On Loan

In sports, a loan involves a particular player being allowed to temporarily play for a club other than the one he is currently contracted to. Loan deals may last from a few weeks to all season-long and can also subsist for multiple seasons.

--Wikipedia

*************

As most of you probably know, I am kind of a sports junkie.  But not so much the sports junkie that listens to sports radio for hours a day or parks in front of ESPN every weekend (except, of course, when the Hawkeyes play).  And I don't play, either, unfortunately; I would love to, but it is quite difficult to find leagues for unathletic people in their late 30's, especially when you have two young children.  

No, I am a different kind of sports junkie: the nerd sports junkie.

For me, ESPN, sports radio, etc. are only supplements to my true passion: cards and dice sports.  In C & D sports (as we in the community call ourselves), each player in whatever sport you are mimicking is given a card, with their performance from the previous season embedded in dice chances.  You then roll the dice to see what happens. You could think of it as "Dungeons and Dragons" for sports. (D & D, as it happens, was inspired by Strat-o-Matic). There are many, many wrinkles, of course, that you can add in (and believe me, I do) but that is the general idea.

For me, it began with baseball.  Before I had kids, I was quite the man about town. I loved going out with friends, shooting pool, playing darts, talking politics, you name it.  Suddenly, though, I had this ten pound little being in my life and found that going out three or four nights a week wasn't gonna be. Not only wasn't it going to be, I didn't even want it to be; kids tend to make you tired.  

When Niko was almost a year old, I bought a baseball preview magazine. On page 14 was a full page ad for Strat-o-Matic Baseball.  It brought back vague memories of playing with my brother Marty while on interminable visits to southern Iowa (although, I would come to realize much later, the game we had played was actually Statis Pro, not Strat-o-Matic).  Intrigued, I asked Sonia if she would mind if I purchased it, with vague, optimistic promises that it would be something I could do together with the kid(s) as they got older.

The kids, of course, prefer video games.  But I fell. Hook, line and sinker.  When the kids were little, I had tons of time around the house that I had never had before and I filled it with draft leagues, tournaments and replays.  And a strange thing happened: even as the kids got older and our schedules filled up with play dates, soccer games, and school, I got even more into the games than before.  I mad a few futile attempts to entice buddies to play with me, but nobody was really interested.  It remained a solitaire passion.

A few years ago, I branched out.  Niko is a huge American football fan, so I bought Strat-o-Matic "for him".  We've played a few games together, but he prefers Madden on the PS3.  I probably would, too, if I were ten.  I enjoyed it, but unlike the baseball game, it doesn't play particularly well solitaire. Football spends a lot of time on the shelf, unfortunately, unless Niko gets bored and I can talk him into a game.

The next time I branched out would present new challenges.  I have played and watched baseball for as long as I can remember, and football for almost as long.  While I had to learn the mechanics of the game system, the sports themselves were second nature to me.   Basketball is similar, but I've never been a big basketball fan.  

So as I found myself "without a sport", as it were, during the long, cold, dark Iowa winters, I decided I was going to become a hockey fan.  First on the list was buying Strat-o-Matic hockey.  As I tried to learn to play, however, I was baffled.  What was a "line"?  When did the subs come in? What in God's name was "icing"?  So, in order to really enjoy Strat hockey, I had to learn the sport itself.  I checked out The Idiot's Guide to Ice Hockey.  I bought a book on the history of the NHL.  I started watching the NHL Network.  I chose a favorite team, seemingly out of thin air: the Minnesota Wild.

It worked.  I learned about hockey, and I love it, and I love playing Strat-o-Matic hockey.  Within 18 months I was as fluid in Strat hockey as I was in baseball.  The last several years I've been playing Strat baseball spring through fall, and Strat hockey fall through spring.

Soon enough, though, I became restless.  I was ready for a new sport. I was ready for C & D soccer.

**************

Like many Americans of my generation and those before me, my relationship with soccer is quite different than my relationship with the "big three" of baseball, football and basketball,  Until 1996, the United States did not have a First Division Soccer league.  For a huge smorgasbord of reasons political, cultural and other, which I won't go into here (not that I'm an expert by any means!), soccer has not caught on in this country like it has in virtually the rest of the world.  This is changing: Major League Soccer (MLS) is now an established league, with 20 teams and expanding, and for my kids as well as most others their age, soccer is as natural as, perhaps even more so than, baseball, football and basketball.

I personally never participated in a game of soccer until I was 21 years old, in February of 1999.  I had recently arrived in the picture postcard city of Merida, Venezuela.  Venezuela is an exception to the Latin American rule: along with Cuba and the Dominican Republic, baseball is the big sport, not soccer.  In Merida, though, that was not the case.  Soccer ruled.  I soon discovered that if I was going to play sports, I would have to play soccer.

Merida sets along a finger-like valley in the northernmost part of the Andes mountains.  In very few places is the ground flat.  But just above the parking lot for the Facultad de Humanidades, where I (sporadically) attended classes, there was a flat stretch of land, perhaps 60 yards long and 40 yards wide, with the frame of the goal on either end.  The nets had long since disappeared.  On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, guys (and only guys) would play pick up games of eight on eight, first goal won.  Winners stayed and took on the next team.  If no goal was scored within 10 minutes, there'd be a shootout.  On the north side of the field, the ground jutted up quickly; on the south side, it jutted down abruptly.  Many, many times, when a ball would fall off that tiny cliff, it would hit a car, and the alarm would reverberate in the cool, foggy air around us.

I had no cleats. I had no shinguards.  Pretty much the only thing I knew was that I wasn't supposed to touch the ball with my hands.  I was almost always put at defender by the self-appointed captains of my teams; I was almost always (and probably correctly) blamed when we would lose our game. "Catire!" ("White guy!") they'd yell.  I learned that word fast.  I was just a body out there, but I had fun.  I made a lot of friends.  When I wasn't losing the game for my side, most people were interested in getting to know the catire.

***************

Still, I never really got soccer until 2002.  It was the summer after my first year of teaching, and I was spending it in Merida.  The big difference this time was that the World Cup was going on in Japan and South Korea.  It was noted in the U.S.; but in Venezuela is was everywhere, all the time.  It didn't take long and I was caught up in it too.  The United States advanced to the quarterfinals and was beat by Germany; I learned many of the finer points of the game and learned to discuss, analyze, even argue it.  I learned to admired the athleticism of the players and marvel at the way they bent the ball.  The players flopped too much (and they still do), but what the hell.

Niko was born in April of 2006.  After school ended that spring, him and I were together 22 hours a day, every day, until late August.  Luckily for both of us, it was another World Cup year, this time in Germany.  I watched almost every single game that year, because really, what else was I going to do? The next summer, Sonia and I went on our honeymoon to Peru and Venezuela, where the Copa America (South American championship) was going on.  Orlando came along in 2008; the South Africa World Cup in 2010, Copa America Argentina in 2011, World Cup 2014 in Brazil; I shared them all with my boys.  

Last summer we spent in Lima; they were playing the Copa America in Chile.  We watched all or part of just about every single game.

Niko and Orlando both play soccer; I've even done some coaching.  It is as weaved into their existence as much as baseball was in mine.  Even for me, it's probably tied for second with football; and as the NCAA and NFL disgust me every day just a little bit more, it may even move ahead of that.

***************

Strat-o-Matic does not make a soccer game; I had to go to their main rival, APBA.  APBA has lots of different soccer leagues: England, Italy, Spain, Germany.  But I decided to be patriotic and go with MLS.  As I did with hockey and the NHL, I set out to learn as much as I could about the league and the sport.  As I did with hockey, I chose, more or less out of thin air, a favorite team: Sporting Kansas City.  I read about the business structure.

As I did so, I kept coming across a term I just didn't understand: players "on loan".  In all other American sports leagues, and indeed most professions, you are under contract with one team and play for them.  Period.  But apparently, soccer, due to its European business ancestry, has a concept, not present in the North American sports leagues, of loaning.  Say, for example, Kansas City has a player under contract, but he's not playing at the current time, for whatever reason.  They can "loan" that player to another team, maybe within the same MLS, but more usually in another league, until such time as they want to use him again.

****************

Two days ago I completed my thirty-ninth year off of the umbilical cord.  We had a great time.  We grilled out, cooking so much (SO MUCH!!) meat and other delicious food.  Many loved ones came over and celebrated with me.

After the party died, I got out APBA and set up for my next game.  Sporting KC vs. Portland Timbers.  As with my other sports, I've learned a lot about soccer through my games.  For example, I learned that I would only have one of my bigger players for part of the season because he was on loan from England's Premier League.

And I started to think about that, this concept of being on loan.  And the more I thought about it, the more I liked it.  Because if you think about it, we're all on loan.  So far my loan to this world has lasted 39 years and I would be overjoyed if I could get another 39, although of course I have little control over that: who knows when my Club decides They need me and I have to head back?

A little harder to swallow is the idea that those around me are on loan to ME.  With many people, it's not such a big deal; coworkers, fellow committee members, etc. are clearly with me for a stated time and purpose.  Casual friends are the same way.  With close friends, with extended family, it's a bit more difficult: does time and distance really separate us?  Were my hometown buddies and college roommates and aunts and uncles and cousins really just on loan to me? Does that relationship HAVE to be severed?

The immediate family is hardest.  I don't WANT my dad, my brothers and sisters, Sonia, my kids, OH MY GOD MY KIDS, to be on loan. I certainly didn't want my mom to be on loan. I want to control those contracts.  I wouldn't mind, necessarily, loaning them out when it's good for everyone involved, but I damn sure would love to be able to say "You're coming back" whenever I damn well please, whenever I want to make sure they're okay, whenever I want to make sure I'M okay.

But I'm not in that position. I'm the player and the coach, not Management. I don't make those decisions. Someone Else makes those decisions, Someone Else with far more power and sway than I have or can ever aspire to have.  

And I guess that means that the best I can do, the ONLY thing I can do, is be the best damn player and teammate I can, and thank Management for all the players They bring me into contact with during my time on loan here.