The future is today
"All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain."
The weird thing about living now is that this is the future.
That picture above? It’s from Blade Runner, probably one of the greatest science fiction movies ever. We’re in November of 2019; suffice it to say that it looks nothing like the 2019 of Blade Runner. No flying cars, no androids, no colonies in Mars or the Solar System. 2019, for most purposes, looks like 1999.
And yet, I can’t say I’m disappointed. I’m holding an iPhone. If you’d told me, in 2001, that I’d be able to watch high-definition live TV on a bus on a five-inch handheld computer exponentially more powerful than the desktop I had back then, my mind would’ve been properly blown. The iPhone is precisely the kind of device we’d imagined people would have in 2019. The future is now.
A therapist of mine once said:
“You’re too concerned with what was, and what will be. Think of it this way: yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery; but today? Today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.”
Yes, it might be a tad on the corny side, but that doesn’t make it less true. One of the things I’ve worked a lot on this past year is focusing less on the past and the future - on things that happened and things that may happen. Instead, I’m choosing to be here now. To work on what I can do right now.
In that spirit, I’d ask you to do the same. Work on letting go, and being here now. Why not spend this weekend on just being? It’s Friday, the weekend beckons, and this is The Miscellanies.
OPEN WIDE FOR SOME SOCCER!!! IT’S MLS CUP 2019!
We've hit that weird lull in the sports calendar that happens once baseball's done. Enough American football's been played on both the college and pro sides that we know who's faking and who's for real, but we haven't gotten to the really spicy games, especially on the college side (I don't particularly care about the NFL). If you're a real sports nerd (hello, me!), the Canadian Football League playoffs begin this Sunday. The NBA and NHL seasons are underway, but to me things don't get serious in either league until the end of this month.
This is the weird lull that MLS -- sorry, Major League Soccer, aka the top pro league in the U.S. and Canada (sort of) -- is hoping to take advantage of, and, well, lull you into watching. The MLS championship game, known as the MLS Cup Final, is this Sunday at 3 p.m., on ABC, and unless you're a die-hard NFL fan or a NASCAR fan, you should watch.
For the third time in four seasons, the Seattle Sounders - one of the flagship teams in American soccer, dating all the way back to the 1970s - will play Toronto FC for the league title. Seattle won the Cup in 2016, after years of falling just short and winning the other American soccer trophies (the Supporters’ Shield* and the U.S. Open Cup**) on a routine basis, especially the latter.
They lost it to Toronto the following year; this, then, is the rubber match. Neither team is at their best, and frankly, this won't be pretty soccer. Defense, timely scoring, and forcing their opponents into mistakes is how they both made it this far.
The three most aesthetically pleasing teams -- Los Angeles FC (LAFC), Atlanta United, and New York City FC -- all lost earlier in the playoffs. Toronto actually beat the latter two, on the road, no less, to make it to the championship. Seattle, meanwhile, knocked off a LAFC team that everyone who pays attention to MLS regarded as the best-ever, based on regular season performance.
This is where I tell you that MLS is also known as the soccer league that your friends who are soccer fans may or may not take seriously, especially if they're fans of a European soccer team. There’s a reason why I led off with that Simpsons clip. For starters, American professional soccer has veered somewhere between north of tragic and south of farcical. I could - and have - written thousands of words about it, at places like SBNation and elsewhere. I’ll link to a book you should read about it down below. But there’s a specific reason why a lot of European soccer fans dislike MLS, beyond the overall quality and recurring corniness.
That's because, unlike most European leagues, but like every American league and notably, the Mexican league (LigaMX)***, MLS uses playoffs to decide their champion.
This means that the team who performed the best in the regular season -- in this case, LAFC -- won't be regarded as the league champion. To fans of European soccer, this is heresy! The idea that a team could finish, say, ninth (as Toronto did this season) and still have a shot at winning the league title is ludicrous.
You're rewarding mediocrity, they say. Rewarding performance over the course of a season as opposed to a tournament in which random chance plays a much greater effect makes more sense, they say. In a vacuum, I get it. I'd agree. I'm very open to the argument, because it intrinsically makes sense and feels right.
But if you get anything from my sports writing, it should be this: sports doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's a reflection of the society and times we live in, and it's rarely, if ever, a meritocracy, as much as benighted sports radio show callers might insist otherwise. This is especially true of European soccer. European soccer is a perfect reflection of our sicklied o'er era of repulsive consumption and drunken, coked-out greed. There's absolutely no sense of competitiveness in any of the top four or five leagues, thanks to the ludicrous sums spent by the top teams.
In England, probably the most competitive top league, the title's been monopolized by one of Chelsea, Manchester United, or Manchester City for the last 15 years; Leicester City was the exception to that, in a season that's never happening again. The same goes for Spain, where the title's bounced between Real Madrid and Barcelona over the same period of time, with Atletico Madrid winning just once, in 2013-14.
Meanwhile, Bayern Munich has won the German league the last seven years running. Paris-St. Germain has won the French league six of the last seven years, and before them, Olympique Lyonnais won it seven straight years. Finally, Juventus has run rampant over Serie A for the last eight years.
If you go beyond those leagues, the gulf is even vaster. Because of the TV money earmarked for teams that qualify for the Champions' League (the European continental club competition, think of it as like the NCAA tournament for European pro soccer teams), teams in smaller leagues - like, say, the Cypriot league - have way bigger budgets than the teams they compete with, which then makes it exponentially difficult for competitors to beat them.
This isn't a meritocracy. It's a system rigged by soccer's 1% for the perpetual benefit of that 1%. The reason Leicester City's shock title triumph in 2015-16 resonated so profoundly is because Leicester City were legitimately the best team in English soccer that year; they were expected to finish at the bottom, and their performance proved otherwise. It's extremely unlikely that will happen again, for lots of reasons I won't get into due to length.
Compared to this depressing state of affairs, yes, shoot MLS' playoff system into my veins. I will absolutely take a system that doesn't guarantee that the biggest spenders win a title. At least it has the virtue of unpredictability. The first German coach to win a World Cup - Josef Herberger - once said famously:
"The ball is round and the game lasts 90 minutes. That's fact. Everything else is pure theory."
That's what the MLS playoffs embody. The idea that anything can happen over the course of 90 minutes. Sunday's game between Seattle and Toronto won't be an aesthetic feast; it's going to be played on artificial turf, which means weird bounces and skittery passes, the players - grizzled American veteran Michael Bradley, most notably - won't be the best in the league.
But it's going to be intense. Over 70,000 fans will be screaming themselves hoarse, pleading for a second title in four years. Century Link Stadium is one of the loudest venues in all of American sports; with a championship on the line, the atmosphere is going to be simply off-the-charts. Both Toronto and Seattle are going to leave everything they have out on the field - which is what sports is ultimately all about.
My hunch is that Seattle wins. They've got the edge on the all-time series: the Sounders have won nine of their 14 regular season meetings. Toronto have only won in two of their eight all-time trips to Seattle, but both of those have come since 2014, the last three years ago. Moreover, Toronto will be missing Jozy Altidore, their best striker, due to injury (though don't count out a dramatic substitution of the bench, Willis Reed-style, I guess? We'll see).
Either way, you should watch.
Speaking of sports: let us now pause to recognize great achievements in animals taking the field. Monday night's NFL game was interrupted by a cat deciding they wanted some gridiron action:
I mean, look at this cat:
Look at how imperious this cat is. This is the kind of footage that deserves NFL Films treatment, John Facenda voice and all:
"From the streets of Gotham, came a shadowy avenger, clad in the darkest fur...". You get the idea.
They're not the first cat to do that; far from it. I can't remember the last time a cat graced an American football field, but in soccer? Happens a great deal. For starters, here's another black cat, this time imposing their will on an Everton-Wolves Premier League game:
And here's a moggy stopping by a clash between Liverpool and Tottenham:
In case you thought this just happened in England, here's a ginger kitty patrolling the corner and touchline in Turkey:
Here's a pictorial list of more animals participating in sports. Enjoy.
Links & further reading
This is just an absolutely ferocious demolition of Pete Buttigieg by Drew Magary. It’s vintage Deadspin, and just makes you miss it all the more. I won’t excerpt it; it’s that good. I think a friend of mine really put it very sharply this past week in a conversation our group of friends had over the 2020 race (quoted with permission):
“The reason Warren and Sanders are real candidates and Pete ultimately isn’t is that they are both positioning their campaigns around power. So is Biden in a very annoying way. There are reasons this is harder for candidates of color to do, and all of them rhyme with spacism, but it is a real issue nonetheless. All the “I love everything you love” shit is a way to not have to talk about power. And a willingness to decide to get, use, and not apologize for power is the only thing there is in politics right now.”
That’s what Magary’s essay — and this fine one, by Osita Nwanevu, also about Buttigieg — get at. So if you’re a supporter of Buttigieg’s, I’d ask you to really explore why it is that you’re supporting him, specifically, when you’ve got candidates like Julián Castro and Kamala Harris and Cory Booker in the field. And remember: a critique — which is what those two articles are — is not an attack.
This was just a fascinating look at how noise - more than most things - is one of the biggest stressors in our lives.
Anne Helen Petersen is one of my favorite writers, and this feature, about a startup pivoting to solve burnout (of all things!) is one excellent example why.
If you want to know more about the fascinating history of American soccer, the late Dave Wangerin is the source. You can pick up his magisterial history, Soccer in a Football World, here. (Indiebound link, because we like indie bookstores!)
Just trust me on this one, OK?
OK, it’s late, my body hurts, and I need sleep. Remember: you’re awesome just the way you are. I love all of you, and I hope you have an excellent weekend. Try to disconnect, and just be in the world.
If you liked what you read, share it. Thank you.