THE GUYS AND THE GAME
It's 7:30 on Wednesday night in late November. The night is cool enough that I can see my breath. Earlier in the day it rained, but for the moment the clouds overhead have broken and an occasional star is visible as they are driven northward by the steady south wind. That's mostly the way it is. I park my car next to the tennis court at Kenilworth Park, and scan the nearby vehicles to see who else is here. I can see Doug's truck and Peter's and Don's van. Enough that there's a reason to get out.
I pop my trunk open and walk around to the back of the car. It's definitely a night that requires cleats. I briefly wish I'd brought my warmups, but shrug the thought off. Once we're moving I don't notice the cold. I grab the cleats, stiff with cold and still damp from last week, and walk up to the fence that separates the tennis court from the small grass field.
That's the way it's mostly been for twenty years. Wednesday nights and soccer practice. Unless it's a week we have a game. Or if the snow's too bad to drive. Or if Christmas or Fourth of July falls on a Wednesday. One by one, the guys show up, lace up their boots, step onto the muddy patch of grass where the lights from the tennis court give us marginal visibility, and knock the ball around until 9pm. Or until 'last goal'.
We rarely quit at nine because as soon as someone calls "Last goal!" our accuracy declines and it takes forever to slot a ball between the orange cones we use at a height considered low enough to count. Alternately, an early and undeserved "last goal" scored rouses a chorus of derision from the side which didn't score and requires further play in search of a quality shot. When an acceptable goal is scored, a majority of the crew heads off to the pub for beer. In recent years, the pub has been Mickey Finn's on Woodstock. Wednesday night pints of good beer are only $ 2.00 and there's no smoking. Reasons enough to make it our destination.
The park at Kenilworth isn't really a soccer field. It's just a wide flat space, but the lights from the tennis court make it playable at night in the winter, and that's important. There are few venues with lights in the Portland area and they all cost money or are used by others. When we first started practices, we were at Colonel Sumner park at 20th and Belmont. The layout there is similar. However, sometime in the Nineties, the City started its great sewer upgrade project, and Colonel Sumner ended up with a giant hole and anklebreaking ruts.
Calling what we do practice is a little misleading. We don't do drills. We really do what kids have done forever on playgrounds and sandlots. We kick a ball around for a little bit, then choose up sides, darks and lights, and we scrimmage. At the east end of our pitch the elevation of the park changes, and a maintenance and restroom structure provides a backstop for our shots. At the west end of the pitch, a variety of trees and shrubs provides a framework on which a soccer net can be tied so as to stop balls heading for the street. Some balls anyway. The orange cone goals, a nominal four feet or so wide, provide the targets.
On a good night, eight to ten guys will show. On an off night, we'll only have four. On a bad night, we'll have sixteen or more. With sixteen guys in that small space, the play degenerates into ping pong and, with a couple of physically aggressive players on the field, the risk of injuries goes up.
With only four guys, there are few of the team interactions that make soccer wonderful and the pace is relentless. When there are five players a side, the passing combinations and interactions between players are complex enough that soccer is possible. The mind is engaged and the physical workout is satisfying.
I said we do what kids do. The funny thing is that most of us are long past being kids. Some of us have grandkids. I find myself, in my fifties, puzzling over how I got to be an "old guy" with such an addiction to this form of jock behavior. I find myself surprised and grateful. I gave up on sports when I was in grade school. For starters, I wasn't very good at them. And I found myself at odds with many of the kids who were. I was a fat kid with glasses and no particular abilities. I played CYO football and Little League and one miserable season of basketball. I was often the butt of taunting from the kids who wanted to insure they weren't the focus of attention. Flash forward a dozen years and I was in my mid-Twenties and no longer a fat kid, but still an ardent non-participant in sports. In fact, I was pretty dismissive of sports and athletes.
At the beginning of summer 1975 something new came to Portland though. The Portland Timbers, a new franchise in the NASL, brought a sport called soccer to the city. I knew almost nothing about the soccer except that it was played in England and I was nothing if not an Anglophile. There may have been other reasons too, but I've forgotten them. We went to that first game between Portland and the Seattle Sounders. Portland won. It rained but that didn't seem to matter to the game. And the majority of the players were solid and confident Brits who came from clubs like Notts Forest and smiled and answered questions on camera with thick accents. I was hooked. I was impressed that these guys would go out on the field, handle the ball deftly without using their hands, and would battle fiercely without the gear that American football required as battle armor.
We went to game after game. By the second year we were season ticket holders. I started watching English and German football on OPB television. I came to recognize the nuanced commentary of Toby Charles. I liked being involved with something which was different than what everyone else was doing. It wasn't long before I bought a soccer ball. And a cheap pair of Adidas boots. And started reading about how to acquire soccer skills.
We lived in Northeast Portland and I began taking my ball and my boots and trotting to a nearby park where I would run back and forth practicing dribbling. And kick the ball from where I stood as far as I could and then run to it and kick it back the other way. I remembered to practice kicking with both feet. sometimes I would kick the ball at a nearby concrete wall and practice trapping it when it bounced back. Occasionally people would stop and stare. I didn't mind. I figured they probably had no idea what I was doing.
I liked the exercise as well. I had been a smoker since my early teens and I was beginning to be scared of the health consequences, not enough to quit, of course. But the exercise was a counterbalance. One day a guy came through the park and asked if he could 'kick it around". He hadn't played soccer before either. We kicked it back and forth until he had to leave and I realized that soccer felt good as a social activity too.
In late spring of 1977, the Portland Park Bureau put out an announcement that they would be forming a summer adult recreational league in response to the substantial interest which the Timbers had evoked. They invited interested men and women to come to Delta Park where teams would be formed and soccer activities would be offered. I went. I was a little scared because I didn't know what to expect, but I knew I had run around in the park with the ball by myself long enough.
When the day arrived, there were hundreds of people at Delta Park. One of the exercises involved splitting the entire crowd into two large groups and throwing twenty or so balls into the space between them. The two sides ran together like the armies in an ancient movie spectacle and balls bounced and shins crashed. It was chaos.
The ultimate purpose of the day was to divide people into teams. Many local companies had already agreed to sponsor teams and had already signed their employees and friends. That left those of us who were unaffiliated. Glenn O'Dell, a rugged engineer and partner in the firm Seton Johnson O'Dell, had agreed to sponsor a team to be filled with people like me.
And so it was that I found myself "signed on" to my first side, the team which began play under the name SJO Irregulars. One of the guys had a connection with Jantzen, and so our first jerseys were orange polo shirts with white collars and yellow bars on the sleeves. No numbers. Most of us had never played soccer before. We made it through that summer recreational season and I don't remember that we won a single game. We were plucky though. We all liked the game.
That fall, we decided we hadn't yet had enough and signed up to play in the Men's League. At that time, I knew that this shadowy league existed which I envisioned as being made up mostly of teams of foreign-born players who were, if not the caliber of the Timbers, at least tough and experienced. They had names like Columbia Wanderers, Germania, St. Pat's, and the Americans. We were going to be tested.
Glenn brought in John Harlan, English and quick, and attorney, Bob Stout, who ended up playing goal for us. A young guy named Mike Calder who'd just graduated from OSU signed on. Mike was quick and athletic. Also joining up was Mark Dillon who came to the game, I think, for reasons similar to mine. And Ernie who was probably in his fifties. He was an American who had played before and, though slow, was smart. I recruited my younger brother, Brian, and his friend Pat McKernan. They were both athletic and young. A Mexican named Jose, quiet, friendly and skilled joined us as did three Saudis, Big and Little Mohammed and Adnan. They were also skilled players but tended to form an Arabian triumvirate on the field. This was how the team began.
I look back on the early photo from that period and am struck by how quickly the things I love about soccer came to the front. The international character of football is one, knowing that you can walk onto any pitch in the world and play the game whether you even know the language. I've kicked the ball around in different countries and against teams from different countries in the past quarter century. Soccer is common ground. And you get respect for your game not for where you come from or who you are off the pitch. I like the leveling that soccer provides. When you get down on the field with your gear, all the usual social trappings are gone. I like the physicality of soccer.
I have run and dribbled, sprinted and kicked and challenged for the ball and, when I do something well, I feel good. The elements of soccer are simple, but execution isn't easy. I like the mental element of soccer at least as much. Playing well requires more than athletic skills. Soccer at its best evokes chess in that anticipation of moves beyond the present moment is the difference between "the game" and chaos. I like the fact that I'm older and slower, but in some ways I'm still getting better at the game.
So it is that my Wednesday nights, unless I have an unavoidable conflict, are reserved for The Game. I look forward to the mud or the grass depending on the season. I look forward to the laughter and kidding with the arrival of the players, some of whom have been coming like me since back in the Seventies. Some are new. Sometimes people show up off the street. Some stay and become part of the crew. Some move on. The ones who stay, in my opinion, do so because they share qualities that have kept this going for so long. Not just going, but growing. We started out with one team, and now have an entire club, FC77, fielding five teams of different ages and levels of skill.
Wednesday nights are a mixed stew from those five teams and other connections. We have wives and partners who play soccer and sometimes show up. We have children who weren't born when we started playing this game and are now well-coached young athletes with speed and soccer skills I've never had. And there is the core group of men who come regularly for reasons that are probably much like mine. Part of them come from my team, Old Nick's, Some of them from other teams. But they're all part of that select group, The Guys.
After so many years, I find myself with a crew of good friends on these muddy fields. Solid friends who know me pretty well for who I am. They are the friendships of my life. That was not at all what I expected when I got my first soccer ball back in 1977. I didn't have any idea of playing soccer until I couldn't physically do it anymore. I got lucky. I've had both the gift of The Game and the gift of The Guys . When I think of my children, I hope that they are as lucky in their lives. That they find some activity which makes them rich, not in money but in living.
It's 7:30 on Wednesday night in late November. The night is cool enough that I can see my breath. Earlier in the day it rained, but for the moment the clouds overhead have broken and an occasional star is visible as they are driven northward by the steady south wind. That's mostly the way it is. I park my car next to the tennis court at Kenilworth Park, and scan the nearby vehicles to see who else is here. I can see Doug's truck and Peter's and Don's van. Enough that there's a reason to get out.
I pop my trunk open and walk around to the back of the car. It's definitely a night that requires cleats. I briefly wish I'd brought my warmups, but shrug the thought off. Once we're moving I don't notice the cold. I grab the cleats, stiff with cold and still damp from last week, and walk up to the fence that separates the tennis court from the small grass field.
That's the way it's mostly been for twenty years. Wednesday nights and soccer practice. Unless it's a week we have a game. Or if the snow's too bad to drive. Or if Christmas or Fourth of July falls on a Wednesday. One by one, the guys show up, lace up their boots, step onto the muddy patch of grass where the lights from the tennis court give us marginal visibility, and knock the ball around until 9pm. Or until 'last goal'.
We rarely quit at nine because as soon as someone calls "Last goal!" our accuracy declines and it takes forever to slot a ball between the orange cones we use at a height considered low enough to count. Alternately, an early and undeserved "last goal" scored rouses a chorus of derision from the side which didn't score and requires further play in search of a quality shot. When an acceptable goal is scored, a majority of the crew heads off to the pub for beer. In recent years, the pub has been Mickey Finn's on Woodstock. Wednesday night pints of good beer are only $ 2.00 and there's no smoking. Reasons enough to make it our destination.
The park at Kenilworth isn't really a soccer field. It's just a wide flat space, but the lights from the tennis court make it playable at night in the winter, and that's important. There are few venues with lights in the Portland area and they all cost money or are used by others. When we first started practices, we were at Colonel Sumner park at 20th and Belmont. The layout there is similar. However, sometime in the Nineties, the City started its great sewer upgrade project, and Colonel Sumner ended up with a giant hole and anklebreaking ruts.
Calling what we do practice is a little misleading. We don't do drills. We really do what kids have done forever on playgrounds and sandlots. We kick a ball around for a little bit, then choose up sides, darks and lights, and we scrimmage. At the east end of our pitch the elevation of the park changes, and a maintenance and restroom structure provides a backstop for our shots. At the west end of the pitch, a variety of trees and shrubs provides a framework on which a soccer net can be tied so as to stop balls heading for the street. Some balls anyway. The orange cone goals, a nominal four feet or so wide, provide the targets.
On a good night, eight to ten guys will show. On an off night, we'll only have four. On a bad night, we'll have sixteen or more. With sixteen guys in that small space, the play degenerates into ping pong and, with a couple of physically aggressive players on the field, the risk of injuries goes up.
With only four guys, there are few of the team interactions that make soccer wonderful and the pace is relentless. When there are five players a side, the passing combinations and interactions between players are complex enough that soccer is possible. The mind is engaged and the physical workout is satisfying.
I said we do what kids do. The funny thing is that most of us are long past being kids. Some of us have grandkids. I find myself, in my fifties, puzzling over how I got to be an "old guy" with such an addiction to this form of jock behavior. I find myself surprised and grateful. I gave up on sports when I was in grade school. For starters, I wasn't very good at them. And I found myself at odds with many of the kids who were. I was a fat kid with glasses and no particular abilities. I played CYO football and Little League and one miserable season of basketball. I was often the butt of taunting from the kids who wanted to insure they weren't the focus of attention. Flash forward a dozen years and I was in my mid-Twenties and no longer a fat kid, but still an ardent non-participant in sports. In fact, I was pretty dismissive of sports and athletes.
At the beginning of summer 1975 something new came to Portland though. The Portland Timbers, a new franchise in the NASL, brought a sport called soccer to the city. I knew almost nothing about the soccer except that it was played in England and I was nothing if not an Anglophile. There may have been other reasons too, but I've forgotten them. We went to that first game between Portland and the Seattle Sounders. Portland won. It rained but that didn't seem to matter to the game. And the majority of the players were solid and confident Brits who came from clubs like Notts Forest and smiled and answered questions on camera with thick accents. I was hooked. I was impressed that these guys would go out on the field, handle the ball deftly without using their hands, and would battle fiercely without the gear that American football required as battle armor.
We went to game after game. By the second year we were season ticket holders. I started watching English and German football on OPB television. I came to recognize the nuanced commentary of Toby Charles. I liked being involved with something which was different than what everyone else was doing. It wasn't long before I bought a soccer ball. And a cheap pair of Adidas boots. And started reading about how to acquire soccer skills.
We lived in Northeast Portland and I began taking my ball and my boots and trotting to a nearby park where I would run back and forth practicing dribbling. And kick the ball from where I stood as far as I could and then run to it and kick it back the other way. I remembered to practice kicking with both feet. sometimes I would kick the ball at a nearby concrete wall and practice trapping it when it bounced back. Occasionally people would stop and stare. I didn't mind. I figured they probably had no idea what I was doing.
I liked the exercise as well. I had been a smoker since my early teens and I was beginning to be scared of the health consequences, not enough to quit, of course. But the exercise was a counterbalance. One day a guy came through the park and asked if he could 'kick it around". He hadn't played soccer before either. We kicked it back and forth until he had to leave and I realized that soccer felt good as a social activity too.
In late spring of 1977, the Portland Park Bureau put out an announcement that they would be forming a summer adult recreational league in response to the substantial interest which the Timbers had evoked. They invited interested men and women to come to Delta Park where teams would be formed and soccer activities would be offered. I went. I was a little scared because I didn't know what to expect, but I knew I had run around in the park with the ball by myself long enough.
When the day arrived, there were hundreds of people at Delta Park. One of the exercises involved splitting the entire crowd into two large groups and throwing twenty or so balls into the space between them. The two sides ran together like the armies in an ancient movie spectacle and balls bounced and shins crashed. It was chaos.
The ultimate purpose of the day was to divide people into teams. Many local companies had already agreed to sponsor teams and had already signed their employees and friends. That left those of us who were unaffiliated. Glenn O'Dell, a rugged engineer and partner in the firm Seton Johnson O'Dell, had agreed to sponsor a team to be filled with people like me.
And so it was that I found myself "signed on" to my first side, the team which began play under the name SJO Irregulars. One of the guys had a connection with Jantzen, and so our first jerseys were orange polo shirts with white collars and yellow bars on the sleeves. No numbers. Most of us had never played soccer before. We made it through that summer recreational season and I don't remember that we won a single game. We were plucky though. We all liked the game.
That fall, we decided we hadn't yet had enough and signed up to play in the Men's League. At that time, I knew that this shadowy league existed which I envisioned as being made up mostly of teams of foreign-born players who were, if not the caliber of the Timbers, at least tough and experienced. They had names like Columbia Wanderers, Germania, St. Pat's, and the Americans. We were going to be tested.
Glenn brought in John Harlan, English and quick, and attorney, Bob Stout, who ended up playing goal for us. A young guy named Mike Calder who'd just graduated from OSU signed on. Mike was quick and athletic. Also joining up was Mark Dillon who came to the game, I think, for reasons similar to mine. And Ernie who was probably in his fifties. He was an American who had played before and, though slow, was smart. I recruited my younger brother, Brian, and his friend Pat McKernan. They were both athletic and young. A Mexican named Jose, quiet, friendly and skilled joined us as did three Saudis, Big and Little Mohammed and Adnan. They were also skilled players but tended to form an Arabian triumvirate on the field. This was how the team began.
I look back on the early photo from that period and am struck by how quickly the things I love about soccer came to the front. The international character of football is one, knowing that you can walk onto any pitch in the world and play the game whether you even know the language. I've kicked the ball around in different countries and against teams from different countries in the past quarter century. Soccer is common ground. And you get respect for your game not for where you come from or who you are off the pitch. I like the leveling that soccer provides. When you get down on the field with your gear, all the usual social trappings are gone. I like the physicality of soccer.
I have run and dribbled, sprinted and kicked and challenged for the ball and, when I do something well, I feel good. The elements of soccer are simple, but execution isn't easy. I like the mental element of soccer at least as much. Playing well requires more than athletic skills. Soccer at its best evokes chess in that anticipation of moves beyond the present moment is the difference between "the game" and chaos. I like the fact that I'm older and slower, but in some ways I'm still getting better at the game.
So it is that my Wednesday nights, unless I have an unavoidable conflict, are reserved for The Game. I look forward to the mud or the grass depending on the season. I look forward to the laughter and kidding with the arrival of the players, some of whom have been coming like me since back in the Seventies. Some are new. Sometimes people show up off the street. Some stay and become part of the crew. Some move on. The ones who stay, in my opinion, do so because they share qualities that have kept this going for so long. Not just going, but growing. We started out with one team, and now have an entire club, FC77, fielding five teams of different ages and levels of skill.
Wednesday nights are a mixed stew from those five teams and other connections. We have wives and partners who play soccer and sometimes show up. We have children who weren't born when we started playing this game and are now well-coached young athletes with speed and soccer skills I've never had. And there is the core group of men who come regularly for reasons that are probably much like mine. Part of them come from my team, Old Nick's, Some of them from other teams. But they're all part of that select group, The Guys.
After so many years, I find myself with a crew of good friends on these muddy fields. Solid friends who know me pretty well for who I am. They are the friendships of my life. That was not at all what I expected when I got my first soccer ball back in 1977. I didn't have any idea of playing soccer until I couldn't physically do it anymore. I got lucky. I've had both the gift of The Game and the gift of The Guys . When I think of my children, I hope that they are as lucky in their lives. That they find some activity which makes them rich, not in money but in living.
Comments