2019日本之旅-札幌篇

我們在札幌做的第一件事是到巨蛋看日職棒，北海道日本火腿鬥士隊對福岡鷹隊，CeCe月前已在Stubhub 網站購票，到達後的第一個挑戰是泊車，原來球場本身附設的停車場要有票才能進入，不過負責管理停車場入口的職員很熱心幫忙，叫我們打開地圖app, 指出附近那裡有停車場，收費也合理（二千日元），入到場館就要找Stubhub指示去的ticket counter, 那裡有掛上Stubhub的招牌！把打印出來的電郵交給售票員就成功取票，入場後就要「揾食」：既有美式漢堡薄餅薯條，也有日式麵食小丸子，當然還有札幌啤酒及北海道軟雪糕，售價和場外相約，不像美國球場餐廳都斬得球迷一頸血。開賽後發現日本球迷對球隊相當熱情，差不多當每位球員上陣擊球時，球迷都會唱為其度身訂造的打氣歌，連客隊球迷也帶來大鼓銀樂隊，這方面亦比美國觀眾優勝，客隊先拔頭籌，接著數局拉鋸，主隊一度追平又被客隊大比數領先，我們秉承美國觀眾沒有看到完場就走，第二天方知主隊在最後一局幾乎成功收復失地卻功虧一簣，其實客隊是太平洋聯盟榜首隊伍而主隊只是中下游，不過主隊出過好幾名現在美職甚有名氣的猛將，包括投手Yu Darvish及職棒唯一一名「雙刀」投手兼擊球手大谷翔平，而現役球員則有來自台灣的王柏融，可算相當國際性！
札幌其他景點還有酒店對出的大通公園，我們在其下的街找到UCC cafe(這個品牌的即溶咖啡相信大家都在超市見過吧）吃個早餐，再欣賞大學農務系學生佈置的花壇。
另一個品牌白色戀人大家也不會陌生，在札幌有其chocolate factory, 平日有收費tour, 因為裝修關係暫時取消並供免費參觀！它的花園佈置得十分美麗，拍結婚照簡直一流。還有定時出現的機械公仔，好像置身主題公園一樣。

Derek Jeter

I heard this during the broadcast of the 2018 MLB season opener Cubs vs Marlins. The focus was of course on the new Marlins owner Derek Jeter and the fact that he has to deal with a team in complete rebuilding mode: all 3 outfielders from 2017 were gone (first time in MLB history) In comparison, the team W-L record of Jeter's career is 500 games over .500! And throughout his career, he has only played in 1 game that the Yankees have been mathematically eliminated from playoff. That's incredible stats!

Sports highlights: NASCAR, EPL, Bundesliga, Champions League, World Series

It has been two really intense weeks back home and I missed quite a bit of playoff actions from NASCAR and Major League Baseball in the States. Glad that I was able to catch Game 6 and 7 of the World Series. Thumbs up to the Astros winning it all. Any pro team from Texas winning a championship is always welcome, especially beating a team from So Cal, my #2 "disliked" team LA Dodgers. The road to WS victory was definitely a tough one even though they played very well in the regular season, they were almost eliminated by the Yankees in ALCS. And if they didn't mount a big comeback in Game 5 of WS, LA just needed to win one of the next 2 games at home to win the series!

I didn't bother to record the 3 NASCAR races I missed but relied on Comcast's On-demand "condensed race" replay of Talladega 2, Kansas 2 and Martinsville 2 (the first race of the Round of 8.) I guess I still watched most of the highlights, e.g. key passes and crashes :P The race at 'dega featured a tons of the latter as expected. And I've finally understood how the new point system works! So basically there are 3 different types of points: the "original" points drivers used to get based on their finishes at the end of each race, the "stage" points that were given to drivers finishing in Top 10 at the end of each stage, and the "playoff" points that were given to stage and race winners. Additional playoff points were awarded based on the end of regular season standings. And playoff points came into the picture during the playoff (obviously!): these points are added to each driver's total points after the point reset for each driver at the beginning of each playoff round, and carried over through out every round and every race in the playoff (except the final race) So drivers have incentive to win stages and races to accumulate the playoff points which would help getting to the final race.

The interesting matchups during the past few weeks in Champions League for me are Real Madrid vs the Spurs and Manchester United vs Benfica. Looks like it's finally time for Real Madrid to have a down year: only able to tie the Spurs at home and lost 1-3 away. The first Man U-Benfica match was a thriller: Man U scored a lucky goal but the 2nd win seems more convincing. (Oh yeah, their victory over the Spurs during the past weekend was a good one too!)

Bundesliga is the only domestic league that my dad followed and Bayern played Leipzig again right after they met in the German cup (which went to extra time) The latter had a player sent off for both games and lost both. (Also lost their Champions league match to Porto!) I guess the team is still not ready for too much spotlight.

The Santana highlights

I watch a bit of ESPN (Sportscenter?) highlight show last night and host John Buccigross dedicated a segment to the Santanas, which included:

• Carlos Santana played the National Anthem at the NBA Final Game 2 Warriors vs Cavs in Oakland. He actually "made a mistake" by playing an extra verse. (BTW, it's kinda hard to find out who played the bass in that video. That's Benny Rietveld. Check out his bass solo on Youtube. He played with Miles in 1988 too)
• Atlanta Braves' Danny Santana went 4-for-5, 3 R, 3 RBI, 2 2B, HR.
• Milwaukee Brewers' Domingo Santana has been playing well lately too: he hit a HR against Clayton Kershaw on Saturday.

Carlos' old team vs Carlos' new team

Caught a glimpse of the Texas Rangers vs Houston Astros game yesterday. It was one-out, bases-loaded in the bottom of the inning. Carlos Gomez made an incredible catch in the center field which turned a base-hit into just a sac-fly. Wait a minute: I thought Gomez played for Astros but he actually was traded from the Astros to the Rangers last season! Then I saw another Carlos, Beltran, came up to bat. Wait a minute: I thought the days of Beltran playing for the Astros were way way back (Yep, that's 2004. BTW, I also remember his very brief stint with the Giants after the 2011 trade deadline but did nothing to save that season.) Well, he re-joined the Astros after playing for the Rangers in 2016.

Yeah, it's confusing.

(Side note: If I could have done it all over again, I would have become a Red Sox fan 'coz not just ESPN but also MLB Network is trying to show every Red Sox game live. I am pretty sure they have the most national coverage among all teams.

And this is the 1000th post of this blog! Congrat to self :)

世界棒球賽中國對澳洲與仁慈條例

就國際化（或者說和全球接軌的程度）而言，和歐洲各國相比，美國給人的感覺是比較封閉。不說度量衡單位或左軚右軚那些，只講體育，瘋魔全球的足球竟不在美國四大聯盟之列（雖然統計指「英式足球」的美職聯每場平均入場觀眾數目比「四大」的冰球及籃球有過之而無不及，但後兩者每球季場數多得多）很多人批評「四大」自稱甚麼World Championship只是自吹自擂罷了。美式足球在美國以外不算流行：加拿大的「美式足球」球例不盡相同，此外以我所知只有德國的聯盟較有規模。冰球的「世界盃」不如足球那樣定期舉行，其實過去廿年冬季奧運才被視為最高水平及認受性的世界冰球賽；籃球也差不多（奧運>世錦賽）而棒球作為美國最老牌體育之一（被視為國粹！），似乎十幾年前才重視「國際化」，由大聯盟（MLB）牽頭的World Baseball Classic越攪越具規模，多了參與的國家（本屆開始有外圍賽），不過各國的水準仍然相當參差，好幾場賽果都一面倒：最誇張的就是今日中國對澳洲輸0:11要出動「仁慈條例」（我由Mercy rule直譯過來，可能另有正式中文譯名）一向有參與小朋友棒球活動的家長相信對這種球例頗有認識：inning結束時，一隊領先超過十分的話就會終止比賽。中國對澳洲這一場苦苦支撐到8th inning,澳洲再士哥擴大領先優勢至11分，而中國無法取得2分或以上，所以在仁慈條例下比賽結束。原來美國職業棒球大聯盟（以及大學校際比賽）均沒有仁慈條例，前幾年就訪問過職業球員對此例的看法，頗為有趣。

Sports highlights: 2016 World Series

昨晚的Game7是Cubs vs Indians為爭奪總冠軍終極一戰，我認為是繼多倫多Blue Jays Joe Carter以一支全壘打奪冠以來最緊張刺激的一次！雖然我看巨人三次奪冠及白襪那一次也相當肉緊，但那是加入個人感情，不夠客觀。

由於我不算是兩隊的fans,  Game1前我的願望是打到Game7 再加時；本來在Game4後Indians以3-1領先，形勢大好，Cubs看來無力還擊，卻又一場一場追回；Game7 更一度領先5-1!  又以為塵埃落定，誰知皇牌Closer Chapman竟然在8th inning失準讓Indians扳平，結果真的加時。不過10th inning就分出勝負，由Cubs打破108年的宿命。108年前的世界到底是有多久呢?古典台出的帖指出，那時作曲及指揮家Mahler尚在生！繼紅襪的多年宿命被打破後，無獨有偶，今次Cubs同樣是由紅襪轉投的總經理Theo Epstein領導下打破宿命。他的下一個東家會是Indians嗎？

Sports highlights and lowlights: WCH2016, Ryder Cup, October baseball, and football

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)

Baseball legends

I watched a bit of the Marlins vs Giants game today and would like to write about 2 legends on the opponent: Ichiro Suzuki hit a ground rule double in the 9th inning (but Casilla didn't allow anyone else to get on base and saved the 1-0 game for the Giants. Yay!) That's Ichiro's 3002 hit. (He hit the 3000 milestone last weekend) Another legendary hitter was not a Marlin player, but their hitting coach, the former Giant Barry Bonds. He got ejected arguing with the umpire today. That's his first ejection (as a coach, obviously) Not sure if he made a big difference but this team has certainly improved a lot from last season and is a contender (currently holding one of the wild card) So glad to see the Giants finally won a series (against a contender too!) after their long long slump since the all-star break. Well, they will be the co-leader of the NL West for at least another day. 

Sports highlights: Euro 2016, NASCAR at Kentucky, IndyCar at Iowa, Home run derby

I think it's blessed to be a soccer fan these days, even if you live in USA. This year we witnessed the amazing rise of Leicester City, the Cinderella who went from surviving to contending and eventually winning the most competitive league in professional soccer: The English Premier league. They clinched the championship in May. Soon followed by the UEFA Champions League final, which was won by Real Madrid but Athletico Madrid fought hard too. Then we had Copa America started in USA (in fact, right here in Santa Clara) in early June. And 1 week later Euro 2016 started in France. To be honest I didn't quite follow the qualification that much and only found out (1) France was the host and (2) Holland was NOT in it. My prediction was France winning it all (well, they did make it to the final) I also knew Argentina won't have any trouble making it to the final of Copa. I had to miss quite a few games because of traveling. I did manage to watch the penalty shootout between Argentina and Chile via my Slingbox. I guess the curse of Maradona's hand ball is still in full force. Don't feel sorry for Messi though. He has his fair share of glorious moments. And my vacation ended before the semifinals and final of Euro 2016 so I was able to watch the full games. (Still wish I could witness the triumph of Iceland and Wales in the earlier stages. Both teams feature mythical character lookalikes: Thor and the Monkey king :P ) As a supporter of Germany since forever, it's sad to see them losing to France on self-inflicting wounds (Schweinsteiger's hand ball resulted in a penalty) There's even more drama at the final between France and Portugal. When Cristiano Ronaldo was hurt and got replaced at the 25 minute mark, I thought it's over: just like the Brazillian Ronaldo becoming a non-factor last time in France. Well, for some reason the French couldn't take advantage. And Portugal played like they'd rather keep the tie and wait for penalty shootout, and was successful at that. And just like Leicester City, it was the unlikely hero Eder who scored and won the game for Portugal (and Ronaldo "the acting coach") Eder received a ton of criticism during the tournament. He was an underachiever who started his career promisingly in the Portuguese league. He almost played for the Hot Spur but ended up with Swansea instead where he didn't get to play much and was moved to the French club Lille, where his hard work was appreciated by the coaches and was a good fit to their system. I guess his experience scoring against opponents in the French league helped! Overall speaking, it was an OK tournament, which would have been better if there was more offense. It would be another 4 years until the next time they play the highest level of soccer in the world. Well, it will be a short break until we have the Olympic soccer tournament. And the European leagues will resume too.

The one sport that get little coverage while I was in Asia was NASCAR (I did accidentally find out Tony Stewart won our "home" race at Sonoma) Glad to be back and the first Sprint Cup race I watch featured a nail-biting finish: the leaders were all in fuel saving mode and Brad K was able to last 'til the end to beat out Carl Edwards for another victory this season. There was no fuel saving at the IndyCar race in Iowa. Josef Newgarden's No.21 car was simply good. No one was able to catch him, not the current points leader Simon Pagenaud, multi-time champion Scott Dixon nor the recently-got-hot Will Power, who ended up finishing 2nd. Well, this result made the overall championship a bit more competitive and interesting.

It was also worthy to write about the MLB Home Run Derby: my favorite teams combined have one participant: the defending champ Todd Frazier, who did make it to the final but lost to Giancarlo Stanton, who was predicted to win by someone from my son's baseball camp. You would probably agree with him if you have witnessed his beautiful and consistent swing. Stanton hitting those 61 HRs in one night was special for us baseball fans.

Sports highlights: Super Bowl 50 surprises, Caribbean World Series, Phoenix Open

This Super Bowl Sunday is quite different from the ones before: it's actually held in the "neighborhood" (less than 15 miles away) The traffic was expected to be real bad before and after the game. Also, it's the Chinese New Year's eve. So we ended up not able to invite anyone to party at our place. After lunch, there were still 3 hours 'til kickoff so we watched a bit of the Caribbean World Series, between the Winter league champions from Venezuela and Mexico. Former White Sox great Freddie Garcia (who pitched the world series-clinching game 4) pitched his final game for the Venezuelan team. It was kinda exciting. Mexico came back to tie while down 2-4 and got a walk-off HR at bottom of the 9th. I also watched a tie-breaking playoff at the end of the Phoenix Open Golf Tournament between Rickie Fowler and Hideki Matsuyama. The American Fowler is becoming one of the "Big 4" of this new generation of world golfers and that's why I tuned in. Matsuyama is the highest ranked Japanese player too. They remained tied after first 3 playoff holes. The tie was not broken until Fowler hit his tee shot into the water and practically gave away the victory. And that happened while Lady Gaga was singing the national anthem during the Super Bowl opening ceremony. I jumped in right at the kickoff! The game featured 3 players from my schools: Panther's kicker and kick returner/RB Fozzy Whitaker (Texas) and Punter Brad Nortman (Wisconsin) as well as the star TE of the Broncos, Owen Daniels (Wisconsin) My coworker was so convinced that the Panther would blow out the Broncos unless the latter could somehow force some turnovers into scores. That was what exactly happened. I knew the Broncos defense would be the most important factor to the "watchability" of the game and they stood up to the challenge. Normally I prefer offensive fireworks but I was glad that it was a defense dominated tight game instead. It's not a bad thing that a good player like Peyton Manning could go out on top. Also, long-time Cowboy-turned Bronco LB DeMarcus Ware deserved his super bowl ring.

So, that's how the sports world wrapped up the year of the sheep. I am looking forward to a great year of the monkey! (Yay to Euro 2016 and World Cup of Hockey!!!)

Sports highlights: MLB trade deadline, NASCAR's Kyle Busch

Is anyone surprised that I haven't posted anything about sports for 2.5 months? Well, I am. Major events that happened included NBA playoff (the local team Golden State Warriors won it all and most importantly beating the team lead by public enemy #1 in the finals), Stanley Cup (won by the Chicago Blackhawks again, who is having a SF Giants-like dynasty IMO), Tour De France (won by Chris Froome, again, without much challenges), THE Triple Crown (American Pharoah became the first horse who won it since 1978) I didn't watch much of these events except for the NBA Final Game 6 and the NHL Final Game 6 (both on the Disney Cruise ship)

Gotta admit all these traveling has shuffled my priorities a bit. And realizing I have a stack of new books waiting to be read didn't help. I do want to write about the few things I still follow, e.g. the MLB trade deadline was passed last Friday. IMO, the Royals (Johnny Cueto, Ben Zobrist), the Dodgers (Mat Latos, Alex Wood), the Astros (Carlos Gomez, Scott Kazmir), the Mets (Yoenis Cespedes, Tyler Clippard), the Blue Jays (Troy Tulowitzki, David Price) all got major upgrades. The Giants got a minor upgrade in Mike Leake who is replacing Tim Hudson. The A's was the seller, which is no surprise as they sell when they are winning anyway. The White Sox should have been selling to build for the future (this season is done for them) but they didn't. I wonder if they saw some hopes after beating up the Red Sox (and winning 7 in a row) but that's more like an illusion judging by how they fell to the Yankees.

And I still follow NASCAR (no one fought for the remote of the 65" TV at the Virginia training site while I was watching the looooooong races using the DVR!) The driver who is having a super hot streak since the beginning of my Summer break was, surprise surprise, Kyle Busch, who broke his legs at the very first race of the season and has been out for 3+ months. NASCAR made an exception for his return: if his point standing was in the Top 30 and won at least one race, he would qualify for the Chase (NASCAR's playoff) So, what has he done lately? He earned four Sprint Cup wins, two XFINITY Series victories and last Saturday's Camping World Truck win. I'm surprised that he's ONLY at #32 even with 4 wins. Some of the races he won were enjoyable to watch (like the local race at Sonoma) Even the ones he didn't win were exciting, like the Windows 10-sponsored one at Pocono yesterday, in which he got a late lead from Joey Logano because the latter ran out of gas. Then the same happened to him (who finished 21st) and Martin Truex Jr. So the next one who didn't ran out of gas won, which was Matt Kenseth! BTW, American Pharoah won again last weekend.

Home run stories

MLB Network is part of the cable package I paid for and I am glad that I have it 'coz between MLB Network, Fox, ESPN and Comcast Sportsnet, I can catch almost 1 or 2 games per day every day during the season! And MLB Network's nightly show "Quick Pitch" gives me all highlights I need (better than ESPN's "Baseball tonight") However, I seldom watch other shows like "Intentional Talk" except for today. And it mentioned 2 interesting stories:

• Yan Gomes (Cleveland Indians) hit 2 HR yesterday and both of them were caught by the same fan! Now the fan is hoping he could get the balls autographed. Hope he gets it.
• Former Oakland A's (and current Indians) Brandon Moss hit his 100th career HR the other day. His teammates have the ball and asked Moss to buy them Apple gears (iPads and Macbooks) to get the ball back. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, stepped in and pay the "ransom" for Moss. Nice gesture!

Sports highlights: Tour of California, NBA Playoff, White Sox vs A's, NASCAR, International Challenge of Champion

It was another week of dramatic finishes in the world of sports. First, the 10th edition of the tour of California bicycle race started in Sacramento on 5/10. And San Jose hosted a stage in all 10 years. This year it was the stage 3, which started in SJ, through Calavaras Rd to Sunol, then Hwy 84 to Livermore and up Mt. Hamilton, back down to SJ again and finished with a climb at Metcalf Rd. The winner was an unexpected one: the young rider Toms Skujins from Hincapie Racing Team. He started his attack on the Hamilton climb. And hung on to the lead at the finish. It might have to do with the wrong decision made by the "bigger teams" not trying to bring back the breakaway. The commentators joked that it's because of the poor cell phone signals and the lack of knowledge about Skujins. He had the yellow jersey for 2 more stages with helps from his teammates until the individual time trial in South Cal, which again had an unexpected winner: Peter Sagan, who was better known as a sprinter. In fact, he has won many stages before with his superb sprinting ability. However, in recent years Mark Cavendish has taken over as this tour's premiere sprinter, who won both stage 1 and 2. Sagan's team owner was so disappointed that he publicly challenged Sagan. And Sagan rose to the occasion to not only win a sprinting stage after that but also the time trial to grab the yellow from Skujins. He lost the yellow to another young rider Julian Alaphilippe on the Mt. Baldy stage and fell behind by seconds at the beginning of the final stage on 5/17. Sagan's only hope to retake the lead and win the race came down to the sprint bonuses of the last stage. Cavendish won the intermediate sprint. Sagan came second and Alaphilippe got third so Sagan inched closer but still need the bonus from the finish (10s for the winner, 6s for 2nd place, 4s for 3rd.) Cav won again and prevented Sagan from grabbing that 10s. Sagan and Tyler Farrar were really close for the 3rd place finish and the photo showed Sagan beat Farrar with a margin less than the width of the bicycle tire! What a finish!

Speaking of photo finish, in the Friday night NASCAR Truck race Kasey Kahne barely beat the Erik Jones to the finish by 0.005 second! Jones is also an up-and-coming young star in the sports.

Speaking of young stars, the NASCAR Xfinity race on Sunday was all about them. Chase Elliott would have won the race if not for the caution right before the last lap. Chris Buescher was another driver with a strong car throughout the race. He pitted and got new tires while Elliott didn't. And that's the difference that propelled Buescher to the victory lane with Elliott had to settle for 2nd.

Speaking of 2nd, the #2 seed of NBA's Western conference playoff, Houston Rockets had a slow start and fell behind LA Clippers 1-3 in their best-of-7 playoff series. Well, as a long time Rocket fan I still remember them coming back from the same deficit in 1995. And they did it! However, I guess it's hard to see the history of 1995 repeat itself: they went all the way and won their 2nd championship in a row!

Speaking of 1995, that's not a good year for the Chicago White Sox even though they have these guys on their roster: Ray Durham, Tim Raines, Frank Thomas, Robin Ventura, Ron Karkovice, Ozzie Guillen and Wilson Alvarez. I hope their 1995 history doesn't repeat for them as they finished 3rd in their division and had a sub-.500 record. That's a bad year for the Oakland A's as well as they finished dead last in their division. Both are teams I root for and they played against each other last week. The Sox won a few close ones and swept the A's in Oakland. Oh well, it couldn't have been win-win for me anyway.

Last but not the least dramatic finish was the TV rerun of the semifinal of 2014 International Challenge of (9 ball) Champion between Shane Van Boening and Darren Appleton. Van Boening missed an easy shot for the 8 ball and lost to Appleton (who lost in the final to Thorsten Hohmann)

Sports highlights: the White Sox bats are waking up?

The Sox was down 3-6 to the Tigers yesterday. Looks like it's another lost cause but the Melk man hit a 3-run homer (his first of the season!) in the 8th and then Avisail Garcia followed up with the game winning RBI single. They also beat Detroit the night before. Hopefully this will be a confidence boost.

Sports highlights: another walkoff (the first by the Giants' Joe Panik), Chicharito scored

Just wrote about a walkoff hit by the former Giant (current White Sox) Melky Cabrera earlier this week. Now I'm writing about a walkoff hit (a sac-fly) by the current Giant Joe Panik in bot 9th last night. And it happened at the game we attended on Wednesday (club level seats thanks to Jenny!) Unlike the lopsided 12-0 A's vs Mariners game, this one was a nail-biter featuring the best-of-the-best pitchers in the game: WS MVP Madison Bumgarner and regular season MVP/Cy Young Clayton Kershaw. Both teams indeed pitched really well in the game, giving up only 2 runs each for 8 innings. (Dodger's 2-run homer was pretty much the only mistake made by MadBum) My son was particularly impressed by Santiago Casilla, who kept throwing strikes in the beginning of the 9th.

Also happy to see the A's beating their SoCal rival Angel's with another lopsided victory: 9-2. And the White Sox earned its victory earlier in the day as well. Seems like both Samardzija and Abreu responded to my criticism earlier. The former pitched a good one and the latter hit a homer. Go Giants, A's and White Sox!

Last but not least, the former Man U forward (though mostly on the bench) Chicharito got a rare start at his new team, Real Madrid (who is even more star-studded than Man U, especially for his position) in the very important Champions League quarter-final match against rival Atletico Madrid because of injuries to the regular starters. According to the stats quoted by sports websites, he scored 1 goal per 105 min on average given how rare he plays. I joked that he might be able to score in this game if he played many minutes and he did! Good for him!

Sports highlights: the Melk man walked off

I have been a long-time White Sox fan and no doubt the past few years have been disappointing. There were moments of brilliance from the players at times and that's about it. From what I read, there were lots of expectation on this 2015 team because of the "big additions" of starting pitcher Jeff Samardzija, closer David Robertson, and sluggers Adam LaRoche and Melky Cabrera. Not from me though 'coz I feel that these players probably are more well-known than they should be based on what they have achieved already (the Melk man did contribute to the early success of the Giants who eventually won the WS but he was suspended in mid-season that year. Samardzija really hasn't done enough to push any of his team over the hump. And I wasn't the only one who said so.) And I'm afraid the lone brightspot, Jose Abreu, last year's rookie of the year, might experience sophomore-jinx.

So, unlike those with high hopes, I'm not surprised to see the poor start early this season. Nevertheless, it's good to see that the players have the fighting spirit and be more optimistic, like what Melky Cabrera said on Monday. And he backed up his words with actions that night. The Sox was down 0-3 to the Indians in the bottom of the 9th but they didn't give up. They got on base patiently and slowly climb back to tie the game (with RBIs from Alexei Ramirez and Gordon Beckham) Finally, the Melk man delivered a game-winning bases-loaded RBI single! 

Sports highlights: MLB opening week, IndyCar at NOLA, F1 at Shanghai, the Masters

I took my son to his first A's game at Oakland last Fri (got a decent deal from Groupon) It's also the first game he saw after he really learned the rules and played in little league so he enjoyed it a lot. I did too as it was a 12-0 beating of the division rival Seattle Mariners (featuring superstars like Robinson Cano and Nelson Cruz. And Oakland lost the next 2 games by 1 run each!) A's offense reminded me of some of the little league games in which batters keep getting on bases!

The next one I want to write about was not a very-enjoyable event: the IndyCar Grand Prix of Louisiana. The track condition caused by the rain was so bad that basically most of the race in under caution. The early race leaders: Montoya and Power got shuffled back for their pit strategy (or I should say bad luck) The sad thing is: it's actually the 2nd race of the season and I had no idea the season has started already even though I work for the title sponsor! Can't believe I miss all those commercials for the season opener as I watch so much sports on almost every channel every day!

The F1 race at Shanghai was also something I should have missed as nothing really happened during the race. The 2 Mercedes (Hamilton, Rosberg), and the 2 Ferraris (Vettel and Raikkonen) went P1,2,3,4 respectively. The only surprise was how well the rookie Verstappen drove (Saw him in Macau GP last year). Too bad his engine broke near the end of the race.

After a disappointing NCAA title game (my Wisconsin Badgers lost) earlier in the week, finally came some good news. It's regarding my other school: fellow Texas Longhorn Jordan Spieth won his first major, the Masters, in record-breaking fashion. The UT Tower went orange to honor his victory! Coincidentally, I also witnessed another Longhorn and former Masters champ, Ben Crenshaw, playing in his last Masters. Very emotional moments! It almost feels like Crenshaw has found a successor in Spieth. Check out this article comparing Spieth to other well-decorated Longhorn athletes!

Baseball weekend

As a UT alum, I receive a few email newsletters and was told months ago that the Texas Longhorns would be playing the Stanford Cardinals here in Palo Alto last weekend. I was well prepared to go, taking my kids and meeting a few other alumni over there. Coincidentally, it's also the pre-season opening weekend for my son's little league (his first) We planned to go to team practice at 11 and bike over to Stanford for the game at 2. Too bad our bikes got flat tire and wasn't able to make it there at 2. It's already the end of 2nd when we finally returned home. Fortunately I remember from Stanford's website that it would be streaming their games live! So we started watching and relaxed in our comfy sofa (with drinks in our hands!) It was a 4 game series and Texas already lost the first 2. However, they had a big 1st inning and got a 3-0 lead and hung on to its lead 'til the bottom of the 9th. Both teams made lots of good plays. Glad to have watched it, even though it would have been better live. We watched the Sunday series finale as well. Texas got a huge 1st inning again (including scoring twice on bases-loaded walks!) and won the game easily.

This could be a very good baseball team

Talking about the San Diego Padres, which is in the same division as the SF Giants. They have just added James Shields, who helped Kansas City reach the World Series last season, to their roster. And prior to this deal, they have already got Matt Kemp, Justin Upton, Wil Myers, as well as Derek Norris, the former A's catcher who I think was pretty good. The rest of NL West should watch out!