My SECOND-ever Sports guestblog. This is starting to Worry me, here. :)

The South End went Nuts :) yesterday ~

Fabio Grosso connected with his left foot and booted them right out the door. Ten of them, 50 of them, hundreds of them, all of them, everyone of Italian heritage in south Hartford raced out onto Franklin Avenue at 4:30 Sunday afternoon.

They popped from their homes. They ran from their favorite restaurants. They sprinted from their social clubs. They ran screaming, arms aloft, as if they had scored the final penalty kick themselves at Olympic Stadium in Berlin and were still running, searching for hugs halfway around the world.

They found those hugs among the crowd already gathered in front of a giant screen showing the World Cup final on the portion of Franklin Avenue closed off between Brown and Preston streets. And this was where the party really started.

One minute, they were suffering the angst of World Cup overtime, watching their team getting outplayed by France, fearing a return of the worst pain brought by the only World Cup final decided by penalty kicks against Brazil in 1994.

Then - in a flash - they were running out the door as if their pants were on fire.

We have seen the face of joy and it was served up on a stretch of asphalt just south of the gold Capitol dome of this New England state. Surely, it was repeated in Boston and Providence and Rome and Naples in so many cities in both the Old and New World, but until you see it and feel it, well, you’ll never quite know the full meaning of spontaneous combustion.

“We are from the heart,” said Salvatore Sutera, treasurer of the Italian-American Stars Athletic Club on Franklin Avenue. “That’s what it is. We are from the heart.”

…People jumped into pickup trucks and began blaring horns, with 20 or 30 piling onto flat-bed trucks. Speakers popped up from nowhere, tens of them, music and noise filled the South End. When captain Fabio Cannavaro held up the World Cup trophy and began to dance, so did Franklin Avenue. It can take cities weeks to plan a parade, and here was one thrown on the spot.

Read the rest. Very very nice. :) We trust folks won’t Object to these joyful immigrants & offspring-of-immigrants parading with the Flag of a Foreign Nation. ;>

In Other important local & worldwide Sporting news :>, a Nawth Cah’lina boy :) has won the Wal-Mart Bass Fishing League All-American on the Connecticut River. :) Takes home a big Check and a Big Boat. Very Commendable. :) He successfully angled, among other places, in Wethersfield Cove. Why hell, I’VE caught Bass in Wethersfield Cove! And with no Boat! :> (Nobody done Give me one for it, neither. :)