It’s probably pretty clear that I don’t know too much about soccer.  It’s a sport that’s taken me awhile to enjoy.  From 1994 through 2002, I didn’t have much time for the World Cup – as in, I derided the sport every chance I could.  In 2006, I started to come around: I had a roommate who was a huge fan and we ended up watching some of the U.S. games as well as a large part of the head buttingly-good finale.  This year, I’ve become more than just a casual observer: I actually follow the results of many of the games and make an effort to learn something about the players.  I thought Landon Donovan’s goal on Wednesday was pretty amazing.  Clint Dempsey seems like a pretty cool dude.  I still wouldn’t call myself a fan, but I figure if I keep dipping my foot in the World Cup water, maybe I’ll actually cheer when a game comes on.

Well, not if pieces of drek like this keep popping up.  Bandwagon jumpers kind of piss me off.  Sappy sports articles written by Danielle Steel LeBatard kind of piss me off.  Combine those two things and you get an angry Duke.  Let’s rip this joint:

Did you see that? Did you call your friends? Did you hug strangers? Did you share?

No, I didn’t.  Eleven o’clock in the morning on a Wednesday is during business hours, so I was at work.  However, judging by the number of people who incessantly posted Facebook and Twitter updates, apparently, no one else was.  And who hugged a stranger, really?  What was this, V-Day?

There is nothing better in sports than patriotism. 

I disagree, winning is pretty awesome.  I look at my favorite teams and don’t really care what nationality they represent, I’m just happy when they win.  Isn’t America a melting pot anyway?  And I’m pretty sure if the Boston Red Sox played the Algerian Baseball Team, there’d be plenty of people pulling for Algeria. 

But hope is pretty close.

Nope, still think winning is way better.  I’ve been “hoping” for Jessica Simpson to stop by my apartment and take me back to Los Angeles with her, but I don’t think hope is gonna make that happen. 

And winning, too.

Ahh, there it is.  Although it does feel like you kind of shoe-horned it in there…

Over here, bars and offices erupted with joyous noise, and grown men wept.

I was in an office, it didn’t erupt.  People erupt in bars all the time, usually when ”Don’t Stop Believin’” comes on.  Grown men usually don’t cry, unless something really awful or great happens.  I’m not sure a sporting event qualifies as either.  And if you’re the type of person who is apt to cry at a televised sporting event on a Wednesday morning thousands of miles away, you have issues.  For instance, why aren’t you at work?

Most of life is not lived in this arena, of course. Most of life is bills and responsibilities and bosses and oil spills, and we need vacations from all that. But games, in moments like this one, allow us to exist and emote on a different and higher plane, living vicariously through that team’s bond, which can grow so large that it allows us to wrap even something as big as our entire country in something as small as a single flag.

It is why America spends so much money and invests so much more emotion on sports — to escape, to vacation from life in this magical paradise. How often does anything outside of sports make you scream at a television or dance around your couch or jump up and down? Think about that for a second. You scream if you win the lottery or dance when your children are born. But you do it all the time in sports, from quarter to quarter, game to game, season to season, with something that isn’t even really yours. Donovan won the lottery Wednesday, not us. Donovan’s teammates are his joyous family, not us. But that’s the beauty of sports in moments like this: It can make all things feel so much larger, turning “us” into “U.S.”

I forgot to mention at the top that it’s better to read this with “Born in the USA” playing in the background.  And while you’re at it, try to put on the opening scene from “Saving Private Ryan,” too.  Dammit, gettin’ a little dusty in here!

This tournament was about to be a disaster for American soccer (not just this team but this movement), and its endless quest to lure the ADHD sports fan who wants more florescent scoring.

A “disaster?”  Yeah, the U.S. team didn’t score a goal, but they didn’t lose a match (soccer lingo!), either.  Plus, they managed a draw (whoa, two in one paragraph!) with one of the best teams in the tournament.  I’m not a huge fan of the game, but this seems like a pretty good stepping stone to me…

After so much boredom and 0-0, against the odds and the refs and the other countries, keeper Tim Howard threw the ball from his own box, and the panicked and desperate American team blurred down the field, and the game was broken open like a heart loving for the first time.

When the epitaph for newspaper sports writing is written, this sentence will be a part of it.  I don’t know what’s worse: the diabetic coma-inducing description, the “eruption” of commas, or the crappy sentence structure. 

From one second to the other, we went from being eliminated from the world’s largest tournament to being one of only 16 countries promised more life just like this.

I’m learning to like soccer.  I have a lot of respect for its players, organizations and its fans.  But it’s people like LeBatard who make me not want to like it.  You have no idea what you’re talking about and neither do I.  So let’s do each other a favor, keep our mouths shut and let the real pros handle this thing.

We are just about three days away from the second-most important horse race in the United States.  Yes, it’s the 135th Preakness Stakes, and just in case you were hanging out in lovely Baltimore, MD this weekend and wanted to take in some racing, be forewarned, it might get messy.  Come along with me as we get ready for Baltimore’s Mardi Gras (what, you thought I was going to talk about the actual race?):
 

For Jamie Myers, going to the Preakness and letting loose on the infield is a rite of passage, a youthful, bawdy tradition that, for better or worse, will always remind him of growing up in Baltimore.

Oh man, I really hope Jamie doesn’t have a real job.  That’s a bad start.  Most places don’t like the word “bawdy” associated with anything.  And since it’s a word that probably hasn’t been used in a conversation between Baltimoreans this century, you know it’s really bad.
 

There are real photos and those just in his mind of the mind-boggling consumption [sic], the young women lifting their T-shirts, the epic carousing. He remembers that time when he and his buddies showed up outside Pimlico at 6 a.m. with two cases of beer, but by the time the gates opened at 9, they’d already drained it.

 
I think it’s pretty clear at this point Jamie is probably just your regular Federal Hill brah who slings beers at the local bar.  “Yo, Hoyt, gotta come to Preakness, there’s going to be some epic carousing!”  He can’t possibly have a job that requires any kind of decorum.  Furthermore, how long has horse racing been a place where you drink beers at 6am and see girls popping their tops like it’s Spring Break in Cancun?  Very brahsome.
 

Though he’s skipped it for a couple of years, the 34-year-old private school administrator…

 
No, brah! Nooooooooooo!!!!
 

Race officials have bent over backward to lure back revelers who abandoned the Preakness last year with the start of the BYOB ban. Badly needing them back, organizers brushed aside questions of taste and propriety to let young folks know that if they want debauchery, the Preakness is where they’ll find it. They announced cheaper tickets, hipper bands and a bikini contest. They broadcast a risque ad campaign urging former race-goers to come back and “Get Your Preak On.” They sent pretty girls out to hot spots in skimpy “Preak On” tank tops to cajole bar flies into buying tickets. And perhaps most vitally, they debuted a bottomless $20 mug of beer.

 
Translation: “Loyal booze hounds, we tried to clean things up.  We wanted to discourage alcohol abuse and make it a more family-friendly environment.  We failed.  We’re desperate.  We’re broke.  We’re whores.  Come to Preakness and feel free to drink yourself stupid on cheap beer.  Mouthbreathers welcome.”  What could go wrong?
 

Chris Glisson heard the call. They had him at bottomless beer.

 
At least he’s honest.  Soon to be unemployed with Jamie, but honest.
 

The 28-year-old tech worker who lives in Fells Point is giving the race another chance, mainly because with all the talk of beer and babes, it sounds like the Preakness might have rediscovered its boozy fundamentals.

 
Well, he’s a “tech worker,” so there’s one guy who’s probably going to be doing a lot more gawking than fighting — that’s a good sign.  P.S. I’d pay good money to hear Jay Bilas or Mel Kiper Jr. refer to a player’s “boozy fundamentals” during a draft broadcast.  Somebody send this to Keith Law, I think he’d do it.
 

Glisson created an invitation of sorts on Facebook, hoping he can get his friends to return, too.

 
Offffffff course he did. 
 

“It’s coming back,” he says of the Preakness. “In a way.”

 
Until the race goes broke and gets moved to a nicer track next year…  Or someone gets drunk and dies trying to steal a horse…  In that “way,” yes, it is coming back.
 

He thought the sheer possibility alone of the spectacle one might see worth the price of admission. “Where else do you go at 9 a.m. and there’s already a line of beer cans on the ground?” he says.

 
Just off the top of my head: Cancun, Key West, Acapulco, Panama City, Lake Havasu, every college football stadium on Saturdays in the fall and Keifer Sutherland’s house…   
 

A little Sodom. Perhaps a sprinkle of Gomorrah.

 
We’re talking about Baltimore, right?  I think you mean, “A little smack.  Perhaps a sprinkle of gonorrhea.”
 

“I don’t want this turning into a Kentucky Derby thing with everyone laidback and sipping cocktails — that’s not Baltimore,” he says. “Preakness is a totally unique Baltimore thing. There’s nothing like it.”

 
Yes, there is.  It’s called “Spring Break” and it happens every year in multiple cities all over the country.  And the only unique thing about it being in Baltimore is that unlike every other party, it will never go away, no matter how much penicillin you take. 
 
In other words, I’ll be there.

"Open bar, dude!"

Much to Bud Selig’s dismay, yesterday, the Washington Redskins took a really old-looking Donovan McNabb and paraded him before their belabored fanbase (Anybody else notice the moustache and receding hairline?  Maybe Shanahan and Bruce Allen should have insisted upon a face-to-face before they pulled the trigger on a trade for a guy who Deadspin referred to as ”Carl Winslow”).  Fans were excited duped enough to play “arts and crafts” with old Heath Shuler jerseys, Joe Theismann took NFL Analyst Hyperbole to new levels, and the team found itself back where it usually is this time of year: spending wildly on older players who have seen better days.  Shocker.  Anyway, the Redskins made a big deal about it.  Donovan talked a lot like a scorned ex-boyfriend.  Here’s the Redskin fantasy.  Below that is the reality. 

The quarterback holding the burgundy No. 5 Washington Redskins jersey was Donovan McNabb. From everything that was said, it might have been simpler to just go ahead and call him John Elway II.

The six-time Pro Bowl star was formally introduced Tuesday at Redskins Park. All things being equal, he would rather be preparing for a 12th season with the Philadelphia Eagles, but an Easter Sunday trade between NFC East rivals has opened what he called “a new chapter in the book of Donovan.”

“I’ve always believed in finishing where you started,” McNabb said. “I think there’s a lot to be said with that. Not a lot of quarterbacks in this league are able to do that these days. Sometimes change is better. Sometimes you’re forced into change. I would have loved to [stay in Philadelphia], but it didn’t happen.”

Instead, he is with the Redskins and new coach Mike Shanahan, and both went to great lengths to say that trading two draft picks for a 33-year-old quarterback with a few nicks is a solid investment.

“I’m turning 34 this year,” McNabb said. “And [Shanahan] finished John’s career with two Super Bowls. Hopefully I can continue to follow behind that… People were saying John Elway should retire,” Shanahan said, “until he won the Super Bowl.”

Before the pursuit of such lofty goals, there were the necessary reflections and thank yous from McNabb to Philadelphia. Most of his words for his former team and city were upbeat and gracious — “I felt I was treated fair” — with maybe a slight dig or two thrown in.  Surprisingly, McNabb said he has spoken “not much” about the trade with Andy Reid, his coach for his entire tenure with the Eagles. He portrayed himself as fallout from a Philadelphia youth movement.

“They’re [Philadelphia] rebuilding, and they’re going young,” McNabb said. “So I never knew 33 years old was old, but I guess I’m too old.”