On the Weekend War, by Jeremy Wine.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
3:48 PM
A leathered man casually ambles about, clad in green jumpsuit, laying rubber-pelleted seed to invisible chickens. He wonders quietly to himself, summing the moments of his life to define his existence: church on Sundays, children and grandchildren born, the tragedies of loss, fears overcome and those that remain. Least on his mind are these most innocuous of duties, this obligatory trudge towards retirement, pension, and the dog days of domino-playing and watching the world go by, ultimately without him.
On a coolish, unassuming day, an assemblage of architects, financiers, technologists, and tradesman gather into that rarest of collections--a bonafide team. Donning their stained, white jerseys and mismatched shorts, sometimes ill-fitting, the Barnstonworth Rovers Metro side looking amongst themselves, furrowed brows, at the dutiful nine who had assembled and limbered up by game time. Like Titans forgiving Gods, hardened stalwarts Mike "Twinkletoes" Alexander and Aldo "The Spatial One" Morales would lend their indefatigable selves to form a fighting eleven.
Pre-game thoughts flitted about. Will this be the year of ascendency? Who will replace Sarge and Dirolf? Do cell phones give you ball cancer? And just like that the game was upon our heroes, facing ever-improving Galicia, who need no introduction after drawing with the Metro side last year, precipitating their fall from contenders to remainders. If Galicia's tactics remain true, it would be a 90 minute dare to outscore or be outscored.
Rovers defense would bend but not break, and before long Rowley would find the end of a nice passing sequence, scoring with his off-foot. 1-nil would bulge into 2-nil, again through Rowley, and again through his "suspect" left peg. To their credit, Galicia never wavered from their bodies-forward plan nor in spirit, but it would be Rovers on this remarkably in-synch day, scoring a third and a fourth, through Darrell "White Zorro" Crane and Gavin "Who is Joe Piscopo" Dick. Halftime, Rovers by a batch.
Galicia would tally one back just after the half, among muted protest from the Rovers as the ball recipient was an easy 4 feet offsides (The ref was otherwise stellar, to be honest). Dick would acquire his third and fourth of the day, embracing his hat+1, in and around a David "Muggers & Acquisitions" Bernfeld strike. Yes yes yes, all very well and good, but at 8-1, things would border on magical, Rudy-esque proportions, bringing hope and wonder to all Americans, and an improved crop yield to drought-stricken areas. Locusts, boils, water-to-blood stuff.
The air was crackling with static electricity, a portending of something impending--doom, perhaps, or a reversing of the magnetic poles, or perhaps the identity of Banksy was about to be unveiled. The world carried the smear of revolution at this very moment. Now let us consider history.
Though these stats are not officially kept, it is believed by some that your humble narrator carries with him a Cosmopolitan League career record for goals scored against not one's opposition. At a likely somewhere between 6 to 8 coolly, perfectly finished goals in the second best direction, a case could be made not only for own-goals in a career, but a negative-best goal personal goal differential when paired with eleven full years of kindly resisting scoring against the opponent. Equal to the wondrousness of the quality of the successful validations of our own keeper's subpar alertness, the impossible beauty of not finishing some gilt-edged chances to unreasonably harm the fortunes and morale of an opposing side are worthy of a kind of self-hating reverence on par with 10 Hail Marys and a forty-day fast. Someone, some day, would have to pay for summoning such hoodoo upon the world.
Amidst the peculiar atmosphere, a nondescript goal kick would be met aggressively by a madman bald man, not a minute after apologizing to Mike Alexandar for running up and down the pitch, often out of position, with an 8-1 lead. "This being my 12th year, I've never scored. On them, that is to say. I have to get forward." Finding the ball on foot, the aerodynamic, cursed individual guided the ball to a seeing-out-the-game-like-a-normal-person Okay "What are you doing anywhere near me" Obudulu, who would see, confusingly, the glint of sun off of a bald head moving like a spooked ostrich up the sideline. Out of little more than a sadistic curiosity, Obudulu would return the ball to an overly-advanced Wine, taking advantage of the full width of the pitch at a critical point in the match whence everybody ceased caring about what might happen.
Looking up for a cross recipient, there was none, because why would there be? We're up by 7 with 10 minutes to go. Given this license to go for goal, and thankfully before he could consider he was about to do just that, poor man's Danny Mills lashed his right foot, from nun-tight angle, actually, wait just a minute, on frame.
Like exiting the womb head first, there are two indelible moments in the most impactful times of a human life. The first is the "Possibility Threshold", from whence risk or opportunity reveals itself, suddenly. Virginities are threatened in such a manner. The second is the "Inevitability of Change", at which moment, the universe as you know it changes hue, and all you knew and trusted requires full-scale re-evaluation. The revelation of Santa Claus, realizing during one's first kiss there is no cut to commercial, visiting your father in jail for the first time are in evidence. Crossing both planes happens three or four times in the life of the most dramatic, and never, not once, for many.
As the blast from the right sailed past and over the 6' 4" goal steward, it was as if the Earth itself emitting the groan of an altered orbit, planetary in scale, and it would belittle the history-making to merely acknowledge the score change to 9-1. Fie on that! And lo, the score would settle on 9-2, with the aforementioned goal-scorer to blame for a shoddy clearance and a mistimed tackle, but these trifles are of no consequence. We know what we whiffed this day and was the unmistakable stench of glory.
There are those who know nothing of this, and for that they should be both pitied and embraced. This game of ours is played on fields and non-fields in the direst of conditions to the most-watched events by decade. While faraway announcers debate the impacts of Wayne Rooney vs. Fernando Torres' shocking misses, we are beset here in the United States with the whines and filibusters of those who declaim "There's not enough scoring". For this narrator, there need be only this goal, in this game, on this day, on those same rubber pellets, and all is right with the world. As they lay my body in the ground, or convert it to ash as the case may be, let them resurrect this day from whence I stood and said, "Today I scored."
And let those know ask, "For which team?"
"A thing like that."
-- Pete Campbell, of Mad Men
Our humblest and special thanks to Aldo, Mike, and MJ's fetal lucky charm.
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