Day 39
Back a dozen or so years ago, which was a while before the internet reached our town in Kenya, it was rather hard to follow American sports of any kind. That’s completely understandable. I mean, do U.S. papers keep track of cricket scores in Australia? Of course not!
So I’ve gotta give the Daily Nation (one of Kenya’s newspapers) credit on that point – they did make an effort to keep us baseball fans informed. To an extent. Every day, I’d go to the library and flip through the sports to find the baseball “section”. Now granted, sometimes they did have the full standings – American League & National League, all six divisions. But in other cases, they’d only print say, the NL West and AL Central. Maybe that’s all they had room for. But when the NL East Phillies were in the thick of the pennant race (hey, I can dream), the sporadic coverage could be a tad frustrating.
These days, thanks to the wide world web and satellite TV, it’s a lot easier to follow sports. You can find out who won the Super Bowl in real time, rather than huddling around a shortwave radio the next morning to find out the results from BBC. You can listen to Phillies announcer Harry Kalas’s lively description of another Chase Utley home run (“That ball is WAY outta here!”) if you don’t mind the game’s 2:05 AM E. Africa start time.
Indeed, people do go to great lengths at times to catch their teams live.
For example, in December 2005, a Monday Night Football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Seattle Seahawks was being broadcast live by ESPN (or someone) in Africa. Thrilled to be able to go watch “our team”, my 2 youngest brothers, who were on break from school, got up in the wee hours of Tuesday morning to go to the video room to watch it. Mom went along (as an adult needed to be present) and apparently got her grocery list and the whole week’s menu done during the game. She’s definitely the queen of multi-tasking.
Anyways, you can guess what happened. Murphy’s Law took over. The Eagles were utterly shellacked. 42-0. I remember watching part of the game here in Milwaukee, but I gave up on them before the first half was over and went to bed. Noah and Daniel stuck it out to the bitter bitter end. I guess when you only get to see a live game of your team every few years, you do that.
But they didn’t even get to see an Eagles touchdown. Sigh.
Onward.
Here’s the benediction Grandpa mentioned in his comment yesterday. It was the one read at their wedding nearly 56 years ago.
Hebrews 13:20-21 Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord, equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
Made for Eternity 