By Dee Schmidt
Hello, world. I’m from the ‘70s and if you’re reading this, you’re probably not. So bear with me, future dudes. I’ve spent 32 of the last 36 years frozen solid, biding my time at the bottom of an ever-expanding trash heap on the snow-white shores of Hudson Bay. I’m from Encinitas, man. There’s no way I should be alive! But Dee lives, he still breathes the game, and he’s holding forth on the World Cup thanks to his righteous new sugar daddies at The A Position, who’ve asked me to blog my way through the world’s greatest sporting spectacle.
Lookit: Four years ago, Dee didn’t even know what a blog was. Or a “personal” computer. Or the Internet. And I’m still learning — still trying to get my head around this Net thing: Was all this information always up there, just floating around in space?
You know what? Nevermind. I don’t care. I love the Net, for no other reason than Dee can follow Bundesliga matches as they happen, or get Serie A results the same day! And here’s another reason: Anyone can dig my backstory by just clicking on this colored, underlined “link” bit here (The Story of Dee).
Trust me, this was not possible in 1973. Not even close. In 1973, that was a sausage. More to the point, do you realize what Dee had to do, back in the day, to check on the Scudetto? Either I had to call my dad’s brother in Salzburg (Horst knew everything about European football), or Dee had to hump it up to Long Beach and buy a London Times at this special ex-pat newsstand on Alamitos.
Forget television. Do you realize that during the 22 years of my former life, Dee never ever saw a match on TV? EVER. I’ll never forget the night some four years ago, fairly soon after my thaw, when I’m flipping through the gajillion channels at my buddy Proo’s pad. He grabs the remote and shows me to a station that broadcasts nothing but soccer. God praise Fox Soccer Channel! … I gotta tell ya, the adjustments to 21st century life have been many. But Dee likes it better this way.
Besides, uncle Horst is dead. Hell, my parents are dead, too, and I never got the chance to say goodbye. Most of my old friends are unrecognizable to me: married, married-and-divorced, parents, even grandparents. Some of them still follow the footy (like Proo, who zoinked majorly when I showed up at his place in La Jolla; he’s a BANKER, man! But we watched a Bundesliga match on his FSC and we zoinked at the kits. Well, I did. More on that later). But in every other way I’m basically unrecognizable to Proo, too. Dee’s a 58-year-old, ice-aged panel-head with a 22-year-old brain, a head of hair that’s going gray at a bitchin’ rate, and the palest, saggiest damned skin you ever saw (apparently, one’s natural elasticity and melanin count tend to suffer after three decades in the freezer. It’s true — I read it on the Net.).
So that’s my story, dig? It’s a sad and bizarre tale in many ways but I’m glad my mother, a writer herself, made me keep a diary all those years and steered me toward a journalism gig at San Diego State. I’m loving this iMac thingy. It’s good therapy for me, and it’s helped me realize it could’ve been worse: Dee could still be sleeping with the fish heads in Churchill, or they coulda dug me out this summer and I’d have missed another World Cup.
In the meantime here are some initial observations on the state of the soccer world leading up to South Africa 2010 — and the world at large — issued by yours truly, the Retromensch, one of the only pentagenarians on Earth totally untouched by disco. I’ve heard this shit, man; what were y’all thinking?
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• Much has changed since 1973, but Dee has to say it was a comfort to see certain fashions, which arrived and thrived during my previous life, have endured uninterrupted to the present day. Bell-bottoms and butterfly collars, for example. You wouldn’t believe the shit I caught for making that fashion move in the mid-‘60s, when pants were still pegged and collars buttoned-down. Now that I’m a dirty old man, I can agree even more strongly with my younger self that nothing flatters the female form like a pair of hip huggers, man (nothing with long pants anyway). Another look clearly built to last: mutton chops. When me and my boys grew our sideburns out in high school, we thought we were on to something BIG. But we never dreamed it would stay so big for so long.
• Football fashion? That’s another story. What’s with the clown pants, man? Y’all look like the second coming of Ferenc Puskas. That’s a look older than I am – baggy shorts down to the knees went out with over-the-ankle boots. Give me Gerd Mueller in a pair of proper shorts any day. I will say, future dudes, that y’all are onto something pretty groovy with some of these national team kits. I watched Cameroon and Ivory Coast plays some African Nations Cup matches in February — psychedelic!
• In 1973, there were two Germanys, East and West. Now there is just one. In 1973, there was this wall, see? Not anymore, I gather. This is basically a huge freak for a dude of my latent vintage, but it’s all well and good. My dad was Austrian, but he’d have been well chuffed that the Germans got their act together politically, and that Austria successfully co-hosted the last European Championship, an event I was privileged to watch (even if the side looked fairly inept). My dad might have gone with me to West Germany in ‘74, had the Austrians qualified, but they didn’t. Neither did England, a fact that rocked the soccer world in 1973. Trust me, it did. They had won it all only eight years before and brought a wonderful team to Mexico in 1970. England’s failure to qualify in ’74 hung like a pall over the pre-tournament atmosphere… Get used to my continual references to West Germany 1974. I understand that eight WCs have since come and gone, but that’s my last, pre-frozen point of reference and you’ve got to recognize that my whole life was leading up to that tournament, man. And Dee missed it!
• George Best is dead? Okay, but here’s my question: It only just happened? Sad, and apparently I missed his stint in Southern California with some NASL outfit called the Aztecs (?), but even based on what I knew of George Best, i.e. leading up to 1973, I’d have put the over-under on his liver giving out at around 1986, 1990 max.
• Okay, in this first column I’ve saved the best for last: Nothing warms my defrosted heart or bends my flower-power brain more than the fact that America will be participating in its sixth consecutive World Cup finals this month. Fuck the Berlin Wall. This development is truly earth-shattering, to me anyway. Never in his wildest dreams did Dee think this was possible. I’ve seen most every U.S. international over the last four years and the class of soccer we’ve mustered is, well, mind boggling. If you were suddenly transported back to 1973 (sort of like my own experience, in reverse), you’d understand what leaves me so gob-smacked. But the thing that really sends chills down my arthritic spine is the fan support. The crowds, man! American crowds! Thousands upon thousands turning out to see proper football — in the United States of America!
In August 1973, I saw the Americans play Poland in a friendly up in the Bay Area. We lost 4-0 and there couldn’t have been 200 people there. I hope you realize just how far y’all have come — how far we’ve come! I watch Landon Donovan and think surely he’s some Irish national who just been naturalized. But he’s an American, from L.A., and that dude can play. The quality and pace of Michael Bradley, of Stuart Holden, of Jozy Altidore — the physical specimen that is Oguchi Onyewu… For a dude whose standard of excellence had been Kyle Rote Jr., whose last pair of new boots were 1971 Puma Apollos (seriously!), it’s a bit overwhelming. But I’m adjusting — to everything but the shorts.
