Hey, look! Americans!

 Time now for the Blob to take a timeout from the important stuff, such as football, football and, um, football. 

(Sample topics: Why were the Eagles and Packers playing in Brazil? Where did Indiana find a team it could floor-wax 77-3? And why were the Eagles, Packers and Indiana playing on a Friday night anyway, because Friday night is sacred ground that should always, always, always belong solely to high school football?)

Where was I again?

Oh, yeah. Timeout. Change of subject. And, you know, a Patriotic Moment.

Anyone see what's happening in the U.S. Open this weekend?

"Didn't they play that in June?" you're saying.

No, not the U.S. Open in golf, silly. The U.S. Open in tennis, which is the last Grand Slam tournament of the year and has been going on in New York for the last two weeks.

What's happening there this weekend is the women's final, which is today, and the men's final, which is Sunday. And what's notable about that is there's an American playing in both of them.

In the women's final, it's Jessica Pegula of the U.S., whose parents own the Buffalo Bills and Sabres, playing in her first Grand Slam final against Aryna Sabalenka from Belarus. This means she's at least the second-best athletic entity in her family, the Sabres running a poor third in that hierarchy.

 And in the men's final?

It's Taylor Fritz against top-seed Jannik Sinner and his nuclear forehand. Fritz is the American; Sinner, the Italian. 

This is a big deal because the last time it happened was 22 years ago, which is is barely conceivable for those of us who can remember a time when Chrissie or one of the Williams sisters was always in the Grand Slam finals, and on the men's side it was always McEnroe or Connors or Andre Agassi or Pete Sampras or Jim Courier or blah-blah-blah, yadda-yadda-yadda-yadda.

Well, not anymore. Except for Venus and Serena, American tennis pretty much vanished from the radar when Agassi quit and Sampras quit and Andy Roddick didn't turn out to be either one, although he did win a U.S. Open once. In fact, the last time an American man played in any Grand Slam final was 15 years ago, when Roddick lost to Roger Federer at Wimbledon in 2009.

This time, Fritz squared off against another American, Frances Tiafoe, in the semifinals. It was the first time two Americans had played one another in the U.S. Open semis in 19 years.

So, yeah, pretty historic stuff. Maybe this means U.S. tennis is experiencing a revival, or maybe this is just a cockeyed year for the U.S. Open. Both Pegula and Fritz, after all, will be heavy underdogs this weekend. But, hey, you gotta start somewhere, right?

And so: Go, USA.