Pirate Galaxy » re now just two round

RIO DE JANEIRO -- Olympic medals are what happen when youre making other plans. Just ask Maya DiRado, who completed a walk-off grand slam Friday night with one last windmill stroke to beat Hungarys Katinka Hosszu by a touch for the gold medal in the 200-meter backstroke.DiRados line in her final box score: A perfect 4-for-4 with medals in each race she entered. Her meet was a success before she jumped into the water and tucked for the start. It was impressive enough that shed collected a silver in the 400 individual medley, a bronze in the 200 IM, and helped win the 800 freestyle relay -- her first relay final in a major international meet -- by keeping pace with her Australian counterpart in the third leg.Thought clearly preceded action for DiRado, who is retiring while she is ahead and will start a job with a management consulting firm next month. But her mind went blank as she fought to gain on Hosszu in the last few meters of Fridays race. DiRado felt her tempo slowing and her legs seizing up.In the practice pool area, newly-minted 100 freestyle gold medalist Simone Manuel, who trains with DiRado at Stanford University, paused in her preparations for the 50 free semifinals to pogo up and down, briefly losing her voice.That wasnt a problem inside the Olympic Aquatic Stadium where the decibel level spiked at the sight of DiRado pulling even.I heard the crowd getting louder and louder and louder, so I knew we were neck-and-neck, DiRado said. Then I hit the wall and looked up. It took me a little bit to process it, and then I looked at the blocks and saw the one dot (light). I dont know, its still hitting me. She paused, her throat constricted with emotion.DiRado didnt just reach for the wall. She whacked it, breaking a fingernail, a fitting metaphor for a race that was decided by .06 seconds.In an era when so many Olympic swimmers are prolonging their careers, wrestling with the ideal time to exit and understandably often changing their minds, the most striking thing about DiRado over the last few weeks has been her absolute and entirely believable conviction that shes right to leave the sport behind at age 23.She swam with controlled abandon at the U.S. Olympic trials and won three events. Once in Rio, DiRado continued to confirm her intentions after each success. Rather than draining her, talking about the end in sight seemed to carve weight from her shoulder blades. She gave off the settled air of someone who had fully explored the edges of her own envelope.Friday, DiRado noted each little last thing about her pre-race ritual with proper competitive grief and cried as she wrote her parents a thank-you note.Who doesnt want to end an important phase of life on the right note? The beauty of DiRados attitude was that she appeared to be willing to accept that note could be a sharp or a flat as long as she kept her own rhythm.DiRado said shell give one of her medals to her parents and leave one behind at Stanford University, where coaches Greg Meehan and Tracy Duchac encouraged her to be flexible about her plans as she kept surprising herself with her improvement.Im sort of at a loss, said Meehan, who is in Rio as a U.S. team assistant. It was the perfect race to end the perfect meet, and to have that be the last race of her life, are you kidding me? You couldnt script it any better.He anticipated what was next. Wouldnt it be tempting to see how much better she could get? Meehan was shaking his head before the breath was out of the question.No, he said, his eyes welling. I will miss her. Coaching her has been perhaps the greatest single privilege in my professional career and I will miss the relationship with her, the partnership, but no way. Not after that. You walk away and you just enjoy. Jason Williams Magic Jersey . -- Jimmy Walkers first PGA Tour trophy came with a special gift tucked inside. Evan Fournier Magic Jersey .Y. -- Sabres forward Drew Stafford has witnessed plenty of turmoil during his eight seasons in Buffalo. http://www.magicauthentic.com/kids-tracy-mcgrady-magic-jersey/ . Radwanska, making her debut in the Seoul tournament, hit eight aces in a match that lasted 1 hour, 4 minutes at Olympic Park tennis stadium. "It was definitely a very good match -- I was playing really good tennis," Radwanska said. Penny Hardaway Magic Jersey . Roman Josi had a goal and an assist to lead the Predators to a 4-1 victory over the Dallas Stars on Monday night. Evan Fournier Jersey . Hazard cut in from the left and scored with a swerving right-footed shot for ninth goal of the season, which proved to be enough for the victory despite Chelseas forwards again lacking a cutting edge up front. SAN FRANCISCO -- Joe Maddon warned his troops this moment was coming. Never hid from it. Never ignored it. Never sugarcoated it.I said that something bad is going to happen -- and [when it does] we have to stay in the moment and maintain our composure, the manager of the best team in baseball was saying Tuesday night, as the Toques et Clochers Cremant de Limoux gushed around him like a waterfall. That was the exact message: Something bad is going to happen. It always does.This was before this National League Division Series ever started. But by the top of the ninth inning Tuesday at AT&T Park, the Chicago Cubs knew That Moment their manager had warned them about had officially arrived.They were three runs down to the San Francisco Giants with three outs to go. Which meant they were three outs away from a game they didnt want to play. Three outs away from knowing they were going to have to take the field Thursday at Wrigley Field, having to beat Johnny Cueto in front of 42,000 people who couldnt guarantee they could get through the night without thinking thoughts like Bartman or goat.In the visitors dugout along the first-base line, the men in uniform were doing their best to follow the boss advice, to embrace this moment and keep their composure. But if you think that mindset was unanimous, well, ho-ho-ho-ho-ho.Nearby that dugout, in the box seats, Theo Epstein had to admit he already let his mind wander. Had already let his imagination race ahead -- to Thursday, to a nervous win-or-else Game 5 at Wrigley, and all that went with it.Obviously, it was in the back of everyones mind, the Cubs normally ultra-cool president said. Youve got Cueto -- and [Madison] Bumgarner behind him. And, I mean, I trust us to win that game. But theres no margin for error.So thats what they were staring at -- a crisis point unlike any the 2016 Cubs had faced at any juncture since the day they showed up in Arizona in February to begin this magic carpet ride. When the season began, they burst out of the gates like Usain Bolt. They started 8-1, 17-5 and 25-6. They spent one day all season out of first place. They held a nine-game lead in the NL Central by May 4.Never, on any day of their beautiful journey, had they faced this: a game they had to win. A time when they had to prove who they were and what they were. A test -- the sort of test that every great team faces -- when Something Bad Happens and then you find out if youre as great as you think you are.Well, we now know exactly how the 2016 Cubs coped with that first test. We now know all about the miraculous and historic four-run ninth-inning rally that turned a seemingly certain Game 4 defeat into the shock and joy and celebration that went with Cubs 6, Giants 5.We now know that this team has found the will to do something that only one other team in history -- the 1986 Mets -- had ever done: charge back from three runs behind in the ninth inning to clinch a postseason series.But here is what you might not know: The Cubs?needed to do this. They?needed to make this statement. They?needed to find out something important about themselves when this moment arrived.And because they did, the 2016 Cubs will arrive at their second straight National League Championship Series in a whole different state than the team that got swept by the Mets in last years NLCS.I think every team that wins in the postseason, you have to have a comeback win, said Cubs infielder?Ben Zobrist, a guy who spent last October hanging out with that Royals team that won the World Series. I think its important. I know that eight out of our 11 wins in Kansas City last [postseason] were comeback wins. So to me, thats such a huge part of a championship team -- is that you dont quit and you always believe youre going to come back.True, the Cubs had done this many times during the regular season, winning eight games theyd trailed entering the ninth inning -- tied for the most in baseball. And just as true, if all Giants games had just gotten rained out after eight innings this year, they probably would have won the NL West -- considering that they lost nine times when leading after eight, the most in baseball.But what happens between April and September often feels as irrelevant to success in October as the score of the first spring training intrasquad game. And the Cubs had spent the past two nights in San Francisco learning all about that.Theyd let a three-run lead melt away in an October classic Mondayy night.dddddddddddd Theyd found out all about the championship mindset that had driven the Giants to win 10 consecutive elimination games. And then the Cubs went out Tuesday and got dominated for eight innings, scraping together just two hits, while whiffing 10 times, against Maddons old friend?Matt Moore.In those box seats, Epstein squirmed nervously, not so much because of the grim numbers on the scoreboard but because this wasnt the team hed watched play all season. And how could he be sure -- how could anybody be sure -- that that team was ever going to show up?We didnt play Cubs baseball for eight innings, Epstein said. We werent ourselves. We werent having great at-bats. We werent all that heads-up. We werent us. And I think that frustration contributed to the eruption in the ninth, because all the good stuff happened at once. So obviously, hitting before the ninth inning is clearly overrated.Right. Obviously. Before Kris Bryant dug in to lead off the ninth inning, teams in the Cubs position -- three runs down in the eighth inning or later -- had gone an attractive 3-824 in postseason history. And it had been 30 years since any team had found itself in that big a mess and come back to win. So that was pretty uplifting.But now you can forget all that. Now these guys can always remember the ferocious at-bats they ground out, the tough walk Anthony Rizzo drew off left-on-left machine Javy Lopez, the huge hits they got from Bryant and Zobrist, from Willson Contreras and Javier Baez, all amid a parade of five Giants relievers. Four runs in the ninth in this setting? How did that happen?There had never been a series-clinching rally quite like it. And now it will live on in Cubs lore forever -- as long as this October turns out the way they keep dreaming it will.Ill be honest: I cant remember what happened yesterday, said 39-year-old catcher David Ross, on a night when he became the oldest catcher ever to homer in a postseason game. But Ill never forget this.And maybe no one will. Of course, we have no idea where the rest of this month will lead this team. We have no idea if this juggernaut really is going to prove that it has that undefinable quality that will make it different from the 107 Cubs teams that came before it.But file this away: Something happened in San Francisco, on a beautiful Tuesday evening, that appeared to leave its mark on these men.Ive been thinking about the adversity of the group for a while now, Ross said. Even over the last month of the season, Ive thought about having the ability to overcome adversity in big moments. And they dont get any bigger than that. Theres no more adversity than being on the road, on the West Coast, playing a team thats won three championships in the last five years. And losing like we did last night ... then coming back today, it just says a lot.This, Ross said, was a special, special night.Because of this night, there are now just two rounds of glory standing between these Cubs and a place among the legends of baseball. Yeah, they were in this same position a year ago, too. But somehow, this feels different.Last October, they arrived in the NLCS a year ahead of schedule, just living the dream and playing it all out to see how high they could climb. Now they return to this same place after a totally different journey. Now there are no doubts about how talented they are and how good they can be.So now, theyre expected to win. And once again, theyll have to take their managers word for it that expectations are just part of the process.Im telling you, man, thats a good word, Maddon said Tuesday night. Expectations is a good word. Because normally it means that you have something good attached to it at the other side. Pressure. Expectations. I want our guys to thrive on those two words for the years to come, I want the organization to. In the end, that means theres a lot of expected of you. Good. There should be.The journey begins anew Saturday at Wrigley, with the first NLCS to open in Chicago since the 2003 team unraveled on the doorstep of history. Now its a new groups turn. And once again, it can be sure that something bad will happen. But something magical also can happen. And this edition of the Cubs seems remarkably cool with all of that.Now, Zobrist said, weve put ourselves in position to do something special. ' ' '