So in a span of about six hours or so yesterday you had the teenage women winning a global basketball medal while a significant number of us watched on our computers, the TFCs hammering their closest MLS rivals with a stunning Giovinco goal in front of a sellout crowd in the sunshine at the park, an audience of 47,000 people (well, a few of the heartiest at the end I’m afraid) watching the baseball team have its greatest ninth-inning comeback ever punctuated by the guy’s second walkoff grand slam in four days, and tens of thousands on the golf course watching as a playoff was needed to decide the national Open championship.
Yeah, we are soooooooo much more than hockey and I love it.
Anything you wanted, and all of it if you were glued to various devices for the entire time, just once again hammers home the idea that the breadth of sports that we watch with passion and intensity.
Yeah, it was a once-in-an-era kind of day and we certainly can’t expect them to come around often but the fact that there were so many outstanding stories in a series of different sports made it special and that so many were able to watch, discuss and enjoy each is rather telling, I think.
The basketball game led to conversations with a couple of like-minded friends over the course of yesterday that came down to one question:
Is this the best summer for Canadian basketball ever?
And all things considered, the answer we came up with was probably yes.
The junior men winning the first gold medal for Canada ever, the junior women climbing a FIBA World Cup podium for the first time ever, the under-16 boys and girls easily qualifying for next year’s worlds by finishing second to the United States in both FIBA Americas qualifiers would sure make it seem that way.
