ENGL 399 Feature DRAFT

Next Time

As soon as you hit the top of the second escalator out of Stadium-Armory, you are accosted by vendors hawking fake D.C. United merchandise. Unless you want an official jersey, you can save about $105 by buying a rip-off t-shirt to show your fanhood. One of the girls I was with bought her sports-minded brother a t-shirt. Another bought one, saying, "I'm cheap, and it's only five dollars, so I have to buy it!" (logic that may fall apart at some point). Since it was my first time at a D.C. game, I decided to start small.

I made a newbie mistake, though: I bought a t-shirt from one of the vendors who did not promise "front-and-back." Mine has a lonely screen-printed D.C. United emblem on the front, while the back is a large white blank. The hasty exchange taught me to take my time in the future; fortunately, a five-dollar mistake is not grave and by the time we passed a folding table covered with Costco packs of chips and candy for sale, I had forgotten about the t-shirt purchase and eagerly scoped the landscape for the swayed outline of RFK Stadium.

The stadium rises from the sidewalk in a curvy bowl. The outline is surprisingly uneven against the sky, and the sides lean outward as if the energy of the fans threatens to stretch and burst the stadium. A bird, casually glancing down at the earth-bound humans passing below, would notice a stream of people rising from underground and spilling down the street, turning right at the corner, and bearing left towards the ticket office. Birds, being migratory creatures themselves, would probably find nothing unusual in the scene.

Down here, though, in the midst of the gobs of red- and black-clad fans, there is a division: this game happens to be against the New York Red Bulls, so a few local or traveling fans trek in with the D.C. crowd. It's easy to miss the opposing team's supporters. They confidently match us with their red jerseys and scarves. (Team scarves are a football fashion that originated in England in the early 1900s, according to the all-knowing Wikipedia. We had to look that up when we got home.)

We pick up our tickets at will call, except Piper had to go buy hers at the door. It's college night, so we go over to Lot 8 for a tailgate that consists of watching corn hole and walking past a lot of people talking to people they know. Since we don't have a tent to pop up or a truck to sit on the tailgate of, we walk back to the stadium to find our seats and to finagle Piper into our section sans-ticket.

The security guards look like large lemons in their yellow windbreakers, and they are just about as sour as the citrus. I had noticed some by the ticket booth yelling at people for not having their bags open for inspection when they got to the front of the line, and the ones out back are no better. While Nicole dumps out her water bottle (it was just water, but rules are rules and we're fine with that), a dude with a drawstring backpack walks obliviously past the guards. The guard from the next line over reaches out in synchronized time with our guard, and the ladies pull him back like bullies taking lunch from a fifth-grader. We make it through though, and the rest of the people we interact with are friendly, helpful, exemplary stadium staff. The security guards are probably exemplary security guards, too—it's just a different standard (like the exemplary undercover cop in the metro station after the game who threw a kid to the ground, handcuffing and swearing at him, after the kid started beating up other young adults in the station).    

Once inside the stadium, the Red Bull fans grab their sodas and noisily head up to the mezzanine level so they can be obnoxious without disrupting the home fans. We get to our seats and take the requisite stadium pictures (vertical, horizontal, close-up, zoomed out with the field in the background) to prove we were there and that girls can be sports fans too. As kick-off gets closer, the cold orange chairs gradually fill up. The refs jog back and forth in a warm-up that looks juvenile next to the agility drills the teams do to get ready. During the introductions, the Red Bull fans set off some red smoke bombs or something similar. Original. D.C. fans boo them and then turn their attention to banging massive drums and waving massive banners and jumping in a mass until the stadium shivers under their pounding. A deep voice sings the national anthem. The players run onto the field, the center referee blows his whistle, and the game is on.

It's a painful 90 minutes to watch (actually, we don't even make it that far, since a couple of the girls starting getting antsy to leave early). D.C. is a young team, and it looks like their players are still figuring out how to step into the MLS level of play. The Europeans sitting behind us talk in fast Spanish and perfect English. When they do speak English, their main concern isn't the play—football in America is so new that Europeans don't take it very seriously—but the fact that they couldn't buy beer after half time.

"I don't know how this country functions. I've never been to a game where you couldn't buy booze."

Down the row from us, a girl staggers in with a group of friends who sit behind her and laugh as she holds her hand over her mouth. She finally retches into the seat next to her, and we hand down some napkins for clean up. Yes, the Europeans must be right, I think. America's biggest problem is not having enough alcohol available.

Down on the field, our boys pick up some momentum, but they aren't able to get enough momentum back to win the game. We leave when the score is 0-3, Red Bulls advantage, and I later find out that they scored again in injury time. I hate leaving games early, and this time is no exception, but the scoreboard proved a comeback hopeless. Sports always harbor disappointments and victory, however, and fans still believe in D.C. United. Next time. Next time.