Now that soccer is popular, on to marbles

RECIFE, Brazil − I keep hearing about how big the World Cup has become in America, which means I will soon need to switch sports to something more obscure. There’s nothing I hate more than covering popular events. Just mention the Super Bowl and my stomach churns.

I was thinking maybe golf without Tiger Woods would do the trick. Boxing would be perfect, in theory. It’s a great writing sport, and it’s dying. The only problem is that it’s evil, so that’s out. I suppose I’ll go with men’s tennis, the Islanders, the Liberty and the Mets. My favorite event ever was the national marbles championship in Wildwood. Picked the winner on Day 1.

Some spor t sw r iter s lose their fastball when they get older. I relied on the knuckler, from the start.

Scene from the flooding on Thursday: Guy holding out a Coke bottle to catch the rain water off the roof, then putting it into the radiator of his stalled car.

Hate making mistakes in my diary. In editions of the newspaper, had Schecter’s Law instead of Koppett’s Law. Brain woke me up at 3 a.m. to inform me of the error.

I was very impressed with the number of messages Michael Lewis was getting in our room. His cell phone just kept buzzing. Then it turns out he’s sending messages to himself. Something to do with Twitter and his Big Apple website. He lost me. He often loses me. He often has to say, “That was a joke.”

There’s a little shack next to this hotel, where a cute old man sells cookies for 90 cents. He’s the best thing about Recife. The rain has wrecked everything else.

FIFA taped over the little Bose logos on the translation headphones here, because Sony is the official sponsor. Reporters are tearing off the tape. Not quite the Prague spring, but we do our part.