Swift Kick From Soccer Fans on Rules of the Game

In an irrelevant aside I recently dismissed soccer as a game in which “a bunch of guys kick a ball around,” comparing it unfavorably with baseball, which has a static, geometrical quality that appeals to such intellectuals as George F. Will and Yogi Berra.

In fact, Mr. Will’s recent book about baseball, “Men at Work,” has been No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for weeks, proving that the game is not enjoyed only by intellectuals.

However, my remark about soccer was rudely received by soccer fans, which does not surprise me. One reader wrote me a letter of such obscene epithets that I am unable to quote it, though I would like to. I deserve it.

I don’t think I have ever watched a soccer game clear through, so it is obvious that I do not understand it. I am somewhat frightened, though, by what it does to its fans. Too many games in England are followed by riots.

Coincidentally, my friends Duke and Shirley Russell recently took Amtrak to Santa Barbara for a brief vacation, and Duke, knowing my affection for local newspapers, sent me a copy of the Santa Barbara News-Press full of pictures and stories about the recent fires.

It also contained a fragment of the sports section, in which I found the first part of a column by John Zant in which he announced that he is against burning the American flag, and he likes broccoli and soccer.

“There you have it,” he said. “Broccoli and soccer. How far from hot dogs and baseball can a guy get?”

He noted that the mainstream viewpoint among American sports columnists is that soccer is a silly game that has no roots in this country. It’s fun for kids, but they will grow out of it.

One of soccer’s drawbacks in the United States, he says, is that it is not suited to television. It moves too fast and covers too much ground. “Hooray!” he says. “Increasingly our sports have been enslaved to television, and they have suffered as live entertainment.”

Readers may complain that I am not a sportswriter, and ought not to concern myself with such matters. But I am a sports fan, and fans have a right to speak out.

I probably don’t like soccer because I have never bothered to learn the rules. Games are not events of random chance. Without rules they are chaos. It is rules, and the players’ adherence to rules, that make baseball such a thing of beauty.

My wife and I recently had dinner at the King Edward III English Pub, in Santa Monica, with its proprietors, John and Ruth Elwell, whom we met on our recent tour of Egypt. It was very British and very busy, and the fish and chips were quite unparalleled.

I mentioned to Elwell that I had once played cricket, but I didn’t understand the rules. Actually, I had played on a team of American journalists against a team of British subjects. I told them I didn’t understand the game and they had a practice game for me at Griffith Park. The real game was played later in Santa Monica.

I had bought a new sweater at Silverwoods for the game. When I took the field a couple of fellow players told me that the price tag was still on it. I was stationed in the field right in front of the actor Stuart Whitman. What he was doing on the team of journalists I don’t know. The ball was hit directly to me and went between my legs. Whitman was so startled when I missed it that he missed it too, and was very angry with me.

That was the only play I made. Elwell said the rules were very simple, and he gave me a little card with the rules on it. It read as follows:

“You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out.

“When they are all out the side that’s out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out. When both sides have been in and out including the not outs, that’s the end of the game.”

All right. If the rules of soccer could be explained to me as simply as that, I’m sure I might find the game interesting. Now that the Cold War is over, we may achieve more international understanding through sports. The recent World Cup soccer matches did get a lot of attention in the United States, and nothing could be more international than Wimbledon.

I don’t think, though, that I can ever learn to love broccoli.