a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
There was more rain today (another inch or so).
I ventured outside with my umbrella before the gray outside tuned into black.
It was not to be— the Seattle Mariners playing in the World Series.
They lost 3-4 in Game 7 tonight against the Blue Jays, in the deciding game in the American League Championship Series (ALCS).
The Toronto Blue Jays will now take on the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series.
Beautiful fall foliage surrounds the playfields at Miller Community Center on 19th Avenue East on Capitol Hill.
Happy Friday.
The new pickleball court facility called Sideout Tsunami Center is open for business (but the official grand opening will be in November).
This weekend, the center is hosting the finals of the National Pickleball League team competition in the “Champions Pro” division for players aged 50 and above.
I stopped by this afternoon to check out the new courts and the action there.
P.S. A win for the Mariners in Game 5!
From the Seattle Times:
Cal Raleigh and Eugenio Suárez delivered eighth-inning homers to send the Mariners to within a win of the World Series, and send T-Mobile Park into a frenzy.
Toronto Blue Jays 8, Seattle Mariners 2.
The best-of-seven series is now drawn at 2-2.
Game 5 is tomorrow night here in T-Mobile Park in Seattle.
Game on, and on to Game 4.
The Toronto Blue Jays rocked George Kirby and the Mariners, 13-4, in Game 3 on Wednesday night, silencing a sold-out Seattle crowd and climbing back into this best-of-seven American League Championship Series in emphatic fashion.
– Adam Jude, Seattle Times staff reporter
Tim Booth, Seattle Times staff reporter, concludes his analysis
“ALCS: Three impressions as Mariners take 2-0 lead vs. Blue Jays” as follows (this series is best of 7 games):
.. but general playoff history, momentum, belief, maybe a weird witch-induced aura are all on the side of the Mariners.
The opportunity is there for Wednesday night to be one of the most important games in the history of T-Mobile Park.
Win and put a stranglehold on the series.
Lose and the Blue Jays are right back in it.
It’s almost go time for Game 5.
Below is a ticket from the Mariners game against the Texas Rangers that I had attended wa-ay back in 2004. 🤗
10.30 pm:
They made it!
At the bottom of the 15th inning the score was still 2-2. Jorge Polanco delivered the walk-off* on a sharp groundball to right field to score J.P. Crawford and end the winner-take-all game 3-2 against the Tigers.
*A walk-off in baseball is a play where the home team scores the winning run in the bottom of the final inning, which immediately ends the game. The term walk-off comes from the fact that the visiting team “walks off” the field, as they have no more opportunities to bat.
What happens next?
From espn.com:
Starting Sunday in Toronto, the No. 2 seed Seattle Mariners and No. 1 seed Toronto Blue Jays will clash with a trip to the World Series on the line.
Seattle outlasted the Detroit Tigers in a thrilling ALDS Game 5 on Friday night, two days after Toronto dispatched the AL East rival New York Yankees to get to the ALCS.
The Mariners crashed to a 3-9 defeat in Game 4 today in Detroit.
Game 5— the deciding game— will start at 5:08 p.m. Pacific Time on Friday night in Seattle.
There was a rain delay to the start of the game in Detroit.
Once the game started, though, the Mariners were the first to put several runs on the board. They held off a late attempt by the Tigers to come back in the 9th inning.
Just a small town girl
Livin’ in a lonely world
She took the midnight train going anywhere
Just a city boy
Born and raised in South Detroit
He took the midnight train going anywhere
A singer in a smokey room
A smell of wine and cheap perfume
For a smile they can share the night
It goes on and on and on and on
Strangers waitin’
Up and down the boulevard
Their shadows searchin’ in the night
Streetlights, people
Livin’ just to find emotion
Hidin’ somewhere in the night
Workin’ hard to get my fill
Everybody wants a thrill
Payin’ anything to roll the dice
Just one more time
Some’ll win, some will lose
Some are born to sing the blues
Whoa, the movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on
Strangers waiting
Up and down the boulevard
Their shadows searching in the night
Streetlights, people
Livin’ just to find emotion
Hidin’, somewhere in the night
Don’t stop believin’
Hold on to that feeling
Streetlights, people
Don’t stop believin’
Hold on
Streetlights, people
Don’t stop believin’
Hold on to that feeling
Streetlights, people
– Lyrics from Don’t Stop Believin’, a song by Journey from their album Escape (1981)
Go Mariners!
The Mariners* are in Detroit for the third and fourth games (Tuesday night & Wednesday night) in the playoff series against the Detroit Tigers.
The Mariners and Tigers are drawn 1-1 in the series.
*Baseball team from Seattle that competes in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member of the American League (AL) West Division.
“The M’s,” named for Seattle’s nautical heritage, have never won a World Series. They have won the AL West Division four times and appeared in the playoffs in 2000, 2022, and now this year, 2025.
I should have stayed on in Tokyo for another week so that I could catch some of the action at the Japan Open ATP 500 men’s tennis tournament there.
World No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz (🇪🇸, 22) made his debut in Japan there, today.
He scared everybody with an ankle injury in the first set of his match, but recovered to beat Argentinian Sebastian Baez (🇦🇷, 24) by 6-4, 6-2 in the second round.
Look for the elevated Yurikamome Line on the left of the picture. The Ariake Tennis no Mori Park train station is towards the top right of the picture.
[Graphic from Olympic and Paralympic Games TOKYO2020 website]
Carlos is doing a Japanese bow as he greets the representative from Kinoshita Group (I couldn’t get his name). The man in the middle is the umpire of the match, Fergus Murphy from Dublin, Ireland.
[Still from TennisTV coverage of the match]
From the New York Post by reporters Chris Harris, Bridget Reilly, Anna Young and Shane Galvin:
The “entitled” jerk who seemingly snatched a hat autographed by tennis star Kamil Majchrzak from a young boy at the US Open has been identified as a Polish millionaire. (My note: I edited out his name).
Majchrzak, fresh off his victory over ninth seed Karen Khachanov when the incident unfolded Thursday night, confirmed his identity to The Post on Saturday and said he was initially oblivious to the now-viral snafu.
“Obviously it was some kind of confusion,” the tennis pro said, adding that the millionaire sponsors his tennis federation in Poland.
Happy Friday.
It’s Labor Day weekend here in the United States— the unofficial end of summer.
There was plenty of action on Day 6 of the US Open. Ben Stiller and Steve Carell were seen in the stands today.
Coqodaq is an upscale NYC restaurant that serves Korean-style fried chicken and champagne from a location in the lower bowl concourse of Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Reportedly one of the most sought-after food items at this year’s Open, is their chicken nuggets garnished with caviar ($100).
On day one of the 2025 tournament, 2021 champion Daniil Medvedev provided a signal example by inciting the crowd to delay his match against France’s Benjamin Bonzi for six minutes — while he was down match point. A photographer walked onto the court between Bonzi’s first and second serves. Umpire Greg Allensworth ruled that Bonzi should get a first serve. Irate, Medvedev approached Allensworth’s chair, whipping up the crowd to boo and chant. After berating Allensworth, Medvedev returned to the baseline. Bonzi got ready to serve. The crowd didn’t stop.
– Matthew Futterman writing for The Athletic in the New York Times, saying that the Medvedev incident is a signal example of the complete absence of tennis etiquette at the US Open
What also happened— after Medvedev had lost the first-round match against Bonzi in five sets on Sunday— is that he smashed his racket on the court and against the bench that he sat on. Still enraged and not satisfied with the damage to it, he went on and smashed the broken frame for a few minutes more, to smithereens.
By the way: Medvedev was fined AUD 76,000 ($49,000) in this year’s Australian Open for smashing a tennis net camera in the first round, and for unsportsmanlike conduct in the second round.
I was near Lake Union for two appointments this morning and took these pictures.
Top to bottom—
Rowing lessons for kids near a flotilla of moored yachts;
Troublemakers (Canadian geese) on the docks;
Space Needle and Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI);
Incoming floatplane;
Departing floatplane— the last one of four in a row— but then the first to become airborne (in the center of the last picture).
Poor Amanda Anisimova (age 23, 🇺🇸) suffered a ‘double bagel’ defeat against Iga Świątek (24, 🇵🇱) in today’s Wimbledon Women’s Singles final.
Anisimova struggled with her serve, and made way too many unforced errors. She skipped practice on Friday because of fatigue and felt pain in her right shoulder while warming up before the match.
From BBC.com/ sport:
The rarity of a 6-0 6-0 score line in a final underlines Swiatek’s dominance.
This is the first 6-0 6-0 win in a Grand Slam final since Steffi Graff (19, 🇩🇪) beat Natasha Zvereva (17) in just 34 minutes at the 1988 French Open.
It is the first time it has been done in a Wimbledon final in the Open era, which is when tennis became professional (1968).
In 1911, Dorothea Lambert Chambers (32, 🇬🇧) beat Dora Boothby (29, 🇬🇧) by the same score line— but that was in the challenge match era, where the defending champion played just once.
Day 7 at Wimbledon is done.
Defending champion Carlos Alcaraz (22, 🇪🇸) is still on track, with a great win today over Andrey Rublev (27): 6-7 (5-7), 6-3, 6-4, 6-4.
Alcaraz will play Cameron Norrie in the quarterfinals on Tuesday.
Norrie (29, 🇬🇧) is British, and was born in Johannesburg, South Africa.
[Image from the official Wimbledon website]
*Yes, there is still croquet, played on three dedicated lawns, but they are converted into practice tennis courts during the championships.
Here are a few random notes for today:
– The hottest day ever recorded at the Wimbledon tennis tournament was July 1, 2015, with a temperature of 35.7 °C (96.3°F). This record was matched today on the first day of the 2025 tournament, Monday, June 30;
– Frenchman Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard (21, 🇫🇷) hit a serve that clocked in at 153 mph (246 km/h), the fastest ever recorded, anywhere;
– World No 733 Oliver Tarvet (21, 🇬🇧) won his first round match as a qualifier in the main draw. He must now spend most of his £99,000 winnings to retain his amateur status on the NCAA Tennis circuit (he plays college tennis at the University of San Diego and wants to continue doing that for another year or two);
– Tarvet will play Carlos Alcaraz on Wednesday in the second round.
Alcaraz needed five sets today to eliminate Fabio Fognini (38, 🇮🇹) 7-5, 6-7 (5), 7-5, 2-6, 6-1. Fognini is retiring after this season and asked Alcaraz for his shirt after the match to give to his son Frederico (he got it; they are good friends);
– On No. 1 Court, Jiao Fonseca (18, 🇧🇷) became the first 18-year-old to reach the second round since a certain Carlos Alcaraz did it in 2021. Fonseca needed only three sets to get past Jacob Fearnley (23, 🇬🇧);
– Line judges have been a part of Wimbledon since the very first Championships in 1877, but this year the humans have been replaced with Hawk-Eye Live (a system of up to 18 cameras equipped with AI that analyzes footage from the cameras to determine if a ball is in or out).
Happy Friday.
Happy Summer Solstice (here in the northern hemisphere).
The arrival of summer weather has been delayed by a few days here in Seattle, with cool and rainy weather expected this weekend.
The high today was only 62°F (17°C).
Here is the latest page that I just added to my set of albums for South Africa.
This unusual sheet of stamps— round stamps on gold foil paper, for nine different countries, in one sheet— was issued in 2010 to celebrate the 2010 World Cup in Cape Town, South Africa.
P.S. In June and July of next year, six matches of the 2026 World Cup will be played right here in Seattle. The USA team features in one match, and I wondered if there would be any tickets left.
Yes, there are, at a very dear price.
Ticket reseller Stubhub offers tickets starting at $2,235, for seats in the stadium.
But hold on to your beer. Right there on the pitch, one ticket is offered for $892,803 and another for $1,116,003. ‘Can relist if plans change’ it says for these. Yes. Or if the stock market crashes and you go from billionaire to millionaire.
