Congratulations and Good Luck

It’s been over a week ago that the USA women won the soccer World Cup. They dominated their challengers by not allowing the other teams to score. It wasn’t until the final when Japan scored a couple of goals but by then it was a bit too late.

It’s a bit unusual when a player scores more than one goal in a World Cup final let alone a Hat Trick, three goals, all in the first half. I really had the intention of watching the match like many of you probably did. But I had a few things to do around my place and I didn’t know which channel it was on.

By the time I figured out which station it was on the game had finished and the USA women were celebrating with the World Cup in hand.

I did get to watch some of the highlights and it was impressive. Matches like this usually end up with one team winning 1-0, 2-0 or 2-1. But the USA women were victorious 5-2.

You have to hand it to these women because there biggest motivation for winning the World Cup came in a final’s loss to Japan four years ago. These women need to be congratulated because they were so dominant but at the same very professional in their approach to this tournament.

You don’t have to be a soccer fan to appreciate the dominance of the USA women. They will be losing a fair amount of talent from this squad so in four years it will be a different team and maybe the motivation won’t be as great as it was in 2015.

But who knows, there is some young talent in this country that had to have been motivated and inspired by this victory. At least the women know how to win a World Cup.

Well, the first half of the baseball season is in the books and the Seattle Mariners have put themselves in a deep enough hole. Can they work themselves out of this funk or not. They have the talent to do it but lately they’ve been good enough to watch every other night but not every night.

I’m not sure what it is but it seems like whichever team gets hot early is confident enough to win the game. But Seattle cannot afford to play .500 ball the rest of the season.

On Thursday and Saturday the Mariners strung together several hits in an inning to score a run or two. I wasn’t happy watching that many guys get thrown out at the plate but if you are going to be aggressive getting thrown out is going to happen. An offensive team has to force the defense to make plays and if they do then you dust yourself off and acknowledge that they won that one. But if they don’t then you get to celebrate the scoring play.

Hisashi Iwakuma pitched on Thursday and after a nerve wracking first inning he settled down and came away with a big victory over the Angels pitching eight shutout innings. Since this is only his second game back from injury it is a real positive for the Mariners going into the second half of the year.

Manager Lloyd McClendon will need to come up with a daily lineup that he can be consistent and string together hits and runs. Nelson Cruz has been a big help and it looks like Robinson Cano and Kyle Seager have had a couple of good games as of late. Hopefully they can get off on the right foot as soon as possible.

So it’s congratulations to the USA women winning the World Cup and the very best of luck to the Seattle Mariners on the second half of the season. Maybe the M’s need to take a page out of the women’s playbook and play with a real purpose. I think it is a formula that just might work.