Soccer: Copa America

By Ed Piper

I've been watching some of the Copa America soccer tournament on television. Once again, as I was during the World Cup, I am struck by the constant, over-dramatic faux displays of being injured by the participants from all teams.

It is such a contrast from the demeanor in baseball. In baseball, if a major leaguer gets hit by a pitch, he makes a point of not bringing attention to the area that got hit as he jogs to first base.

For La Jolla High's baseball team, the players will make a point of reinforcing this for their afflicted teammate, calling out--somewhat humorously--"Don't rub it" or something like that as the batter hit by the pitch moves toward first base.

On the other hand, in professional soccer everything is about drawing the referee's attention to the fact contact was just made, and "I deserve to have a foul called on my defender."

It's so ridiculous, that when you watch the replay, sometimes it is clear there was no contact at all. That happened in a game over the weekend, when a player who lost the ball acted as if he had been hit--when the replay showed without a doubt that he had never been touched by the opposing player.

The problem in soccer, with this behavior encouraged, is that you have nuts like Luis Suarez, the ear-biting superstar from Uruguay, making the sport look even worse with his tantrums. The latest was his slamming the Plexiglas wall next to the team bench and throwing his shoe out onto the field during his country's match.

He either hadn't been told, or he didn't listen carefully, that he couldn't be inserted into the match under any circumstances. The coaching staff had already marked his name "O"--for ineligible to play--before the game ever started.

Which brings us back to baseball. Some observers don't like Bryce Harper, the Washington Nationals' young superstar, because he is demonstrative, dramatic, showy. He breaks baseball's code of don't-say-a-word. One of his teammates, Jonathan Papelbon, got so ticked off that he grabbed Harper by the throat during an altercation they had in the dugout. Papelbon subsequently got suspended, and now is no longer with the franchise.

Back in the day, when my brother and I played high school and American Legion baseball--granted, it was over four decades ago--there wasn't a stringent baseball code of being demure. We were relaxed, we had fun. If a pitched ball hit us in the side, we rubbed it. It wasn't a big deal back then. You weren't considered a sissy.

Fast-forward 40-plus years later. Baseball has hardened. There is a code of behavior. The coaches at La Jolla will say to their players, "Act like you've been there before." In other words, if we win this playoff game, don't go overboard in your celebration. Don't show up the other team. Act mature.

Yes, if a team wins the championship game, they'll run out and do a dog pile in celebration. But that's about the only time. Otherwise, it's considered "showing up the other team".

Final words on soccer: I must have watched as many or more hours of the Copa America as any other 62-year-old Anglo-American who never played soccer (three games before quitting as an adult--a guy kicked me in the foot, I said, "I'm out of here") nor had a son or daughter who played it (I don't have any sons or daughters, with soccer or without!).

To show how old I am, soccer only came into my high school at the end of my senior year in high school. And then, it was only in P.E. (But I was still on the baseball team, so I didn't play.) It didn't come in as a team sport until years later.

Our poor foreign exchange student, Frederico, who is from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He would come home from school that spring moaning how the other kids had kicked him and bashed into him, because they just didn't know how to play the sport.

Frederico, who I still keep in contact with, was so dedicated to the sport that he endured four knee surgeries and was still playing in adult soccer leagues until the last few years.

Isn't there a way the goal could be made wider so that there's at least a little more scoring? Games are l-o-o-o-n-g. And that's my final word.