Bowing to history

Permit the Blob an assumption, to begin with: You probably don't think about lacrosse more than once or twice a day.

Or, you know, a lifetime.

This is because lax, as its devotees call it, has never been blessed with a Japanese-fleet-on-December-7-sized blip on the Sportsball radar, as fine a sport as it is. All we know about it is the Native Americans invented it, and Jim Brown was really good at it, and, geez, do the goalies ever actually make a save, or what?

They do. You might have to watch for a decade or so, but it happens.

Anyway ... the Blob is going to talk lax today, because the Blob is all about empathy, and it feels your pain in these days of lunacy and prospering cheaters, speaking of Our Only Available Impeached President and the Houston Astros.

Who swept the poor Twins in the wild-card playoffs this week, dammit. And then rubbed our noses in it by reveling in our disdain for their cheating hindparts.

But there is still honor in Sportsball. Just ask the Iroquois Nationals.

Who were denied entry into the 2022 World Games in Birmingham, Ala., on account of the organizers didn't deem the Iroquois an actual nation. This despite the fact the Nationals are ranked No. 3 in the world, and they represent the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, who actually invented what their ancestors called "the medicine game."

Well. This wouldn't stand with at least one entrant.

And so all hail to Ireland, who earlier this month chose to bow out of the eight-team tournament to make room for the Nationals, whom the organizers belatedly recognized as legitimate but only after the tournament field was filled.

"None of us would be going to Birmingham, Ala., in the first place if it weren't for the Iroquois and giving us the gift of their medicine game," Irish player Sonny Campbell told NPR's Morning Edition. 

Indeed. And so here's to those who honor history and propriety and the nobility of doing the right thing.

Refreshing, ain't it?