I must take a moment here to thank the NCAA Tournament for providing such an awesome end to the season. Without the Tourney, the college game just wouldn’t be the same. Pundits may say that the college game is watered down because of great high school players jumping straight to the NBA, but there is nothing else like the Tourney, and that can’t be taken away from the NCAA. Great job.
But the past is the past. You’ll have to forgive me if I yawn through the NBA playoffs. They just don’t do it for me, and they’re bound to be a disappointment after the Big Dance. I’m going to have to seek out other forms of sporting entertainment for the next few months. I took Step One in that direction recently when the US played Guatemala in a World Cup qualifying match in Birmingham, Alabama.
That’s soccer, for those of you who don’t know the World Cup from the Breeder’s Cup. You know, the biggest sporting event in the world? Most Americans don’t care about the World Cup, or soccer in general, but the Average Joe does. To gain an understanding of how most of the rest of the world feels about the Cup, think about what it would be like if the Super Bowl was played every day for a month, with all the same media build-up and fan interest. Then imagine if the teams competing were national teams. Would you want to see the US lose the Super Bowl to Russia? Or France?
Hell no, you wouldn’t. In America, we have lots of sports that we pour ourselves into. We invented baseball and basketball and our version of football, and those are our favorites. Most places don’t have all that. Soccer is the game, and while baseball is big in Latin America, and cricket is big in England, India and Pakistan, it’s just not the same.
I knew all this when I went to Birmingham, but I was still unprepared for the scene I found at Legion Field. The only legions there were scores upon scores of flag-waving Guatemalans. It was like I entered another country when I got off the interstate. They had come from all points across the country to see their national team play. I saw car tags from California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Texas, and all points in between. These people were hyped-up to see their boys play the big, bad Americans.
It was a ton of fun. The whole parking lot scene was just wild. I had never seen a middle-aged man drink a tall boy while juggling a soccer ball, but I have now. He didn’t spill a drop, either. That guy exhibited some serious drink control, and I applaud him for that. There were Guatemalans everywhere, and just about every one of them had a team jersey. These people were seriously coordinated on a level I’ve never seen at American events. Imagine if every guy at a Patriots game had the same jersey and headband on.
And they were into the game too. Despite the fact that the Americans scored early and wound up winning 2-0, the Guats never gave up, cheering and chanting until the final whistle. It was fun cheering and booing against all the fans around me, like being at a foreign, hostile stadium and not understanding what anybody was saying. God only knows what kind of names I got called, because I surely don’t.
And it wasn’t just Guatemalans there to jeer at us. Many Latin American nations were behind the Guats. The Average Jane had a conversation with a girl behind us. She said she was from Honduras, but was there because she was dating a Guatemalan. She pointed out one of her friends. “That guy there? He’s from El Salvador. I don’t know what he’s doing here.”
Good times. Since international soccer isn’t something I can do very often, I’ll also be turning my attention to baseball. (Although consider yourself warned, Chicago. I’m all over the US v. England game on May 28.) Regular readers may know the pains that my rooting interests in Ole Miss and the New Orleans Saints cause me during football season. Baseball is where I get relief. The St. Louis Cardinals are my one sporting luxury – a consistently winning team to cheer for.
I’m no bandwagon jumper, either. I come by it honestly, a result of a 3-year stint living in Southern Illinois as a child, not 30 minutes from Busch Stadium. Ozzie Smith was my hero, and I saw Jack Clark hit some towering homers there. Here’s hoping the Cards can win the NL again. And if they do, maybe they can actually show up for the World Series.
