A Whole New World

We have discovered, belatedly but with considerable pleasure, that there is a whole other world of sports out there. We have found a game that has excitement, color and grace, and that does not, thank you, require the services of either startlingly tall men or exceptionally beefy ones. While this game doesn’t come close to matching the enchantment of well-played baseball--nothing can--it does have its moments of individual glory, of supreme teamwork, of high drama and of wonderfully low histrionics.

We have discovered soccer.

Well, not exactly discovered. Like almost everyone else who has accepted the obligations of parenthood in the last few decades or so, we have been exposed to soccer, thanks to the American Youth Soccer Organization, under whose auspices hundreds of thousands of kids play each week throughout the fall and early winter. But while it can be fun watching one’s own compete--it’s not you, after all, who has to run around in the heat of October or the mud of December--the style and quality of the play often leave much to be desired. We hadn’t really known how good soccer can be until the World Cup, the great quadrennial tournament, came to Mexico this year and, thanks mainly to a local Spanish-language television station, KMEX, gave us a view of the sport that we never had before.

Here were the world’s best players and worst actors--men who one minute would appear to be mortally injured because of an opposing team’s foul, only to recover miraculously the moment the referee saw things their way. Here was the comfort of seeing the world’s best get caught off sides or kick a ball 12 feet over the goal, even as one’s own does on a Saturday afternoon. Here was--dare we say it?--the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, experienced not just by teams but by entire nations.

Most Americans don’t find soccer, which is a low-scoring game, very exciting. The rest of the world does, and after watching the World Cup we now happily know why.