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Thousands of soccer fans chant and beat drums in the stands. An announcer narrates, on live radio, the start of the match.

Players from Gaza’s top soccer league sprint and dive for the ball. Going for a header, two players collide — and one lands on the leg of the other.

What happens next has never happened in Gaza before: A woman in a pink Muslim headscarf dashes out from the sidelines. She’s there to treat the player whose leg was injured.

In the West Bank and Gaza, female doctors, nurses and emergency medical technicians have worked pretty much everywhere their male counterparts do — except at soccer games. These are all-male events, often rowdy, which until now have used all-male medical teams — just as in much of the world. It’s rare to see a female sports trainer at La Liga matches in Spain, for example, or even in England’s Premier League.

But after another Arab country, Jordan, began employing female EMTs at its soccer games this year, Gaza followed suit.

Not everyone is happy about it.

“They have a problem that a female can touch the male [body] and do first aid,” says Hanan Abu Qassem, 28, who in October became the first female EMT to staff professional soccer games in Gaza. She was the one in the pink veil who sprinted onto the field to treat the player with the injured leg. “But it’s something ordinary for me.”

She’s an experienced EMT, having treated victims of Israeli bombs during the 2014 Gaza war. Compared to that, soccer sprains and scrapes were supposed to be straightforward — more pleasant work, she says.

But at her first game last month, she and a female colleague were booed by the crowd — and lambasted on social media. Male soccer fans, offended by their presence, took their complaints to Gaza’s soccer federation, which told Abu Qassem she might be locked out of future games because of the backlash, and for her own safety.

The backdrop of all this is an ongoing political struggle between the Islamist group Hamas, which governs Gaza, and Fatah, the party that runs the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and is seen as more liberal. Injured players are treated by municipal EMTs here, who aren’t required to be affiliated with any political party. They provide all medical care at soccer games, unlike in America or Europe, where private sports trainers, employed by individual teams, are often the first responders.

“If I cannot enter the field, I may be crying,” Abu Qassem says. “Because I have ambition. I’m anxious to be a very famous EMT.”

She is already, because of this controversy. Before one recent match, as NPR accompanied her, guards initially prevented the ambulance Abu Qassem was riding in from entering Gaza’s main soccer stadium. Amid scuffles and yelling, they acquiesced after the head of the Palestinian EMT Association intervened.

“I’m surprised to see a woman doing this job!” says soccer fan Kamal Bahoum, 59, with a white beard. He was injured during the chaos at the stadium gate as he tried to get in, and went to Abu Qassem in search of a bandage for his bleeding hand. In the end, he had no qualms about getting medical treatment from a woman, he said.

At the game NPR attended, there were no boos directed toward Abu Qassem — but there were stares. She says she dressed more conservatively than she does most other days, wearing a pink headscarf and a long, loose-fitting black robe with a reflective vest over it.

Only three women appeared to be present in the entire stadium of thousands — Abu Qassem, a female sports journalist, and this NPR reporter.

“As female journalists, we face the same problems that they face,” says Sabah Ahmed, a reporter for a Gaza sports website. “But day by day, the people start to deal with us. They are welcoming us. Actually, I’m surprised.”

Abu Qassem ends up riding in the ambulance to the hospital with the player who hurt his leg. Turns out it was broken. She says she sat by his hospital bedside as he cried — not out of pain, but out of fear his soccer career would be over.

Later that night, local TV stations in Gaza replay — over and over again — footage of the player’s injury, with his leg bent at an unnatural angle. It shows him being carried off the field on a stretcher. The report doesn’t say who treated him.

But if you pause and look closely, you can spot a hot pink hijab in the background.

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Mary Keitany of Kenya won her third consecutive New York City Marathon on Sunday, finishing in 2 hours, 24 minutes, 26 seconds, and leaving her closest competitors in the dust.

Keitany pulled away from the elite women’s pack less than halfway into the race and ran most of the race alone, her No. 1 spot uncontested over more than a dozen miles.

The men’s race was more conventional, with a pack of elite runners sticking together for more than half of the 26.2 mile course before 20-year-old Eritrean runner Ghirmay Ghebreslassie pulled away. He crossed the finish line in 2 hours, 7 minutes, 51 seconds, becoming the youngest man ever to win.

Lucas Rotich of Kenya finished second in the men’s field. Abdi Abdirahman, an American, finished third.

Ghebreslassie finished fourth at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro over the summer. But Keitany was cut from Kenya’s Olympic team — despite being the second fastest female marathoner ever. According to the International Association of Athletics Federations, only Paula Radcliffe has ever run a faster time than Keitany’s 2012 London marathon time of 2 hours 18 minutes 37 seconds.

Sunday was Keitany’s triumphant return, showing that she could not only win, but do so without the luxury of fellow elite runners to pace her throughout the race. Sally Kipyego of Kenya took second place in the women’s race with a time more than three minutes slower than Keitany’s. Molly Huddle of the United States was third.

In the women’s wheelchair race, the American Tatyana McFadden won her fourth New York City Marathon title in a row, and her fifth overall, according to the official race press release.

McFadden has dominated wheelchair racing since 2004, when she won her first Paralympic Games medal as a 15-year-old. In 2012, she described how she won the right to compete as a young athlete at Atholton High in Howard County, Md.

NPR’s Joseph Shapiro reported:

“[McFadden] wanted to be part of the high school track team. But on the eve of the first track meet, the coach refused to give her a uniform. She wouldn’t be allowed to compete.

“After her mother complained, Tatyana was allowed to race, but not side-by-side with her teammates. At her first meet, her teammates and other competitors in the 400-meter race ran first. Then the track meet stopped and Tatyana was allowed to race — going around the track in her wheelchair, racing against no one. ‘That was the most humiliating, embarrassing thing I’ve ever done, ever,’ she says.

“She didn’t want to be the girl in the wheelchair; even then, she wanted to be seen as a top athlete. ‘People look at you and in their minds [they] see, ‘Oh, the girl with a disability in a wheelchair is running for a high school team. Congratulations.’ And for me as an elite athlete, it’s not what you want as an elite athlete.'”

On the men’s side, Marcel Hug of Switzerland narrowly won the wheelchair event, edging out Kurt Fearnley by six hundredths of a second, according to race regulators.

Here are full race results for the overall women, overall men and the men’s and women’s wheelchair races.

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I know baseball is not real life.

While Chicago’s streets teemed with loud whoops and waving banners as the Cubs won their first World Series in 108 years, 18 more people were killed over two days on the south and west sides of the city. The number of homicides in Chicago has surged past 600 this year. 2016 could be the city’s deadliest year in nearly 20, and the people in those afflicted neighborhoods, usually a long way from Wrigley Field, will remember this year more for their losses than any World Series victory.

And while the Cleveland Indians played valiantly, no victory can do much to roll back the unemployment, crime, and decay that have shrunk their city to about a third of what it was when it last won the World Series in 1948.

But a lot of people, including me, still put a lot of blood, toil, tears and sweat into baseball.

A great team can lift up a city. People who ordinarily pass each other every day tip the baseball caps that seem to sprout on so many heads. We trade smiles the morning after a win, and words of hope after a loss. In great cities so divided by race, class, and rivalries, championship teams can make everyone feel inspired, and walk a little lighter.

In the autumn of 2016, when many Americans say they are discouraged by politics, a World Series between two teams from the heart of America that had gone the longest without winning gave the country a few days of grace and light. Either the Cubs or Indians could have won, until almost the last seconds of the last game. Each team, and their fans, seemed to genuinely respect each other.

Each team got ahead, made mistakes, and fell back.

The Cubs were down in the series, 3 games to 1. The Indians were down in the last game, 6 to 3. And then each team found new strength and ingenuity to come back. Millions in the historically large television audience were charmed to hear the young Cub first baseman, Anthony Rizzo, seek out the veteran catcher, David Ross, to say, “I’m in a glass case of emotion right now.”

As Cleveland’s manager, Terry Francona, said, “Everyone tried until there was nothing left.”

I know baseball is not real life. But it’s an art that can capture our hearts. Children all over America stayed up late to watch the Cubs and the Indians. They saw that great talents still make mistakes and fail; the true test in life is learning how to get up from the floor and come back — to try until there’s nothing left. This year’s World Series was a great show, just when we needed one.

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When you root for a cursed sports team, you learn heartbreak — and superstition.

I am a Bostonian and therefore spent most of my youth and middle age rooting with futility for the Red Sox, and pining for the day when the Curse of the Bambino would finally be purged.

Most of my most acute memories of rooting for the Sox involve not disappointment, but decimation.

I watched from an airport en route home from an assignment during what may have been the worst of these awful moments, the sixth game of the 1986 World Series against the Mets. I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach in the ninth inning (cursed-team fans always have these feelings) when we were one strikeout from victory. Then the Sox blew the lead, only to face ignominy in the 10th after Bill Buckner let an easy grounder escape through his legs. Poor Buckner is now in witness protection.

In 2004 when the Sox were down three games to none in the American League playoff with the Yankees, my husband, David, got so mad at the end of the third game that he threw his Red Sox hat downstairs, and it fell on the landing. The Sox then won four straight against the Yanks, and went on to win the Series and break the curse — yes, there is a God and she is a Red Sox fan!

Soooooo … when the Chicago Cubs were down three games to one last week, I said to David, “Throw your hat on the landing.” He did, and, well, you know the rest. The Cubs went on to win the Series in a historic comeback.

So — along with the Cubs’ president for baseball operations, Theo Epstein, who helped the Sox break their curse before he worked that magic in Chicago — I am taking credit for breaking the Cubs’ Billy Goat Curse.

I am sure there are thousands of other superstitious baseball fans who are doing the same.

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Updated at 1 a.m. ET

The Chicago Cubs, ending a championship drought that has lasted 108 years, beat the Cleveland Indians 8-7 in Game 7 of the 2016 World Series at Progressive Field in Cleveland.

They did it the hard way, too, coming back from a 3-1 game deficit, winning three straight games, including the last two on the road in Cleveland. And it took ten innings to win it all in Game 7.

The Cubs are the first team since the 1985 Kansas City Royals to claw back from a 3-1 deficit in the World Series. They won 103 games during the regular season.

The Cubs took the lead early in the first inning and seemed in control of the game before almost letting this one get away. They were leading 6-3 when their hard-throwing closer Aroldis Chapman blew a save opportunity by giving up three runs in the eighth inning, two coming from a dramatic home run by the Indians’ Rajai Davis that tied the score at 6-6.

In the top of the rain-delayed tenth inning, the Cubs’ Kyle Schwarber opened the frame with a single and was replaced by pinch runner Albert Almora Jr., who took second base on a sacrifice fly by Kris Bryant that almost left the park. Anthony Rizzo was intentionally walked. Ben Zobrist doubled to score Almora and then pinch-hitter Miguel Montero singled to score Rizzo. The game stood at 8-6.

In the bottom of the tenth, the Indians threatened again. Cubs reliever Carl Edwards Jr. got two outs from the Indians before walking Brandon Guyer, who stole second base. That brought up Davis, the hero of the Indians’ eighth inning. He promptly singled, scoring Guyer. With the score at 8-7, Cubs reliever Mike Montgomery induced Michael Martinez to ground out.

The last time the Chicago Cubs won the World Series was 1908 back when Theodore Roosevelt was president.

By losing in extra innings in Game 7, the Indians fell short of their goal: to win Cleveland’s first championship since 1948.

The game had no shortage of stomach-tightening moments for both teams and their fans.

The Cubs struck quickly with a solo home run to center field by lead-off hitter Dexter Fowler, off Indians starter Corey Kluber in the first inning. Schwarber followed with a single, but Kluber then retired eight straight Cubs hitters over the first three innings. Schwarber collected his second single of the game but he was thrown out trying to stretch out a double to end the top half of the third inning.

The Indians tied the score at 1-1 when Coco Crisp led off the bottom of the third inning with a double to left, took third on a sacrifice bunt by Roberto Perez and scored on a single to right field by Carlos Santana. An error by Cubs second baseman Javier Baez put another runner on base. But the Indians failed to capitalize on what might have been a big inning.

The Cubs regained the lead in the top of the fourth inning, scoring two runs. Kris Bryant led off with a single and Rizzo was hit by a pitch. A sacrifice fly by Addison Russell scored Bryant, then a double by Willson Contreras brought in the Cubs’ second run of the frame.

The Indians went down quietly in the bottom of the fourth inning.

Chicago got two more runs in the fifth inning on a solo homer by Baez on the first pitch he saw from the Indians’ Kluber. The Indians brought in their ace reliever Andrew Miller. Two outs later, Bryant walked and scored on a base hit by Rizzo. Chicago led the game 5-1.

The Indians came back with two runs in the fifth. Cubs manager Joe Maddon pulled his starter Kyle Hendricks in the bottom of the fifth with two outs after he walked the Indians’ Santana. Hendricks left the game surrendering only one run and scattering four hits. The Cubs’ Jon Lester, typically a starter, came in to relieve. A throwing error by catcher David Ross put runners at second and third. They both scored on a wild pitch by Lester, cutting the Indians’ deficit to two runs, 5-3.

Ross reclaimed one of those runs with a solo home run to center off the Indians’ Miller in the top of the sixth inning, extending Chicago’s lead 6-3.

Chicago stayed in command until the improbable bottom of the eighth. They were never behind in this game.

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The Chicago Cubs beat the Cleveland Indians 9-3 in Game 6 of the World Series at Progressive Field in Cleveland. The best-of-seven Series is now even at three games each. The decisive Game 7 will be played Wednesday in Cleveland.

The Cubs were led by starter Jake Arrieta who gave up two runs and three hits in five-plus innings. He struck out nine and walked three Indians batters. He also had the luxury of watching teammate Addison Russell collect 6 RBIs, with a two-run double in the first inning and a grand slam in the third.

Chicago struck early, scoring three runs in the top of the first inning with a two-out solo home run by Kris Bryant, followed by Russell’s double on a fly ball that was mis-played by the Indians outfielders.

The Cubs blew the game open in the third inning when they loaded the bases on a walk and two singles, chasing Indians starter Josh Tomlin. Cleveland reliever Dan Otero promptly gave up a grand slam to Russell.

The Indians showed sporadic signs of life. They threatened to get back in the game in the fourth inning with a double by Jason Kipnis and an RBI single by Mike Napoli. They loaded the bases, but Cubs starter Jake Arrieta worked out of the jam.

The Indians got another run on a solo home run by Kipnis in the fifth inning.

Arrieta was pulled from the game after getting two outs in the sixth inning. Cubs reliever Mike Montgomery got the third out.

The Cubs appeared to slam the door shut in the ninth inning when Anthony Rizzo smacked a two-run homer to right field, making the score 9-2. But the Indians scored one more in the ninth when Roberto Perez hit an RBI single before getting thrown out at second base trying to stretch out a double.

Despite his team’s lead throughout the game, Chicago manager Joe Maddon made it clear he was taking no chances in allowing Chicago to stage a comeback. He brought in his flame-throwing reliever Aroldis Chapman in the seventh inning when the Indians were threatening again. Chapman induced a ground out by Indians Francisco Lindor. Chapman pitched into the ninth inning, giving up one run and one hit. He threw 20 pitches and the question many will ask is, how much does he have left for Game 7?

The final game will feature a showdown between Indians ace Corey Kluber, the winning pitcher of Games 1 and 4, and Cubs starter Kyle Hendricks.

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The Chicago Cubs kept alive their World Series hopes by beating the Indians 3-2 in Game Five at Wrigley Field on Sunday to send the best-of-seven Major League Baseball championship back to Cleveland.

The Indians lead the series 3-2 ahead of Game Six on Tuesday.

Chicago’s quiet bats came to life in the fourth inning with three runs, sparked by a home run from Kris Bryant and four more hits that followed that allowed the Cubs to hold on to the dream of winning their first World Series in 108 years.

On the brink of elimination, Cubs ace starter Jon Lester turned in a strong six innings to reignite roars from the home crowd and flame-throwing reliever Aroldis Chapman did a yeoman’s job in registering the last eight outs to preserve the must win.

“It didn’t feel like an elimination game,” said 24-year-old third baseman Bryant. “Jon (Lester) doing his thing, Chapman coming in for eight outs. That was an unbelievable win.”

Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo, who followed Bryant’s blast with a double off the wall in right and came around to score, had a different take on the mounting tension in the win-or-go-home thriller.

“High anxiety and a lot of deep breaths,” Rizzo said about dealing with the pressure. “Every pitch gets bigger and bigger as the game goes on.

“Great win, to set these fans off with a win. Now we get to go back to Cleveland and take care of business.”

Chapman, whose longest outing this season was 2 1/3 innings, was asked to go one out longer when Cubs manager Joe Maddon brought him in with out in the seventh and a man on first and the score 3-2.

But the Cuban-born reliever poured his 100 mph-plus fastballs in to overpower the Indians, striking out four on his way to the critical save.

Lester, who yielded two runs on four hits while striking out five, registered the victory. Cleveland starter Trevor Bauer took the loss, his second of the Series.

Before the game, spirits did not seem as high among fans compared to the first two games played in Chicago, as revelers seemed subdued, wary of a third straight loss at Wrigley.

But by the end, the crowd was roaring and after Jose Ramirez struck out to end the game, fans inside and outside Wrigley stood and sang the team song with the title dream still alive.

“I’m feeling amazing,” Nicole Herrington, who lives a few blocks from the stadium with her husband and four-month-old boy, told Reuters. “We can’t believe that they are not (going to win).

“It’s been unbelievable. One hundred and three wins in the regular season. They got to take it in Cleveland. They have to take it in Cleveland.

“How can we not win it now?”

Chicago’s Jake Arrieta, the Game Two winner for the Cubs, is scheduled to start Game Six on Tuesday against Josh Tomlin, with a Game Seven to be played in Cleveland on Wednesday if needed.

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One more win and baseball fans everywhere might finally believe in these Cleveland Indians.

That’s all it will take for Corey Kluber & Co. to clinch this World Series.

Kluber pitched six sparkling innings on short rest to win again, Jason Kipnis hit a three-run homer in his hometown and the Indians beat the Chicago Cubs 7-2 Saturday night to take a 3-1 lead.

Carlos Santana also connected for the first of his three hits as Cleveland moved closer to its first championship since 1948. Trevor Bauer gets the ball Sunday night at Wrigley Field in Game 5 when the Indians try for the franchise’s third World Series title against Jon Lester and the faltering Cubs.

Not bad for a team that seemed like an underdog all year long. The Indians beat the defending champion Royals and star-studded Tigers for the AL Central title, and then eliminated David Ortiz and the Red Sox and the heavy-hitting Blue Jays on their way to the AL pennant.

Then much of the talk centered on the major league-leading Cubs and their 108-year championship drought. But it’s been mostly Indians once more, with manager Terry Francona pushing all the right buttons while improving to 11-1 in the World Series.

The Indians will try to bring another crown to Cleveland, adding to the one LeBron James and the Cavaliers earned earlier this year.

Dexter Fowler doubled and scored in the first for the Cubs, and then homered against Andrew Miller in the eighth. Fowler’s drive to left-center was the first homer for Chicago in the World Series since Phil Cavaretta connected in Game 1 in 1945 and the first run allowed by Miller during his dominant postseason.

In between Fowler’s two hits, the Cubs came up empty every time they had a chance to put any pressure on the Indians.

Pitching on three days’ rest for the second time, Kluber allowed five hits, struck out six and walked one. The steady, stoic right-hander, who struck out nine in a dominant performance in Game 1, improved to 4-1 with a 0.89 ERA in five playoff starts this year.

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