The sport is boring.
There’s too much standing around and not enough sustained action.
Its hard-core fans are brainwashed lemmings, and its specialized press corps a bunch of shameless advocates.
Plus, why should we get excited about a sport in which U.S.-born players aren’t the best in the world, and in which Team USA was a washout in the recent high-profile world tournament?
But enough about baseball.
Absolutely, the Los Angeles Galaxy’s signing of Englishman David Beckham got my attention, and not only because I remember him indeed bending one inside the post in the World Cup last summer; or that the guiding and financial force behind both the franchise and Major League Soccer is Denver-based billionaire Phil Anschutz.
Although I’ve disowned my own previous rantings about soccer – more on that in a minute – I still don’t know a striker from a midfielder. (Or are they same thing?)
So I checked in with one of the biggest soccer fans I know – Father Dennis Woerter, our former pastor at St. Dominic Catholic Church. A Chicago-area native, Dennis played soccer for Loras College in Iowa and was known to extol the virtues of the sport – both in English and Spanish – to his North Denver parishioners before being “transferred” last fall to St. Pius V on Chicago’s South Side.
“I think his signing with Los Angeles is a positive sign that U.S soccer is going in the right direction,” Dennis wrote back. “Beckham is someone who loves the sport, and wants the sport to be loved throughout the world. Those who expect a player who scores a lot of goals will be disappointed. Beckham is a team player whose play is unselfish and inclusive of his teammates.
“He may not be the superstar who stands out on the field, but he is a player who makes things happen. He appreciates the beauty of the game, and appreciates the talent and the roles of the players around him. Beckham is the sort of player who uses his skills to help his teammates. While his crisp passes and bending crosses can help influence the outcome of a game, what he will bring to U.S. soccer is an emphasis on hard work, love of the game and team play.”
End of homily.
Now, my confession, one that Father Woerter has heard before, when we were talking over beers after Sunday night basketball, not in the church. Years ago, I was prone to advance all the hackneyed, Ugly American knocks on the sport and its inability to gain a higher profile in this country – and believe them. (You’ve heard them all, so there’s no need to repeat them.) But my mind opened, at least to this extent: To each his own, and the U.S. mainstream media’s denigration of the sport has gotten old.
I got caught up in the contagious international passion for the World Cup, both while here in Denver and on personal trips to diverse New York during the competition, and worked in Portland, Ore., when the University of Portland men’s and women’s teams both developed into NCAA powers.
Plus, bells finally went off in my head when I heard my journalism brethren and other nonhockey fans rationalize their disdain of hockey. Like all stereotypes, there are elements of truth in the parroted criticisms of hockey, but especially when scribes come off as if they think they’re being “clever” and “witty” as they subject us to droning redundancy in summoning all the clichés, it just gets old. Plus, one of the dirty secrets of our business is that U.S. sports journalism indeed allows ingrained prejudices, traditional patterns and even demographics (i.e., golf) to affect our level of inside-the-business interest and coverage.
I can’t pinpoint when it hit me, but it did about the 7,233rd time I heard some hackneyed dismissal of hockey: This must be what we sound like to soccer fans. Same old junk. And try explaining baseball to your cousins from Norway (or wherever) sometime, and then tell me it isn’t – at least on the surface, to the closed-minded – inherently boring.
At age 31, Beckham has talents and a star power that is ineffable, yet obvious. Anschutz is hoping that a charismatic star will draw increased attention to soccer in the U.S. In the years since Pele and other over-the-hill stars failed to nudge pro soccer into the mainstream U.S. consciousness, much has changed. In this era, we’re fascinated with celebrities who are celebrities only because they’re famous, and it isn’t just People magazine and trashy cable shows. Paris Hilton even makes newspaper pages almost daily.
At least Beckham has talent. Still.
And maybe, just maybe, more of us will be drawn to watch and come away asking: How did he bend it like that?
Terry Frei can be reached at 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
