Back in late December 2001, after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan held its first soccer match in 5 years.
No I didn’t have tickets. According to the news reports, it was a makeshift event, put together probably for no other reason than to let the people breathe for the first time in a long, long while. Here a team of US Army GIs was assembled to play 11 rag tag Afghan footballers going as “Kabul United”.
The stadium could hold 20,000, yet 40,000 showed up.
Kabul Stadium used to stage executions every Friday, most carried out with a Kalashnikov at the half line. This time no executions, just an uneven dirt field fit for of 22 players ready to kick off in front of a lot of fans. Supposedly, Kabul Stadium could hold 20,000 spectators. Yet 40,000 showed up.
As a huge fan of both sports and the free world, this was one of those moments that made me whimper with emotion, almost cry, like a sixteen year old girl watching a Julia Roberts flick.
Love for sport is a shared addiction. Sport is one of those things, like many of Life’s past times that you look forward to every day. For some it might be getting up at the crack of dawn to hunt quail. For others it is a slow-paced chess game by the breezes of Lake Michigan.
While for some, spectating is not just watching a game played by others, but participatory activity. This goes for any good crowd, one comforted at a baseball park in America or another at a soccer match in the poorest of nations.
I remember as a typically poor twenty something hearing some of my smoker friends tell me about the shared addiction concept.
Specifically that, if you smoke, not only is it not rude, but it is no sweat to bum a smoke off another person bearing cigs. Common as a way to make acquaintances, your generous host would only expect this of you and later return the favor. Moreover, you would share a certain camaraderie and enjoy the experience together like a holy sacrament.
My gut tells me that being a sports fan no different. Sure, sports can be a generic first step in a conversation like talking about the weather. But sports talk is, most of the time, a topic warmer than Florida.
Addictions sometimes become abusive...I think about the first time I took my kid to a Cubs game, and how it stirred up conversations for weeks. Everyone wanted to get the play by play of our kid’s sacramental birth rite. Everybody wanted to see pics.
As we left the stadium with kiddo in stroller, I picked him up a souvenir Cubs ball. One block later we walked by a typical Wrigleyville open air sports bar, one with the bouncers hanging out front. The big bouncer looked at my kid holding the ball and said, “Nice!”
It must not have occurred to bouncer boy that my 3 year old didn’t actually catch a pop up or pick off a ball in-play, Steve Bartman style. But that didn’t matter, it was the enthusiasm shared at that moment that counted.
But like anything, sometimes we can go too far. Thinking about “addiction” in the American context, it is a word that usually comes with baggage. An addiction is something that you try to shake…something that you don’t want if you know what’s good for you.
Right? Just ask a Cubs fan.
After Christmas one year I was with extended family at Universal Theme Park in Orlando. I saw this short, stocky old orange haired woman wearing a Dutch soccer jersey. She saw me curiously scoping to view the logo on her shirt and said, “Feyenoord! [which is the name of the club]… I’m Dutch! Rotterdam!”
One time my turnout to watch the football match got me invited to a wedding. Of course I went.
I wasn’t trying to make conversation, really, though she was. She then showed me every sport-related tattoo she had, all of them the same actually. There, then, a red encircled letter F on her shoulder, one on her other shoulder, then her calf, and her tailbone. I was hoping her pants wouldn't drop to show me the others.
I’ve been told that acquiring tattoos is also a common addiction. For this strange lady, it was a dose of both. But most of us don’t take our shared addiction for sport this far per se. Most of us are generous with it in the best of ways.
With fellow adult sports fans I’ve used a variant of this bumming-a-smoke tactic more than a few times and it’s worked out well. Out of the blue, you might ask a stranger about a score. Or the Michael Vick dog-fighting controversy. Sports banter works well not only for killing boredom at the airports, but for breaking the ice.
I’ve even forged some long term friendships starting at the tail end of a comment about last night’s game. One time my turnout to watch the Arsenal/Chelsea match got me invited to a wedding. (Of course I went.) But, sports camaraderie can sometimes be softer, just as a courteous nod.
Shania Twain used to start her concerts in every city with that city's key sports club on her fine figure. Visiting big towns with split team allegiances, a trip like London's visit would bring out an England rugby shirt, no local teams.
Visiting New Jersey she poshed a Nets shirt to mitigate the controversial pick between Jersey’s other sports teams, the Giants and the Jets (ha ha). In Moline, Illinois, where farming is a sport, Shania wore a John Deere shirt. (I’m not kidding.)
Similarly, about a decade ago I went to the House of Blues in Chicago to check out the final tour of A Tribe Called Quest, the Queens NY rap trio who have sold millions of records with strong beats and a library of sports references.
HoB is a great place to see a show and they could have started the usual boastful rap act. Instead they kicked off with the sounds of Dusty Springfield and stepped casually on stage one at a time wearing Chicago Black Hawks jerseys.
I couldn't help but see this as anything other than a huge gesture of respect to the fans and people of Chicago. For whatever reason, this meant a lot to me.
Certainly these guys, like most men…kids in a candy shop, could have just been stocking up like any sports addict also suffering from life as a shopaholic. But at this moment in time, I think the trio on stage were just sharing the love, and the drug as any other good fellow addict would do.
Frye's new blog is up at MySportsComplex.Blogspot.com, as well as on Facebook, and Twitter. Updates pending release from rehab.
