LIVE Soccer In the UK Tempted Me, But I Came Home to Baseball
I flirted with football living in England, but returned to my true love.
From 2014–2018, my family left the hustle and bustle of the Washington, D.C. area for the rolling hills of rural East Anglia, England.
Living overseas was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for my kids to travel throughout Europe and experience new cultures.
Football — or, as we Americans call it, soccer — has long been a cornerstone of British society. In every village pub and living room across the country, the world stops whenever the footie match is on the telly.
Even I, who had no prior interest in the game, found myself taking an interest in the results of international matches, particularly during the 2016 European Championship.
And in a fanciful and wildly unrealistic way, I dominated powerhouses like France, Portugal, and Germany as Team USA…on Xbox.
In every village green on any given miserable, misty afternoon, children could be seen kicking the ball around the pitch, dreaming about becoming the next Premier League superstar.
On weekends, I looked out my window onto the village green to see grown — sometimes middle-aged — men earnestly competing in formal leagues, probably reliving the same dreams they had as small boys.
And wherever there were Britons — even on holiday on the continent — there were Chelsea shirts, Arsenal scarves, or Tottenham hats worn by vocal and passionate supporters.
Schoolchildren talked about football constantly, like we used to talk about baseball when I was a boy in the ’80s. It was easy to see how an impressionable American kid could get caught up in football fever.
That’s exactly what happened to my son.
Born in Maryland, where he had lived for the first four years of his life, he found himself entering nursery (kindergarten in America) in a small village in Leicestershire, located in the English East Midlands.
He quickly made English friends, developed a British accent (or lost his American accent), and pretended to be Cristiano Ronaldo. His best mate, Tom, was a Chelsea supporter, so my son was, too.
Naturally, he wanted to play on a team like his friends once he was old enough. For one season, my son was a stalwart on defense for the Mawsley Miracle, coached by a kind and patient young man named Aaron.
Sadly, he missed the last game or two, and the team trophy presentations, because we were due back in America.
Intent on my son not missing out, I bought a random soccer trophy on eBay and asked Aaron to present it to him. Aaron, of course, gladly obliged, and my son got his “official” team trophy, which still stands on a shelf in his bedroom today.
After moving back home to America when he was 8, my son continued to play soccer at a high level for several years. As I did in England, I enjoyed his matches.
There was always something about the gracefulness and fluidity of the players and their movements that mesmerized me. I understood why it was called “the beautiful game.”
I tried to stay interested in soccer, to bond with my son through it.
I feigned interest in Major League Soccer, and watched small portions of matches on TV. The quality of play was far inferior to what we were accustomed to, and frankly, I found it extremely boring.
I even took my kids to an MLS match — DC United versus the Columbus Crew — which happened to be at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, down the street from our temporary home in Annapolis, Maryland.
There was but one goal scored in the match. It happened in the first few minutes — while I was on the concourse buying hot dogs.
The other several thousand Americans in the stadium who were also forcing themselves to like soccer cheered semi-raucously. Many even sported DC United scarves of the style European football supporters wore.
Even though DC United ended up having to play much of the second half a man down due to a player being sent off with a red card, there was no more scoring.
The DC United defense — particularly the stellar goalkeeper — provided some excitement toward the end of the match, but it wasn’t enough.
Soccer was boring.
Again.
And I lost interest.
My love affair with the beautiful game was over before it even got started.
In the end, I returned to baseball like a long-lost lover. Soccer just couldn’t break the spell America’s National Pastime held over me. By the time he was 11 or 12, my son lost interest, too.
Fortunately, I had invested a great deal of time and effort in teaching him to play and love baseball while we lived overseas. With no leagues, no sandlot games, and no baseball to watch on TV, I had to do it on my own.
But the hours upon hours I spent playing with him in that very same village green had the greatest and longest-lasting impact on him.
I taught him to throw and catch.
I taught him to hit.
I taught him to field.
I taught him to love the game.
As the English children would pass by us, football in hand, they would marvel at us as if we were speaking a foreign athletic language.
I made up imaginary games for us in which my son would play as one Major League team — batting as each player in the team’s real-world lineup — while I played as another Major League team.
I would even provide color commentary in real-time:
“Dodger pitcher Clayton Kershaw kicks and delivers…Ryan Howard drives it deep into the right field bleachers to give the Phillies a 1–0 lead!”
As the official scorer, I was quite generous — any ball my son hit over the makeshift infield I constructed with throw-down bases was a long, soaring home run.
To indoctrinate him into the statistics-obsessed world of baseball, and to hold his interest, we created our own box scores, ran league standings, and even statistics.
I still have the small pocket notebook I used to keep track.
By the time we moved back to America when he was 8, my son was fully prepared to play on his first team, which I coached.
In fact, he turned out to be a standout player.
Every year since (he is now 14 and in eighth grade), I have coached his teams. He has become a talented, smart player poised to start on his high school junior varsity team (which I also coach) next year.
Beginning in February, when spring training starts and his winter training is in full swing, he is obsessed with baseball.
I cherish our time on the field and in the dugout now, and look forward to watching him grow in high school, and maybe even play in college.
But the hours we spent recreating Major League games on the Broughton village green were some of the most memorable of my life.
I’ll cherish them forever.