6/13/2014 How Soccer Explains the Sports Page

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2014 WORLD CUP
How Soccer Explains the Sports Page
When a handful of newspaper reporters helped introduce America to the Beautiful
Game 32 years ago.
BY BRYAN CURTIS ON JUNE 13, 2014
For decades, the American sports page whats that? What was the sports page? That was the place
we got our news, our opinion, our agate type. The man you see yelling about sports on TV? The sports
page is where he hatched. Ill continue.
For decades, the American sports page acted like a python on the imagination of the sports fan. The
sports page was loath to admit out-of-the box fare like fantasy baseball, advanced stats, pro wrestling,
and fighting sports other than boxing. The World Cup found itself among the unloved. In 1982, a
columnist named George Vecsey went to his New York Times editors with a proposal. Vecsey wanted
to go to Spain to cover the Cup. For weeks.
Vecsey is 74 now, with glasses and a professorial white beard. We had lunch the other day in Brooklyn,
trying to duck Times reporters who might transform us into a bogus trend story. Whats interesting
about Vecseys 82 voyage, which he writes about in his new book, Eight World Cups, was its
untrendiness. Its a view of American soccer writing in its pre-hipster, pre-Buford, pre-Foer state. As
Vecsey put it, I was spectacularly unprepared.
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If the sports page was going to send someone to the World Cup, Vecsey was in some ways an ideal
pilgrim. He had played soccer at Jamaica High School in Queens. But one day in October 1955, he
found himself drifting off the pitch during a match here lies a metaphor for soccer fandom in
America to listen to Game 7 of the World Series, which was blaring from a nearby radio. If you want
to listen to the ball game, you can sit on the bench, Vecseys coach said. His soccer career was over.
Vecsey worked as a Newsday sportswriter in the 60s as one of the pirates on New Yorks loopiest
sports section. A decade later, he felt the sports pages python squeeze and abruptly left the beat.
Vecsey went to Kentucky and covered Appalachia for the Times. (He cowrote Coal Miners Daughter
with Loretta Lynn.) Then he became a Times religion writer, sending back copy from the 78 papal
conclaves in Rome. Two years later, Vecsey was back in the sports department, not because he loved it
so much but because he felt tapped out on religion, too. Red Smith died in 1982. Vecsey was given a
column.
Still: It was sports. I liked the routines, Vecsey said. I knew them. But then to see managers burping
and eating and deriding reporters questions all at the same time, I just had to remind myself I
covered Buffalo Creek. I covered heavy stuff. I thought, I have to approach this from a different level.
In 1982, soccer was at a different level, one 10,000 feet above the sports editors office. There were
signs of hope. Pel and the New York Cosmos (1970-85) had provided endless bylines to a small group
of soccer buffs in the New York papers: David Hirshey and Lawrie Mifflin of the Daily News, Phil
Mushnick of the Post.
But the World Cup was a big ask. Want to go to the Davis Cup final in Grenoble? Sure, send a bushel
of copy on John McEnroe. The Tour de France? Write me a profile of the first American entrant,
Jacques Boyer. The World Cup had no local hook the U.S. team didnt qualify. ABC Sports agreed to
televise the final live for the first time, but refused to replay it two days later because the network didnt
want to preempt General Hospital.
Vecsey, who did not lack for stones, took his proposal to Times sports editor Joe Vecchione. My
reaction was obviously a go, Vecchione said. The sports pages may have lacked for imagination, but
they didnt yet lack for money.
By 1982, soccer writing had begun to take on some of the contours wed recognize today. It was already
a Model United Nations for writers. As Alastair Reid quoted an American diplomat saying in The New
Yorker that year: I have come to believe quite firmly that if the United States had a national soccer
team that played regularly against the established soccer-playing nations the whole conducting of
diplomacy would be considerably eased and humanized for us.
Did you think covering Team Italy would help you learn something about Actual Italy? I asked Vecsey.
It was less learning than experiencing, Vecsey said. To be around the Italian team, its so freaking
Italian. I mean, cases of Barilla pasta in the hallway
You have to look at it another way, Vecsey said. It was also a way for me to get to Barcelona Id
rather spend two weeks in Barcelona than Philadelphia or Cleveland.
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Click here for more on the 2014 World Cup.
Our pilgrim had one problem. He didnt know much about international soccer. That was the dilemma
with writing about soccer in the pre-digital world there was no cheat sheet to help you learn the
sport. Inquiring minds eventually discovered Paul Gardner in Soccer America. If you read Spanish, you
could find El Pas at better New York newsstands. Beyond that
I bought crappy English newspapers which just had snippets of stuff, Vecsey said. Not the Guardian
we see today. I was buying the Mirror. Will Keegan Be Well Enough to Play? Well, whos Keegan? And
why do you only refer to him by his last name? He supplemented that with a handful of wire stories
and set off.
Spain was groaning from a nasty heat wave when a small group of Americans landed to cover the Cup.
They included Grahame L. Jones, who wrote On Soccer for the Los Angeles Times; Dave Kindred of
the Washington Post; David Hirshey, watching as a fan; Hubert Mizell of the St. Petersburg Times; and
Dick Schaap, who was filing smooth jazz for ABC News.
They began sending back copy. None of it is the stuff of best-sportswriting anthologies. But its
interesting as a look at a group of brainy, open-minded guys trying to find their way. Kindred and
Schaap filed jovial dispatches. Vecseys were a bit more austere. One of his first columns, published on
July 4, 1982, was about the dancing he saw on Las Ramblas:
People strapped on soft shoes as a modest band began playing the solemn notes of the Sardana.
Several elderly people formed a circle, held their hands above their heads, and performed the
gentle steps The summer sun glanced off the face of the cathedral, designed by a mason from
Rouen 600 years ago. First, there was one circle of dancers, then two, then four, then eight. A few
blocks away, La Torcida [a group of Brazilian fans] was surging up and down the Ramblas; and in
front of the cathedral the people of Catalonia were also dancing in the streets.
It was the kind of pure atmospherics that would not be assigned by an editor. God bless, there was no
email, Vecsey said. No cell phones. They had to get you on the hotel phone or when you called in. So
if some idiot editor had an idea, it would take a while to get dropped on you. And by the time the editor
got through, Vecsey could always say, Geez, Chief, I was just about to file.
The pilgrim-writers were surprised to discover that FIFA didnt much care about them. There were few
press-release printouts, no postgame media availability after the final. Its as if FIFA assumed everyone
already knew about the worlds game. There is no introduction of the players, Kindred wrote in the
Washington Post on July 11. There are no announcements of who scored the goal, with assists by
whom, and whether this is a record for red-headed Poles on the third Sunday of July.
Because Americans are hooked on sensory overload, Kindred continued, we look for new stimuli.
The game alone is not enough So the promoters give us more than a game; they give us a sound and
light show of sports. For many other nations, soccer is the only escape from a dreary routine, the only
connection to a success that is theirs as truly as it is the players.
In the 82 dispatches, you can see writers trying to explain soccer by the most direct means: using the
metaphor of American sports. In the group stage, West Germany and Austria connived to have a 1-0
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game a move that bumped Algeria out of the second round based on goals scored. Vecsey, in a June
28 dispatch, compared it to a basketball team running the four corners offense. When normally
defensive-minded Italy went on the offensive to beat Brazil, Kindred wrote that it was as if Joe
Montanas 49ers declined to throw the ball and insisted on winning with defense.
By 82, soccer had been called the worlds game enough that dispatches didnt have to repeat the
charge. Its patronizing to both your readers and to the stature of the sport around the world to be
stating, Hey, its the worlds most popular sport, folks, said Lawrie Mifflin.
But there were gentle reminders in Vecseys accounts. In his story about the ItalyWest Germany final,
he included a line right at the top that said it was the most important soccer game in the world. In the
age of the ESPN dog pile, its almost hard to fathom there were sports fans who didnt know.
To write about soccer, Vecsey had to retrain his reporters brain. At NFL games back home, he often
browsed the newspaper. Sitting in the press section at Barcelonas Estadi de Sarri, often just a few
yards from the field, Vecsey found players like Argentinas Diego Maradona were simply moving too
fast. To keep up with the game, Vecsey taught himself to capture a 60-second loop of memory, he
writes in Eight World Cups, that could record how a goal came to be.
I asked him to give me an example. He mentioned the U.S. teams recent World Cup tune-up game
against Turkey.
One of the American midfielders, I think it was Michael Bradley, made a bad pass, Vecsey said. A
lazy, diagonal pass. One of the Turkish players picked it off. Now Turkeys on the attack. Theyre
moving down the left side, theyre moving the ball in. Im thinking to myself, This all began with a bad
pass.
The bad pass is where you started your 60-second DVR?
Right, Vecsey said. Bad pass, midfield, I think by Bradley. Thats in there, in the back of my head.
Its soccer, so lets say everything gets screwed up, nobody takes a shot, zip. You can erase it. The DVR
starts fresh with another small event, and with any luck, one or two of those chains of motion makes it
into the column.
Franklin Foer recently tweeted that the 82 Cup was the best ever. Beyond the roster of all-timers
Rossi, Bruno Conti, Socrates there were mouthwatering geopolitical angles. Among Polish fans,
Solidarity banners were unfurled, and quickly confiscated, when the team played the Soviet Union.
Vecsey took to the Poles. During the tournament, Polish coach Antoni Piechniczek pulled a Klinsmann
and said the team was aiming for third place. When the Poles faced Italy in the semis, instead of the
glamorous Brazilian team, Piechniczek was disappointed. Losing to Brazil, Vecsey quoted him saying,
would be like falling off a good horse.
The only American I saw there was Henry Kissinger, Vecsey said, who was working to try to get the
World Cup for America in 86. He happened to be on my floor of the hotel, which was kind of bizarre.
The murderer of Haiphong Harbor right down the hallway from me. I wrote that he got free tickets.
The next time he saw me, he said, I am not a free-load-uh. Go figure.
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We now know soccer writing as a battle between the games fans and its trolls. There were soccer trolls
in 1982, too. For Bob Ryan, soccer was a commie conspiracy played by grown men running around in
pink shorts, said Francisco Marcos, who did PR for the Tampa Bay Rowdies of the old North
American Soccer League. (Ryan whacked soccer right up until the 94 Cup, before finally giving in.)
The Times sports section was never the go-to for the rest of the country. But the gravitas of the rest of
the Paper of Record gave the section the ring of truth. Vecseys columns, by their mere existence,
became signposts that soccer was making progress. We would copy those things, literally, and make
them part of our press releases, said Marcos.
Whats most striking about the 82 American soccer dispatches is that writers were at the beginning of
a decadeslong inquiry to figure out why the United States was slow in embracing the game. The great
Times critic John Leonard probably got closest when he wrote: Television is inadequate to any sport
we dont understand, any sport that hasnt developed its sinew in a childhood psyche. Soccer also isnt
making any North American money.
In Eight World Cups, Vecsey floats another theory. Anti-soccer sentiment among his generation, the
children of World War II, wasnt because they didnt know Europe. It was because they knew Europe
too well: A fear of mobs and stomping boots in the generation that was young during World War II and
the Holocaust and the Cold War and nuclear proliferation.
Vecsey missed stuff in 82, enough to get a 2014 reporter put on a plane home. When I think of the
things I didnt know Vecsey said sheepishly. The fact that Polish midfielder Zbigniew Boniek got a
yellow card in the quarterfinals his second of the tourney, thus assigning him to the bench for the
semis rated only two sentences in Vecseys July 5 dispatch. Vecsey knew there were European club
teams, but didnt know that Boniek and Italys Claudio Gentile both played for the Italian club
Juventus. It would have made for a good column.
But Vecsey kept convincing Joe Vecchione to send him back to the Cup. And every four years, more
pilgrims joined him. This year, the Times will send 15 journalists the most the paper has ever had at
a World Cup to Rio.
Vecseys soccer writing got better. Through tireless reporting and precise observation, through the
accumulation of what athletes call reps, he achieved, finally, one of the sportswriterly ideals: He
began to sound like a smart-ass. Mussolini once lamented that his was a nation of waiters, Vecsey
wrote from the 90 Cup. It is not stretching the truth to say that Italy is currently a nation of
midfielders.
It was a sign that soccer had gained some traction on the sports page that a Times reader was
sufficiently outraged by that line to call the papers switchboard. The reader asked, whats the name of
the sports editor who would print this libel against Italians?
Its Mr. Vecchione, he was told.