Russ Thaler: A Moment For Russ

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Monday, August 10, 2009

Familiar sights but different feelings.

The Nationals keep on winning, so does Tiger, and the Redskins scrimmage.   These are all good topics, but I’m going to keep it to the ones I saw firsthand.

Saturday:  Legg Mason semifinal.  Andy Roddick def. John Isner.

Sunday:  Real Madrid def. D.C. United at FedEx Field.

Each of these events brought me to familiar surroundings, but left me with a confused feeling.  Let me start with the tennis.

Every year around this time, my wife Brooke and I try to get out to the Saturday night session in Rock Creek Park at the Legg Mason Tennis Classic.  We’re both sports fans and since I rarely get to attend an event as a spectator rather than on-assignment it’s a great date night for the both of us.

The tennis itself was of the high quality variety.  Isner, the 6-9 product of the University of Georgia gave the top ranked American all he could handle.  The match was ripe with booming serves, surprising touch, and terrific tension as the younger Isner tried to finish out one of his idols.  Roddick, for his part, kept raising the bar and eventually toppled the behemoth on the other side of the net.  It was the best tennis I’ve seen all summer but it was far from the most fun Brooke and I have had at a tennis match.

Now don’t get me wrong, anytime we can get a babysitter and go out as a twosome instead of a five-some it’s a good night.  But something had changed in both of us.  As Brooke and I watched the match; Applauding each terrific rally and winner, leaning forward in our seats as the match progressed to match its intensity, we could both sense that something was different on the inside.  As it turns out, it was the same thing for both her and me.  World Team Tennis has changed us.

All say this again so we’re clear.  This was the highest quality tennis we’d seen all summer.  Roddick and Isner’s match would have been as good in the Round of 16 at the U.S. Open.  Yet every time there was a break in play, weather it was between points or on changeovers or whatever, we both kept waiting for something to happen.  Where was the music?  Why wasn’t the public address announcer getting us involved in some way?  Why were we simply witnesses to this display instead of being a part of it?  I grew up watching and playing tennis and these were feelings I’d never had before.  I wouldn’t dream of bringing my 6, 4, and 3 year old boys to the Legg Mason, we’d be asked to leave for sure.  Brooke took them twice to see the Washington Kastles, by herself while I worked the matches as the P.A. guy.

This doesn’t mean I had a bad time or that I’m done with tournament tennis.  Not at all.  I have the same appreciation I’ve always had for how great these players are at what they do.  It’s just that my perspective has been altered just a bit and I didn’t realize it until just this past Saturday night.

Sunday I left the house early to get to FedEx field before the crush of traffic made me late to work.  D.C. United hosted one of the greatest teams in the world in Real Madrid.  I’ll spare you the particulars, but Real Madrid put the New York Yankees, and for that matter the Washington Redskins, whose 95-thousand seat building was used to contain their fans, to shame when it comes to spending money to acquire players.  The last two FIFA Players of the Year now play for the Spanish club after leaving others behind for the big payout.

To say that Real Madrid was an attraction would be a massive understatement.  I’ve covered D.C. United for years now and never before have I seen such a display at a united “home” game.  Not when Chelsea F.C. played on this same field in 2005, not when Scottish power Celtic F.C. came to RFK Stadium in 2006.  From afar it may have seemed like most of the 72-thousand-plus was wearing white because of the scorching heat but I knew from my short walk from the parking lot to the media entrance that most of that white was from Real Madrid jerseys.

Still, the overwhelming support of a visiting team on D.C turf wasn’t what threw me for a loop.  It’s what happened after the game that really got to me.

Let me explain something.  In every major pro sport we cover in the United States there’s a familiar rhythm to the post game proceedings.  Normally, as reporters, we try to grab players as they walk off the field for quick interviews then head to a designated area where the head coach and selected players will be brought to a podium to answer questions and then we’ll head in to the lock room to speak with the players.  Little things change, like sometimes selected players are bout to the podium or sometimes there isn’t really a podium specifically, but that’s about the gist of it all.

Not on this day.  Not for international soccer.

For international soccer matches, and from what I understand after most league games outside the U.S.A., there’s something called the “Mixed” or Mix” Zone.  Here’s how it works.  While the coaches appear in a press conference the players shower, change, and prepare to leave the stadium.  When they are ready, they walk out of the lock room and through a corridor that leads to either the team bus or to their cars outside.  A metal barrier is set up in the shape of an “L” that runs from the door of the dressing area down the hallway.  The media sets up with cameras and tripods, microphones and recorders to wait for the players to pass by.  The players can choose to stop and talk somewhere down the line or just keep walking toward their intended destination.

I’d experienced this before but never to this degree.  The horde of people crammed in to the mixed zone Sunday was suffocating So many cameras, so many people trying to get in interviews, all of us trying to be polite yet angling for the best chance to nab the players.

Just think what this must look like from a player’s point of view.  This mass of humanity, crammed in a designated area, has to look like an angry mob waiting to rip the flesh off their backs.  It’s degrading in a sense.  I’m sure the Real Madrid players are used to this.  It’s an everyday or every game occurrence.  The D.C. United players must have enjoyed taking part in something that only happens “over there” in the top-top tier leagues around the word or, better yet, with the National Team.

If ever there was an image of the “adversarial media” this would be it.  It was us against them.

When Chelsea F.C. came to FedEx Field back in 2005 I received my first lesson in Mixed Zone Etiquette, courtesy of a polite reporter from the Sunday Times in London.  After calmly and genially answering my questions about the Chelsea lineup and describing the expectations put on the English Premier League contenders, this man (and I can’t remember his name) explained that when John Terry, the Chelsea and England star, emerged from the locker room it was he who had exclusive rights to an interview.  It was part of a sponsorship with the Sunday Times that Terry, the England Captain would only speak to The Times.  Imagine if Clinton Portis was contractually disallowed from granting an interview to anyone besides Comcast SportsNet!  This was a journalistic culture clash if I ever saw one, but I deferred to my new friend and went on my way.

There were no such “side deals” with Real Madrid, as far as I could tell.  In fact, Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese Superstar himself, was kind enough to stop in front of my while I wilted under the crush of my fellow media members and answer a couple of questions in English, even though it isn’t his first, or second language.

The tough part was watching the D.C. United players emerge.  Again, it must have been a cool experience for them and, truth be told, I was happy for them.  They had shown well against these Spanish giants.  They deserved to feel “big time”.  Much like with the tennis at the Legg Mason, the problem was me!

I see these players often.  In fact, I consider some of them friends, at least peripherally.  They are some of the most down to earth professional athletes I have ever come across, mostly because they live about as close to what would seem like “normal” lives as compared to you and me as someone who gets paid to play a game can.

So here I am, standing behind this barricade, sectioned-off with my fellow media members as if I were a rabid animal.  “Don’t get too close, or you might get infected.  In fact, if you so choose, just move along!”

Out comes Luciano Emilio, with whom just two days ago I was congratulating on the birth of his second daughter.  Here’s Ben Olsen, one of the most media-friendly and flat-out friendly people I have ever met.  The one who I felt compelled to call and leave a message for while he was on the field in a World Cup game in 2006 in Germany.     Devon McTavish, who missed the game against Real Madrid in 2006 because he had elected to finally get his injured knee surgically fixed just days before the game was announced.  I don’t know if anyone else wanted to head from Devon on-camera, but I did!  He had finally taken the field against this latest version of “The Galacticos”.  Not bad for a kid from Winchester, VA.

I’ve never been ashamed of what I do.  I understand how privileged I am to have the job I have, to go to the events in a working capacity.  I talk about sports for a living, how can there be anything wrong with that?  There isn’t.  I’ve always understood the inherent separation of interviewer and subject and I have no interest in basking in the glow of someone else’s spotlight.

But never before have I felt “less-than” like I did on Sunday, if only for a few minutes.

I’ve come to love soccer and respect the players of the game.  I hope that one day D.C. United or some other Major League Soccer team can garner the kind of attention Real Madrid did on this day.  But if someone with any “sway” is reading this, when that day comes, can we please do something, anything, other than the mixed zone?

Tags: united, tennis, roddick, thaler, real madrid, legg mason