A Parent Speaks to the American Soccer Experience

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=1329

Our standard American sports give us a distorted view of the world--

Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game.
Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle.

Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park.The baseball park!
Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium.

Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life.
Football begins in the fall, when everything's dying.

In football you wear a helmet.
In baseball you wear a cap.

Football is concerned with downs - what down is it?
Baseball is concerned with ups - who's up?

In football you receive a penalty.
In baseball you make an error.

In football the specialist comes in to kick.
In baseball the specialist comes in to relieve somebody.

Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, piling on, personal fouls, late hitting and unnecessary roughness.
Baseball has the sacrifice.

Football is played in any kind of weather: rain, snow, sleet, hail, fog...
In baseball, if it rains, we don't go out to play.

Baseball has the seventh inning stretch.
Football has the two minute warning.

Baseball has no time limit: we don't know when it's gonna end - might have extra innings.
Football is rigidly timed, and it will end even if we've got to go to sudden death.

In baseball, during the game, in the stands, there's kind of a picnic feeling; emotions may run high or low, but there's not too much unpleasantness.
In football, during the game in the stands, you can be sure that at least twenty-seven times you're capable of taking the life of a fellow human being.

And finally, the objectives of the two games are completely different:

In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.

In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe! - I hope I'll be safe at home!


~George Carlin

Geezer, touche and thanks for the post: in a former life, in a galaxy far far away, I read this comparison, but it still brightens my day . . .truly imaginative . . .unfortunate that we lost such a comic genuis early.

RIP George Carlin.

I love the first argument in that article; "Any sport that limits you to using your feet, with the occasional bang of the head, has something very wrong with it."

Point taken? I don't know if that is necessarily a cogent argument.

This is the argument I have to face every time I go home... Haha my dad still holds against me the fact that I chose soccer over baseball... Blah blah baseball is like a chess match, hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports blah blah... I respond with "you don't see chess matches on TV for a reason, maybe they should take note about baseball..." and "a baseball is hard to hit? I never had a problem" which of course just gets a muffled "you could have played THAT in college".... blah blah

Anyway, I think soccer is a game so very different from the American psyche, one of constant ebb and flow, one where a score of 1-0 can be a dominating victory... Something that our fast paced, number/result/statistic driven society doesn't understand.... And I don't expect the majority of middle aged to older Americans to understand it. Soccer isn't really a game you can understand by JUST watching. Soccer is kind of like music, you have to really play it and immerse yourself to truly be able to feel and understand it. I think a lot of people just haven't given the game or themselves to really understand the music that the rest of the world plays.

God, the man who wrote that article is just plain ignorant. I really don't understand why a college professor would take the time to write an article about so much garbage instead of sticking to what he knows best: philosophy and religion.

This statement is just plain sexist and offensive:

"I know my daughter will kick me when she reads this, but soccer is a game for girls."--Stephen Webb.

There are few things that make me more irritated than soccer bashing. I'm sure that the writer has no idea who Cristian Ronaldo is...Messi...or any of the world's best players. He's never seen one game of the Champion's league or seen the women's game at the highest level. I hope his daughter gives him a piece of her mind because he probably won't listen to anyone else. All the same, I'm going to send him an e-mail letter. Annoying.

Haha although after watching Ronaldo roll around on the ground half the game, he might not be the best example...
Haha how about Zidiane, Gazza, Terry, Vidic or someone else who dished out rather than absorbed punishment....
(Histrionics aside, his game is nothing short of beautiful, and he does take a lot of punishment for it)

Again, I think until you familiarize yourself with the game, and watch the physicality of a high level soccer match I think he might change his opinions.... Not that I really care what he has to say about anything.

Seriously. Here's a copy of the letter that I left:

3/14/09

Dear editors:

I was recently reading Stephen Webb's March 5th article "How Soccer Is Ruining America," and I have to admit that the article is at best extremely offensive. To quote Mr. Webb:

"I know my daughter will kick me when she reads this, but soccer is a game for girls."--Stephen Webb.

Please explain to me what this article has to do with religion, culture, or fulfilling your mission to your readers. Is this editorial article really helpful in anyway in achieving your goals? The gist of the article is that Mr. Webb is ignorant of the sport and he's not a fan...so, he's decided to express that by coming up with some lame points which not only express his ignorance, but, are sexist among other things.

If you are able to find Mr. Webb, I would like to make a few points about the game. First of all, Mr. Webb, soccer...or the original football is the world's game. It's the beautiful game. You might not understand it with your narrow viewpoint of the world. Maybe, they skipped that chapter in your World's religion classes or Judeo Christian culture classes that you took on the way to getting your doctoral thesis. However, I would encourage you to expand your mind.

The history of soccer is rich. The World Cup brings countries together in a way that few events other than the Olympics can. A man at my Church once gave a homily about soccer as a sport that has actually prevented a war in the past. Pele was voted one of the most influential athletes of the first century by an international panel in 1999. I suggest you do your research, Mr. Webb. In fact, it's probably better that you stick to commenting on religion and politics and stay away from soccer.

Thank you,

I really, really hope you signed your email with that emoticon.

I'll post the response if I get one. Bring it. I'd like to take
some shots on that writer with him in goal.

Taking the article way too seriously is as offensive as anything stated within the article . . .really. The professor's article was in gest, too bad your response misses the point almost entirely. The anthropological analysis and the suggestion that soccer was egalitarian, leftist, even comparable to an intellectual movement such as Marxism and other absurd political fads, was truly funny. Your post was borish, rude and unimaginative, which is unfortunatley too often the case when folks are left in front of the internet with their keyboards. I think the professor was clearly out of his element with soccer, afterall he reads books on the sideline during his daughter's matches, but I do not think he was pretending to be anything he is not. His was intended as a humorous commentary, which is not the case with your proudly published retort to his editor. Lighten up . . .

Boorish, unimaginative and rude?? Would you prefer iambic pentameter?

You want better responses? I have half a mind to link this on the Timbers board and throw in the guy's e-mail address. We'll see what kind of responses he gets then.

Personally, if a sportswriter wrote this I would treat it as the standard, "I don't understand the game and I don't want to take the time, so I'll just make fun of it" column about soccer. They must teach writing that column in journalism school. I would just roll my eyes, remind myself why people are turning to blogs and message boards, and log on to Pilot Nation.