Gringo "World"(?) Series

This is a classic example of why the USA is completely out of touch with the rest of the world.

While the entire global population, save for said Americans, are engrossed with the leading sporting event of the world, the FIFA World Cup tournament, the United States is hardly aware of its occurrence, even though its national team is actually in the tournament as one of the strongest teams.

One US soccer fan said: “We had baseball, American football, basketball long before soccer and so they took a big share of big business. Unless there is big money in the game, soccer will just remain one of the many sports. But we are growing and one day we will be there.”

Maybe his analysis sums up the American approach to all things in life – is there money in it?

Just to demonstrate the katak di bawah tempurung mentality (= frog under a coconut shell = insular minded), a group of baseball fans outside New York Mets Stadium was asked: “What is the world’s most popular sport that is going on right now?”

Their immediate answer was “baseball, the World Series.”

The Americans have the thick-skin to title their American games participated by only American teams as 'World Series', but it does indicate the American worldview that they are at the centre of the universe, which extends to the south up to the US-Mexico border, to the north at the US-Canadian border, and by their mainland east and west coastline, with Hawaii and Alaska tucked away somewhere but protected by their massive naval fleets.

Until a decade ago, baseball as a game of some note was confined to the USA and Japan, the last principally because of US occupation of, and subsequently American presence and sporting influence in that country.

It might shock Americans to learn that in the eyes of the sporting world, baseball is pathetically insignificant or even ignored when compared to the 'beautiful game' of soccer - Americans won’t or can't call it football because their brand of football is where the players have to take numerous timeouts (breaks) to ask the coach in which direction they ought to be playing the ball to.

In the initial days when introducing football (or soccer) to the USA, FIFA was shocked when the American sporting entrepeneurs suggested a few changes to the game to assist its growth in popularity in the USA - namely, increase the width of the goal-mouth, and remove the off-side rule.

The Americans explained that their spectators didn't like games with small scores or worse, draws. They said they couldn't understand how Europeans could oohs and aahs a goal-less game. That mentality could explain why the fabrication of 'body counts' in the Vietnam War become a daily morning US military ritual in Saigon. Americans like to see a soccer game with scores like 157-129 - or body counts of "192 Vietcongs killed* in yesterday's bombing run over the Vietnam-Cambodia border."

* the counts were based on the probability of x persons being killed in y square miles when z tons of bombs were dropped

Unlike the rest of the world they don't and just can't see 'beauty' or 'poetry in motion' in dribbling, passes, dummies, etc.

Fortunately FIFA told them to f**k off with their rules-change suggestions and, if they want to play football, to join the rest of the world. Thank goodness for us that football was big enough with or without American participation, and thus safe from their crass influence, where we get to keep the beauty of the game unsullied.

Imagine, Netherlands beat Germany 157-129! Ayoyo, I squirm at that very thought of a football game producing that kind of crass scores. God, what stupid play would have been involved?

By the way, my Argentinean friend objected to my referring to citizens of the USA as Americans. He said the term 'Americans' cover the people of many North and South American nations like Argentina. So what do I call them?

He suggested ‘gringos’.