Flashback 2002, 2013, 2016: All kinds of drama over the years

I was hoping to do some flashbacks this year to look back 10 years to 2010, when I was in my second year as the radio play-by-play broadcaster for the Houston Dynamo. Now with sports shut down and so much of life seemingly on hold, it seems like the right time to aim for a series of retrospectives, looking back at some memorable or quirky moments from my career in sports.
 
June 26
I've had the fortune to have a string of memorable soccer moments on this date over the years. June alone has brought my first in-person pro soccer game (2001, Columbus), Rice winning the NCAA baseball championship (2003, Omaha), my pro debut in minor league baseball (2005, Yakima), my first game as a sideline reporter (2012, Philadelphia), and my first US women's national team broadcast (2014, East Hartford), and an England-Germany shootout (2017, from studio).

But June 26 has had more than its share of drama, and here are three with indelible memories.

2002
As a college-credit-earning intern for the MetroStars, my first game sees me spotting for broadcast legend JP Dellacamera and sees Sports Illustrated cover boy Clint Mathis returning to MLS after the US run to the World Cup quarterfinals.

In the second half, Mathis went to the halfway line and tried to check into the game, only to be sent back to the bench by the officials. I was one of the first in the building to know why: His name had not been included on the original lineup sheet!

Here's how it happened.

2013
Maybe the best goal I've ever called, and it wasn't even the wildest part of the game. 

First, watch Darlington Nagbe's run through the FC Dallas defense in the US Open Cup:


I didn't get every aspect of the call right, but "dancing in the box ... just blew up one entire side of the Dallas defense ... that was something special!" felt right on the money.

Now what was I doing calling that game? It's a long story. Due to my wife's job, we spent one year living in Shreveport, Louisiana, which was no picnic in terms of free-lance work. But with budgets being what they are and the Open Cup important but not a huge priority, the Portland Timbers took the chance to bring on a "local" fill-in rather than travel their regular broadcast team.

So I drove the three hours to Frisco, Texas, and set up shop in a very familiar stadium (I have called FC Dallas television broadcasts off and on since 2012). I knew Portland fans would want to hear their call rather than the audio of the Dallas webstream, so I had fun doing a radio call but also explaining to those watching that there WERE fans there, they were just on the near side of the stadium under the roof.

At any rate, the game was wild, as you can tell if you watch the whole highlights, but the Nagbe goal was just a sudden burst of brilliance that took your breath away. And surely the offensive assertiveness and aggression fans have always wanted to see more of from Nagbe, despite his high level in the midfield.

Not only was the goal, the game, and the finish great, but we had one of the great post-game quotes of all-time. The communications staff brought a microphone down to relay Caleb Porter's thoughts after the game, and he dropped the line that his players "continue to show me they have big hearts and brass balls, because they know how to get it done when the game is on the line."

I mean, really, that's a hard night to top!

2016
Three years later, I called more Timbers drama, but this time I was a seriously neutral party.

Any ESPN assignment is special for me, even to this day after 8 years working for the company at various levels. To call an MLS Game of the Week at Providence Park, one of the best atmospheres anywhere, featuring my former club, the Houston Dynamo, was just over the top.


And the game delivered! Goals, energy, back-and-forth ... and a little bit of controversy at the end, when Joe Willis was whistled for a foul that allowed Diego Valeri to convert his second penalty kick of the game for a 3-2 Portland win.

I didn't think it was a penalty kick, but partner Brian Dunseth and I ran into an ebullient Portland owner Merritt Paulson afterward, and he (of course) had no doubt!

Nothing too fancy this June 26, but we can hope for more drama in future years.

10 years since Clint Mathis was left off the MetroStars lineup sheet

Clint Mathis, the face of the franchise, was left off the
lineup sheet. (Courtesy BigAppleSoccer.com)

Wednesday night was a very important milestone in MLS history. It was the 10th anniversary of my first MLS game as an employee! (The game was on June 26, 2002, but I felt a Wednesday was more appropriate to celebrate the anniversary.) That’s right, 10 years ago, on a Wednesday night in the Meadowlands, I was a communications intern for the MetroStars after my freshman year of college. I saw the MetroStars lose (surprise!); Pablo Mastroeni get a red card (big surprise!); and sat through an international game designed to draw additional fans (it didn’t). Thus began my career in sports.

Perhaps more memorably for everybody else, Wednesday night was the 10th anniversary of the infamous game in which Clint Mathis was supposed to make his return to MLS following the World Cup, but was denied entry as a second-half sub because (wait for it …) he had been omitted from the team’s lineup sheet. It was an extremely high-profile blunder that hurt the MetroStars’ chances to win the game and cost an assistant coach his job. And I could have stopped it.

Read on for the full story …

Open Cup nostalgia: My first road trip

I love the U.S. Open Cup. Something about seeing teams from different leagues and different levels squaring off appeals to my brain. It’s one of the reasons I got into soccer in the first place: I thought club teams representing different countries in the UEFA Champions League was the coolest concept.

So I always look forward to U.S. Soccer's preliminary draw for the Open Cup, pitting teams I’ve never heard of against places I’ve never been, all vying to make it onto the main stage against professional and (eventually) MLS opposition. The tournament’s biggest lure is the chance for a rec team – such as ASC New Stars, who play in the same league I did, the Houston Football Association (albeit in a much higher division) – to face and, once in a blue moon, beat a professional team. Most amateur teams are from the more organized PDL and NPSL, in which many of the players are college players (and there are some future stars out there if you look back at old Open Cup scoring records), but the USASA qualifiers are the true Cinderellas.

I’m especially excited for this year’s tournament, because all 16 American-based MLS teams and all of the other professional teams are in the tournament. Qualifying games among MLS teams were usually an after-thought, while last year’s tournament seemed light on aspiring giant-killers without the NASL.

I’ll write about plenty of the matchups and whatever games I can attend in later posts, and those interested will of course want to check TheCup.US), but I want to provide a brief look at my most memorable Open Cup experience:

My first Open Cup game was in 2002, when I was a communications intern for the MetroStars. No New York /  New Jersey crap, just ‘MetroStars.’ As an intern with occasionally too much time on my hands, I had spent plenty of it researching the history of MLS teams playing against minor-league teams in the Open Cup. Most of my duties, however, involved press clippings, game notes, and game days in the press box. For away games, I was just another fan watching on TV. But when the MetroStars drew an away game against the A-League’s Hampton Roads Mariners in mid-July, my bosses sent me on the trip as the team’s sole communications representative. I was excited about the honor of flying solo and glad for a free trip, but looking back on it, the assignment kind of shows you what they thought of the tournament, doesn’t it?

We flew down to Virginia Beach on the day of the game, but I was later instructed to leave that out of an online report so that fans did not know just how casually we took the tournament. After arriving at the hotel, while the players napped, Octavio Zambrano’s technical staff asked me – somehow they knew I was adept at using the internet – for some help researching our opponent. Suffice it to say, professional scouting has rarely been part of my job description.

The game itself was hardly a classic, in retrospect. I wrote live text updates on good ‘ol MetroStars.com, less than 1,000 people showed up (most of them there to watch native son Steve Jolley), and Rodrigo Faria scored the only goal of the game in the 76th minute to give the MetroStars the win. I remember being impressed by the Mariners and thinking they deserved better than a shutout loss, but I sure was happy to leave with a win. It actually wasn’t a bad MetroStars lineup: Tim Howard, Mike Petke, Steve Jolley, Craig Ziadie, Andy Williams, Ross Paule, Brad Davis, and Mamadou Diallo all started. (Pretty sure I wrote this recap, which lives on at the great MetroFanatic.com.) For my take on the trip at the time - including Hampton Roads' bizarre goalkeeper situation - see the original version of this piece I wrote for the MetroStars website. It was certainly an interesting road debut for a freshman in college.

As a post-script, the MetroStars drew the next round of the Open Cup at home against Columbus and elected to play it as part of a doubleheader with the New York Power of the WUSA out on Long Island. Again, it shows you how seriously the Open Cup was taken back then. On the other hand, announced attendance was more than 8,000, so maybe they had the right idea. I can’t remember which game most fans came to see.

I later was part of several unforgettable Open Cup games while working for the Houston Dynamo – a penalty shootout loss and a revenge win at Charleston, the epic 2009 semifinal at Seattle – and I hope to see plenty more over the years. But the Open Cup will always take me back to my first professional road trip, Tim Howard giving me a nickname in the first 10 minutes of the bus ride to the hotel, and my attempts to get a coherent quote from Rodrigo Faria after the game. Good times.

2002: Open Cup road trip

I wrote this article as an intern in the MetroStars communications department in 2002.
 
The airport employee was confused: “Now wait, what’s the difference between the brown shirts and the red shirts? I couldn’t figure out who was who.”

Such is the fate of the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup — colorful, but not well known.

The MetroStars flew to Norfolk Tuesday for that night’s Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup Third Round game in Virginia Beach against the Hampton Roads Mariners of the A-League. Hampton Roads is in last place in the A-League’s Southeast Division and has won just four games all year. The team almost folded earlier in the season and was without a healthy goalkeeper due to injuries and eligibility issues. Yet it was Hampton Roads that had the better of play in the first half and only a somewhat lucky Rodrigo Faria goal with 14 minutes remaining allowed the MetroStars to escape with the win before an announced crowd of 828. That’s right, eight hundred people showed up to watch their team play its best soccer of the year.

Such is the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup—surprising and intriguing, but not well followed.

Single elimination open tournaments have a rich history in soccer throughout the world, highlighted by England’s F.A. Cup, the second most prestigious title in the land. All clubs, professional and amateur, can compete in the tournament, making for a few rare occasions where a small-time team can knock off a big gun. Something about a one-game, winner-take-all atmosphere lifts the minnows to new heights and many a first division side has fallen at the hands of lower division teams.

The U.S. Open Cup, however, has not caught on in the United States. While the rest of the crowds in this week’s first round were impressive for an Open Cup match, with a sellout in Seattle and upwards of 4,000 attending most of the games, they still pale in comparison even to a weekend MLS game.

For minor league teams, however, they are a chance at the big time, and MLS teams almost always find the going tougher than expected.

The MetroStars were a quiet bunch arriving at Kean University on Tuesday morning. A 7:00 A.M. departure time took care of that. After riding to the airport, the players ducked their way into a cramped airplane for the short flight to Norfolk.

To set the record straight for the airport employee, the team polo shirts did signify a person’s role in the team by color--players were in tan, coaches and staff in bright red, head coach Octavio Zambrano in white, and one rookie P.R. representative in gray.

The players loosened up a bit after waking up from the flight, and Tim Howard took over the comedy routine while strolling through the airport terminal, making fun of everything from Big Mama’s walk to Brad Davis’ youth.

A charter bus was waiting to take the team to the hotel, where the players dispersed for the afternoon to catch up on sleep and hang out in the hotel. Steve Jolley, however, had family matters to attend to as a Virginia Beach native. With family comes responsibility, and Steve did his best, asking team travel manager Orlando Conguta for as many tickets as possible.

The coaches did not spend the entire time resting, however; assistant coach Merlin Villagomez was finding assistance to track down any kind of a scouting report on Hampton Roads and also checking on the midweek plans of Saturday’s league opponent, the New England Revolution.

At 3:30, four hours before gametime, the team assembled in the hotel restaurant for the pregame meal; then picked up their equipment from the bus and returned to their rooms before returning at 5:45 for the trip to the stadium.

The Virginia Beach Sportsplex was built primarily for soccer, with two-tiered stands close to the field on one sideline and a small grass hill on the far sideline. While the personnel and staff were as welcoming as could be, the field was another matter. There were a ton of bare patches on the field, making for conditions that weren’t exactly ideal, but that’s what the homefield advantage is for.

The Mariners may not have had the crowd advantage at home, but they played like the home team in the first half, enjoying more possession and generating more chances than their more-heralded opponents.

“The game was hard to play,” Faria said. “They had a lot of motivation to play against us, for sure, and the field was terrible — we didn’t play well in the first half.”

Former Kansas City Wizards striker Gary Glasgow was one of many thorns in the MetroStars’ side, teaming well with South African midfielder Jerome McCarthy. The pair teamed up for the best offensive move of the game, but Tim Howard made the save to keep the match scoreless into halftime.

The biggest Mariners star of the day was keeper Joe Larson, who wasn’t even supposed to be playing. Hampton Roads had been using Wizards backup Taly Goode to replace Larson, sidelined with a quad strain. Goode’s status with the Wizards, however, precluded him from competing in the same tournament with a different team. So the Mariners worked out a loan agreement for D.C. backup Mike McGinty, since United failed to qualify for the Open Cup. But McGinty’s paperwork wasn’t filled out on time, leaving Larson to play through the pain. Did he ever!

Larson made high-caliber saves on a Faria header, a Mike Petke header, and a Ross Paule chance in the box to keep the match scoreless in the second half. It looked like Larson had done it again in the 76th minute, but Faria got to his own rebound for the game’s only goal.

The MetroStars held on through a physical and at times frantic finish for the win.

The few fans that were there were certainly devoted, crowding the field after the game for autographs and words with their heroes. Any little gesture was appreciated, such as Williams tossing his shinguards to a fan on the way to the locker room. The locker room facilities were once again pretty good for an A-League side, but it took some asking to get reasonable amounts of soap for postgame showers.

The players knew that they hadn’t played their best, but a win is a win is a win, so they enjoyed their postgame meal and got to bed early, because they were to meet the bus at 4:45 the next morning to fly back to Newark.

“They played well today, they for sure had a lot of motivation to play against us,” Faria said. “But we have to move forward and be focused for Saturday now.”

The measure of a team is without a doubt the marathon of the league season, but there’s something to prove in one-game showdowns as well and perhaps in the years ahead the Open Cup will become an integral part of the American soccer scene.

Or maybe 4,000 fans will continue to be considered an excellent crowd for an Open Cup mtach.

Either way, the tournament will remain true to its roots as a place of color, surprise, and the rare occasion for an unheralded side to shock a giant.

The shock may only last 76 minutes, like it did for the MetroStars, or 86 minutes for the Wizards, but it may last a year, the way it will for the Chicago Fire. The A-League’s Milwaukee Rampage beat two-time champion Chicago 1-0 Wednesday night on a goal set up by John Wolyniec, who dressed last Saturday against the MetroStars as a member of that same Chicago Fire.

Chicago probably should’ve taken a page from Kansas City and called Wolyniec in for their match. Then again, maybe Milwaukee would’ve pulled it off anyway.

Such is the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup—anything can happen, and it usually does.