#321 World Mug

The recent early exit of the US team from the World Cup underscores the indifference most Americans feel for soccer—what the rest of the world calls football. Americans are high-score fanatics and games like hockey and soccer suffer in the public consciousness from lack of reward syndrome. Americans are motivated by the score not the process, the destination not the journey. We hear ads all the time about some place or another being your “auto shop destination” or your “dinner house destination.” Forget that you may have the prettiest drive in the world getting there or the restaurant is enclosed in a park-like setting of stunning natural beauty, it’s your “steak destination” that sells the sizzle. Some folks like the hunt but most folks like the head on the wall. Like in baseball, America’s pastime, if you include the Caribbean, Japan and Korea. Remember how baseball is always dinkin with the height of the mound? Get it up too high and it’s a pitcher’s game. A pitcher’s game has all the excitement of soccer—the battle of minds, the tension of wills, the poetry of motion in the gentle nuances of the infield players adjusting their cups or the outfielders spitting seeds. Pitchers games are inherently more boring than even baseball itself. No wonder baseball fans find themselves drawn into endless references to Rainman-like statistics. That was the first time since 1893 that a man on second was tagged out by a first baseman crossing over to third to field a popped bunt when the pitcher tripped on his shoelace. Definitely definitely, can’t miss wheel of fortune. So my theory is, baseball is to us what soccer is to the rest of the world. We’ve already embraced one catatonically boring sport there’s simply no room in the human psyche to hold two. And bedsides, we’ve got Nascar. Who could possibly watch a ninety-minute game, where the Deff Leopard drummer has as much chance as anyone else, that battles to a scoreless tie when instead you can participate in the dizzying thrill of watching a bunch of drivers race around an oval? Over and over and over and, oh yeah, did I mention, over. Auto racing reached its pinnacle in the good old USA. Why? Look at the size of the ad space. With every car and driver decked out in more logos than a phone book how the hell couldn’t it survive? And the drivers, their iron will, their steely determination, their incredible left arm strength. Cause let’s face it, auto racing may have been invented in Europe but they screwed the whole thing up by treating it like a stupid bike race. Auto racers aren’t supposed to actually go anywhere. How many people are going to be able to watch that? As one wag put it, American auto racing is as excruciatingly simple to understand as a shampoo bottle, go fast, turn left, go fast, turn left. Rinse, repeat. But say what you will, it sure as hell beats glorified kickball.
America, ya gotta love it.