Sporting Life

On Sunday I got the chance to do something that I don’t very often get to do. I went to a game...as a fan. I ventured over to Children’s Mercy Park to catch the game between Sporting KC and Real Salt Lake. They played to a very exciting 1–1 draw before the usual sellout crowd. Sitting by myself in a great seat, I was fully immersed in the game, as well as a cold beer. A bit more on the details of the day later.

Having even a better day than I was, was 18-year-old Kalen Ricketson from Stillwater, Oklahoma, who was surprised with becoming a Sporting player for a day. Ricketson has survived 13 surgeries for a variety of forms of cancer, and his fight is ongoing. His mother asked him a month ago what might be a boost in his spirits, and he said exactly what was made happen yesterday.

Professional sports teams springing nice surprises for people has become something of a cliché, but a cliché can be a wonderful thing. Be it someone in the military surprising their family with a visit home, or someone fighting through a traumatic illness getting to fulfill a wish like Kalen. Sure, it’s great marketing for the teams, but who cares? It can truly push someone forward in their fight and bring joy into many peoples lives.

That heartwarming story was another part of a great day for me. While the game played out in front of me, I was musing about how much Sporting has changed the landscape of Kansas City sports. It really revved up when they moved into their sparkling new stadium in 2011 amidst a new branding as Sporting KC after years as the Kansas City Wiz andWizards. Of course, it might be fifty years, if ever, before a soccer team can galvanize a community like a football or baseball team can, but continued sellouts and rabid interest prove that Sporting is more than just relevant.

The organization from top to bottom is a hard-driving and innovative bunch that demands excellence and produces results. It is personified in their manager Peter Vermes. He is probably tougher and more demanding, and perhaps less balanced in outlook, than I would usually see as ideal in a coach. But all you have to do is spend ten minutes with the guy to know why he succeeds. Some people are just leaders of men, and Vermes oozes that. I’m sure at times his players hear accolades about him, and roll their eyes and think “If you only knew what we have to go through”, but you damn well also know they respect the man and the fact he brings out the best in them.

It was my good fortune to really start to become a fan of the sport when I traveled to Europe in 2010, just before the Sporting rebrand, and their recent run of success. I became an Arsenal fan, and had my learning curve on Premier League football. But another good fortune was that the MLS team that I would get to see in person, broadcast games of, and follow in my town, was worth it in every way. Sporting plays a full bore, intense, and exciting brand of soccer. The players are relentless and fit, and the coach on the sidelines is intensely entertaining.

Sporting was immediately a success upon inhabiting their new stadium, and it was perfect timing. The Royals and Chiefs were both awful at the time, and they would only have just started to gain and regain their footing when Sporting won their MLS title in 2013. Fans, even those who are only casual, or less, soccer fans, love winners, and you add those people to the diehards in the Cauldron, and you have yourself a sellout streak.

They haven’t won the ultimate prize again (although they have grabbed a couple of U.S. Open Cup trophies), and have lacked playoff success since in MLS, but they will this year make the playoffs for the 8th straight year, and appear to be well positioned for a strong run.

So, on this Sunday from a perfect vantage point, I soaked in a very entertaining and intense game. I have been trained by my job when I am in a stadium to observe and not react. I also will confess that while I am a Sporting fan, and want them to win, I am not as passionate about it as I am about my Arsenal fandom. But in both cases I am more of a fan of the sport itself than a zealot.

This for me makes it even more enjoyable when I am sitting watching a match by myself. With a full field and far better view than I get on television, I really soak it in and get into the intricasies of the game. My head is on a swivel watching the play on and off the ball. I get to enjoy that far more than when I am broadcasting the game and have to concentrate on the ball more, and which player has it. That being said, I also love calling soccer games.

The skills of high-level soccer players when viewed closely are amazing, and are easily taken for granted in the bigger picture. Split second decisions and reactions on how to gather in the ball with chest, knee, or leg to corral it and make a play, or one-touch or head it, often under duress, are brilliant to watch.

I often hear from fans of other sports who don’t much like soccer that only if the best U.S. athletes played the sport, we would be so much better. What they don’t get is that many attributes that a smaller person can bring to the table are often better suited to soccer than mere size and speed. Sure, if you could find someone 6’4” and 220 pounds with the same quick-twitch muscles and maneuverability in tight spaces, that would be great. Good luck.

One of the great players of this soccer generation, in many peoples minds the greatest, is Lionel Messi, who is 5’7” 155 pounds. He also is not remarkably fast, but he does things on the pitch that most others can’t dream of.

In Sunday’s match between Sporting and Real, each team had a dangerous player on the field who was tinier still than Messi. Every sport is different. Even in basketball, which perhaps demands size the most in its players who have to be athletic, there is a place for a listed 6’2 and 185 pound star like Steph Curry. To me, the regular guy size of many fine soccer players is a selling point.

Just to get it off my chest, one thing I don’t understand is that soccer seems unique, at least in this country, in the fact that many people who don’t like it feel compelled to try and belittle it. It’s fine to not like a sport as much as another, but diehard American football fans often seem to be compelled to scoff at the sport, and NBA fans, whose sport corners the market on diving and gesticulating on real or imagined fouls, will focus on “all the flopping”.

One other thing that gives me more enjoyment watching a game, at times, is when you ARE less partisan. It allows you to soak in the action with a keener eye. You aren’t looking to see where your team got screwed, you can actually see when they both do!!! Fine plays become fine plays no matter who they benefit.

Don’t get me wrong, living and dying with every play is a fantastic enterprise as well in fandom. All you need is to check my Facebook stream to see a photo of me sprawled on my back last November 1st with arms upraised celebrating in a rainbow jersey as the Astros won their first World Series, to know that I am capable of blissful sports insanity.

But on a warm fall Sunday evening in Kansas City, Kansas, I got just about as much enjoyment in quietly and intently watching this MLS match along with twenty thousand of my closest friends, about the same amount as the Royals averaged this season.

That only 7 years removed from the then Kansas City Wizards playing in a minor league ballpark a few hundred yards away.