OutTakes
Commentary by Edd Merritt,
April 7, 2011, page 14.....

“On Brave Old Army Team . . .”

All the scientists are running around Looking for the monkey but he can’t be found
Cause he’s down by the pond playing hockey with the kids
And all the mothers are running around Looking for their children but they can’t be found
Cause they’re down by the pond playing hockey with the monkey “Hockey Monkey” – The Zambonis

I don’t know how many times I’ve stood in the stands, on the field, on the ice, hat or helmet in hand, facing the flag for the playing of the “Star-Spangled Banner” prior to some sporting event.
In my youth, I took the formality seriously. To show respect to a nation that allowed us to play games with gusto was important. On the chance that it would help us capture a homecoming victory, count me in. I was won over by the proposition that good patriots were also good skaters and that standing up for the flag actually improved your skills.
I treated it with the same respect I treated my parents’ warnings to stay away from cigarettes. One puff and your sports career was over – irremediable damage, forget recovery. I heeded their warnings until I hit college, which, in the early ‘60s was a den of tweed blazers and cigars, not to mention road trips to women’s colleges where prep-school queens had been hiding butts under their beds for years. What did I know about sophisticated eastern culture? I was an only child from the Midwest.
One of my least fond memories from that period happened my freshman summer when my mother found me, cigarette to my lips, smoke in my mouth. I instantly ditched the stub and swallowed the smoke. It must have come out my nose or ears, because Mom sighed and said immediately, “Oh Edd, I’m so disappointed.” I cleared my lungs. The anxiety from getting caught, however, lodged in my heart.
Cigarettes are now 40 years behind me, but the Star-Spangled Banner still introduces nearly every sporting event I attend. I’m past the point of fear for not paying attention, and after a season of UVM hockey games, each preceded by a corps of ROTC students traipsing onto the ice, I ask myself, “What is the connection between nationhood, the military and the games kids play?”
Well, I have a book to recommend that delves into the topic. It’s by Franklin Foer (one of the prolific brothers Foer). It is titled How Soccer Explains the World. He writes clearly about the relationships between the original game of football and rulers, countries, churches, hooligan fans, referees and players, the overindulged and the down trodden.
I witnessed some of this zeal when my sons were younger and we took a youth hockey team overseas. We were in Munich, Germany, during the European Soccer Cup, and the Scots had arrived. Hordes of fans from Glasgow, who had foregone sleep for gallons of their country’s finest single-malt beverage on the train to London and ferry across the English Channel, were now plowing through Munich wearing team colors and looking for the next bar or a drunken brawl with the enemy – whichever came first. Our kids were intrigued by the spectacle. But, the city was prepared. Anyone with a slight hint of Celtic brogue or the likelihood of a Scottish scarf rolled up under a sleeve was barred from beer halls. To this day, I don’t know how many of them made it to the game. Soccer seemed the excuse, not the reason, for them to be there.
Several years later my younger son and I attended a World Cup match in Foxboro Stadium outside of Boston. I hadn’t thought too much about it at the time. However, in retrospect I realize that I witnessed what Foer describes as American fans’ “Europhilic cosmopolitanism.” Whereas in many other countries soccer is a sport of the working classes and a way they demonstrate their contribution to nationalism, here it is a yuppie activity. We wear jerseys of many different stripes and colors to show that we’re above narrow distinctions. Yuppies aren’t supposed to act out, and at the games I attended, they didn’t. Fans of the Brazilian opponents, on the other hand, sang constantly. They sat together with identical national team colors top to bottom. Although I don’t think the vuvuzela horns were as prominent then as now, there were enough South American horn blowers to maintain a constant din. They must have practiced breathing in intervals so the sound never quit over the course of two hours. We northerners were mesmerized and missed some good plays on the field as a result.
Despite a history of cosmopolitanism in this country, though, sports do seem to be tightening their ties to the nation. Soldiers and center-icemen increasingly wear statehood on their sleeves, each believing it signals the moral path to victory. Kids are organized into “teams” at younger ages. Play for the sake of play is fading.
But, do we really want one banner to fit all? Is war a metaphor for sports? Is it true the Tea Party wants to dump the Red Sox in Boston Harbor rather than use public money to fix Fenway? Do learning to win and learning to walk happen simultaneously?
If it becomes skinhead versus mullet, I’ll take mullet anytime.