I don?t have a thermometer in my living room, but I?m sure it topped 90 degrees in there more than once this weekend.
It?s obviously a great time to be a sports fan, between the baseball playoffs and football season hitting its full stride.
It?s also the one month when an adult can buy candy in bulk without anyone batting an eye. Halloween is also the one occasion when seemingly normal adults can have an ordinary conversation that ends with one of them saying, ?I?m getting a Captain Kirk costume this year.?
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Sunday was a tough day to be a pro football fan in Kansas. After being treated to a morning of utter futility on offense courtesy of the Chiefs, the Denver Broncos were completely steam-rolled in their game against San Diego at Mile High.
I don?t remember the last time both of these AFC West teams lost at home on the same day. Home-field advantage didn?t mean very much to either squad, and if I had paid for a ticket to either game, I would not have been terribly happy with either team?s effort.
Saturday was a considerably better day for football, as the highlight reel from the final moments of the Stanford upset of USC had more entertainment value than anything either the Broncos or the Chiefs did on Sunday.
Not only that, the game between LSU and Florida on Saturday night was a real treat to watch. If you?re keeping score, CBS went 1-for-3 with two strikeouts over the weekend.
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The Colorado Rockies are really playing some very good baseball right now. Having edged out the Padres and swept the Phillies, they?ve earned a shot at the N.L. title.
Arizona will play them tough, but I?ll be rooting extra hard for them. If by ?rooting extra hard? I mean ?not wasting another minute rooting for the Broncos.? Denver is two last-second field goals from being 0-5.
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The Chiefs game was so ugly that I actually ended up watching almost an hour of the 1987 masterpiece thriller ?Benji the Hunted? on Fox.
Since I did not see the whole Chiefs game, I can?t be sure?but it seems a reasonable guess that Benji logged more yards shepherding those mountain lion cubs than the entire K.C. offense managed against the Jags.
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One other sports story caught my eye on Sunday?the Chicago Marathon, where 49 people were hospitalized and one runner died.
According to an AP report on Sunday night, more than 10,000 runners?45,000 registered to run?chose not to race on account of 88-degree weather and ?sweltering humidity.?
Nearly 11,000 others did not finish the race, which was called 31⁄2 hours after the starting gun was fired.
I started sweating just from reading the story, so when I got to the part where 21,000 people who actually like to run so much that they spend time training for and entering marathons decided that it?s still too hot out, I turned on the AC for the first time this month.
