The League Cup Final

Not one for my north American readers, this, but my team Rangers won the Scottish League Cup (officially known these days as the Co-operative Insurance Cup) on Sunday with a 1-0 win over Saint Mirren, the local team in Paisley, where I now live, and the team supported by my brother-in-law and all three of my Paisley-living nephews, and one of my nieces. In my defence at not supporting the local team, I wasn't born here and Rangers, as well as being the biggest and most successful club in Scotland (and reigning champions and probably about to be again), play their home games just about three miles from where I was brought up and were my local team as a boy.

In the game, though, Saint Mirren were by far the better team. They had possession of the ball about two thirds of the time, an amazing statistic in any game, especially by a small club playing against Rangers. And Rangers had not one but two players sent off (thrown out of the game and can't be replaced) so Saint Mirren were playing for quite a while with eleven against nine. But they didn't have the quality of goalscorer to put the ball in the net, and with seven minutes left Rangers broke forward and scored a beautiful goal with an excellent cross and wonderfully accurate header.

The Saints fans were gutted, of course. I have it on good authority that it was the most galling defeat they've had since a game some years ago against a Swedish team whose name begins with H (out of courtesy to family and friends I'm not actually going to name that team), and indeed Saint Mirren forums were discussing urgently whether this one might be even worse before deciding that it wasn't, quite. For probably the first time in my life, when I saw the inevitable shot of a wee boy in the other team's colours crying his eyes out, I didn't laugh immoderately but felt my heart go out to him, and to all the Saint Mirren supporters.

For that reason (well, okay, not ONLY that reason) I was delighted when, this evening, the Saints went out and won 4-0 against Celtic, the second best team in Scotland and Rangers' historic and eternal bitter rivals, the other half of the "Old Firm" who have utterly dominated Scottish football over the years and decades. That result also means that Rangers would now have to lose six of their last ten games in the league to have any chance of throwing their title away, having lost just one of about forty eight in the last year and a bit. So I'm probably twice as happy as the Saint Mirren fans.

Ach well, it's only a game. Apparently.

Go Yankees.

Susan is a New York Yankees fan; she was born in the Bronx, where the team plays. And right now they are in the World Series, playing against the reigning champions, the Philadelphia Phillies. As I write this, the Yanks are leading by three games to two in the series, and so need just one more win to win the series, which we hope will come in tomorrow night's game at Yankee Stadium.

I say "we" because, in the spirit of romance and partnership, I decided to take an interest by watching the deciding game in the Yanks' previous series against the Los Angeles Angels. And blow me down if it didn't get me hooked. So hooked, in fact, that I signed up for ESPN so I could watch it live rather than the minute or so behind I was getting with the streamed broadcast. And we've been watching the games together three thousand miles apart, by phoning as the game starts and hanging up shortly after it ends.

Baseball's exciting stuff, not at all like the borefest that is cricket, which many people on this side of the Atlantic imagine it resembles. It is complex and fast-paced-- to the extent that I often am unable to keep up with what has just happened and have to wait for an explanation from the commentators or from Susan, or whoever might happen to be in the room with her as she also falls behind occasionally-- and has one hell of a lot of specific terms which I will have to learn to keep following it. For instance, it's damn hard for me so far deciding just what's a strike and what's a ball, sometimes, although I'm already getting better and was able for instance to laugh right on cue when one poor opposition player started jogging to first base after only three instead of the required four balls, and before Susan had caught on. I have even begun screaming in delight when a Yankees player unexpectedly reaches base or more expectedly scores a run, or when a Phillies player drops the ball or misses a catch. I still fall behind reality a lot though (nothing new there, I suppose, but watching football it rarely happens. And by football I mean football, not gridiron: the clue is in the word "foot"). I've also started being abusively sarcastic about Phillies fans and their silly towel-waving. In short, I'm having a great time and have discovered a new sporting love. Now I just have to decide which player I want on the back of the shirt Susan's going to buy me. At the moment I think Joba Chamberlain is in the lead, because he is closer to my own body shape than any sporting hero I have ever seen. Which is another thing I love about baseball: some of those athletes look decidedly unathletic and could never in a million years cut it in any other sporting discipline.

Of course, Susan's end of the deal is to return the compliment when she moves over here, and watch and try to learn football. I can't wait to teach her the offside rule...