Last month I found myself peppering conversations with words like “equalizer,” “brilliant ball in,” and, of course, “gooooooooaalll…”

I had caught World Cup Fever.

 

Friends were shocked.  So was I.  I was never a jock.  In high school I had a membership to the YMCA.  I swam.  Alone.  For one year.  That was it.  When I tried to play basketball, I earned the nickname “The T.O.P. Man” (Tower Of Power) – sarcasm intended.

These days I do tune in to championship series – basketball, baseball, the Superbowl – find out who the underdog is, and root for that team. 

By rooting, of course, I mean smiling wryly and nodding ever so slightly between beers.

But this year I was all about the “Beautiful Game.”  Right now I’m on disc three of “Fifa World Cup Highlights, 1930 – 2002,” trying to keep the love going.  I used to catch glimpses of soccer while channel surfing, and, like fellow Offender Phil, thought, booooring.  But now it’s like I’ve just seen the image hidden in one of those Magic Eye squint-at-the-dots pictures. 

Now I become rapturous over little trick passes, and my adrenaline spikes unbearably during penalty shootouts.

So what happened between booooring and needing to be resuscitated from the living room floor before each corner kick? 

Full disclosure: I was born in Spain to a Spanish father.  So there was not even a question as to whether I would play soccer.  The only question was whether I would be a good player or a great one. 

Of course I was neither.  I quickly volunteered to play defender.  I didn’t want the pressure of having to score goals as a forward or the pressure of having to block them as goalie.  I was happy to lay low.  

And then, to my great shock, I made the all star team my first year, at six years old, because I was tall for my age (the future T.O.P. Man!)  and could kick the ball pretty hard.  Never mind that I couldn’t aim it.  In the AYSO (American Youth Soccer Organization), the slogan, left over from the hippie dippie 60’s, was

 

So I did.  And at age six, it was enough for me to kick it from our side of the field to theirs.  My team mates nicknamed me, unsarcastically, “Bigfoot.”   

But I didn’t really love the game.  I played for five more years until I finally had the nerve to tell my dad I didn’t want to do it anymore.

Flash forward three decades and I’m signing up my own eight year old son Gabriel to play the Beautiful Game.  He had seen kids playing on fields around town, and wanted to give it a shot.  Plus, unlike his father, he is a natural athlete: coordinated, confident, aggressive.  I was excited.  It surprised me how excited I was. 

I signed him up, but on his first day of practice, he got cold feet.  More than cold feet.  He was in tears.  We had missed the team’s first practice, so he was already embarrassed when we showed up at the second practice, plus he didn’t know any of the kids.  And there was another Gabriel already on the team, so the coach called him “Gabriel Number Two.”   He was miserable.

Even though he wanted to quit after that first practice, I didn’t let him.  I told him he had to make it at least to the end of one season before quitting (I think I used the “I already paid for your registration and uniform” excuse), and so he resigned himself to sticking it out.

The other kids were perfectly nice.  But most of them had already been playing a while, and if nothing else, knew the rules of the game and the names of the positions.

For the first few weeks, Gabriel would reluctantly take “the pitch” for practices and games, anxiously waiting to be subbed out.

And then it happened.  During the Wizards’ fourth game, the coach put Gabriel Number Two in at forward.  Right away I started yelling over and over from the sideline: “Get in the box!  Get in the box!” 

A stray pass headed toward the box.  After all that yelling and screaming, Gabriel had apparently been listening, and was actually in the box.  The ball deflected off a defender’s leg and rolled straight toward him.  He raced in with a hard right foot and shot the ball into the back corner of the net.  The goalie had no chance.

I jumped in the air.  I jumped up like a cheerleader.  I was bouncing and clapping.  Today there would be no mere wry smile.   I couldn’t help it, I just kept clapping and whooping. 

Decades after my own timid start, Gabriel came in to score the goal that I never did.  With a shy smile he ran back to the midfield line.  He pretended not to hear me yelling “Fantastic Gabriel!  Fantastic!”  Gabriel Number One didn’t look over at the sideline; today everyone knew which Gabriel the hooting and hollering was for.

I am prompted to write about all this because last Wednesday the famous Spanish club team Real Madrid (featuring four major players from the World Cup) played an exhibition match at Candlestick Park.  When I got word of the game, I bought really good tickets for me and Gabriel.  This was fate.  We had just watched Spain, forever the bridesmaid and never the bride, win its first World Cup, my son had become the soccer player I never was, and now our Spanish heros were here, in the flesh.  We were giddy.

It’s normally a half hour drive from our house to Candlestick, but not wanting to miss even the singing of the national anthems, we left two hours early.  I brought along a pen just in case we could get an autograph from Iker Casillas, Xabi Alonso or maybe Sergio Ramos.  I had the digital camera, blankets, and water bottles.  We left at 6:00.  By the time we got to the Candlestick parking lot, it was 8:15.  The game was already underway.  Traffic had been a nightmare.

I was grouchy.  I snapped at Gabriel not to talk to me until I had figured out how to get to will-call and pick up our tickets.

We could hear the roar of the crowd coming from the stadium.  People were running for the entrances.  The parking lot was a crowded mess – apparently 47,000 other people felt the same way about Real Madrid as we did – I took Gabriel’s hand and pulled him along.

Will-call was worse.  A mob.  The newspaper estimated there were 5000 people crowding the two open will-call windows. 

A city bus was surrounded by pissed off fans and couldn’t move.  Cops were trying to get people to disperse.  The crowd started chanting “Refund!  Refund!  Refund!”  I overheard people complaining that they had been waiting in the will-call line for an hour already, and hadn’t moved ten feet.

We quickly realized that if we got into the stadium at all, we’d be lucky to see the last five minutes of the game.  I was crushed.  What happened to our destiny?

Gabriel was the first to suggest we go home.  He had been such a good sport the whole time.   Even though prone to car sickness, he didn’t complain once during our bumper to bumper slog on the bridge, and he didn’t mind me pulling him through the mob.

Desperate, I walked up to an entrance with nothing more than a printout of my credit card receipt, hoping someone would take pity on a cute ten year old boy and his frazzled father, but there was nothing doing.   It took me a few minutes to accept that Gabriel was right, that we should get out of this mess and just head home.

We found our way back to the car. 

We made our way through desolate San Francisco streets.   This was an industrial part of town.  No one was out after dark.   It was quiet.  So were we.  Our adrenaline was subsiding, we were getting over our disappointment, and it was already a bit past Gabriel’s normal bed time. 

I had the classical radio station on, the volume turned low.

And then Gabriel turned to me and said, “Dad, it’s okay.  If I keep playing and working hard and getting better, when I get older, you can come and watch me play.”

I put my hand on his knee and smiled.  I told him it was already the thrill of my life to see him play.  Wonder if he knows I meant it.