So, sitting here on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, clock reaches late afternoon, and the thought hits me that the Indy 500 might be televised over here.

And this actually happened:

The TV comes up on ESPN GB (Great Britain) … and the first image we see is a slow-motion replay of a car flying through the air and crash-landing on a wall separating the infield from the race track.

The vehicle continues to disintegrate, shedding wheels and struts and wings till nothing is left attached to the “safety cell” except the left-front wheel.

Which leads to the mental note: “Yeah, that’s Indy.”

Holy mackerel.

It perhaps is not necessary to say we watched the final two-and-a-half hours of the race.

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Four years ago I suggested a parlor game of my own devising. As I recall, it came from my staring at a four-digit clock on a treadmill.

Start with a year and match it with any event that happened in the 365/366 days attached to that year. For instance: 2016, Cubs win the World Series … 1941, Pearl Harbor attack.

Whoever can correctly match the highest number of years-with-events in a countback — consecutively, that is — wins. Any incorrect pairing, and the contestant is out of the game.

(This might be fun for history classes in high school or college. I never copyrighted the idea, so feel free. Then again, nearly nothing is new under the sun; somebody probably already has done this, though I have not yet heard of the board game called “Counting Down the Years”.)

Another idea that has been knocking around in my head for a while and, as far as I can tell, I have not suggested previously in the 3,000 or so entries on this blog is this one:

Pair the name of an athlete to every jersey/shirt/sweater number you can manage, starting with zero and working up consecutively. It can be any sport … but it has to be a number you can prove that person wore.

It will be good for figuring how much junk is cluttering your brain … and it also will peg you to a certain era of sports history — probably corresponding to athletes active between your own fifth and 20th birthdays. When you were a fan and when your memory was sharp.

(It also will reveal your favorite sports teams.)

Let’s see who I come up with … and I have done no prep for this.

Here we go!

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In 1999, a U.S. team led by Landon Donovan got to the semifinals of the Fifa Under 17 Championship, in New Zealand.

The young Americans played Australia to a 2-2 draw but lost the shootout 7-6 when Kenny Cutler missed his penalty and Oz’s Joshua Kennedy converted. Brazil won the tournament and the Yanks finished fourth but it seemed like the U.S. had announced its arrival on the global stage, in terms of age-group teams.

Turns out, that semifinal run has not been bettered in U.S. soccer global age-group play — whether it is the U17s, the U20s or the U23/Olympic teams.

But something potentially interesting is going on right now in Korea at the 2017 Fifa U20 World Cup.

The U.S. U20s, led by a precocious, 17-year-old forward named Josh Sargent and by a fine goalkeeper named Jonathan Klinsmann (yes, son of Jurgen), need only a point from their final group game, versus Saudi Arabia in Daejon on Sunday, to secure a place in the Round of 16.

It would represent one of the first chances in a decade for a U.S. side to make a deep run in an age-group tournament.

Looking back at U.S. age-group history, of late, makes for doleful reading, in the main middling results — when, that is, the Yanks have managed to qualify out of Concacaf, and several times they have not.

Consider.

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The Cleveland Cavaliers put the Boston Celtics out of their misery tonight.

(And I do so like the idea of the Celtics being stomped into a greasy little green spot on their home floor. Can we do this every year?)

And up next, the Cavs and LeBron James against the Golden State Warriors in the clash-of-the-titans NBA championship series.

I can hardly wait!

Oh, and about that wait …

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What we do not know about the natural world around us is an extensive body of information. Quite.

In the past decade, for the first time in human history more people live in urban than in rural areas, according to the UN.

And we City Kids often don’t know what to make of our surroundings when we move to a rural zone after, oh, a half century spent in built-up areas where a vacant lot is considered “nature”.

Like in the field behind where we live, in this lightly populated corner of southern France.

If we didn’t know better, we would insist that some white birds with long legs are flying around the local herd of sheep and goats … and sitting on the backs of those mammals.

Oh, wait. That is exactly what they are doing.

And now we know why.

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In six-plus years based in Abu Dhabi, I saw this kid play dozens of times in person, hundreds of times when we add TV exposure … and it seems to me a highly justified decision by one on the web’s most important soccer sites:

Omar Abdulrahman of Al Ain and the United Arab Emirates, best player in Asia.

Far as I am concerned, he has been the best Asian player for several years already, but it is only the past year or so that the little playmaker with the big hair has been getting recognition the recognition he deserves.

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For as long as I have been a quasi-fan of Arsenal FC, which is about seven years now, the debate has raged, fomented by placard-waving fans or banners pulled along in the sky by small airplanes.

Sometimes the argument is loud. Sometimes louder.

Is it time for Arsene Wenger, the coach since 1996 of English Premier League side Arsenal, to step aside?

The discussion’s decibel level seems to have reached new heights this season, particularly during a midseason slide of four defeats (including to Watford and West Brom and a draw in six matches.

But the debate continued right through a seven-victories-in-eight-matches-in-34-days finish — which left Arsenal one point shy of Liverpool in fourth place and qualifying for the Champions League for a 20th consecutive season.

Some of the struggle to make a point — Wenger out or Wenger stay — has been waged inside my own head. I have made the case, to myself, both ways.

But I think I finally have some sense of how this should go.

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The English Premier League.

Has to be the longest competitive schedule in team sports.

The 2016-17 season, which ended over the weekend with 10 matches … began on August 13 and concluded on May 21.

Yes, that is a season that lasted nine months and one week. Or, if you prefer, 40 weeks and one day.

Or 288 days. Of 365.

No wonder if always feels like the Premier League season almost never stops. And fans feel almost bereft to reach this short interim in the summer … when the Premier League IS NOT PLAYING.

Those numbers, above? They do not include preseason training, which can run to several weeks and includes exhibition matches, “friendlies” — often in some distant country.

Which makes a player’s commitment to his club team — or the English Premier League, anyway, a solid 10 months.

And we say “solid” because of this:

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The place where we live, in the south of France, has a large room on the ground level.

However, it was not necessarily a garage.

Until the other day, when we slowly backed a dinky Toyota into a space that offers no more than 10 inches of extra room.

Ta-da! Our place has a garage, after all!

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The NBA has become a bit unbalanced.

Twenty-eight teams can do all the coaching, scouting, planning and plotting, building and rebuilding they want … and it will not change a basic, unalterable reality:

They have no chance against the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Which ought to make for a fascinating championship series, when those two collide, for the third consecutive season, beginning on June 1.

In the meantime, six clubs have been reacquainted in these playoffs with the Cavs-Dubs inferno, a process that should come with the warning: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”

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