sucked, in

i first moved to the boston area in 1986, and got hooked on the red sox on one warm october day. i’d been to see them at fenway once, my first game being the one where they clinched the division title. on this day, we’d walked up over the hill to the beach in the early afternoon, then came back to watch the rest of the game; the dave henderson home run game. ridiculous. not so long later came game 6, and a sizable number of brain cells were from then on devoted to something that generally made me dumber, but has always been a lot of fun.

so too has it gone with the revolution. now i’m stuck with ‘em. last year sucked. this year’s mls cup match felt even worse, even though it was, i suppose, a more deserved loss. they played a lousy second half, mostly. sure, the officiating seemed one-sided, and they had a great many near misses. hell, it was probably a great game to watch if you had no stake in it. but they weren’t the better side for a crucial portion of yesterday’s match. and that was that. and it doesn’t make any sense, but damn if i ain’t a little pissed off and just plain disappointed.

it wasn’t ‘cause we drove down there; you know that going into a road trip on this kind of pretense. your team might lose. the concert you’re going to see might suck. it’s the stuff that happens around it. we still had a good time. drove a while, saw strange and amusing things, had a few beers. suz says i have monkey arms. nevertheless, there was a reason for being there.

it was really great, for one, sitting in a big crowd of supporters, standing for the whole match. the organizers handed out song sheets; it was hilarious to see them handed out to school-age children, who eagerly read them, profanities and all (some with lyrics like “…shit on the bastards below!”). i was hoarse by the end of the game, and a little shell-shocked, just like the rest, but regardless, you had to yell on, just to show that the rest of the crowd wasn’t going to get you down.

and it’s really priceless to have the players (and the owner) come over and applaud their fans for the support; it’s such a rare gesture in other sports, but de rigeur in soccer.

of course it wasn’t fun to take shit from the houston and dc fans on the way out. it definitely was not cool for the jackass to run over with his orange flag to interrupt the aformentioned salute from the players.

but there you go. like i said, now i’m stuck with ‘em. and another formerly useful part of my brain has been tasked to follow the exploits of people being paid well (okay, somewhat well) to play a game.

i’m fine with that, really.