By Anthony Bosco
Our esteemed associate sports editor, Dylan Butler, asked me to pass him the hat last week. The hat, a giant foam top-hat variety advertising Murphy’s Irish Amber, has been collecting dust in the newsroom of the TimesLedger offices since the last millennium. But it was desperately needed.
Dylan was not the victim of an insane barber, but rather needed a hat to fulfill the sudden desire of some of the employees of these award-winning publications to take part in a World Cup pool. Pick a team out of the hat, hand over $5 and hope for the best.
In case you haven’t heard, 32 nations entered into the 2002 World Cup competition, which began last week, battling to become the soccer champion of all the world. It’s a tournament which takes place every four years and has only the Olympics as its equal in terms of global reach and significance.
Dylan may be the only person at the TimesLedger who knows anything about international soccer. In fact, he probably knows as much about the English League as some English people. And he, in his fervor over the World Cup, has inspired the rest of us at the TimesLedger to take part in this pool.
The way it works is 16 of us picked the names of two teams out of the big foam hat, one so-called “elite” team and another also-ran, or qualifier. I picked Brazil as my elite team and Croatia as my qualifier. From what Dylan tells me, Brazil isn’t the powerhouse it used to be and Croatia is pretty good but not great. All in all, I got the sense that my odds of winning are pretty slim.
But it is all in good fun. And I already have written off the $5 I will lose as a pack of cigarettes I will not buy — having quit in January — or some kind of fried food I will have to avoid, relying instead on the cabinet full of food I have at home and should cook anyway.
To be honest, after nearly 13 years of covering every sport under the sun for these now 14 newspapers, I think I know as much about soccer as I do about dog racing; the concept is easy, it’s the details that are the problem.
I never played the sport as a child, opting instead to perfect my stick ball swing and ability to rush a quarterback. And lacking a major professional soccer league during my formative years, I just never quite latched on to the sport considered the most popular around the globe.
I remember the New York Cosmos when Pele still was playing, but that was ages ago and to be honest, soccer just wasn’t a sport big in my neck of the woods. But how times have changed.
It is widely believed that there are more young children playing soccer in the United States than there are playing baseball. In fact, the mothers of these children, the so-called “soccer moms,” also are credited with swinging the 1992 presidential race in favor of our junior senator’s husband.
These young soccer players can be seen chasing a black and white ball like a swarm of locusts almost every weekend on every piece of grass big enough to accommodate a soccer match throughout this blessed borough of ours.
My little brother Christopher, who this past weekend graduated from Archbishop Molloy, was the first to introduce me to this phenomenon of youth soccer. He, like thousands of others, played the sport when he was barely old enough to scream and run at the same time.
It must have been 12 years ago that I went to O’Connor Park in Bayside to watch my youngest sibling’s first foray into soccer. What I witnessed was as comical as it was memorable. Christopher and his teammates, as well as the opposing team, kicked the ball up and down the field, running for the entire time.
No one scored, but there we were, all the family and friends on the sidelines cheering for the kids, who didn’t know what the heck they were doing in the first place.
At halftime Chris came to the sideline and collapsed, exhausted into my arms. What a riot.
Most of the kids who played that day probably gave up the sport soon enough. But some stayed with it through high school, I’m sure. Some may even go on to play in college, but somewhere along the way, the elite or highest level of soccer is hardly ever reached by the United States.
Despite the success of the women’s national team, which is the best in the world, this country is not a soccer power and has only recently tried to capitalize on the popularity the sport has on the lower levels by starting a professional soccer league.
The immigrant population also feeds a lot of skilled younger players into the country, but we have yet to take that huge step up and compete on a level playing field with the likes of England, Italy and the other elite nations come World Cup time.
Maybe youth programs, high school and college teams and little office pools like the one we have going at the paper will help make soccer a major sport here like it is overseas. But I’m not betting on that. Even so, I find myself interested in the World Cup this year and rooting for Brazil and Croatia to make it all the way.
Reach Sports Editor Anthony Bosco by e-mail at TimesLedger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 130.
