Cup, WNBA, Cubs

Today, as I write this, it is still Father's Day.  

Our family got together in an odd configuration.  What was supposed to be Jamie, myself, The Admiral, KareBear and Jamie's dad, DocDik - expanded to include my CousinSue, Unky Bob and Steanso.  Steanso's kids and wife are out of state seeing her family while he toils in the legal salt mines.  

I have had the good fortune of not just a Quality Dad - I've also had a great Father-in-Law.  Not everyone gets to say that.  But we get along very well, and get to debate "what's wrong with the Cubs now" on a frequent basis.  My own Dad is doing well.  He's into The Expanse, which is cracking me up.  That has spread across our whole family like a virus.

Sometimes I wonder what kind of father I would have been had the fates been different.  And very different they would have had to have been as I very much didn't care for kids until I was in my mid-30's.  Now I find them charming chaos goblins and enjoy how different each one of them really is, right from jump.  But I also don't have to raise them.  

My Dad put up with a lot of nonsense from me, pretty much from when I was a small kid to when I aged into a smart-aleck who liked to push buttons, to someone who fancied himself a wry observer and therefore allowed to crack whichever joke he felt was best in any situation.  That my father allowed me to keep living to age 25 is a testament to his eternal patience.

Here's to Dads.  Good dads, dads doing their best, and dads who go out for cigarettes and don't come back.

And to the moms out there who are either doing it single-mom style or who are partnered up with a lady raising kids minus anyone specifically called *dad*.  Parenting is hard, weird work.  Y'all should get a card on Father's Day, too.  Just scratch out "dad" on the front.

World Cup Fever

I don't know that I've contracted World Cup Fever, but I have been watching some games.  

This weekend I checked out both the game in which Curacao tied Ecuador and the game in which Cabo Verde tied Uruguay.  And that's part of the fun.  These are tiny countries - I hadn't heard of either prior to this last week - who will have eternal futbol glory thanks to a *tie*.  Everyone expected them to get clobbered at this stage, and they held against established national programs.  

There's a lot of joy to be taken in so much of the World Cup - something the corrupt dirtbags at FIFA know and exploit - and it's been decades since it was on our shores.  But now we have thousands and thousands of people from across the globe running around the U.S.  And after the past decade of the US looking like Keystone Cops to the rest of the world, it's great for people to come here and see we're not all ultra violent weirdos.  Just, you know, way too many of us.

Anyway - despite how essentially corrupt and dirty FIFA's leadership may be, I count World Cup as a worldwide good.  Governments may want to lob missiles at each other, but people want to have a beer and cheer on their team by wearing matching shirts.  It may actually work against some interests as it's a reminder we have more in common than we have different, and cultural exchange can be groovy.

When Germans and Japanese people are fascinated with our way of life, like learning getting endless chips with Tex-Mex is free, then we're doing something right by having people here.  But also that we're not the snarling monsters that media would have them believe (we've contained that to the capitals).

Anyway - I have no particular dog in the fight.  I suppose I'll cheer for Team USA a bit.  They're doing better than I anticipated.  But it's more fun to watch the underdog countries every time.

Late Edit:  I admit, I'm gonna cheer for Argentina.  I like that Messi fella.  I assume they are not an underdog.

WNBA

Once again off to a somewhat slow start, the Las Vegas Aces are playing well again here as the season progresses.  We're at 12 and 4, and that ain't bad.  But once again, the Minnesota Lynx are at the top of the leader board with a genuine rookie phenom in Olivia Miles.  

It's funny - there's always a lot of overblown hype about rookies coming in, but Miles has delivered beyond any reasonable expectation.  That's not to say the superstar rookies haven't played well - looking at you Azzi Fudd - but there's usually a curve for growth.  I mean - look at Bueckers in Season 2 as a genuine team leader for the Wings.

Anyway, I don't really have *a* team. I watch several teams and enjoy the players on those teams.  The only team I outright dislike is Phoenix, and I am slowly, begrudgingly, gaining respect for the next Portland team.  Good for me, as Phoenix is 5-12 right now.  

My favorite player remains A'ja Wilson, but that doesn't mean I don't still cheer for lots of other players, like Kelsey Mitchell on the Fever or Thornton on the Valkyries.

If you are curious about WNBA, there's tons of games on network and cable TV right now.  Just take a look at your local listings.

Cubs

We're not yet to the All-Star Break and I kind of need a break.  The Cubs are basically all over the place, sometimes looking brilliant and occasionally looking like last week's trash.  Overall, stats are okay-ish.  But our pitching will just melt-down in the bullpen with absolutely no forewarning.  Someone who pitched great two days ago will come out in the 7th and give up a five-run lead.

And that's not always on the rest of the defense.  In general, those guys are doing pretty well, too.  I disagree that Shaw (that racist piece of shit) is a better right fielder than Suzuki.  But I also respect resting Suzuki. 

Meanwhile, Pete Crow-Armstrong has been on fire on both sides.  He's still doing amazing, stats-defying work in the outfield while also doing things like hitting for a cycle (in reverse, starting with a homer) and just consistently winding up on base every game, or smacking a dinger.

But then we have a game like the one on Saturday that was just dumb, where we blow the aforementioned lead.

  

Texas Tree Roach Summer

It's not just in summer that we get tree roaches in the house, but summer is when we *definitely* find these bastards have breached the perimeter.

Last night I was in the East Wing of League HQ (the room by the front door) getting Emmylou's leash set for this morning's walk, and got that always-horrible shadow in the corner of my eye - a large, dark spot on the otherwise flat-colored wall.  It was my old nemesis - the Smokybrown Cockroach, hanging where they like to - about 10 inches just below the ceiling, plastered on the wall.

They look horrendous - a sort of dark brown with a sheen.  Antennae, splayed legs and roughly the length of your palm.

They don't bite or make any chirping sounds - they're not that kind of nuisance.  And they're not the kind of roach that "if you see one, it means there's a hundred more you haven't seen".  It just means there's a single ding-dong roach that has wandered somehow into your house.  Maybe under a door, through a vent...  I suspect that's how we get them.  Every once in a while I wonder if they popped up through the toilet (more on that in a second).

League Rewind - June 7th

literally asked KareBear to stand there for scale

Well, this weekend we met up with my parents, Steanso and his crew, and we spent some days at Lost Pines Resort in sunny Bastrop, Texas.  

Lost Pines is a sort of corporate resort/ retreat that doubles as a family resort.  If you want to see innumerable children needing corralling, this is the place.  Everyone else arrived between Wednesday and Thursday, but we were unable to get there until Friday afternoon.  Just in time for some socializing, dinner and then more socializing.  

Saturday was breakfast, seeing the petting zoo, and then hitting their pool area.  After, I lost track of everyone else for an hour or two while I read, and then found people for dinner.  After, we watched some of the UT baseball game as the Longhorns beat Oregon by quite a bit.

And then this morning we got home and retrieved Emmylou from the Pet Ranch.  

All in all, a good time was had!  But I was annoying everyone by checking calories on food and whatnot.

This evening, Sunday, I am weirdly exhausted.  I have no idea why.  Apparently getting me off rhythm is a problem.  Here's hoping a night in my own bed solves all.

Cubs. 

After winning two streaks of ten games each, the Cubs then *lost* ten games in a row.  It was painful to watch.  

Well, we're winning some games again - so that's good.  But if I've been quiet about baseball, it's been a brutal few weeks.

I am hoping the recent wins mean we're finding a rhythm again.  And Pete Crow-Armstrong has really come to life recently.

WNBA

This season has been so strange.  I can't really even tell who is great or not yet - minus The Minnesota Lynx, who seem on fire.  In the end, I think what is happening with pay and moving people around depending on who is worth more and what teams can afford, in the short term, is creating something like parity among the vast majority of the teams.  And you just never know who will win in any match-up.  

Expect for this POV to change as the season wears on and some teams become the clear pack leaders, but just because they've one or two more games than others.

NBA Finals

In general, Jamie and I don't follow the NBA.  We were Spurs fans in the 90's and early 00's, and became Suns fans during our time in Phoenix.  But it's been hard to follow anyone - including the Spurs.    

But now the Spurs are in the NBA Finals, and while I want for them to win, I understand what it would mean for a lot of people if the Knicks finally won a championship.  I'm not sure I'm ready to add the Spurs back into my life, but they are great to watch, and I kind of do miss NBA ball.