breaking news in both baseball and football

OMG YOU GUYS, THE SOX WON THE WORLD SERIES.

And they did it faster than necessary, which I think was very nice of them and also allowed all the grown-ups to go out and enjoy Halloween, so that was good.

But now that means baseball is OVER. Until, I think, spring training, which happens in the spring and is like spring cleaning but with less whacking of the rugs. I'm kidding. Nobody takes their rugs outside and hits them with sticks anymore. That's just something people did in old books I read when I was a kid. Nowadays, they use the sticks of wood to hit balls and people get really excited about it.

Thank goodness one sport has temporarily ended, though, because all of the other sports are going strong. If I'm to judge from some very reliable sports news that I get from my friend Tami, it appears that tennis is happening. I happen to know from my own self that tennis is where the pretty people go to play sports. I have talked with enough women (not Tami, specifically, gosh) who watch tennis to be moderately sure that men's tennis is women's porn. That's only because they haven't come up with a reality show in which men clean the house, but, still.

So there's tennis, and then my boyfriend said something about basketball starting up. I said, haven't we already been to a basketball game?, the one where we met all your friends from basketball?, and he was like, no, that was a hockey game. In my defense, we were in a fancy box that was way in the sky, and also I wasn't watching.

By the way, I apparently misquote people all the time, so you should know that if anyone mentioned in this blog is wrong about something, it's probably because I wasn't paying the degree of attention that I should have been.

And then there's FOOTBALL, which is STILL GOING, and apparently will be happening every hour of every day until the Superbowl, which I know for a FACT takes place in either January or February, and is written in Roman numerals. I honestly don't understand how people manage to find the time to watch football. I can't find the time to watch Castle, which is on for one hour per week, most weeks, and while I have yet to look up the actual hours of football broadcast, I know that it happens more than there are hours in the day because of something I have heard of called simul-casting.

I try to pay attention to one hour of football per week, for parity with my other TV-watching, and so I paid attention to bits of the Northwestern game in between naps. This weekend they played another N-team and the good N-team (purple) was winning for most of the game but then at the absolute last SECOND, the bad N-team (red) won, which I can only assume was insanely thrilling for all of the red-N-folks but moderately devastating for the purple-N-folks.

You're going to learn a lot about Northwestern if you read this blog, because that's where my boyfriend went to school. He's not particularly passionate about professional football except for the fantasy football, which is another topic altogether, and which we will save for next time.

let's make this a thing

So, two of the people who noticed my Facebook summation of Things I Know In Sports thought I should do this sort of a write-up regularly. One of those people was my boyfriend, but the takeaway here is that ONE OF THEM WASN'T. There's so much sports knowledge in the world, and it's about time that we hear about what's happening from people who don't have a clue. I'm that people.

Right now (ish, not "right now this minute," please stop being so literal) the World Series is on.
St. Louis has the Cardinals, who are called "the Cards" if you know what you're talking about, and Boston has the Red Sox, who are, I'm not sure...called...maybe (?) The Sox but there's another Sox team and I'm not quite sure which one locked in that nickname. This is only part of why sports is so hard for some people to understand.

**free advice: NAME YOUR TEAMS DIFFERENT NAMES. This goes for you, too, hockey. There are so many words in the world, you guys. If you don't know what they are, you can talk to me.**

This World Series is the most important event in baseball, where the people who won one side of things play the people who won the other side of things. It's like the Superbowl for baseball, except it takes place over the course of maybe a week and no one throws any parties and there are no commercials beyond the regular ones.

**showcase idea: WORLD SERIES COMMERCIALS! Let's get on this, folks!**

Unlike the Superbowl, which is just one game, the World Series is a Series of games from around the World. Hee, hee...I'm kidding about that last part. I think it's just from this country. Pretty sure. Anyway, best of seven. Which means the first person to win four games wins. If you don't like sports, this means you're rooting for someone to win four in a row so it can be over faster. If you DO like sports, this means you want to see your favorite team start to win and then not so much and then come back at the end to win Game 7, because that way you get to watch more sports and also it means you get to root for the underdog for at least a little while, which is the point of sports.

Speaking of The Point Of Sports, it is this: to feel as if you've come from behind.
"Underdog" is a term used for the person or team who is less good than the better team. I'm not sure whether other countries want to root for the underdog. I guess if you're England or Rome, you probably want to root for the team that was all set to win the whole damn thing and then lost miserably but still has good merchandising and is popular. If you're America, you want to root for the people who started from nothing and overcame the team with the best merchandising. It's ALWAYS better to come from behind and win than come from ahead and lose. Technically, this is true in all venues, not just sports, but sports is the place where people go to be open about this goal (or lack of a goal).

What I think we should all remember, then, is that losing is a really good long-term plan, because it means you are all set to overcome, eventually. Theoretically. Maybe. And, like sports, the longer you go without winning, the more rabid your fanbase will become.

(Sorry. That last part's not technically true, unless your fanbase is your mom.)

Unrelated: I am a little nervous about Jake Peavy starting tonight for the Sox. But don't tell HIM that. I wouldn't want him to be uncomfortable.

...and that's all, folks!

The University of Oregon Ducks are a football team, and their only real rival is Alabama, but they don't get to play them unless they go to the nationals (?) and the only team in their half (?) of the league (?) that they are worried about is Stanford, but that would make you think they would be second-best when in point of fact they are currently ranked third because Florida State beat Clemson, and this is college ball, not professional which is called the NFL and Boston and St. Louis are playing the second game of the World Series and Boston won first but right now the Cardinals are winning except that just changed which tells me that the bruised ribs are not so bad and Chicago won the Stanley cup recently, Boston was robbed, 17 seconds, and there are two hockey teams that are both called the Hawks and Martina Navratilova is a lesbian which no one used to know and that other guy has a super bad temper and sometimes threw his racket, and the Red Sox are saying to "fear the beard" which even I know they stole that from Brian Wilson, who is both a beach boy and also an injured pitcher who is playing in Albuquerque and being sort of a dick to his fans who are fans of the Isotopes but used to be the Dukes and are a feeder (?) team for the Dodgers who were at one point in LA but may have changed. 

(whew) There's all my sports knowledge. I thought I should share in case you didn't know as much as I do.