2010-06-26 - 12:28 a.m.
This will be about sports, again. I took what I wrote last time and made it into this:
I took a day off on Wednesday. I got up early, drank a cup of coffee, and at 9:30 in the morning walked into Slainte, the Irish pub in Fells Point. This isn�t about why you should care about soccer. You do or you don�t. This is about why I do.
Downstairs was packed. Lots of American jerseys. None for Algeria. I fought my way upstairs. Also packed. I found a friend. I ordered a beer, and nursed it, and then did the opposite of nursing it, for my nerves. I ordered another. My brother found me and we inched ourselves into a sliver of a spot along the wall, settling in among all those bodies as best we could.
Behind us: Thames Street�s summer heat and its cobblestones. Ahead of us: the low hum of a room full of people, a bartender and his bottles, and a television showing a soccer game in South Africa. That room sounded like anticipation, like the theater before the house lights go down, like the quiet dinner before the big night out. Yes, we had to win. Of course we had to win. We lose, and we go home and wait four more years. We wanted the game to start but at the same time we wanted it to be over already.
Kickoff, and we nearly gave up a goal. We got chances but couldn�t do it. Soccer is fluid, and there are a lot of guys on the field, and when you get a chance to shoot, the better teams score while the mediocre teams go home. Would our team be mediocre? Oh, man, I hoped not. I ordered another beer. The bar got tighter. Moving around was impossible. I stepped on feet. I got elbowed in the ribs.
England got an early goal in the other game and so no doubt about it now, we had to score. But we couldn�t score. My stomach shrank. Halftime came. Zero-zero, nil-nil. I bought a slice of quiche from a coffee shop down the street because that was all they had but all I could get down was one bite.
Back to the bar, and then sixty minutes in, and still no goal. Seventy minutes in: chances but no goal. My brother got us more beer. Eighty minutes in, still no score. Just ten minutes left now. A great chance! But, no. Five minutes left. Really? Three games and we�re done? All those articles I read, checking scores on the internet, and we�re done? I stared at my shoes. We were wrecks, some of us chewing the insides of our cheeks, some of us angry with the referee, with each other, even with our own guys. The girls in front of me held their hands to their mouths in a kind of prayer.
Ninety minutes and still nothing. The sideline official holds up the electronic sign. It says, �4.� Four more minutes of injury time, enough for one, maybe two more runs at goal. Algeria has a quick shot, but straight at our keeper. He�s good. He whips the ball 40 yards to Donovan, our best player. It�s got to happen now. My stomach is small.
And look at this, now. Donovan, ball at his feet, is gliding up the field and no one�s in front of him. He�s still going. At the box, he slides it off to Altidore, the big striker who�s only 20 years old. Oh, my, does he have room to do something here? He does. Altidore darts in a low cross and there�s Dempsey, the white boy who raps, and he pounds it into the keeper�s chest and oh, that was it. That was our chance. The girls in front of me shriek. But the keeper can�t hold onto the ball and it�s loose, just sitting there, and who�s that trailing the play? It�s a guy in a white shirt and there�s no one in front of goal and then this: goal. That�s all. Just goal.
How to describe a noise made by human beings that you�ve never heard before? Was that sound that came from an Irish bar in Fells Point like a jet engine? Or like this: silence, and then a thousand, a million pennies hitting a tin roof, those pennies raining down for two, three, five minutes? Or did it sound tribal, like something deeply and anciently human, from the place where joy was born and lives?
My chest hurt. My smile muscles hurt. I slapped my brother�s hand very hard, over and over. It�s like this: we went from losing losing losing to, in one half-second, winning. We went from didn�t-get-the-job to got-the-job, from I-don�t-love-you to of-course-I-love-you, from, yes, dead to alive. My friend sent me a text message after the game. It read, �I cried. My brother and I cried. I�m still crying in the alley next to Mick O�Shea�s.�
I was in a different Irish bar, but in the same town, and we�d been watching the same game, and the only difference between him and me is that I�d managed to take a swipe with my sleeve before anything rolled down my cheek.
