Welcome back to “I’m Curious!”

Happy Hump Day! There’s plenty of sports news to tackle, plus your usual on-the-ground pro soccer updates.

We’ll get right to it all in a sec.

But first, here’s Peach!

The Most Curious Thing This Week

It’s the Major League Baseball postseason!

I suppose I should start with my beloved New York Zombie Yankees, who seem to almost permanently be on the brink of elimination. 

The Yanks survived a wild card series against the Red Sox, advancing in a game reminiscent of peak Yankees-Red Sox showdowns of the early 2000s. The Yankees had a player Sox fans can curse out for years to come (Cam Schlittler,) a Yankee infielder made a crazy play diving into the crowd (Ryan McMahon,) and the Yankees actually won.

Just as quickly as they did that, they fell right back to the brink against the Toronto Blue Jays, being outscored a combined 19-1 in two games. It took the Yankees scoring eight unanswered runs Tuesday night to live to see another day.

In the other American League Division Series, the Seattle Mariners have jumped into the driver’s seat with a 2-1 series lead over the Detroit Tigers. In a fitting moment, Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh, the 60-homer-hitting Big Dumper, dumped his first homer of the playoffs into the hands of a fan wearing a shirt that said “DUMP 61 HERE.” 

Over in the National League, the eminently likable Milwaukee Brewers are torturing a deeply flawed Chicago Cubs team, winning handily in both of the first two games. The Brewers are also playing with a bit of extra emotion, as this is their first season in over half a century without their legendary broadcaster, the late great Bob Uecker, on the microphone for games.

And then there are the inevitable Los Angeles Dodgers, already out to a 2-0 lead over a wilting Philadelphia Phillies team. Shohei Ohtani is doing superhuman things, pitching game 1 for the Dodgers and batting in both games so far.

It’s hard to tell if the Dodgers are as inevitable as they were last year, but between the Brewers trying to win one for Uecker and the magical Mariners season fueled by Big Dumper, there will be no shortage of threads to keep an eye on as baseball season winds down.

My Reporting

NWSL

Pop some Alka-Seltzer because it’s time to talk about the Washington Spirit giving their fans heartburn yet again.

Wild games that shift in the dying minutes are the norm for the Spirit, especially at home.

But their 2-1 win over the San Diego Wave on Sunday in DC may have been their wildest one yet.

A 9^th -minute goal by winger Rosemonde Kouassi was all the scoring in the first 90 minutes of a game where the Spirit generally outplayed the Wave. In a recurring issue, the Spirit struggled to turn strong chances into additional goals, while navigating the similarly recurring issue of frustration at referees as calls repeatedly did not go their way.

After the game hit the 90-minute mark, the dam broke.

In the 5^th minute of stoppage time, San Diego struck, with forward Kyra Carusa slipping a ball between multiple Spirit defenders to find Delphine Cascarino, who put one foot forward to slide it past Washington goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury. San Diego did not have a single shot on goal in the game to that point but made their first chance count, leveling the score at 1-1.

With two minutes left in a designated seven minutes of stoppage time, it looked like the Spirit would have to resign themselves to a draw.

The clock passed seven minutes into stoppage time but the Spirit had one chance left with the ball in the attacking third. Yet again, it was winger Rosemonde Kouassi. This time, she was far off to the right of the goal and several yards outside the box. She lobbed a cross over the middle toward goal. Except this cross looped a bit further forward than most crosses.

San Diego Wave goalkeeper Kailen Sheridan had been stellar on the day, with nine saves, but was caught off guard by the late curve on the ball.

It hung well over the outstretched glove of a jumping Sheridan, hitting the left side of the goal, just inside the far post. As a cross, it missed several potential Spirit teammates as targets. But as a shot, it went into the net, as Kouassi’s second goal of the day and a game winner. 

Kouassi has a knack for clutch moments. The 23-year-old from Côte D’Ivoire also scored a similarly timely goal deep into stoppage time to save the Spirit’s game in August against Racing Louisville, turning what would have been a loss into a 2-2 draw.

After the game, I asked her about if anything changes late in matches to allow magic like that to happen.

She does not speak much English, so usually a more bilingual teammate is on standby to translate. The teammate on translating duty Sunday, French defender Kysha Sylla, is also not entirely fluent in English yet, so I broke out some of my rusty college French to ask the question.

As far as what changes for Kouassi, the answer isn’t much more complicated than just looking at the scoreboard and the clock.

“Something changed for me at the end of the match, because we gave up [a goal,] they tied it,” Kouassi said.

“With the time, you had to push at the end of the match. If we didn’t push, we wouldn’t have the victory. And we pushed,” she added.

This is the fifth home game this season for the Spirit where they have notched a game-tying or go-ahead goal in the 85^th minute or later. 

And the last two home games of the 2024 season, two home playoff matches against Bay FC and Gotham FC, both included game-tying goals in the 85^th minute or later.

For Spirit players who have been around for all of those dramatic finishes, this win was near the top.

“It’s up there with those playoff victories,” Spirit goalkeeper and captain Aubrey Kingsbury said.

“The crowd just erupted.”

Spirit defender Esme Morgan went further and ended up offering a theory as to why people love sports.

“The euphoria of a last-minute winner, I don’t think you feel anywhere else in life other than in competitive sports. It’s crazy,” Morgan said.

She wondered about other ways to access that high.

“Like, people who don’t like sports, do they ever feel those moments? I don’t know, it’s sad if they don’t,” Morgan asked.

“Because I feel like those moments stick with you forever. And as soon as you think about it, like, right now, I can feel my heart is going again because I’m going back to how it felt when that ball hit the back of the net. It’s so special, it’s the best way to win. Most stressful way to win, but definitely the most fun.”

The Spirit are close to locking up the number two seed for the NWSL playoffs, as they are eight points up on third place with just three games left and nine more points available for teams trying to catch them. If the Spirit win any of their remaining three games, they are guaranteed up to two home playoff games.

The Wave, meanwhile, now hold the number eight seed, at the bottom of a logjam where just four points separate 3rd and 8th. They also hold a three-point cushion over the ninth-place North Carolina Courage.

If San Diego moves one spot up to 7th and the Spirit hold the two-seed, it may give these two teams an exact rematch in DC in the quarterfinals next month.

I asked Wave forward Kyra Carusa about that prospect postgame. She outlined how a scenario like that can serve as a bit of a mental advantage and a source of energy for the team.

“There’s something particularly uneasy about playing a team multiple times in a season, especially a double, like, if you’re playing a team in the playoffs again, and you have games like this,” Carusa said. 

“There’s an advantage to that, as well, of remembering how this feels, and remembering the points left on this field,” she added.

Washington heads down to North Carolina to play the Courage on Saturday, while San Diego continues their late-season road trip with a Saturday match against the Utah Royals.

Other Sports Takes and Things of Note

NFL: No Fleeing Losing Yet again, the ever-waning crew of surviving 1972 Miami Dolphins got to light up cigars somewhere this week, as both the Philadelphia Eagles and Buffalo Bills lost, guaranteeing that no NFL team will have a perfect season. The Eagles coughed up a 17-3 lead heading into the fourth quarter against the Denver Broncos, while the Bills could not match a stellar performance from Patriots quarterback Drake Maye, who completed 22 of 30 passes for 273 yards.

And while expected favorites like the Bills, Eagles and Detroit Lions all have 4-1 records, there are some surprising crashers of the contender party. A resurgence by quarterback Baker Mayfield has keyed a 4-1 start for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and on the other end of I-4, the Jacksonville Jaguars have also started 4-1 thanks to some stout performances from their stifling defense. 

And then there are the Indianapolis Colts. How the heck is this one happening? 

The Colts climbed to 4-1 after a 40-6 stomping of the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday. Jonathan Taylor ran in three touchdowns, and somehow the much-maligned quarterback Daniel Jones has turned things around, with his 1,290 passing yards ranking third in the league. Danny Dimes has stepped up and increasingly become Indiana Jones. 

@nfl

tight window throws 😮‍💨 #danieljones #indianapoliscolts #nfl

Oh, and the New York Jets are 0-5. The NFL can be unpredictable on a lot of fronts, but not this one. The Jets just suck. 

Aces cruising early in WNBA Finals With the Las Vegas Aces up 2-0 in the WNBA Finals, it’s worth taking a quick step back. This team started the season 5-7, including a skid of five losses in six games. More than halfway through the season, they were 14-14. And then they didn’t stop winning. 

The Aces rode a 16-game winning streak into the playoffs, where they eked out a 2-1 series win with a game-winning basket by Jackie Young with 12 seconds left to beat the Seattle Storm 74-73 in a deciding game 3.

It took overtime in a deciding game 5 for them to beat a Caitlin Clark-less Indiana Fever team, but the Aces have been back on it against the Phoenix Mercury.

After holding on 89-86 in game 1, they cruised to a 91-78 win Sunday in game 2. It definitely doesn’t hurt to have probably the best player in the world in this year’s WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson. The Aces center has averaged 25.7 points, 9.7 rebounds, 2.3 steals and 2.4 blocks per game in the playoffs, including a 28 point, 14 rebound performance in game 2.

There’s a reason Wilson has won back-to-back MVPs and three out of the last four. If she keeps playing like this, it’s hard to bet against the Aces locking up their third championship in a four-year span.

McDavid McDeal! Edmonton Oilers center Connor McDavid has been the best player in the NHL for about a decade now, ever since his selection as the first overall pick in the 2015 NHL Draft. A decade later, McDavid has three Hart Trophies for most valuable player, five Art Ross Trophies for most points in a season, and four NHL First-Team All-Star selections.

But for all of the individual accolades, McDavid is missing a Stanley Cup. McDavid came one game away from lifting the cup in 2024, with the Oilers falling just short in a deciding Game 7 against the Florida Panthers. And this past season, history repeated itself, with the Panthers again besting the Oilers in the Stanley Cup Final, this time in six games.

McDavid was set to become a free agent after this season, but signed a 2-year, $25 million extension. As far as generational stars like McDavid go, it’s a very team-friendly deal, far below the 8-year, $136 million megadeal the Minnesota Wild gave their star winger Kirill Kaprizov. 

So why take a hometown discount? Two reasons come to mind.

McDavid is giving the Oilers some salary cap flexibility, leaving them room to bring in another solid talent that could allow McDavid to lead the Oilers to their first Stanley Cup in over 35 years.

But it also draws a line in the sand. In 2028, McDavid will be a free agent. At 31 years old, he’ll still be in line to receive a massive deal for the seasons that follow. The Oilers will be on the clock to get him a Stanley Cup and every other team will have three full seasons to clear out cap space and acquire assets to make them the most appealing landing spot for a star already on the fast track to the inner circle of the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Something Good I Ate

I don’t think I had ever seen as much meat on one plate in my life as I did the day in the spring of 2023 when I stopped by Fernandes Steakhouse 3.

The place is a Brazilian steakhouse in South Amboy, New Jersey, and as the name suggests, it is the third location of a steakhouse restaurant that has two other locations in the heavily Brazilian and Portuguese neighborhood of Ironbound in Newark.

I went with my parents and my grandpa, and while my grandpa has seen a lot of different meals in over eighty years of life, I’m not sure even he has seen this much meat in one serving.

Not even a trip to Fogo de Chao can prepare you for the rodizio, or rotation, of meats that end up on your plate. All sorts of steaks piled high on a platter. Between the mix of meats and the servers who clearly spoke English as a second language, I often had no idea what I was eating.

But I knew that it was very good and that with a price that wasn’t all that absurd, I was getting a lot of food for the price.

Seriously, look at all of this! I wish I could tell you more about what I even ate beyond just “meat,” but there was a lot of very good stuff on there.