Sporting News

A great essay in the WSJ by the one, the only, Julius...Dr. J...Errrrviiiiing!. He remembers the 1980 NBA Finals in which rookie Magic Johnson helped the Lakers win against the Sixers...a very gracious essay, considering how bitter that memory still is for Sixers' fans. But then, what sports memory isn't bitter for a good Philadelphia fan? I know I must have some happy, sweet ones in the cerebrum somewhere...oh, yeah, there's a real good one. Tug McGraw's last pitch to win the World Series. Mmmmm. Let me just bask in that for a bit.

(Pause)

OK, all the other ones are really, really bitter. No way around it.

But...if you can't get good memories from Philly teams, maybe you should start paying attention to cricket.

Exciting stuff! A brilliant one-day by England against Australia...now there's a clause I never thought I'd write, for all sorts of reasons. Anyway, the English bowlers ("pitchers") Darren Gough and Jon Lewis got seven batsman ("batters") out in just 20 balls ("pitches"). In cricket this is akin to, I don't know...a triple-play. Twice in one game. Something like that. It's hard to do, anyway.

This is particularly important, because Australia is visiting England this summer to contend in the oldest tournament in sport, the Ashes. The Ashes is a battered trophy with, inside, ashes supposedly from burn cricket stumps. Legend has it some English ladies burnt the cricket stumps ("Stumps" are the verticals that hold up the little crosspieces called "bails" to form a wicket--that's what the bowler is trying to hit, and the batter trying to "defend") after Australia won a tournament in England in 1882...pretty early for a bunch of Australians to come all the way around the world to tour England playing cricket, but there it is. To say that England was collectively stunned is putting it mildly. The name for the tournament almost certainly comes from the following "memorial notice" in the Sporting Times, rather than from a rather dubious stories about cricket-loving cuties:

In Affectionate Rememberance of English Cricket Which Died At The Oval on 29th August 1882
Deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances
R.I.P
NB: The body will be cremated, and the ashes taken to Australia.


They've been playing ever since. The last time that England won was...

...Well, it was three years after the Sixers won an NBA championship.

In England, that's reckoned a long time to bear defeat. In Philadelphia, it's called life.