The Outsiders' Edge

All Fandom is Local: Seattle’s Summer of Soccer and Politics

Seattle’s undergoing a renewed awareness in two areas the past couple months: sports and politics.  This summer’s been an incubator for new fans in both areas.  Yes, the old standbys are around—the Mariners exceeded everyone’s expectations by not sucking as much as Oakland, and people here still believe reusable grocery bags will singlehandedly save oceans—but there are new guys in town mucking things up.

Seattle got a new sports toy as the Sounders upgraded from the minors to Major League Soccer.  The Emerald City is one of few that actually pays attention to soccer: Qwest Field regularly sells out Sounders games, though the top deck is off-limits so it’s not as impressive as a Seahawks football crowd.  The team, led by local goalie Kasey Keller and somewhat-famous Swede Freddie Ljunberg, obliged the fans by starting out strong, but are starting to fade late in the season like a vintage Mariners team.

The link Brad sent me was broken, so I posted this steamy picture of Freedie Ljungberg posing in his underwear

On the political front, Seattle’s in the middle of a hard-to-fathom election season.  Long-time mayor Greg Nickels lost his primary race to the guy running T-Mobile and a Sierra Club lawyer.  That’s identical to the Yankees finishing third in the AL East behind the Tampa Bay Rays and the Portland Beavers.  One reason Nickels is a lame duck is how he let the Sonics walk off to Oklahoma without much of a fight.  (Okay, no more Sonics talk.)  There are other competitive and interesting races up simmering until November.  (The county executive race involves a delightful story of one candidate skipping work on the Fourth of July due to alleged hemorrhoids.) The region’s also getting swept up in the national debate over health care.  All the local Congressmen are holding town halls, just so they can tell all their friends in the other Washington when they fly back next week.

The Mariners’ jacket cemented his third-place finish.

I wanted to see what the summer of bluster was about, so I took my mom (I’m a good kid) to a Sounders game and one of those infamous Congressional town halls this weekend.  The first thing you should know about Sounders is that their jerseys (in soccer, they’re called kits) border on hideous.

Wear this, they still stand out on green grass.

That searing color is officially called Rave Green, and it serves as a blaring Xbox ad.  Even in Microsoft’s hometown it’s tacky.  The beauty of the not-found-in-nature, just-in-candy-and-electronics color is that Sounders fans stick out to sore eyeballs.  Hours before their Saturday afternoon game, Mom and I could spot dozens of people in Keller, Ljunberg and Fredy Montero jerseys and some in face paint and hairspray, but also people wearing non-licensed Rave Green clothes.  It’s the Pacific Northwest; our wardrobes are varying shades of green and blue.  Some fans headed to the game even wore old Sonics gear.

(Okay, no more Sonics talk.)

The bright green is now the opposite of a secret handshake or the equivalent of an inside joke.  Other cities are good at showing their colors, but it’s something Seattle fans, outside of the purple-and-gold Husky boosters need to work on.  During a halfway-decent season a couple years ago, the Mariners’ PR department crafted a one-night Lolla-Blue-Za, urging fans to just wear blue.  The stunt was so badly named that it doomed the team’s pennant run.  But with the Sounders, there appears to be a fun consensus emerging: we all know it’s hideous, let’s just wear it and go yell for a couple hours?

The best yellers for the Sounders are the Emerald City Supporters, who set up shop in the south endzone of the field during games.  They’re a legitimate (albeit unofficial) fan club—if you pay $30 you get your own t-shirt, hat and scarf.  And they have some decent cheers and chants, many of which involve drinking.  (Sample lyric:  I am a Sounder, I’m seldom sober… It’s when I’m drinking, I’m always drinking, To a Sounders victory.)  Those words are bit too risqué for the team to officially endorse the ECS—Washington produces great alcohol (Columbia Valley wine is almost as good as Napa Valley at half the cost and condescension), but tries to be “family-friendly” by never talking about it.  Still, the ECS gloms onto team-sponsored functions like the March to the Match, where all the fans gather in a downtown park to hear the team’s brass band (the badly-named Sound Wave) play hits from 1999 before walking half a block to Qwest Field.  While families (like my mom and I) quietly admire the raw musicianship, the ECS actually do something.

Majestic sousaphones

They’re also the instigators during the game.  Almost all the 32,000 fans stood for all 90 minutes against Toronto FC, and cheered whenever aggravating Toronto striker Dwayne De Rosario got knocked down or got carded, the Supporters waved signs and flags and kept up their oh-so rhythmic chants.  I hope soccer helps revive fan-generated cheering and chants.  PA systems coaxing fans into saying “Heeeeey-Oh” doesn’t cut it for participatory fandom.  This is one area where Europeans soccer and basketball fans have us beat.

I’ve gotten this far without talking about the actual game because there wasn’t much good to write about.  The downfalls of having your star player be your goalie is that you’ll endure a lot of thrilling shutouts.  Seattle needed a victory to get closer to a playoff spot, but settled for a scoreless tie with Toronto.  The Canadian Reds had several easy scoring chances in the first half thwarted by their own failure and Keller’s experienced play.  Seattle fared better in the second half, with several painfully close scoring chances in the waning minutes, but both teams walked away from the scoreless game with only one point.  I enjoyed the match—the Sounders Steve Zakuani can be a relentless attacker on the left side.  But I don’t mind staying up late or getting up early to watch international games, so I’m not going to sway many by saying the game was awesome, even though no one scored.

The town hall meeting the next day was just as futile, but also almost as sporting and competitive.  The object of adulation or ire, depending on your views of socialism and health, was suburban Democrat Jay Inslee.  He’s got enough liberal cred (he voted against the Iraq War and wrote a book on alternative energy) to get support from post-White Flight suburbanites without being an inner-city ideologue or Barney Frank witty.  He’s a competent, faceless politician who gets newspaper endorsements.

You don’t recognize this guy. Trust me.

That’s what makes it surprising but pointless that he got a huge crowd wanting to hug or heckle him for predictably being in favor of a contentious health care plan.

Just like the Sounders game, Inslee managed to pack a mid-sized venue, as a local high school gym was standing room only before he took his spot on the basketball court’s baseline.  Like Sounders fans fueled by sites like the ECS’s website (http://www.weareecs.com/) or Sounder at Heart (http://sounderatheart.com/), those on either side of the health care debate have blogs and cable networks to both stoke their emotions and instruct their town hall behaviors.  Before Inslee approached the crowd, people were waving signs saying “If not tort, you must abort” (a wondrous mashup of today’s hot button issues like health care, abortion, and race) and “If you hate socialism, give up your Medicare.”  My mom says she heard someone shout “Go Huskies.”  Democracy was on display, in slogan and mob form.

It’s too bad Jay Inslee is a competent politician, because he defrayed what could have been a more eventful afternoon.  His crew lightly controlled who got a hold of the microphone, and no truly loony questions were asked.  One woman with a thick accent said health care options were better for her when she lived in Communist Poland, so someone shouted for her to go back.  But Inslee kept quiet while people called him a liar about death panels and the cost of a public option.  He used the word poppycock and claimed that there was a misplaced apostrophe in one of the proposed health care plans he read.  But while there was plenty of shouting and several standing ovations, nothing went viral.  Inslee’s town hall followed the path of other Congressmen’s public meetings around Seattle—political reporters must be feeling disappointment that they didn’t have anything great to cover this summer.  Sports reporters must feel the same way tracking the Sounders, Mariners, Seahawks and the rest—always on the cusp of what could be awesome, always failing.

My lesson learned from a weekend of soccer and political activism is that while I love sports and politics, they need different tactics and different etiquette.  Boisterous crowds turn athletic events into something more than people working out, but those crowds force politicians to retreat to pithy talking points.  I hope more people realize that a crossover in fandom is a bad idea.  Look at how well sports merchandise like ugly Sounders kits sell compared to political bumper stickers or signs.  There’s a reason baseball cards are long-lasting collectibles while Barack Obama commemorative quarters belong in a pinball machine.  Hours spent at a scoreless soccer game, or a Mariners blowout loss still leave me smiling, feeling like part of a communal event, but 90 minutes at a political rally just make me wish for a less representative government.

Yes, he can. His .221 as a DH and still be a fan favorite.

Brad Iverson-Long is an aspiring journalist in Seattle for now.  Give him a job or follow him on twitter: http://twitter.com/bivlo

~ by globalcorrespondent on September 3, 2009.

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: Freddie Lljunberg, Kasey Keller, Ken Griffey Jr., MLS, Seattle Mariners, Seattle Sounders