Tigers Fever!

It's official: my student have caught Tigers Fever!  I have been talking up the Tigers for a week now, and hung a few fan towels up in my classroom.  At first, they were just curious, wondering what all the fuss was about.  They offered me deals: become a Manchester United fan and they would root for the Tigers.  But as the week has gone on and we have tracked the American League series scores together and followed each Tigers v. Yankees game, their excitement has been building.  Today, we knew, was the day.  I was teaching during the entire game, and you would think I'd need to be "sneaking off" every few minutes to check the score- not necessary.  They wanted to know as much as I did.  So every 15 minutes, all morning, we'd stop and look- and cheer and bite our nails.  When my homeroom left for their 3rd period class we were up by 1 heading into the 8th inning.  My 8th graders came in and took a quiz.  I'd walk a lap, monitoring the room, they stop by the computer to see what had developed.  The internet at school isn't fast enough for us to listen or watch, so I had the Gameday feature turned on.  The kids finished their quiz with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th, so we put Gameday up on the front projector to watch Valverde's last out together.  And the room erupted into yells and applause.  A few seconds later the phone rang- it was my homeroom, down the hall in LA, calling to congratulate me on "our" team's success.  So now we're all psyched and ready for Texas, me and this crew of 100 international middle schoolers who has discovered the joy of cheering passionately for your team, especially when they defeat the Big Gad Yankees.  Go Tigers!