Americanized Tale Suits Sockers’ Citizen Quinn : Soccer: Team to honor him in ceremony at halftime of playoff game tonight.
The Sockers suddenly have one fewer foreign player in their lineup.
The team on Friday replaced their lone native of Northern Ireland, Brian Quinn, with a U.S. citizen.
Premature senility on Coach Ron Newman’s part? Did the coach crack under the pressure of facing the St. Louis Storm in Game 2 of the MSL Western Division finals at 7:35 tonight at the Sports Arena?
Hardly. The new U.S. citizen is . . . Brian Quinn.
Quinn and his wife, Sharon, were sworn in Friday as U.S. citizens with several hundred other petitioners at the War Memorial in Balboa Park. Unlike the others, Brian and Sharon did not receive their certificates of U.S. citizenship.
They will be handed to them at halftime of tonight’s game during a ceremony that will include representatives from each branch of the armed services who took part in Operation Desert Storm.
“When I came here in 1981, I really didn’t have any expectations,” Quinn said before being sworn in. “I just wanted to come to America.”
Quinn and his wife have since had three children--Danielle, Caitlin and Sinead--while living in San Diego and are rearing five children here. Their oldest, Nicola, was born in Belfast, and their son, Damien, was born in Montreal.
Quinn has trouble envisioning what it would be like in his strife-ridden hometown of Belfast, where Irish Catholics have long clashed with the British over autonomy.
“There are a lot of problems in Belfast,” Quinn said. “But the people in Ireland don’t want all the violence. Looking back, and I know hindsight is 20/20, but if I married someone in Belfast, I would want to provide a more secure home for my kids and a decent standard of living. I would want to raise them somewhere where there is opportunity.”
Quinn has found that place, thanks to his skills with a soccer ball.
He came to the United States in 1981 to play for the Los Angeles Aztecs of the defunct North American Soccer League.
Quinn remembers his arrival as coinciding with that of another athlete.
“Fernandomania was just starting and a friend of mine told me, ‘You have to see this guy pitch. You have to go to a baseball game and see this guy,’ ” Quinn said. “So I go to a baseball game and I don’t even know anything about the sport. I don’t even know what a pitcher is and here’s this round, fat man and everyone’s telling me he’s an athlete. I didn’t believe it, but he kept winning and it turned out he was a marvelous athlete.
“I look back at that know and think, ‘I’m still playing and he’s gone. But he has probably made a little more money than me.’ ”
Fernando Valenzuela secured a spot in the Dodgers’ starting rotation, but Quinn had trouble even securing a team on which to play.
They kept folding on him.
The Aztecs did so after the 1981 season, so Quinn moved to the Montreal Manic. Two years later, the Manic ceased operations, and Quinn came back to California and signed with the Sockers.
About that time, indoor soccer was taking off and gaining credibility. At the same time, the Sockers were beginning to establish their dominance. They had won two consecutive titles at that point, one in what was then the Major Indoor Soccer League and the other in the now-defunct North American Soccer League.
They won another in Quinn’s first year with the team, 1983-84, and have since won five more championships in six years.
Coincidence? You decide. While other Sockers have come and gone, Quinn is one of only two players who remain from that 1983-84 team. The other is defender Kevin Crow.
Quinn has excelled in the Americanized version of the world’s most popular sport by being very un-American and by playing a more socialistic role. He is a guy who sets up goals for others instead of capitalizing on his own skills.
This past season, Quinn led the Sockers in total points with 74, but 55 were assists.
In last year’s playoffs, Quinn led all players with 17 assists and 26 points and earned his second championship series Most Valuable Player award. He is the only player to score at least 22 points in four different playoff seasons.
It is a game he takes seriously. He was even apprehensive about having the INS present him with his certificate at halftime of tonight’s game.
“He was concerned about the emotional side of all of it getting in the way of the game,” said Holli Traeumer, the Sockers’ director of public relations.
He was also a bit worried about the interview/oral test all petitioners have to go through as a final step to gaining citizenship.
Quinn and his wife took the test on Wednesday. It was conducted by Lauren Mack of the INS.
“I talked to him earlier in the week and he didn’t seem overly confident at all,” Mack said. “But he knew it perfectly. He passed with flying colors. In fact, they even wanted me to ask more questions. When it was over, Sharon said, ‘You’re not going to ask us to name the Great Lakes? We studied that for nothing?’ ”
Quinn said that he passed the test on the basis of one answer.
“She asked me who the sexiest man in America was and I said, ‘Stormin’ Norman.’ She said, ‘OK, you’re an American citizen now.’ ”
Socker Notes
Wes Wade, who suffered a concussion during Thursday’s game after colliding with St. Louis’ Thompson Usiyan, was still having headaches Friday, fogging his status for tonight’s game. “We have to get medical clearance for him,” said Ron Newman, Sockers’ coach. “We may have to give him some time off to let his brain settle down. Or put it in a jar and look after it while he plays . . . “ Storm Coach Don Popovic spent Friday trying to find a replacement goalie for Zoltan Toth, who broke three ribs in Thursday’s game and will miss the rest of the series. Likely candidates are A.J. Lachowecki, who spent three seasons in the MSL before being signed by Atlanta of the National Professional Soccer League this season, and Jamie Swanner, who played for the Canton Invaders of the NPSL.
