“Imagine a culture in which everything is geared toward helping all individuals become the best human beings they can be; in which individuals are driven to devoting their lives to becoming enlightened by the natural flood of compassion for others that arises from their wisdom.”
—Robert Thurman (August 3, 1941–June 16, 2026)
I don’t follow sports. My grandfather loved college basketball, and my father passed on to my brother Oliver a love of basketball and baseball. My dad worked with local football heroes Sonny Jurgensen and Joe Theismann at his TV station, and when I was about ten, he introduced me to Sugar Ray Leonard.
Even so, recently I’ve been paying close attention to a number of moments that are consoling during a political and historical era that might otherwise be called inconsolable.
We are living through a period that does not lend itself to easy consolation. Our country’s leaders have spent much of this year dismantling sources of international goodwill, defunding science, education, and the arts, and reminding us how quickly a nation can damage its reputation. As we welcome the world for the World Cup and prepare for the 2028 Olympics, I take comfort in knowing that strangers often treat one another with greater generosity than governments do.
While America has been squandering its previously earned goodwill, let me tell you what I saw at a baseball game.
This past Monday I attended my first Major League Baseball game in forty years. Invited by some old friends, I entered Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, the temporary home of the transitioning A’s, more as an anthropologist than as a baseball fan. I enjoyed watching the A’s score something like 11 runs, but I enjoyed even more the theater around it: the food vendors moving through the stands, calling out their wares in a kind of oral tradition I didn’t know still existed, and the fans, who apparently know this tradition well, calling back. While I didn’t understand the words they were yelling, or how those vendors could be so loud without the sort of electric amplification I depend upon, I didn’t need to. I saw the exchange as a liturgy, passed down through generations of stadium-goers, and everyone there but me knew their part. In my naïveté, I saw the shared ceremony as an occasion for joyful strangers to perform a ritual that had no purpose except to make everyone feel like they belonged there.
In my section of the baseball park sat a man nearby wearing an A’s baseball jersey, a baseball glove, and two hats simultaneously, one for the A’s, one for the Sacramento Kings, one facing forward, one backward. He cheered every positive development in the game with the gusto of a professional hype man, and he gave high-fives to people he’d never met after every run scored, sometimes with the actual baseball glove that he did not remove once.
The man in two hats would have felt at home in New York last week. After the Knickerbockers won the NBA championship last week, their first title in fifty-three years, the streets of New York City filled with revelers. This was expected. Less expected was what happened after the celebrations wound down: fans stayed, spontaneously, to help the sanitation workers clean up. Writing online, my friend Manuel Medeiros captured how a surge of local pride can give citizens the sense of belonging that distant institutions fail to provide: “This is what happens when people feel seen by their government.”
I also saw the Japanese World Cup fans. You may know that Japanese supporters bring trash bags to games and clean the stadium when their game is over, no matter who wins. I’ve seen this communal spirit on trips to Nara, a city about the population of Stockton in which seemingly everyone plays a part in tidying up. The Japanese national team, meanwhile, cleans its own locker room and leaves behind a thank-you note.
Moving from civic virtue and shared labor to cross-cultural euphoria, consider the love of Mexican soccer fans for South Korean soccer fans. Because South Korea knocked Germany out of the 2018 World Cup, a result that was somehow good news for Mexico, when Mexican fans fill the streets to celebrate their soccer team, they find South Koreans, and then buy them drinks and hug and kiss them in the street. At first, they were celebrating together, two nations briefly aligned by the arithmetic of a soccer bracket, but then it became a habit, with Mexicans just looking for excuses to find and lift up Koreans.
I can’t fully explain it, but I love it.
When official institutions, such as governments, alliances, and administrations, fail to model the virtues that hold societies together, we everyday people don’t simply abandon those virtues. We practice them anyway, in the spaces we still control, with the strangers who happen to be nearby. Infused with joy and camaraderie, diverse strangers gather to clean stadiums, pick up trash in the streets, and exchange high-fives with people whose names they’ll never know. Some of them spread purposeful joy to visiting Koreans.
As global eyes turn toward our stadiums for the World Cup and the upcoming Olympic games, we have lessons to learn from these revelers. The fans cleaning the streets of New York, the Japanese supporters with their trash bags, the Mexicans kissing strangers from Seoul all make an important argument. We are not our government.
Even though I am not a sports fan, this week I have become a fan of sports fans. As they surf what the late Robert Thurman might call “a flood of compassion” at sporting events, I hope they squeeze out all the joy they can from this summer of athleticism, play and new friendship. And I hope they bring trash bags.
My wife Kate bought me a new Pub Quiz shirt yesterday, so I will be trying that out for the first time this evening. We have a pleasant evening in store for us, weather-wise. Will we break our record of 45 teams tonight? Join us to find out. Also, people will be curious to know if Menace to Sobriety will let us know if they plan not to join us this week. Expect 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about, this week with questions on conveyances.
Our first-place team last week was Quiz Me Like You Miss Me. They were followed by Portraits, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, and The Mavens, who won the swag tiebreaker with Coming in Hawt, Tutus, and The Crayons. Congratulations to all the winners, and thanks to all of our players. Thanks, also, to the top four teams for your support on Patreon.
Did you see that my silver and better patrons got to watch a video of last week’s quiz on Patreon?
In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: action heroes, animal lovers, animation, blockbuster audiences, California newspapers, catalogs, changing light, city parks, desserts, dress shirts, drummers, early chemistry, English history, European culture, everyday purchases, fast food, forecasts, foul territory, golf swings, household wiring, house bands, human anatomy, lemons, lightning, literary prizes, live performances, local geography, laboratory surprises, maps, modern nostalgia, neighborhood maps, poetry, power pop, public spaces, questionable beauty advice, remote controls, repeated subjects, road trips, royal families, rural scenes, sidewalks, Silicon Valley, sitcom fathers, skeletons, social media, state names, street signs, suburban life, sunshine, television screens, theater stages, tom toms, touring bands, turning points, unexpected visitors, weather forecasts, young musicians, current events, and Shakespeare.
For more Pub Quiz fun, please subscribe via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.
Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Certain friends have upgraded their memberships recently, which I really appreciate.
We are now past 100 Patreon members, including people who have upgraded their paid memberships! You know who you are, and I salute you! I also incidentally salute Cathy, Christine, Bobby, Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks also to new subscribers Prescott, Bill and Diane, Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens. Their cookies cannot be topped. Thanks in particular to my paid subscribers on Substack. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. Also, I sometimes remember to add an extra hint on Patreon. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine!
I also want to recognize those who visit my Substack the most often, including Elaine, Michael, Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion, especially this week
Best,
Dr. Andy
Three questions from last week’s pub quiz:
- Current Events – Names in the News. In what country did Bad Bunny recently have an audience with visiting Pope Leo?
- Sports. A headline in yesterday’s Defector reads “Mike Babcock Is Proof That No One Is Too Weird To Get Hired In The NHL.” What Edmonton NHL team might hire Babcock?
- Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s most geographically wide-ranging tragedy shifts between Alexandria, Rome, Messina, and Athens. Name the play.
In each newsletter, we recognize the causes of our gold supporters of the pub quiz on Patreon.
The Mavens support Meals on Wheels Yolo County
For over 50 years, Meals on Wheels Yolo County has prepared and delivered freshly cooked meals to seniors in Yolo County. in 2026, MOW Yolo County is providing approximately 1,200 aging adults in the region with the nutrition and social engagement they need to eat well and age well – safely and with dignity. Join the Mavens in supporting Meals on Wheels Yolo County!
Lynne Conrad-Forrest MD and Quizimodo support Planned Parenthood
Both these institutions do a lot of good and are in need of financial support in these dangerous times. Planned Parenthood provides primary care including contraception, hormonal therapy and sexually transmitted infection screens and treatment, as well as pregnancy counseling.
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