Dear Editor:

On Friday, Aug. 15, the two top clubs in the Nuclear Weapons League met in Alaska for a much-hyped but ultimately meaningless "friendly" match.

Evenly matched in team leadership (Russia’s captain is an indicted war criminal; America’s is a 34-count convicted felon), the U.S. claimed home field advantage — though the Russians had formerly owned it and now talk about getting it back.

Russia got off to an early lead when the U.S. captain scored the first of his three ‘own goals’: he welcomed his opponent (who has not been allowed to enter any country in the free world since 2015) with an affectionate handshake on a red carpet.

Things rapidly went from bad to worse for the home team. After a long half-time of private meetings, the Russian defense stubbornly thwarted U.S. efforts to make any progress. Then Captain Trump deflected a Russian shot into his own goal for a second time, after giving his opponent precedence at the podium and more than double possession time with the mic.

The match ended with a humiliating third Russian score when Trump misdirected a pass back to his keeper, Steven Miller. Into the goal it went: no questions were allowed at the press conference, the “working lunch” was canceled, and a grinning Putin boarded his team plane with a badly needed victory — a ‘clean sheet’ and global legitimization conceded by the soon-to-be-relegated Donald Trump.

Bill Hammond

Boothbay