New ball game for US and us

A small, brown-skinned, wise-cracking guy in his mid-20s from Michigan, his name was Alex, and he kept the passengers on the funicular going up to Rio’s Christ The Redeemer statue royally entertained with stories of his adventures as one of the thousands of USA supporters who’d made the trip to Brazil for the World Cup.

Alex was in is civvies that day but had already gained minor fame for turning up at all of his country’s games kitted out in full comic-book hero regalia.

“There’s more than two billion of us on the planet,” he declared, referring to his Asian-Indian ancestry, “but I’m absolutely certain that I’m the only brown Captain America in the world.”