Auchtoon!

The University of Michigan baseball team didn’t win the College World Series, but they got closer than any Michigan teams have in a while. It’s nice to have a Michigan baseball team (professional or otherwise) that does well enough to play in a championship.

If you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, I don’t blame you. I’m a fairly big sports fan, but college baseball has never been in my wheelhouse (which is a baseball thing sportsy people say roughly meaning “it’s not my cup of tea”). The season starts in the spring in places where there is a spring (the south and west, not Michigan), and then finishes during the longest days of summer when we can comfortably be outside in Michigan.

Also, I don’t get the end-of-season format. For me, how the College World Series works is like how annuities function or how cribbage is played: I have the capacity to understand, and they have been explained to me several times, but I have the complete inability to retain any of it.

What is in my wheelhouse is the Women’s World Cup and the United States team. I can explain ad nauseam the nuances of group stage, knockout stage, goal differentials, shootouts, and so on. (Don’t ask if you don’t want to know.) Alas, the next game for the U.S. team after my deadline — a quarterfinal game against host France.

I’m hoping they win because I am a big fan and an American. But, honestly, also because there are some much richer editorial cartoon prospects to mine from women’s soccer — the equal pay for women issue, the pre-emptive rejection of a White House visit, LGBTQ rights. I’ll get it started here and maybe follow up in the coming weeks: Megan Rapinoe is the Muhammed Ali of our generation. Discuss.