March 21, 2006
I went to my first ever professional indoor soccer game this weekend. I’ve managed to avoid almost all professional sports in Wisconsin. I’ve seen one Packer Game (pre-Brett Farve) and one Brewer game (I read a magazine and watched bugs fly into the sodium lights).
Not much of a fan here. I have some sort of library-related cheer deficiency. On a cellular level, when I should be standing up and shouting, I have an overpowering urge to make everyone else sit down and shut up.
But we had these free tickets that we won in a raffle for a Milwaukee Wave soccer game, and an afternoon to kill.
What the hell.
Indoor soccer is my new favorite sport. Not many people go to it, so it’s not hard to get a decent seat. The team is marketing furiously to hold the attention of the jaded crowd, so there are mirror balls, fog machines, parachute prize drops and assorted other give-aways. Did I mention that it was bobble-head day?
And you can get rum smoothie drinks with little paper umbrellas.
So. We have something that looks vaguely like a sport, involving good looking young men in shorts running around while I drink cocktails? And there’s enough stuff going on so, if you are like me and have the attention span of a gnat, you can stay entertained.
Bread and Circuses. Deal me in.
And the rules are relatively easy. Kick the ball to the other end of the field and into the goal, where a man in a fashionable black uniform will try and stop the goal.
And if a player gets nailed in the nuts by the ball, goes over like a felled tree, and then curls up into a fetal position?
That’s a time out.
We were half way down the field, in relative safety and not by the goals where as #1 son put it, “They’re trying to kick the ball hard enough to kill you.” Excellent view of the ball flying into the stands at a million miles an hour, straight for someone else.
But that’s not all…
There was also a charity match after the game with pseudo-celebs form “Survivor” playing against former Milwaukee Wave stars. That one-legged guy, and the one with the tattoos, and three of the millionaires but not the one that’s in prison for tax evasion. And the seats were so good I was close enough to see Jeff Probst sweat.
My husband developed a headache early on and was begging for mercy by the start of the Survivor game. How long did we have to stay?
Until Rudy has a heart attack or Big Tom splits out of his shorts. Now shut up and drink your rum.
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