Chiquita on Soccer

My entire life, for as long as I can remember, I’ve been a Cubs fan. My whole family is, but especially my grandmother. From the time I was born until I was in second grade, my mom worked as a nurse at Mercy Hospital. She worked nights on the weekends. Because of this, my brother and I spent a lot of time at my grandparents’ house. I bonded with both grandparents a lot during this time of my life. My grandfather had been in the Navy for most of his life and he was really into computers and he worked for Rockwell for something like 30 years. He used to let me sit on his lap and play Pac Man on an ancient, early generation Macintosh. I was never really that interested in computers and technology, but anything he wanted to tell me about them I absorbed wholeheartedly. My grandmother was the typical old lady. She played bridge, went to lunch with other old ladies, and sat in the “front room” and read the paper. That’s not how we bonded though. My grandmother and I bonded over, of all things, baseball. More specifically, she and I loved the Cubs. We’d sit on the sofa in the den, and watch the game. I was an active little girl, always hyper, always running around, but when the Cubs were on, I was 100% zoned in on the game. Sometimes kids from the neighborhood would come to the door and ask if I wanted to come out and play and I’d shoo them away, telling them I couldn’t come out today, the game is on. That basically how the tradition between generations grew into my sort-of obsessive love of the game. For a long time, baseball was my sport, I played on an all boys (except for me) baseball team with my brother from the time I was seven until I was 12 and the league said I had to play softball. I wasn’t interested in other sports at all. If there was a bat, a ball, and a diamond, I didn’t want anything to do with it.
I’d pretty much always been like that and I still was until about a week ago. My friend and I had a crazy week of schoolwork, and we were both really stressed out. One of my guy friends plays for the Mount Mercy Soccer Team, and he happened to have a home game over at Kingston, so we decided to take a break from our horrible academic week and see what all the fuss was about over soccer. Long story short; WE LOVED IT! I love soccer. The action, the wild running up and down the field; its awesome. The way we almost score and then ahh! We just miss it!! The whole game was intense. There was even a fight and a kid got a red card! It’s good in a way that’s different from baseball. Baseball is a slow game that builds, like a good story with a twist ending. Soccer, on the other hand, makes me tired just watching. Its action, action, action! I just love both the sports now. I’m not saying soccer is going to take baseball’s place in my heart or anything. I’m just saying, I seriously underestimated that sport. It rocks!