Category Archives: Sports

Disappointments, fun and surprises at the World Cup

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(Brian mentioned this video the other day; helps you see the difference between English-speaking announcers and Latin announcers)

The World Cup has been a disappointment. And it’s been a whole lot of fun. It’s also had a lot of surprises. Let me tell you about each.

The Disappointments:

  • Scoring has been way down. More than that, there has been a definite lack of precision on offense. Scoring isn’t everything, but games are more enjoyable when players are playing at their best. Players have blamed: (1) the Jabulani ball that is being used. Supposedly it “soars” on them; (2) the vuvuzelas, those horns that fans blow constantly in South Africa. Players say the noise from the horns has prevented them from communicating with one another.
  • The officiating has been bad. I haven’t minded so much the questionable offsides calls; they are part of the game. I haven’t cared for the booking-happy refs that have officiated some games, nor the incredibly bad playacting that has resulted in bookings in other games.
  • I would have liked to have seen more success by the African nations, with this being the first time the World Cup was held in Africa.

The fun:

  • Argentina won all three games, one of them in a big way.
  • The United States pulled off a win in injury time to move them on to the second round. Beyond that, they even won their group.
  • It’s been good to see the Asian teams do well. I have hopes that this is a sign of things to come.

The surprises:

  • The surprises have been part fun, part disappointments. Some of the best teams have lost, not so much because of the play of their opponents, but because of their own failures. That’s disappointing. I was especially disappointed in the French team, who showed a complete lack of respect for themselves and for the tournament.
  • It was surprising to see Italy be eliminated in the first round, after winning it all four years ago.

I have a feeling that there are more surprises to come. I’m definitely sure that there is more fun to come, and there might even be some disappointments.

A baseball confession

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1982 Topps #710 - Jerry Reuss - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.comSince I’ve been talking about sports all week, I guess this is as good a time as any for a baseball confession…

I spent the summer of 1982 in Long Beach, California. I was living with the Loren Evans family. Loren was an insurance agent. He had season tickets to the Dodger games, using them for his business. They were wonderful seats, fifth row behind home plate.

On June 11, Loren invited me to go see the Dodgers play the Reds. Loren was teaching me to keep a scorecard. I think I got so focused on that, that I hardly realized what was going on in the game itself.

The Dodgers had a wonderful offensive night, exploding for 11 runs. They also did well defensively, holding the Reds to one run. So while it wasn’t a competitive game, it was definitely an enjoyable one, especially if you were rooting for the Dodgers.

Jerry Reuss was pitching that night for Los Angeles. He had a pretty good outing. The first batter for the Reds hit a double. Reuss proceeded to retire the next 27 batters. One batter away from a perfect game. Pretty amazing.

Did I appreciate that? Not particularly. I knew it was a good game, but I didn’t realize how good.

But wait, there’s more. At some point during the game, one of the batters fouled off a pitch. It cleared the safety net and hit the front of one of the sections above us. As it fell back, I reached up and snagged it out of the air. Yep, I caught a foul ball.

Who hit that foul ball? I don’t know. Don’t even know which team. People have asked me and have been amazed that I have no idea. It may be one of the balls Reuss threw on the way to his one-hit, almost perfect game. The world will never know.

I used to be more of a baseball fan than I am now, but even then, I couldn’t appreciate a very special happening. I enjoyed the game and thanked Mr. Evans for it. But I realize now, I should have been a bit more excited about what happened that evening.

There… it’s good to get that off my chest.

Oh, and here’s a link to the stats from that game, for you baseball fans:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/LAN/LAN198206110.shtml

Soccer, culture and Christianity

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Well, if you know me, you know that I can’t just let a cultural study end at noticing differences. Not even during the World Cup.

I look at how people in the United States have such different tastes in sports than most of the rest of the world. I look at how what we like in sports announcing differs from that of many other countries. And I can’t help but wonder… could we possibly see the same thing in our Christianity?

I’m not talking about doctrines so much as I am the application of those doctrines. I’m specifically thinking about worship styles, although leadership styles and evangelism methods could also be examples of differing applications. Shouldn’t we expect, for example, worship among Latinos to be much more effusive and emotional than the typical U.S. worship style? Shouldn’t we expect the preaching style in Latin America to be more similar to the style of a Latin sports announcer than that of a U.S. sports announcer? Questions like that creep into my brain.

Maybe we need to study a culture’s sports as we contemplate the best ways to take the gospel to that culture.

Soccer vs. Futbol

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It’s hard to compare soccer announcers that you hear on English-speaking television with those that you hear on Spanish-speaking networks. The announcers in English are relatively unemotional. They give lots of stats. They rely a lot on the technology of the network they are broadcasting on.

Announcers in Spanish get excited. Really excited. They speak poetically. The other day, during the South Africa-Mexico game, I heard the announcer say, “Using his heart as a compass, the goalkeeper launched himself…” During the Argentina game the following day, I heard: “He went after that ball with heart, soul and body.” You just don’t hear expressions like that on the main U.S. broadcasts.

I was seeing that as a difference between the Latin culture and the mainstream U.S. culture until… they played a replay of Japan’s goal against Cameroon, listening to the Japanese broadcast. It was more like the Spanish broadcast than the English one. That rattled my assumptions, since I don’t see the Japanese culture as being particularly expressive.

So maybe I should avoid any sweeping generalizations about culture. I’ll just say this: soccer will be a lot more fun on U.S. TV when they start hiring announcers from Latin America rather than Europe.

U.S. sports fans and soccer

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The most popular sport in the world, hands down, is soccer. No question. No contest. No comparison. Nothing draws the world’s interest like the World Cup. It’s far and away the biggest sporting event in the world. It’s one of the few competitions that truly deserves the title of “world championship.” Many countries send their very best athletes to this soccer tournament.

You can’t count the United States in that group, however. Our best athletes tend to be busy with other things. That’s not meant as a knock on the U.S. soccer team. It’s just a reflection of the fact that football, basketball, and yes even baseball are still bigger than soccer.

Some thought that would change as youth soccer leagues grew in popularity. It did make soccer slightly more popular, but not on the same scale as the number of kids that have played the game. Most of them still prefer other sports.

Here are some unscientific, half-baked ideas as to why that is true:

  • The commercial aspect. Soccer does not lend itself to advertising as other sports do (though part of that is the fact that networks in the U.S. don’t seem to have figured out how to run commercials during the game, as they do in other countries). Commercials basically only run before the game, at halftime and after the game, not at the times when people are truly focused on the set. The United States even made a push to switch world soccer to be played in quarters, rather than halves, just to get more commercials in. Without commercials, companies don’t put as much money into soccer. Lack of funding hurts the game.
  • The strategy aspect. We like games where you stand around and talk. Seriously. People from other countries complain about American football, where they play for 5 seconds, then stand around and plan for 30. Baseball is like that. Even American-style basketball is slower paced than international basketball. Rugby doesn’t give you that. Soccer doesn’t give you that. Hockey, which is losing popularity every year, doesn’t give you that. We want to strategize. During the game.
  • Comprehension level. Adults in the United States don’t tend to understand soccer at the level they do other sports. I thought that the proliferation of youth soccer leagues would change that, but it hasn’t seemed to. To me, it’s a bit like opera, ballet and modern art; I recognize that my lack of appreciation for those art forms speaks to a lack in me, not a deficiency in them. I don’t understand them, so I can’t appreciate what I’m seeing. I think that happens a lot with soccer.

This last point also speaks to a lot of complaints I hear about soccer. The same people who gripe about the lack of scoring in soccer can love a no-hitter in baseball. They can see the beauty of a well-executed draw play, but can’t see the elegance of a corner kick.

Will time change the States’ views toward soccer? Maybe. The first World Cup was played in 1930, and the United States was one of 13 nations that participated, placing third overall. It’s taken almost 80 years to get the United States back to a respectable international level. It will be interesting to see what the future holds.