Last time I wrote about this year's World Cup of Hockey, the 4th team of the semifinals was not determined yet. It turned out to be the Russian edging out Team North America (who would have got through if they could have won their last game in regulation!) Team Europe upset Sweden during the semi while the home team Canada did their job with Russia. The final was a best-of-3 between Europe and Canada. Canada took Game 1 and Europe led most of game 2 and looking to tie the series only to see 2 late goals by Canada to win the cup. It was an awesome tournament from start to finish!
Another international competition was the Ryder Cup. US was the team with home field and we certainly took advantage of it with a huge margin for the victory. However, it was not without controversy: the brother of Danny Willett of team Europe wrote about poor behaviour of US fans before the event, which Willett claimed to disagree before the event (and agree afterwards!) And the Willett's were right. I think it's too much to heckle players on the opposing golf team. This is not football/soccer afterall. Speaking of heckling fans, a funny story did came out of this: during the Ryder Cup practice round, a US fan made fun of the European players' inability to sink a putt. The players offered $100 to challenge this fan to make the long putt and that dude made it! That $100 note with the autographs of those players certainly worth more than $100 now.
Of course, for the local sports fan, the biggest deal was whether the 2016 SF Giants could make it to the playoff! If anyone could still remember how the season started, the Giants was the hottest team in baseball entering the All-star break. They seem to be able to win games that they shouldn't have won. Well, it seems like the "mirror image" after the All-star break: all players were in one slump after another. Starting pitching was not that great anymore. The bullpen was unreliable and the batters had trouble hitting the balls and getting runs scored! It was a torture to see they losing all those games they led at some points. We dropped all the way from NL West 1st place to fighting for the 2nd wild card! Anyway, it came down to the final series about the Dodgers. The way I saw it was that if we couldn't finish the season in convincing fashion, there's no point getting into the playoff (because of losses of other wild card competitors) And the Giants rose to the occasion! The first game on Friday started out close but the Giants jumped to a big lead and a win. We scored free tix to the 2nd game which feature 2-time Cy Young Clayton Kershaw vs ... well, Giant's rookie pitcher Ty Blach. I thought we were doomed but man I was so wrong! Blach matched Kershaw inning-by-inning with both teams shut out, until Pagan hit a solo homer. Then the Giants put 2 more runs on the board while the bullpen did a nice job keeping a clean sheet for the win. Sunday was the last day of the season and the Giants must win to retain the 2nd wild card and they did exactly that (and kinda spoiled Vin Sculley's last broadcast of his legendary career, who did an inning for the local station for this game)
The SF football fans were not as happy though: the 49er wasted a 14-0 lead at home over the Dallas Cowboys team that was hated by lots of their fans and fell to 1-3 for the season while the "crosstown rival" which was also the laughing stock for more than a decade, the Oakland Raiders, won another close game away at Baltimore for a 3-1 record. Oh yeah, Stanford was hammered by Washington on Friday night. I actually cared more about the Wisc-Mich and Texas-OkSt games on Saturday. Too bad both of my teams lost!
For fans of Manchester United like myself, tying Stoke City 1-1 felt almost like a loss. They barely beat their Europa league opponent from Ukraine 1-0 (scored with a mis-kick by Rooney fed to Ibrahimovic for a header) in mid-week as well. Seems like their huge victory over reigning EPL champ Leicester City the weekend before was just a fluke! Nevertheless, a 3 game unbeaten streak is way better than the 3 game losing streak before this!
Back to baseball, the playoff has officially started today with the AL wild card game between the O's and the Blue Jays. The latter was kinda like our 2nd home team since we have family there. And they advanced with a 3-run homer by Edwin Encarnacion in the bottom of 11th. It did look like the World Series winner by Joe Carter! (That's the most memorable HR in my 25 years of experience watching baseball)
Tuesday, October 04, 2016
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