Dates and Locations: Soldiers Field via Boston Mass.

Yesterday Rocky fwd me a neat address that listed off results, goal scorers, attendence etc for each game the old Chicago Sting of the North American Soccer League ever played. In truth, they were the soccer team that I loved more than any other team. Fire, Man U., America, U.S.A., all pale for my childhood team - The Chicago Sting.

I can remember when I was first exposed to them up close- it must have been summer of 1977 and the Marquette Park Day camp I was in had a field trip to old Soldiers Field. Jump on the yellow buses, crowd of screaming kids to go, and deposited #@ Old Soldiers. We were given demonstrations and gifts from a team I'd heard about, but didn't really know too much about- but it was enough: this old man thinks (looking back) two things, probably even more than the actual 'beautiful game', attracted me mightly and made me a fan:

1) They gave us old game programs. They were thick magazines full of the history of the game, bios of the players, and stats stats stats. Like most of us, I was an obsessive reader when I was young, and the three programs gave me reading materials that I read and re-read. Sting public relations worked well on me.

2) It was different. we were all Sox, Cubs, Bears, Hawks, and Bulls fans. However, who was a soccer fan back then? Moho, for sure, and my circle of frenz. but as I have been and continue to be someone who is attracted to 'different', the Sting were my thing.

Many memories from then. But this Wednesdays Memories concerns a specfic game- and here's the line from that link(from 1983 season):

709 H S Tulsa Roughnecks 1-2 SO L 8-6 73 10,276 Karl Heinz Granitza

Wasn't @ the game that was played in front of 10, 276 fans @ old Soldiers Field That summer, the Summer of the Weight Sox (as it turned out to be-but the Fall was all Baltimore) my Mom, Sister.1 and Sister.2 and I visited our four uncles and their families in Boston. We stayed a whole week @ my Uncle Mikes, and like mine, it was the large, young and bawdy family. We fit in, suprise suprise. Crammed into a long room with two of Uncle Mikes sons - the other got stuck in the basement to make room for me. The extended family of an already large and extended family. Thousand miles away from home, but we were in a place that was recognizably home.

But it wasn't the only scene that I fit in to- I hung out with my like aged cousins and their frenz. I was instantly a ' part of the gang ', and accepted as such. I remember playing football - mutherfucker if the Boston kids didn't tackle as hard as my Chicago mates- and baseball. Someone lent me a Rawlings. Ah, but young mens minds do not stop @ sports, hard as it seems to be - we also attended teenage beauty contest in Quincy Market. I can't remember much, just young men watching like aged girls being put on display for us. Sexism is markets young to us all, n'est pas?

And the experssions !! This was my first exposure to adjectives like 'wicked' and 'mad' - both to denote "a lot of", as in.....well, 'mad beers' or 'wicked beers'. And then there was the fashion statements.

Back in those days there wasn't the incessent coverage of sports on tv like today - but ESPN did exist. I can remember walking to the cornershop to look- but not buy - @ the morning papers for the Sox box scores*. But there was one Chicago sports highlite that was shown on Boston tv - Granitzas goal in that July Sting game. Yes- I couldn't get Sox highlites, but here was a teaser to 'come back after the commercial' with a flash of a goal in a Sting game - and a Sting goal.

But what a fucking goal- in all honest, it may be the greatest goal ever scored in soccer history. What I saw flashed up on the tv screen was old Soldiers, the game clock counting down from 10 seconds, and the ball 120 yards away from the Tulsa goal and in our goalies hands. But that flash on tv: the goalie Victor Nogueria dropkicking the ball linedrive style to midfield- Ricardo Alonso, the tall lanky Argentinian heading the ball forward from the center circle - rite to the chest of Stings greatest player ever, the German Karl Heinz Granitza. With his back to the goal, he deadened the ball perfectly, and just as time ran out - he biked it into the enemy goal.

And then a bleeding commercial.

I'll give it away - the game ended in tears. It went to a 'shootout' and the Sting lost ((but, in accordance to the rules of the N.A.S.L., they got two points for the shootout loss and one for a goal scored - Tulsa only got five points (four and one) )). This I only found out when I got back - because we were on our way to somewhere, I could not wait till after the commercial to see the goal again and hear the story. I only found out that Granitza goal was not the winner, but only the tier(sic) back home. No internet then to find out, for example, the time of the public league semifinal this weekend, the scores of Sting games from way back - or if the Sting won that game in 1983 . The only option? No good. Boston Globe didn't carry N.A.S.L. scores.

But, a gametying goal, as time ran out, by advancing the ball totally airborne 120 yards - it was the greatest goal I have ever seen.

You should have seen it.

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*= this will be revisited some Wednesday to come, for the baseball aspect.