Now for a little MORE good news...

With the Cardinals officially eliminating themselves from the MLB playoffs and the Jets managing to embarrass themselves on and off the field, this week has me in something of a funk, sports-wise.  So I took  a cue from Bee’s Steve Nash post, and went hunting for some sports news that’s guaranteed to put a smile on your face:

• First off, let’s congratulate Kevin Durant and the rest of the US team on winning the World Basketball Championship, the country’s first since 1994.  If Kevin Durant smiling doesn’t make you smile, check your pulse.

• We here at Ladies love Dwight Howard for a variety of reasons, but his visit to a dying Magic fan might be Dwight at his most lovable.

• In other NBA charity news, Al Horford is all kinds of awesome. I like it when the cute ones are also do-gooders.

• Remember those commercials during the All Star Game where various MLB players pitched ideas for the Pepsi Refresh Project?  The Twins ended up winning the $200,000 grant, with their project to build the Rolling Twins wheelchair softball teams a new stadium. (It’s a bit old news, but the news didn’t seem to make it out of Minnesota, so I’m including it.)

• The six finalists for this year’s Marvin Miller MLB Man of the Year have also been announced.  The link is to a St. Louis paper so it leads with Pujols, but it also has nice summaries of the other five nominees (Jorge Posada, Brandon Inge, Troy Tulowitski, Chipper Jones, and Torii Hunter) and their charity projects as well.

• And this has NOTHING to do with charity, but I was fascinated by this graphic illustration of bobblehead distribution in major league baseball this season. The Red Sox seem to avoid them like the plague; the Astros must be amassing quite a collection.

If none of these stories will cheer you up, just remember you’re less than 24 hours away from Friday.  That helps, right?