One week ago, on a pleasant Wednesday evening, my wife and I ventured into Stadio Artemio Franchi to watch our beloved Viola, Fiorentina, take the field against Napoli. The atmosphere inside Franchi is always exhilirating. But at the end of 90 minutes, we were among 40,000 deflated souls as the Azzurri headed into the locker room with 3 points and we headed home shaking our heads. On the way out of the stadium, I overheard a small boy wish death upon the referee who had ejected Fiorentina winger Juan Guillermo Cuadrado rather than award him the penalty kick which subsequent replays would show he rightly deserved. It more than likely meant the difference between a tie and a loss. “It's only a game,” his father replied. Three nights later, Fiorentina, minus Cuadrado expelled for the red card, would travel to Milan and teach the Rossoneri a lesson in football and return to Florence with 3 points. Go figure. But don't spend too much time doing it. It is, after all, as the boy's dad said, only a game.
But is it really? Here, perhaps more than anywhere else in Europe, calcio is religion. Here on the peninsula, it is calcio first, food second, and then mom. In English, football (what Americans call soccer) is often referred to as “The Beautiful Game.” To call it beautiful is debatable. I wouldn't call swimming beautiful. Or tennis. Or volleyball. Or boxing. A Ferrari can be considered a beautiful car, but there is nothing beautiful about watching one travel 66 laps around a track at high, but relatively constant speeds. It's boring. A racing bike can be considered beautiful, especially a hand-made Italian bike(like mine). But a bike race is not beautiful. It is a bit more exciting, however, watching Formula One. Car and bike crashes may be heart-stopping, but they are not beautiful. A fight commentator once called a Mike Tyson punch a beautiful left hook as it landed on his adversary's jaw. That is about 800 pounds per square inch of pressure on a part of the body that is not covered by muscle. It may have been a perfectly executed punch, but it was not beautiful. It was thoroughly violent. There is nothing beautiful about golf, though a golfer may hit a ball off a tee 250 yards directly into a small hole. Amazing, probably lucky, but not beautiful. The closest we can come to beautiful in sport is in American football and baseball and basketball. New York Yankee Robinson Cano can take a beautiful swing of the bat and drive the ball 300 feet only to be caught by an outfielder who races at breakneck speed and makes a beautiful, diving catch. Watching Vince Carter of the Dallas Mavericks or Dwight Howard of the Houston Rockets dunk a basketball is beautiful. Pure athleticism. Watching Minnesota Viking Adrian Peterson or Kansas City Chief Jamaal Charles run with a football, or Detroit Lion Calvin “Megatron” Johnson or N.Y. Giant Victor Cruz make one of their many acrobatic catches on the run is the quintessential beautiful athletic feat. No, those fat, 300 pound linemen are not beautiful, but then they don't pretend to be. They are meant to be agile, hostile, mobile and a general menace to opposing quarterbacks, and they are. An Acupulco cliff dive isn't a thing of beauty. It is crazy.