Columbus Part 3
Stairs, stairs, stairs – green.
It doesn't matter how many arenas and stadiums I visit. That first sighting of the playing surface is always a thrill.
Old Wembley, Yankee Stadium, Maple Leaf Gardens when I was a kid, Plough Lane, Wimbledon back in '72, the Montreal Forum, endless little lacrosse barns all over everywhere – the thrill may differ in intensity, but is essentially always the same.
Crew Stadium, Columbus, is a pure case of function over form. There are no frills, no adornments. The grandstands are graceful, and the field sparkles lush, emerald green as the late afternoon sun burns off the clinging, end-of-winter damp.
I'm in the front row, above and just left of the south goal. But there'll be no sitting this afternoon.
It just isn't possible. The seats, metal benches running the width of the pitch and then some, are set back about three feet from the railing. If you try to sit, your view will be utterly blocked. Fans are pouring in from all angles, filling every empty, unclaimed spot. It takes a couple of minutes, but I'm eventually able to claim my piece of railing, sliding in sideways at first, then widening the gap with judicious, unapologetic shoulder turns.
On the pitch, Toronto FC players are out warming up. Stretching, light sprints, shooting drills. Danny Dichio is conspicuously wearing a heavy gray tracksuit. The rumours are true. The fan favourite will not be starting this game.
But still the fans sing his name. “Oh, Danny Dichio!”
Fans! The entire south end is red. Half of the upper east grandstand, as well. Healthy blotches of TFC are visible in other spots as well. At the far other end, squeezed in next to the giant concert stage that ate 2,000 seats in the off-season, sit our counterparts. They fill the bottom half of two sections. Two small sections. They wave yellow-and-black chequered flags. They look – cute.
The national anthems are inaudible. Whatever luckless boob had the job of miking the small orchestra out on the pitch should never have answered the want-ad. But the Canadian anthem thunders from the south regardless, rising and roaring from hundreds upon hundreds of travelling TFC throats. If we looked disrespectfully distracted during the American anthem, please forgive us. We literally couldn't hear a note.
Game time, and the joint is rocking. Under the relentless pounding weight of all those leaping fans, the metal floor is undulating like an ocean. Not a boat, an ocean.
The first score isn't on the field. In a brilliant piece of turf-seizing, the Red Patch Boys supporters' group has hired a small airplane to carry word of their conquest aloft.
“TORONTO FC – COME ON YOU REDS – RPB 2008”
Triumph! We control the south end of the stadium. We control the sky. Next comes – the field!
Oh, right. The field. I didn't even see the kickoff. The game was 58 seconds old before I caught on. That, from a professional spectator, standing in the front row. Gives you a sense of the power of all the distractions. (I hope.)
TFC is moving away from us, battling forward in the teeth of a howling north wind. One of those home-field winds that dies out at half time so the Crew won't have to cope with it. We didn't know that at the time.
This is not your typical North American sports experience. This is soccer the way the rest of the world experiences it. Mass passion. Endless noise. A physical experience a hundred times more vivid and absorbing than it will ever look on television. That's what we all found out last year. That's why we're all in Columbus, passionately living and dying with every move two of the weakest teams in a sub-average league care to serve up.
