WORLD CUP USA ’94 / MEMORIES : MIKE PENNER : It’s Blurry, but It All Comes Back to Him Now

The editors have demanded I send them 750 words of World Cup recollections, and I am sitting here drumming my fingers and racking my brain and the pages of my yellow legal pad are still as blank as the Greek half of a Group D scoreboard.

The last thing I remember is a Saturday night in late June, about 10 o’clock. My wife and I, who used to have a life, are flipping through copies of Soccer America and World Soccer, newspaper sports sections from New York to San Francisco are spread across the living room floor like Patton’s field maps and I am clipping stories for my 24 individual World Cup folders. A Wall Street Journal piece on the rigors of training to be a World Cup referee suddenly seems particularly compelling. ESPN’s tape-delayed broadcast of the Saudi Arabia-Morocco match is droning on in the background. I look up, Saeed Al Owairan makes a sensational spin move and . . .

Pfffffffftt!

Nothing.

Now I am sitting in front of my computer screen and I am wearing a green-and-orange Ireland Soccer T-shirt bearing the inscription “Playing On America’s Toughest Greens” and a yellow-blue-and-green baseball cap with the CBF Brazilian football logo on it. I have no idea how they got there.

The CD player is on. Electric guitars are crunching and groaning and it seems like Alexi Lalas is singing.

‘Cause it’s not against the law

Bring anyone at all

We’re all just kickin’ balls.

I reach for another CD and the first one I grab is called “World Cup Bend It!,” featuring “songs about (or by)” Pele, Roberto Baggio, Maradona, Johan Cruyff and Roger Milla. I do not want to know how it got there.

Stacked against the wall are a half-dozen videotapes. They have handwritten labels that read “WORLD CUP QUARTERFINALS,” “ROMANIA 3, COLOMBIA 1” and “GERMANY 3, SOUTH KOREA 2.”

In my handwriting.

I feel dizzy. I decide to lay on the couch and close my eyes. My head hurts. I see a flash of golden light, a blurry yellow mushroom cloud. I concentrate harder. It appears to be a partial eclipse of the sun. . . . No, that’s not right. . . . It’s . . . yes . . . it’s Colombian midfielder Carlos Valderrama.

I see white stars on a blue denim shirt. I see red block letters. B-A-L-B-O-A. The long-haired man in the shirt is cartwheeling in mid-air, heels over head, and he kicks a soccer ball before he lands. The ball nearly winds up in a a massive mesh of netting, missing the post by inches.

My head is pounding. I hear drums, incessant and rhythmic. I see something that looks like the banner for a high school science fiction club. I see another, and another. Now dozens. They are frantically being waved in the air by people dressed from head to toe in vertical green-and-yellow stripes. I hear voices, speaking in tongues. BRA-seel! BRA-seel! Over and over. Louder and louder.

The images are moving faster now.

South Koreans. Running and running. Legs churning. Never stopping.

Germans on the same plot of grass. Feet dragging. Tongues hanging. Begging the referee to blow his whistle.

Booming kick by a yellow-shirted Romanian. The ball accelerates as it gains altitude, then it knuckles and slices into the top corner of net. Then he does it again from a little farther out. Each time, the crowd keeps count, calling out in Romanian: “Hagi! Hagi!” Penalty kick by a red-shirted Romanian. Swedish goalie makes a guess and takes a dive. Ball hits goalie’s glove. Swedish players fly in the air. Romanian players lie on the ground.

It is starting to come back to me.

I remember buying a magazine at a newsstand in Westwood. The vendor is from Sweden. He predicts Sweden will beat Brazil, 2-1.

I remember buying a mini-cassette recorder in Lakewood. The man behind the counter is from Nigeria. He predicts Nigeria will reach the quarterfinals.

I remember sharing a plane ride to San Jose with an Iranian gentleman who sells Persian rugs in Corona del Mar. He is flying up to see the Brazil-Cameroon game. He predicts Brazil will win the World Cup.

I remember a cab ride in Palo Alto. The driver is ending his shift as soon as he drops me off at my hotel. He, too, has tickets to the Brazil-Cameroon game that afternoon.

Who are these people?

And why am I comparing playmaking midfielders with them?

I fear something terrible has happened.

My wife walks into the living roon and almost trips over a Jorge Campos-autographed soccer ball.

I open my morning sports section, read the soccer stories and toss the rest.

I am now counting the months to France ’98 and wondering how I can score that assignment and wondering how I will pass the time until then.

I pop a tape into the VCR.

“101 Classic Goals Of The World Cup.”

Forty-seven months to go.