The Cubs drew level with the Giants in the NL wildcard race on Tuesday night. However, as I am writing this, the Giants are about to nudge in front again.
The Cubs have been whizzing around the place this week. Milwaukee on Sunday, Miami Monday, Pittsburgh Tuesday and Wednesday. They split Monday's double-header against the Marlins, made up of games postponed because of the plethora of hurricanes in the past few weeks.
When I read yesterday that Mark Latham was promising to raise Townsville's profile as a defence base, I thought he was planning a special assignment for the North Queensland Cowboys. As it happens, it's a promise to establish an infantry battalion and a parachute battalion in the city, which is situated - fancy - in the marginal Liberal seat of Herbert.
JFK was on Letterman Monday night. According to Associated Press, he read the Top Ten George W Bush Tax Proposals, which are:
Tipperary beat Cork 2-11 (17) to 0-9 (9) in the All-Ireland Camogie final at Croke Park on Sunday. The RTE website has a brief match report, and there is vision during the archive of Sunday night's Nine O'Clock News, about 14:45 into the bulletin.
So Cuban national baseball teams don't win every tournament they compete in. Venezuela's best ten year-old beisbolistas defeated the Cuban kiddies 4-1 in the final of the V Mundialito Preinfantil at the Jose Antonio Casanova stadium in Caracas on Saturday.
Nominations closed for candidates for the federal elections on Thursday, and the Australian Electoral Commission announced them on Friday afternoon. Only five candidates in my electorate of Grayndler - that's a surprise. Not so surprising is the 78 candidates for the 12 senate vacancies in New South Wales, making up thirty different groups. That's right - the NSW senate ballot paper on October 9 will be thirty columns wide.
What a week for ice hockey! Canada wins the World Cup, then the NHL lockout begins. And aren't the gloom merchants having a field day!
I'm not personally going to go into much depth on this - I couldn't care less about ice hockey really - except to track a few perspectives on events, mainly from a Canadian angle.
It's on, or should that be off. There will be no professional baseball in Japan this weekend. Talks between the Japan Baseball Players Association and the owners broke down on Friday night.
At issue is the planned merger between the Orix BlueWave and Kintetsu Buffaloes. The association, concerned about player redundancies, opposed the merger then offered a compromise of deferring the merger till 2006 so that another club could take its place. The owners refused.