I belong to a fantasy basketball league made up of a half-dozen former co-workers, a competition we have been contesting for two or three decades now. The SHL (Sun Hoops League).

Our league was developed independently of others, but it turns out we use pretty much the same stats as more formal leagues: Scoring, field-goal percentage, free-throw percentage, rebounds, assists and steals/blocks.

Hours before the NBA season began, back on October 25, we held our draft, and this is how it went at the top:

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A few months back, I confessed to a fascination with elections, and nothing is bigger than a U.S. presidential election, the Super Bowl of elections.

The big prize, of course … leader of the free world. Other items of interest include one-third of the 100-member Senate decided and all 435 members of the House of Representatives facing election.

As noted in the earlier post, elections are like very elaborate sports events, with winners, losers, strategy and tactics, second-guessing and mountains of statistics.

It’s like Game 7 of the World Series — but a really intense one covered simultaneously by a half-dozen TV network. And it’s usually four or five hours of waiting for the results to come in.

And it happens only once every four years, like the World Cup or Olympics.

I was not going to miss this, certainly not because the results did not really start rolling in until 2 a.m. (Wednesday) in France.

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Not a good weekend for American soccer people or the league most of them play for.

Landon Donovan’s comeback from retirement suddenly ended as he went off at halftime with a hamstring injury and his LA Galaxy went out of the Major League Soccer playoffs in a shootout.

Bob Bradley, the first American to coach in the Premier League, is winless in four matches with Swansea City, including a 3-1 thrashing at home against Manchester United.

The coach of Italy’s national team said he did not call in Sebastian Giovinco, Toronto FC’s star forward, for World Cup qualifiers because “he plays in a league that doesn’t matter much.”

So, American soccer … still in search of some global respect.

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The Los Angeles Rams lost again today, 13-10 to the Carolina Panthers.

That is four consecutive defeats for the lowest-scoring team in the NFL, at 16.2 points per game, a team that fell to 3-5 and looks doomed to post a losing record for the 10th consecutive season.

A team already becoming irrelevant in Los Angeles, which seems far more interested in the Dodgers and Lakers and Clippers than their newly returned NFL franchise.

All of which begs the question: If the Rams are headed nowhere again this season, why are they sticking with journeyman-at-best quarterback Case Keenum?

Isn’t it time to put on the field the Rams’ (and the league’s) top draft pick, quarterback Jared Goff?

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It sounded promising.

I Hate the Internet, by a little-known author, Jarett Kobek. Self-published, self-publicized. Got a bit of traction when a photo of Bret Easton Ellis circulated showing him reading the book in bed.

The New York Times did a review, which was mostly complimentary. I checked Amazon, and the price was $7.

I pretty much hate the internet myself, even though you and I are communicating via the selfsame system, so I spent the money, and …

I pretty much hated “I Hate the Internet”.

Some of the issues:

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At a time when U.S. vineyards routinely charge $15 per person to sample their wines, French vintners often are happy to let you taste their creations at no charge.

And if you cannot summon the energy to go the few miles to the nearest caveau, here in the south of France … they very likely will come to you.

Or to your small town, anyway.

Tonight, representatives from eight (!) local vintners came to the Salle des Fetes (festival hall) in our village and invited the villagers to have a taste of as many as four varieties of their products — red, white, rose.

At no charge to the residents.

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For nearly a month, I burned the midnight oil.

Or, actually, more like the 3-5 a.m. oil.

That is what comes from watching (live), from the other side of the Atlantic, the latter stages of the 2016 baseball playoffs and World Series.

All but a handful of games I watched had 8:08 p.m (EDT) starts. Which was 2:08 a.m. in France.

As a fan, I was working the graveyard shift.

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It wasn’t enough for the Chicago Cubs to win a World Series for the first time in 108 years.

At least one prominent but overexcited journalist decided their 8-7 victory over the Cleveland Indians in 10 innings tonight also constituted the greatest World Series Game 7 ever played.

It was an interesting game, no question. But greatest?

Nope. At best, Cubs-Indians 2016 is second.

Even the semi-serious baseball fan already knows which Game 7 to which I am referring.

It featured historically great players doing what great players do; a decisive collision of baseball dynasts from the big city versus the championship-starved team from blue-collar America; managers Casey Stengel and Danny Murtaugh directing a second-guesser’s fantasia; a freak bounce that incapacitated a key player and sparked a crucial rally …

And (this is key) a game that saw Team A leading 4-0 after four innings, Team B leading 7-4 in the middle of the eighth; Team A leading 9-7 going into the top of the ninth and Team B forging a tie at 9-9 before the bottom of the ninth.

OK, let’s open the envelope.

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The Chicago Cubs, World Series champions.

Alas, this seems all but inevitable. Or, as Cubs fans have liked to say, via posters: “It’s happening.”

I have done all I can, from the other side of the Atlantic, to stop this development.

First, outlining why we ought to contribute our mental energy to stopping the Cubs from defeating the Cleveland Indians. Then, applying my reverse-jinx skills ahead of the World Series.

But the Cubs have rallied from a 3-1 games deficit to knot the series at 3-3, amid a sense of gathering momentum for the team that has not won a championship since 1908 even as the Indians show signs of falling to pieces.

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We were unclear about French familiarity with Halloween. Do they know about it? Do they celebrate it? How do they celebrate it? Do kids come to your door looking for candy?

It made for an interesting October 31 in the south of France.

Early in the day, we saw a handful of adults wearing a prop or two (devil’s horns), or even some zombie-face makeup. At work.

Several stores seemed to be selling pumpkins and other Halloween paraphernalia, above, like masks or fake spider webs.

But we still did not know what the kids might be doing.

We found out when the doorbell began ringing at our apartment a few minutes after sundown.

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