THE FLAW IN SOCCER
It’s difficult to assess exactly when this mass hysteria associated with competing against one another in physical activity --- sports --- became a regular part of the human condition. Although the Greek Olympic idea comes to mind in trying to ambiguously decide where this all started, it’s probable that all the known ancient cultures participated in some form of physical burlesque. It is my guess that none of this really took hold until after the development of agriculture, a technological advancement that allowed the leisure time and sedentary life style necessary for such athletic entertainment. Perhaps no more than 20 to 30 thousand years ago --- just a wink in evolutionary time --- the use of our athletic ability was still quite relevant for the specie’s survival. On a regular basis, the ability to use our bodies skillfully was still consequential in providing a good meal as well as the residual benefits of clothing and whatever else a juicy carcass might be used for. In much the same way a domestic cat still has an instinct to hunt lizards and birds even though it now has no bearing on their survival, so too do homo sapiens, through their sporting life, hearken back to a more savage time when physical performance meant so much more. It’s something we still haven’t gotten out of our systems, even though our brains and not our bodies are infinitely more responsible for our survival today. Some of the sports modern man has created to satiate this need for physical relevance are wonderfully sophisticated devices that mandate the use of every aspect of our capacities. This includes our coordination, strength, stamina, running and jumping abilities, our courage, reflexes, and, most of all, the ability to use all these endowments together in an harmonious athletic expression we might refer to as “talent”. As if this weren’t enough, substantial elements of our cerebral abilities --- concentration, strategy, mental spontaneity in the heat of battle, teamwork, perseverance in the most difficult of circumstances, etc. --- are all essential elements of our most highly evolved games. Such sports as baseball, basketball, ice and field hockey, all the various forms of American-Gaelic-Aussie football and rugby, are examples of such a total conjunction of all human abilities. Other sports, such as tennis and cricket, come very close to this all-encompassing standard, perhaps lacking elements of physical courage. With regard to our traditional fighting sports --- boxing, wrestling, etc. --- I am somewhat ambivalent; although the feet come heavily into play, running speed, such a traditional characteristic of athletic ability, is hardly at all relevant. Regardless of how we might label a great performer in the decathlon, I would never refer to a track star as the “world’s greatest athlete”. (“Athlete of the Year”, yes, just as a golfer could so be considered if their competitive domination calls for it.) Track stars only perform singular elements of physical ability in a very controlled setting. Carl Lewis might be the fastest man on the field, but he might also be the most useless baseball or football player in the game. This fact would have made him less serviceable as a prehistoric hunter as well. Soccer is a sport that must be included in the list of honor with regard to sporting sophistication. But … Perhaps the most telling moment in the evolution of what we now refer to as human beings, occurred in that instance when one of our forefathers abandoned the use of his front legs as ambulatory devices and stood erect, thus creating an independent set of “hands” that could strike out on its own and evolve into the remarkably dexterous appendages they are today. From that moment on, our species began to distance itself from the rest, until we had become the most relevant animals on the planet. There is no other life form on Earth that comes close to being able to do what we’ve accomplished with our hands. We are the only species that can even attempt such prosaic feats. Even if we begin at the most mundane levels of human activity, with plumbers, electricians or carpenters, the work of the hand can only be considered awesome. If we move on to the delicate work of surgeons, dentists, acupuncturists and such, our language begins to become inadequate in describing such delicate exactitude. It would be ludicrous to even remotely suggest that any other animal could create the harmonious noise we call music, could even barely conceive re-creating reality on a canvas or piece of marble, without the unparalleled use of the hand. The hand is the true miracle of human development. This exclusive manual dexterity has played the prominent role in the intellectual development of the species, providing possibilities for ideas and projects that would never have been conceived without what can be done with our hands. In mimicking this unique human ability, our most sophisticated sports make the hand the focal point of the skill necessary in playing it. In assessing athletic ability, one of the most oft used expressions is that he or she has “good hands”. When a basketball player consistently secures a rebound, he has “good hands”. So too does that infielder, who misses a ground ball with all the regularity of a Biblical flood, have “good hands”. That wide receiver who catches anything near him … etc., etc. Even the way we denigrate athletes is filled with references to our hands: “butterfingers”, “stone hands”, and the picturesque nickname of a particularly bad first basemen, “Dr. Strangeglove”. But the idea of “good hands” is only just the tip of the iceberg. Almost every movement of a ball in any sport is a direct result of something done by the hands. Almost … And this is the great flaw in soccer. Soccer, with the exception of the goalkeeper, does everything it can to minimize the impact of the great miracle of human evolution. It has decided to make the foot the singular protagonist in its drama, leaving that delicate manipulative instrument of human triumph dangling awkwardly out of play, or, at best, relegated to the underworld of pushing, shoving, grabbing … of cheating. In so doing, an interesting spectacle has been created, but one that is a perversion of our physical capabilities, one that has little relevance to how we’d use our bodies in the wild. Our feet are meant to do the heavy work, the dull work, the unglamorous work, to carry the load as best they can. Indeed, the more our evolutionary superiority seems to grow, the less our feet seem to matter. It has even been suggested that our little toe is evolving towards extinction. There are many animals who use their feet in a far more spectacular way than man does; who run much faster, jump much higher, corner, dodge, feint and change direction laughably better than the most elusive runner on a football field. The pads of their feet, their paws, their claws, etc., are infinitely more suited for getting about than humans are. For such animals, their legs, along with a diverse catalog of teeth, jaws, strength, smell, eyesight, camouflage, etc., are their tools for survival, and they are more efficient than what humans possess in this sense. But we have hands … and, due to our inexplicable mixture of brilliance and stupidity, there are almost none of them, and billions of us. When’s the last time you heard someone ask for help by saying, “hey buddy, can you lend me a foot?”
Jerome Grapel
Author of the book of essays, “Because You Never Asked”
Phone: (305) 766-9576 • Email: JerryG@postcman.info • www.postcman.info
THE FLAW IN SOCCER
A 2 book collection of Mr. Grapel’s essays will be published soon by AbsolutelyAmazingEBooks
