On the road, again

I got a call early Friday, "want to go the Iowa?"

A friend works as a journalist in New York, and I never say no to Iowa. He needed video coverage, but my new Hi-Def camera is packaged and sitting in an artists studio in Los Angeles, waiting for an interview that will happen next month, it's a long story that I am not even sure how to tell.

Suffice to say, I took off with an older standard definition camera, flew to the Midwest and checked into a hotel and sat.

In Des Moines a million years ago I was sitting in a hotel room when I decided there was a woman in Seattle that I just had to marry. It was a wise decision in retrospect because it ended with three wonderful children, it also ended in divorce. Children good, divorce, not so much.

Over the past few weeks of intense travel and equally intense interaction with friends and disease I have come to an understanding. People are filled with both love and forgiving, as am I. This was news to me, it might not be to you, but for me, it was and is.

I played college soccer in the Midwest a long time ago, there was only one other player who liked to play physical, oh fuck it, he and I both liked to play dirty. If you were stupid enough to try and score on our side of the field you might score, and when I say you might score, I mean it was doubtful you would score, but let's pretend you scored, you paid a dear price for scoring. In fact, Roberto and I made sure that any player dumb enough to bring the ball down our side of the field paid a price for even entering our zone, in both intimidation and ankle pain. For that I am kind of proud. We did not cheat mind you, we played rough and tough and for the most part we played legal. Neither of us ever received a red card, which is the worst penalty available to a soccer player. Yellow cards? Yes, we got a couple of those, each.

Roberto was from Columbia, I was from Southern California. I was coming off a season of playing in a men's league in Los Angeles, populated by ruthless Mexican players who cheated, kicked and beat you in any way possible. It was a glorious way to play soccer, at least for me. The nice thing about the Mexican players was they would do almost anything during the game, and then, at the end, we all had beers and laughed and kicked the ball around and chatted. Roberto came from an equally agressive outlook when it came to playing the game. We both looked at it as a way to play, it was nothing personal, our goal was to not permit offensive players to score goals, pretty simple actually. We played for a Midwest team populated by dumb plump farm boys who had no real soccer skills and were equally untalented when it came to closing off a teams scorers. Roberto and I were the only people on the team willing to play the sort of buzzing and dangerous defense that could stop an all American player, and that is exactly what we did when we played Notre Dame.

Notre Dame back in those days, even now, was known more for a Football and Basketball program, but they still had athletes in other programs that were outstanding and in soccer back then they had one on the men's team that was outstanding. He was a handsome, perfect athlete who played forward with passion and skill that was unmatched in our experience. We had been warned that he was capable of scoring goal upon goal in a single game, from almost anywhere on the field, such was the power of his foot. It was true too, we watched as he warmed up and he was launching balls directly into the goal from anywhere on the field. It was inspiring. Roberto and I were slowly stretching and laughing. This was the way we played, nothing too serious and nothing too intimidating. Roberto looked at me and said, "if he gets past me, you stop him?" I smiled broadly and said, "that would be my pleasure."

Lucky for us the coach of Notre Dame took our team as seriously as he should, which was not seriously at all. We were a sad sack of bad players and stupid farm boys. The All American lined up on our side and was fed the ball a couple of times right at the start, coming down the far side of the field, where Roberto almost immediately took the ball away from him and sent it down the field to one of our players who almost as quickly lost it to a skilled Notre Dame defensive player. This would be how the entire game would go, we would steal the ball and as quickly one our somewhat retarded players would return it just as quickly.Our internalized goal was to not allow any scores from our side of the field, because the rest of our team was too ill equipped to stop anything, even a five year old first year players team from dismantling them with skills.

Shutting down the All American was easy and I do not say that with false pride, I say that because we brutalized the poor guy. I believe it was his third time bringing the ball down the side of the field, the first two, Roberto had expertly removed the ball from the player and sent it down the field to one of our players. This time, he had passed to one of his players, moved past Roberto and received a pass back, avoiding Roberto completely and now the All American forward from Notre Dame was in front of me, I was the last defense between the All American and the almost open goal, since our keeper was nothing more than a one armed blind idiot from a small farming town near the Capitol. If the All American could get past me, he would score with ease. I knew it, he must have known it and he looked at me and the goal and must have thought, in his All American mind, goal one for this game. I caught the ball with a long slide with my right foot and followed through and laid the All American out on the field. He was face down as I got on my feet, went after the ball and kicked it up the field. He jumped up and ran up after me, saying something like "gonna play dirty like that all day?" I kicked the ball hard to mid-field and turned and caught his eye and said, "yeah, every chance I get."

He came down our side of the field a couple more times that game. Roberto took him out once, I did another time and soon enough we noticed that he was switched to the other side of the field, where he ended up scoring 6 goals. He never scored from our side of the field, no one did during that game. We lost by 15, maybe 16 goals, We scored none. That was how our season went.

Last night I had dinner with Roberto in Nebraska. He lives there with his wife and four children. He has aged, not so well. I told him this, so writing it is not a betrayal. He is balding and he has a belly, almost pregnant belly. I pointed that out too. He pointed out that I too have gained weight since soccer. We had hugged when we met at the sweet little restaurant he had recommended when I called. We spent a few hours catching up. We had been wild friends for a short period of time, because that season was my last as a player and my only at that college. He had stayed, graduated, continued to grad school in Minnesota and was now a principal in the Midwest with this beautiful wife and all these children. He no longer plays soccer, or at least not the dangerous type of soccer we used to play. He looks happy and content. He had a beer and steak, I had water and salad.

It's an interesting thing, when years take a toll on a man. Roberto is old now, gray here, jowls and a look of time on his face. Maybe I have the same look, but my mirror is paid to lie to me. For a moment in our history we went to war together, we played together, shared injuries together and those memories can not be taken away. This is part of what makes a life worthwhile. I asked Roberto is his sons play soccer and he got this devilish smile on his face, "you should see them play, you would love it. No one and I mean no one scores on those boys."