The Futility Infielder

The Inevitable World Cup Column

As sports-related fevers go, baseball is running a distant second in my household this month. My roommate Issa, a soccer fanatic, is in the full throes of World Cup fever thanks to the time-shifting magic of the TiVo system he purchased a few days before the tournament started. Committing to full immersion in a month-long tournament being held halfway around the globe isn't for the ill-equipped, so Issa got himself a little help in the form of a marvelous machine which puts every VCR ever produced to shame. Thanks to that contraption, and no small amount of sleep deprivation, Issa has watched 85% (by his estimate) of the tournament thus far. I can vouch for that figure--frankly, I'm surprised he's still got a job.

But he's not walking the soccer path alone. Virtual neighbor Nick ("Clubhouse Lawyer") is a huge soccer buff, a two-sport threat who can yammer about Manchester United, the English Premier League, When Saturday Comes and David Beckham's haircut du jour until the Spice Girls come home. My brother Bryan grew up starring in the sport and throwing hair-pulling temper tantrums whenever I wanted to change the channel away from PBS's "Soccer Made In Germany". These guys have been gathering regularly for 7:30 AM viewings of the previous night's action--the better to combat what I'll call Nagano Syndrome: the pre-emptive ruination of a time-shifted sporting event by discovering the result. I see their point--it's the best way to avoid finding the score inadvertently (not a difficult thing amid the ethnic mix of New York City)--but I only partake when the U.S. plays. Breakfast with Tommy Smyth (imagine an Irish cross between Dick Vitale and Yogi Berra, calling a soccer game) doesn't carry quite the same allure for me.

I'm not exactly a stranger with the game. I grew up playing soccer, not baseball, toiling for five years on some fairly disinterested rec-level teams in Salt Lake City. I scored the grand total of one goal in my soccer career, primarily because I spent most of my time as a fullback or goalie, where my less-than-stellar attention span and loathing of running weren't quite so damaging (hey, at least I never sunk to the mud pie-making, dandelion-chasing level of my teammate Benji Smith. Sheesh). I did enjoy one championship season as the starting left halfback on an undefeated (7-0-1) team, but that was the high-water mark. Nepotistic coaches, poor sportsmanship, and a dearth of talent among my cohorts made for some lean years which leave me with the regret that I didn't pursue my first love, baseball, instead.

If I had, I might have brought the intensity to baseball that my brother did to soccer. My father likes to tell the story of how on Saturday mornings you could find Bryan kicking a ball against the garage door, revving up his competitive engine as he waited for his ride to the game. I, on the other hand, had to be rousted from my books, my baseball cards, and my cartoons to gather my gear in time for the match. I liked the game, but even then, I would rather expended my energy on baseball. Bryan could score hat tricks at will in his rec days, and went on to play on state champions in junior high and high school. I couldn't even make my freshman high school baseball team. Anyway, enough time on the psychiatrist's couch...

Despite the biases I project onto the sport thanks to these childhood scars, I am managing to enjoy the World Cup without too much trouble. Of course it helps to have a home team to rally around, one with stars as bright as Landon Donovan, Brian McBride, DaMarcus Beasley, Travis Bickle-lookalike Clint Mathis, and John Malkovich-lookalike Brad Friedel (all hail the goalkeeper!). There's not much that compares with being able to holler out "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!" at 8:30 AM in imitation of the Univision announcers while watching an American make a restaurant-quality crossing pass to set up a score. That's the bulge in the ol' onion bag, as Tommy Smyth is fond of saying.

The pro-U.S. fun will probably end soon--we're not going to win this thing, are we? But at least the shame I felt watching the Americans lose to Iran in '98 and score one measly goal in three games in France has been banished. Advancing through their group by beating heavily-favored Portugal, tying home-team (and Olympic revenge-motivated) South Korea and then flopping listlessly against Poland before sneaking through the backdoor and into the Round of 16, the U.S. had already outdone itself. But in stifling Mexico 2-0 on Monday morning for the biggest soccer win in this country's history, the U.S. has finally made a dent in the World Cup.

I still think soccer faces an uphill battle for acceptance as a big-time sport in this country, even with the men's success, the U.S. women's World Cup victory in 1999 and the birth of a new women's league last year. The continuous action of the game makes it difficult for TV advertisers to latch onto. Unlike football, baseball, and basketball, with their built-in (and TV-exacerbated) delays in the action, soccer runs 45 or so minutes at a clip without a full stop in the action. This is hard on the average American sports fan's attention span, not to mention his bladder. The other is that said fan, at least the male subspecies, is already so saturated with other viewing options that the prospect of taking up an unfamiliar sport induces a rational admission: it's time to pull my ass out of this E-Z chair and get some fresh air, even if it means mowing the damn lawn. Call this the NASCAR Syndrome. Hell, I'm as susceptible to a sports bandwagon as anybody, but living in a veritable soccer-fever hothouse, I haven't caught the bug.

I do think certain changes in the game would aid its acceptance in America: shorter halves, perhaps divided into quarters, translate into more opportunities for advertisers. Unlimited substitution would allow for fresher legs and more dynamic action (and more commercial cutaways). It would also familiarize audiences with the type of specialized roles that basketball and hockey players carry (go-to scorers, defensive specialists, etc.). If all that sounds like your vision of hell, relax--I'm not actually advocating them. Your average soccer purist would be as horrified by those suggestions as we baseball fans would be if some crackpot Futility Midfielder suggested 18-man offense-defense platoons (a side full of designated hitters!) for 6-inning ballgames, with a TV commercial every time a runner reaches base.

Not that it really matters much. Soccer is the international game, and it's the U.S. sports fan's loss for not embracing the sport, for not being able to appreciate the fervor that grips entire nations as they pull for their teams. Then again, we've got a enough potential for mob violence without tossing a round ball into the mix. As for me, while I'm a quick study in any sport provided the stakes are high enough, I only obsess night and day about one. So while I'll be waking up early to watch the U.S.-Germany match on Friday morning, my boys will have to forgive me if I put the admittedly tantalizing Brazil-England match (scheduled at 2:25 AM, to be viewed at 6 AM here) under my pillow instead. I've got to study those On Base Percentages etched on the backs of my eyelids.