On Wednesday at 7:10pm, the Mets play the Padres.
Also on Wednesday, the Washington Spirit play at 7:30pm…I will be watching the Spirit square off against Sky Blue FC, and not tuning in to watch the Mets.
I played about half of one season of soccer as a kid, and the only soccer I ever watched was the US Men’s National team, and they are even less entertaining than a 4 hour baseball game that ends 1-0. So, I’ve never been a soccer fan. That was until I discovered this completely new sport…women’s soccer. I watched a total of two (2!!) women’s world cup games, and was immediately hooked.
It all started when Rose Lavelle entered my life. I first heard her on a Pardon My Take podcast appearance, where, after she settled in, was actually an interesting interview. More importantly, I was impressed with this 24 year old doing something that was likely outside of her comfort zone, and going on a podcast that doesn’t exactly appeal to the women’s soccer demo. She was funny enough that I was curious to see her actually play during the World Cup.
Then comes her play on the field, Rose looks tiny out there, but when you watch these games, she looks like she is running on fast forward compared to everyone else. It was amazing to see, like watching the roadrunner say “meep meep” and take off. Literally going by defenders like they were wearing cement shoes, and firing 40 yard lead passes directly to a teammates foot to setup a scoring chance. And that wasn’t something that happened one time, it would happen over, and over, and over again. It was incredible. And it would be a failure on my part not to mention her Iverson-like crossover, where she completely turns the defender around, and puts one in the back of the net to seal the World Cup final.
Alongside Lavelle, the rest of the USWNT displayed such a high level of skill, talent, and true team camaraderie. I couldn’t get enough of it. There was no jealousy on that team, everyone went bananas for every goal, no matter what the score was, who scored, or who was on the field. Watching that team just put me in a better mood because of how much they cared about each other, and because they were steam rolling every single team that stepped on the field against them. The talent gap the USWNT had over every other team was tremendous, and I loved every second of it. Physically emasculating other countries in athletic events is America’s true pastime, not baseball.
I was born into being a Mets fan, my parents are Mets fans, my brothers are mets fans, and I’ve been going to games probably as early as 5 years old. I played baseball growing up, and as a sports fan there were three seasons; football season, basketball season, and baseball season. To me, baseball has always been far and away the most boring sport of the three, both to watch, and to play. But during baseball season, in my mind, there has never been any other sports to watch, so I continue to come back and watch year after year. With the Mets being a complete dumpster fire for the 10th (probably generous) year in a row, I am ready to give up on the franchise and baseball as a whole.
Much like the Mets, the US Men’s National team stinks, and has been completely incompetent for years. I can’t even watch them anymore, because: A) I literally can’t when they don’t even qualify for the games that are on TV, like the World Cup in 2018, and B) when they do make it onto the world stage, they lose to countries I didn’t even know existed. It is embarrassing to root for that team. The US dominates the rest of the world in every major sport, and then we have the ugly step child men’s soccer team making the rest of us look bad. It’s oddly similar to the Mets-Yankees dynamic, and until something drastic happens, I won’t be watching the Mets, or Men’s soccer. And just in time, The National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) has arrived to fill my summer sports need.
But the real reason I wanted to start watching the NWSL was after hearing Megan Rapinoe’s call for action from fans. A plea to not only care about these athletes when they’re competing at the World Cup on the biggest stage, but to watch them play professionally outside of the international stage. I truly enjoyed watching that World Cup team, but now I want to follow them as they make their returns to their pro teams here in the US. I want to watch these elite athletes battle it out against each other, instead of beating the brakes off of teams 13-0.
The feeling that those players have when they go from playing in front of 58,000 people in the world cup final to 7,000 in their first games back professionally sucks. I played college basketball where nobody went to the games and nobody cared, but that was because we were awful (6-20 record my last year, WHAT IT DO BABYYYYY!!!!). These women are the most elite performers in the world at their craft, and still nobody cares outside of their play for Team USA. So, will my one extra view of their game make a difference? Certainly not, but I’m still going to give it a shot over watching the 5,000th extremely boring baseball game of my life.
If you don’t have plans Wednesday night, download the Yahoo Sports app, or go to NWSLsoccer.com and watch my girl Rose Lavelle put on a show…and if you already have plans, cancel them!
***Disclaimer: This blog is strictly about entertainment value, so if I’m entertained watching the NWSL, they have fan for life. If these games are terrible, and baseball is more entertaining than them…well I’ll just hibernate until football season***
The Jackpot 