So it goes, in a crazy week

It has been a crazy week in sports. Heck it’s been a crazy couple of days. A couple of hours even.

There’s been a lot of news, not too much of it local, but even so.

There was an earthquake last night! Which, well, that’s not sports, but it was kind of strange to feel concrete roll like a ship’s deck.

Elsewhere, the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team made it to the World Cup finals again (it will forever be a mystery to me why we can, as a country emerge as a world powerhouse in the women’s game, yet seem doomed to remain a running joke on the men’s side — probably because I’m not curious enough to do the research).

Then we’ve got Kawhi Leonard signing with the Los Angeles Clippers yesterday and somehow dragging Paul George with him.

Not the Lakers, the Clippers. The same team that has sucked its way through most of its existence as the littlest of little brothers.

Apparently when they dumped Donald Sterling five years ago, the polarity at Staples Center reversed, and now they’re the ones who have it together, while the Lakers go stumbling around in the dark waiting for serendipity to strike them just so (which, to be fair, has happened more than once).

Now I don’t have anything against the Clippers; it’s just amusing to see the Klaw choose them over their more accomplished roommates. Lakers fans on message boards advanced conspiracy theories about Leonard as he drew out his free agency, accusing him of intentionally holding the team hostage while rivals snapped up potential role players and belittling any decision-making tree that would lead him to some conclusion other than teaming up with the Rich Paul Singers (i.e. LeBron James and Anthony Davis).

Personally, I would’ve liked to see Leonard run it back with the Raptors, but

I’ve got to admit that my preferences are colored by a childhood spent reading about sepia-toned baseball heroes like Stan Musial, the forever St. Louis Cardinal — all of whom of course were more or less glued in place by the reserve clause.

My desire to preserve stable rooting interests clashes with my understanding that professional athletes are ultimately just trying to maneuver themselves into the best situation they can find, just like every other working stiff.

And while all this is going on there’s the hubbub over at Wimbledon, where 15-year-old American Cori “Coco” Gauff has bulled her way into the round of 16 after upsetting tennis legend Venus Williams in the first round, dropping Magdaléna Rybáriková in the second, and fighting off Polona Hercog in the third after dropping her opening set and going down 5-2 in the second.

Gauff is the youngest woman to make it this far in the draw since Jennifer Capriati in 1991.

While not unprecedented, her run is still mind-boggling. To me at least.

While I don’t watch it all that often, tennis is probably my favorite sport to play. I’m terrible at it, and it infuriates me, but also I love it.

I started playing in high school, at around the same age that Gauff is now. I was barely ambulatory. She’s crushing seasoned pros in tennis’ biggest tournament.

If there wasn’t such an obvious talent disparity, I’d probably feel a little bit self-conscious about my sparse curriculum vitae right about now.

As it is I’ll probably spend the rest of the day fiddling around on a computer, forgetting that practice makes perfect and then cussing myself out the next time I blast a serve into the net.

To make the requisite Vonnegut reference, “So it goes.”