Since the blog was on semi-hiatus last month, I didn’t have a chance to talk about two items from the world of sport:
- On 1 November, the San Francisco Giants won the World Series in Game 5.
- On 14 November, the F1 season ended in Abu Dhabi. Red Bull Racing won both the Driver’s (w/ Sebastian Vettel) and Constructor’s championships.
What do these events have in common? The lesson that, sometimes, things take time.
Patience
The Giants hadn’t won a World Series championship since 1954; that means they’d never won a Series since moving to San Francisco in 1958. (Their opponents, the Texas Rangers, had never even reached the Series in 50 years of franchise history.)
As for F1: Red Bull Racing traces its history back to the 1997 debut of the Stewart-Ford team. (Stewart-Ford was subsequently purchased by Ford, campaigned as Jaguar, and then sold to Red Bull.) For most of those years, it never won anything. In 2009 matters began to improve, and in 2010 Red Bull won its first Driver’s and first Constructor’s championships.
I can’t really claim to be a fan of either outfit; I never recovered from Game 6 of the 2002 Series, and sort of lost interest in F1 after Ford sold out, but I’m glad to see them win, nonetheless. Too bad about the Rangers, but at least they’re in Texas.
Class
I’ve mentioned Mark Webber before, noting his graciousness. It’s worth mentioning him again; he was leading the Driver’s Championship heading into the last race of the season, where he lost it to his teammate. (He finished 3rd on the season.) Here’s what he said:
I fully congratulate Seb on the World Championship …
There have been a lot of positives this year but this weekend didn’t turn out as planned and it’s a shame.
There’s time to reflect and look at the highs and lows in the next weeks, but that’s the way sport is sometimes.
There are quite a few emotions of course, when you’ve come so close to the top and just missed out, but I tried my absolute hardest.
I have great guys around me and we did what we could, but at the end it wasn’t enough and that’s where it’s at — but two championships for the team isn’t a bad year for us.
Seems like a good guy. I hope he wins next year.
