Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.

• 1 Corinthians 9:24

I was just thinking about what a strange time in the USA the past month has been in the area of sports.

Not on many people’s radar, but the United Football League, the Spring League, had their championship and the Louisville Kings, an expansion team, won the championship, but the team that they played was ahead until the back-up quarterback got hurt.  Interesting.

The New York Knicks won the NBA Championship.  The people of New York took to the streets in the middle of the night in celebration.  There was violence.  There were shootings.  In some ways for the large cities who especially call themselves sanctuary cities, it’s almost predictable.  I hope when the World Cup final is in the area that the citizenry can behave.

Then, the Carolina Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup.  Jordan Staal set a record for the longest time between winning two Stanley Cups.  Odd how the media said nothing about Staal’s first Stanley Cup came with Pittsburgh 17 years before.  But now, he was the captain of the Hurricanes.  I liked Staal when he was in Pittsburgh, and he went to Carolina to play with his brother.  His comments about building a championship team in Carolina were characterized by the media as “weird”, but he was there through the construction of a winning team and now a champion team.  I think the media are the ones who are “weird.”

And now to the World Cup.  There was an expansion of the number of groups and the number of teams going to the knockout rounds, but Italy is still not back, missing three World Cups in a row.  They finished second to Norway in their European group.  Then, that forced them into a tournament where they lost to Bosnia & Herzegovina.  Odd how a four-time champion has fallen.

But Germany seems to be rebounding from their latest flop four years ago, but their second round game was a nail biter.  I can remember when they last won the World Cup.  I was working with a group of Germans in Tennessee, and suddenly our internet switched off.  We had exceeded our data limit.  Odd how no one admitted that they were watching the World Cup instead of working, but no other month did we ever come close to exceeding our data limit.  I had to make my reports and such at the hotel after a 10-12 hour workday was over due to no internet.  Strange…  And thinking of that, I was laid off 12 years ago.  Not long after Germany won their last World Cup.  So much for the overtime.

The USA is through to the knockout round as a number one seed, along with Mexico and Germany.  The other host nation is Canada, and Canada has not yet been defeated, so they might make it to the next round.  Thirty-two teams will make it, and we won’t know until the end of the week how the tiebreakers will play out.

But Brazil and Spain had rocky starts, both looking better in the second round.  A lot of the top-rated FIFA teams played their first games to not lose, rather than win.  I wonder if Belgium should be in the top ten in FIFA rankings, with two ties so far.  The saving grace is that they might be able to finish first in their group.  Nine tied games in the first round of group play, more than a third of the games?  And then the first game of the next round was a tie.  Yes, countries that had never gotten a point in World Cup play now have done so, but why not try to win?  Or are these new teams that good?  The teams that are just happy to be there are playing hard.  They want to show the world that there is a good reason that they are there.

Some of the World Cup has been watchable; some of it was like watching paint dry.  I am reminded of an old Roger Miller joke, slightly modified.  I think I would rather go to the diner and watch the blue cheese dip turn black than watch some of those games.

And somewhere in there, they played the U.S. Open Golf Tournament.  Congratulations Wyndham Clark.

And Major League Baseball is nearing their halfway point in the season.

I have cut back on watching sports a lot, but I need to watch something other than a couple of music channels when not writing.

Okay, from still having mild aftereffects of the sinus infection, I have taken more breaks lately.  Besides, worldwide gatherings to play silly games makes me feel good.  People gathering with politics not being the central theme.

Listening to the media, it seems that the sky is falling, but if we have something that in the long run is trivial, people can sort of behave… a little … sometimes.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.