World Cup, Blue Marble

One Body

I am a pretty typical American when it comes to the World Cup.

Or maybe not typical, because I have no TV. But typical when it comes to ignorance of the event.

I played high school soccer, more than six decades ago. I was a decent athlete, but I went to a small, all-boys, high school in Rhode Island, and we were 90% Anglos.

When we played the other high schools, many heavily populated with Portuguese boys, we quickly got it that our brand of the game was only tacitly related to theirs.

Even though I’m relegated to 15” computer screens to watch sports, which I do to follow tennis, I have been bitten by the World Cup bug.

It’s estimated that, by the Spain vs. Argentina final is played, more than 1.8 billion people will have watched the games.

That means one in every eight people on earth would have been connected to the game.

And each other.

If you discount those who are too young, or too old, disabled in some way that precludes their watching, so isolated that they lack connection to a satellite signal, it must come close to half the world’s people.

Maybe as many people recognize the name, Lionel Messi, as they do Pope Leo. Or Jesus, or The Buddha.

Though I’m loathe to claim to understand the significance of all this, it’s undeniable.

Especially for Americans. We got engaged when it seemed as if we might finally be able to have a place among the world’s football (time we joined the rest of the world in using its name) elite.

Thanks to instant communication, the early success of the American team, ignited national pride.

Here the analogy gets a little dicey.

Ever since WWII, when we emerged as the only major country to have been spared war on our soil, we have enjoyed being the world’s major economic, political and military power.

So, when, for a moment, it seemed our national soccer (football) team, might win the World Cup, it felt like another shot at the pinnacle.

When we were taken down, in the same round as in previous World Cups, it was a body blow.

Especially so, as our deeply, troubled, tariff-infatuated, megalomaniac, president, sought to assuage his ego by starting a war.

As the United States has gradually needed to learn to play the role of partner, not ruler, among the nations, opportunist American politicians have exploited our anxiety by shouting, “America First.”

Is it my imagination that we haven’t lost interest in the World Cup, even though we’re no longer in contention?

Would we dare see this is as a subtle step in embracing our place as a peer among our fellows?

Might this World Cup take its place next to “Blue Marble,” that breathtaking photo taken from Apollo 17 in 1972, when we finally saw what’s a stake for us on this tiny island we share?

It may be that our species isn’t well designed for long tenure here.

But when so many of us can share a moment like the World Cup, I dare hope enough connects us, that we may yet learn we are many members of a single species.

As the letter to the first-century people in Corinth, said of human anatomy, there is one body, but there are many parts.

The eye may say to the ear, “You’re less important because you can’t see.”

You get the point.

As a nation of hybrids we are uniquely suited to embrace the other.

Maybe even the Belgians, who bested us in the round of 16.