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Wrigley The Goat Aims At Cubs' Curse; Xiao Sa The Dog Races Across China

If a goat walks about 2,000 miles from Arizona to Chicago can that "reverse the curse" that has plagued the Cubs for nearly 67 years?

Odd as that question sounds, it's about to be put to the test.

Five Cubs fans and a goat have just finished a three-month walk from Mesa, Ariz., to the Windy City and are due at Wrigley Field this afternoon when the Cubs host the San Diego Padres.

The goat, named Wrigley of course, is supposed to break a curse that has supposedly been in place since 1945 — when the owner of Chicago's Billy Goat Tavern and his goat were kicked out of the stadium. "Them Cubs, they aren't gonna win no more," Billy Sianis reportedly told club officials. The team hasn't been back to the World Series since.

Wrigley's trip isn't all about the curse. It's also been . And that's good, because it's probably too much to expect that Wrigley's walk will do much to help the Cubs anytime soon. The team is tied for the worst record in Major League Baseball, with 16 wins and 32 losses.

Meanwhile, another animal has made some long-distance news. In China, a stray dog followed cyclists more than 1,100 miles and over 12 mountains as they raced from Sichuan province to Tibet.

She was fed one day by one of the racers, and apparently decided to tag along the rest of the way. Now known as Xiao Sa ( which China Daily sayscombines the world "little" with the last syllable of Lhasa), she's since been adopted by one of the riders "and received a clean bill of health from a veterinarian after her long, eventful journey," according to ABC News.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.
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