Fish Fanaticism

There has always been a hat.

The first one was a teal adjustable hat I bought at Woolworth’s. I wasn’t a fan of the black stripes stitched into it so the cap rarely left my closet.

There have been others, adjustable hats, warm-up hats, vintage hats and more. But, through the years, I have always had a Marlins hat.

The caps serve as my connection to a team and a sport that captivates my attention only long enough to elicit frustration. For 20 seasons my relationship with baseball recedes and flows like slow waves to shore.

On occasion there is a high tide and the Marlins are having a successful season. In others the sea is gone, revealing shells and other undesirables that are masked by a winning season.

Through it all, there has always been a baseball cap.

It’s a relationship born out of proximity, and a lust for leaning my baseball fanaticism on some team I could relate with. Atlanta appeared to be an alternative universe to an inquisitive baseball fan in Southwest Florida. Miami felt just as foreign, but at least it was in Florida.

Spring training in Sarasota brought all the stars to me. But once April came, the players and teams were only as tangible as the television or newspaper box scores would allow.

That hideous teal cap made Charlie Hough, Benito Santiago and Jeff Conine more than names in a box score. Even if I was never closer than a box television in my bedroom, the Marlins seemed to be a team there for my own summer entertainment.

A collection of errors has hindered any ability to see this routinely mediocre team in person. But, the hat has always been there. In the good years and the bad, the hat has been a tether to a team teetering along in the National League.

Every April my optimism would heighten that this would be the year. They would flirt with my emotions for five weeks, only to go on a losing spell, stinking like rotten citrus as May drifts toward June. Father’s Day would be the barometer for the rest of the season, saving cranks like myself from suffering through summer’s dog days in the fabulous Florida sun.

I was never too good at baseball. My swing had a hitch in it. My throwing motion was never consistent. Plus, I always took circuitous routes to fielding my position.

Personal shortcomings never hindered my Marlin-inspired mania.

Mr. Marlin winning the All-Star MVP award in ’95 was the highlight of my summer. Meeting Charles Johnson six years later was such an experience I nearly hyperventilated. Little compares to dressing up as Marlins player — hat and all — for a Halloween party days after Craig Counsell floated home.

It’s been nearly a decade since Josh Beckett tagged out Posada to shutout the vaunted Yankees. Since then, there have been occasions, large and small, to proudly wear the hat of a team that defiantly represents Florida — whether it’s the booms, the busts or the steady promises for future growth.

As I’ve grown up with the Marlins, the hats have changed. My fanaticism has never wavered, even when the team is floundering in fourth place.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

How conveniently can you forget your (trivial) history?

It couldn’t be possible.

Spain, the serial underachievers were about to win at an unprecedented pace, should they find a way to be victorious at Euro 2012.

Broadcasters, and others in the media, nearly led me to believe a triumph by La Furia Roja would be the first time in soccer history a country won three straight major tournaments. Spain’s emphatic victory Sunday meant they completed the treble.

Throughout Euro 2012, something in me remained skeptical each time I heard someone trot out that useful piece of history to justify the Spanish as the best team of all time. I just had a hunch there was a long-forgotten South American team that won successive major titles.

The Brazilian teams of the early 60s led by the incomparable Pele came to mind. But, after winning the 1958 and 1962 World Cups, the Brazilians faltered in the 1963 South American championships to Bolivia of all teams.

Turns out it wasn’t the Brazilians that set the standard for winning in the beautiful game.  It’s their neighbors — Uruguay.

For a country with fewer inhabitants than greater Miami, it’s pretty remarkable they won Olympic titles in 1924 and 1928, the 1929 South American championship and the first World Cup in 1930.

The current Spanish soccer team would likely wipe the floor with the Uruguayans, because soccer, like so many sports, has changed over the past 80 years. To me, the bigger annoyance is how those past accomplishments were conveniently swept under the rug when a more colorful narrative arises.

Sunday night, I sent a text message to some very close friends highlighting that frustration:

“I find it funny people have fallen over themselves to say Spain is the first team to win three major tournaments. … My point is the Euro-centric media is quick to omit or forget history when it doesn’t suit them. South America and Africa held continental championships long before Europe, but that’s forgotten.”

South America held its first continental championship in 1916. The Asian Cup was created in 1956, while the first African Cup of Nations was first held a year later. Europe didn’t get around to hosting its first continental championship until 1960.

The deification of the Spanish national team was a reminder of the European World View, a term I was taught in a black psychology class back in college. I digested most of the lessons from that course with a raised eyebrow and a quizzical look. However, some fragments stuck around like broccoli in incisors.

One such lesson came in a chapter titled “The Development/Acquisition of Cultural Misorientation. The following sounds like a mouthful, but it made all the sense in the world this weekend as journalists exalted Spain, and brushed aside everyone else.

“Eurocentric curriculum content, which presents European history and culture as the frame of reference for world history and culture; denies, fabricates and distorts true African History and Cultural contributions to the world; and presents the Eurocentric models of reality in the liberal arts, natural sciences and social sciences as universal standards for optimal human expression and European culture as the universal referent for human culture.”

In layman, and soccer-specific terms, Spain is not the first team to win consecutive continental championships.

Asia has had four repeat champions, including an Iranian trifecta in 1968, 1972 and 1976. Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil have won the South American championship/Copa America multiple times. Ghana won consecutive African championships in the early 60s. Cameroon did the same four decades later, while Egypt won three straight African Cup of Nations tournaments in 2006, 2008 and 2010.

Soccer is certainly not the sport for everyone. But, when history is conveniently forgotten in a sporting context, we should all take note to ensure other, more important issues, are not being whitewashed from our conscience.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb