War Liberal

...and we wonder why the right wing is beating the pants off us. Brookings investigates why soccer has swept the rest of the world?

Play Ball.

Congratulations, Mac (I think).

That's no way to cite a blog!

I wonder if they need librarians.

I was wondering about that. They didn't need any copyright clearance?

(not to mention the sloppy citation format)

You don't need clearance for short excerpts. The link is dead.

MLA's format (may be outdated):

Blogs are sort of semi-personal online diaries. No one (including MLA), seems to have noticed that some web logs are interesting enough to be worth citing. Just in case you want to cite one, here is our unofficial, made-up blog format.

*
Lastname, Firstname Middlename (or whatever part of the name you find). "Subject Title." Blog entry. Date posted. Date of access. .

*
Cool, Joe. "Learning to Dress Cool." Blog entry. 4 Oct. 2002. 15 Nov. 2002. .

*
Kingman, C. "Steps to Make a Birthday Cake." Blog entry. 18 Oct. 2002. 18 Nov. 2002. .

I put in a redirect page to take anyone who actually typed all that printed URL in to the entry.

Wow, Mac. I'm glad you've found some more literate posters. Congrats on the recognition.

Yeah, those guys from the original post were a little...illiterate.

Nobody thought it was worth talking about at the time, actually. All those commenters came in three months later or more on a Google search for "hate soccer" or something like that. They were looking for a place to be stupid.

hey Mac

Apologies- I probably should have contacted you about the quote. what I liked about what was the way it completely met all prejudices - everyone in the world plays soccer- including criminals- except Americans (except now, of course, most wholesome US kids do play soccer - I wonder what they play in state penitentiaries?).

The thing is, some Americans use the fact that they play different sports as a metaphor for the gap in political outlook between the US and the rest of the world, but most other countries use soccer as a metaphor to stress the difference between themselves and "abroad". In Europe, instead of despising others for playing a different game, we despise each other for the way we play the same game. Both Andy and I thought this captured very nicely the present gap between America and the rest of the world.

Take the European Union, for example. Many Americans seem to despise it as some kind of old-Europe conspiracy against the the US (and no doubt some Europeans wish it could be like that) but in fact most of the debate inside the European Union is about how to prevent your country getting ripped off by other members.

I originally wanted to call the book "Soccer Sucks", but wiser counsels prevailed.

There certainly are no hard feelings here. I'm not sure an email would even have reached me; the email account you'd have gotten from there has been defunct for awhile.

I don't actually hate soccer. I just don't see the appeal, so I'm more or less indifferent. What's really interesting to me is that 98 percent of the kids who play soccer here seemingly give up on the game in high school and join the great soccer-distaining multitude. Why is that?

Ah well, I have a theory about that.

First, start with cricket. Britain's national pastime- started around 1700- first cricket clubs/stats etc 1750, first history written in 1851. One British politician recently called for a "cricket test" to determine your right of nationality- it what's makes the British British. So who plays it? No one except the British or those who needed to prove that are better than the British- primarily the nations of the old "Empire"- India, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, South Africa, the Caribbean islands (their team is called the West Indies), Bangladesh, Zimbabwe. Looki it up- these are the only cricket playing nations of any substance outside England, and they all prize beating England because that proves they are better than us. Until 1850 cricket was the dominant sport in the US too- only problem, too British. Maybe in the early years after the revolution you guys had something to prove- but by 1900, come on, you knew you were better than us- so no point playing the game.

Second- baseball. Great game. We played it here in in the 18th century (it's in our book- the rules of "base ball" were published in London in 1744 in "The Pretty Little Pocket Book"- it even has pictures so you can see how obviously it is baseball. But of course, Alexander Cartwright and the Knickerbockers perfected the game- comparing English base ball and modern baseball is like comparing a Model T with a BMW- not the same thing at all. But for American patriots this was not enough: Baseball needed to be "really" American, so Al Spalding got his committee in 1907 to "prove" that Abner Doubleday invented the game in Cooperstown in 1839. Never mind the truth, the point is that no one would ever deny that baseball is the quintessence of America- the national pastime, which is also why it has not spread abroad too much- except in your own backyard (central America) and Japan.

Third- soccer. The interesting thing about soccer is that it was also invented in its modern form in Britain- the rules were formalised in 1863- but it spread so fast to Europe and South America that it didn't have time to acquire an excessively English imprint. Other countries put their own stamp on it. I have met Brazilians who were genuinely shocked to discover that modern soccer came from Britain. Each country can claim it as their own: hence its international popularity.

For me, that is why soccer in the US is for kids. When you're kid, you don't have a well developed sense of all this nationalistic stuff. You learn all that when you grow up. In the US, that means giving up soccer. But maybe you're better off without adult soccer- because we all play the same game we fight over it, because you play your own game you don't fight with anybody over it. But one day, maybe soon, you will win the soccer World Cup- let's see what happens then...