The Passion

This morning started badly with reading the news from Charlottesville. Honestly, it's like fifty years of too slow progress towards gender and racial equality is being completely rewound in a matter of months. I do believe that the great majority of Americans are smarter than the alt-right minority and that America will not succumb to hate, but I fear that there are many dark days ahead before the progressives overcome.

After that rotten start, things improved remarkably. A lovely birthday meal for my father-in-law celebrating his 80th birthday with my whole family. Such a wonderful man, still full of vim and vigour. He's an inspiration.

I left the party with Arthur. Arthur went home and I went to Koshien Stadium to watch another baseball game. Arthur was going to come too but decided he couldn't bear the heat. It was a fantastic game. Both teams deserved to win. I was rooting for Sakai, simply because I had a nice holiday there once and there is a great dinosaur museum there. However, I have also had a lovely holiday in Beppu, which is where the Meiho team is from, so, again, not much between them. Both teams played equally well. Going into the eighth inning, Sakai was ahead by six points to four, but then Meiho hit a home run which put them ahead seven points to six. Meiho then completely shut Sakai out from any chance of equalising at the top of the ninth, so Meiho won by seven points to six at the end of an incredible, nail-biting game.

I'm now hoping to see Toin play Meiho in the final.