Getting our Kicks

It's World Cup time, folks! And our next game is Thursday versus Ghana.
Team USA's showing to-date in Germany hasn't been so great. We started with a sobering 3-0 loss to the Czech Republic (I remind you that I am half SLOVAK.) And it was Italy who accidentally put the ball in their own goal, allowing us to tie our second game. We did play well considering a couple of our players were tossed out with red cards, so holding to a tie was very good. And we played hard, I mean we're good enough to have at least gotten to the World Cup, right?
It is a curious thing to watch any sporting event where the greater likelihood is that we, the all-powerful --in fact, Super Power of the World-- may not win. We might be beaten. We might be beaten badly. (In soccer after all, a score of 3 is like a buzillion in any other sport.) That easy, nonchalant confidence in our superiority is humbled. Where else in the world will Ghana most likely trounce the United States? (I could be wrong... I was pretty surprised to discover that USA is officially ranked 5th by FIFA, and Ghana a low 48th.)

For US sports fans it must be isolating; you have so very little to connect and vest you with the teams that will most likely win. In baseball, I will root for the Phillies, since I am from Philadelphia. But if they drop out, then I might cheer on the Indians, since I went to college near Cleveland. I can quickly rationalize a personal reason to root for most any team. But what can I say about watching a soccer game between South Korea and Togo? Except that it might be fun to cheer, "TOGO! TOGO! TOGO!" (Togo sadly has the lowest ranking of World Cup teams though: 61st.)

Post-Script: You may have wondered if you'd arrived at the right blog when you saw the sports content. I'll try to keep both the uninformed sports commentary, and the cat photos, to a minimum.