Mundial de Futbol*
Tomaso sat down to watch the day’s action. He had missed several crucial games from the 1990 tournament because, like most men, the extraordinary physics and logistics involved in setting the timer on his VCR utterly confounded him. His New Year’s resolution for 1991, ’92, ’93 and ’94 had been to figure out how to make the godforsaken machine record while he was not actually there. Still unsuccessful at this endeavor, he simply turned on his TV and started the six-hour tape when he left his house, rushing home in the middle of the day to put in a new tape while trying desperately not to watch any real-time action or catch a score. So far his routine, though stressful, had been effective.
This was to be the year for Italy. Every year, of course, was the year for Italy, God’s team. More so than ever, this team had the wherewithal, the stamina, the skills, the surgical precision, the wonderful arrogance to make the world take notice, once again. Simply put, it had to be, and Tomaso felt with all his heart that this was to be the year for Italy.
Two players gave him pause, and kept his confidence miserably in check. The first, a minor concern, like a hornet that is not capable of killing you, but can inflict pain to remind you that it is around was Stoitchkov. Tomaso regarded the miserable but brilliant forward with a grudging admiration that, he feared, might make him weep humbled tears. Stoitchkov was making Tomaso nervous. How dare Bulgaria advance past the first round? Who did they think they were? This was as almost as awful—and inconceivable—as France winning. But one thing Tomaso was certain about, something he would stake significant, even exorbitant sums of money on, as well as his good name, was that France would never, ever win the cup. Not in 94. Not ever.
The second player, a major concern that literally kept him up nights, was Italy’s own Roberto Baggio, Il Divino Codino (the Divine Ponytail), loved and reviled as much for his controversial religious beliefs as for his unparalleled athletic ability. Every Italian understood the gravity of this matter: through Italy’s play, God would speak, the Catholic God whose sacrosanct breath filled the Vatican with life. Why Baggio? Why Buddhism? Why anger the very God who chose you above all others to perform His art, to be His instrument on earth? 1986, the dark year Argentina and that insufferable monkey Diego Maradona (hand of God? The blasphemy!) took the cup, and Roberto Baggio renounced Catholicism, his country, and his creator all with one word: Buddhism.
And yet. God is gracious, God is magnanimous, God is, always, omnipotent. How else to explain what was otherwise an irredeemable tragedy? Baggio’s genius against Nigeria: two goals in the waning moments. Another miracle from this pony-tailed prodigy. Here, in this man’s ostensibly unremarkable body was God’s greatest gift: he was Italy; he was soccer (Tomaso would say football).
Tomaso was forced to watch the games alone, because there was no one whose presence he could tolerate, plus the fact that no one seemed particularly interested in watching the games with him.
And so:
Tomaso was forced to watch the games alone.
Tomaso sat down to watch the day’s games.
This was to be the year for Italy.
(*from the novel The American Dream of Don Giovanni)
Enough of fiction, and 1994.
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