MLS Thoughts – St. Louis Products
This past weekend was a great dad soccer weekend, not the first
one I have ever had and I hope it will not be the last one.
The San Jose Earthquakes played Sporting Kansas City at San
Jose’s wonderful fairly new stadium on a pretty nice Sunday afternoon. While the Golden State Warriors were playing
Houston in the NBA playoffs, this father sat in the stands and watched the
soccer game – only his Warriors hat showing that he was missing the basketball
game. From time to time … a couple of
granddaughters perched on his lap (which doesn’t make you feel young but sure
makes life fun).
A couple of things happened that afternoon that made me
reflect on how the real parts of life exist everywhere because that is why they
call it life. It could be professional
sports or recreational softball and the things that connect are really rooted
similarly.
At some point in the second half of the soccer game my phone
started buzzing. Many of my friends
who were watching the game on ESPN (and no doubt mostly watching the Warriors
and/or Giants … or possibly The History Channel but at least during commercials
switching to the soccer game) texted me telling me that the ESPN announcers
were telling the story about when Chris made it to MLS and I told him that I
thought he could ‘be like Taylor Twellman’.
The ESPN translation on air was close but a little off and probably
because they got the story from my son who has perfected the skill of barely
listening to me over the years.
Not that anyone really cares, but I have the keyboard so I’ll
go ahead and elaborate.
Taylor Twellman was the most potent goal scorer in Major
League Soccer history. In professional
sports where players change teams as often as homeowners change their smoke
alarm batteries, Taylor Twellman never changed teams. The New England Revolution appreciated this
St. Louis product so much that he played his entire career with one team. In the process he scored 101 goals with a
goal production rate of 0.60 goals per 90 minutes. To put that in perspective, nobody with more
than 75 goals has produced goals at that rate.
I used to watch Taylor drift off his defender when the ball
was across the field, circle around and then make a purposeful run (without the
ball and without the defender) into the penalty box in order to receive a pass
that he could shoot on goal. I saw him
do this better than anyone else who was playing. I also saw him create with the ball at his
feet and run by defenders with the ball.
So when Chris was signed by the San Jose Earthquakes … when he was
unknown and possibly just a body to fill a uniform at training … I told him
that I thought if he worked hard he could be like Taylor Twellman. I suspect that in February 2005 I was
probably the only one with this theory.
The thing about being a father is that you say a lot of
things that you don’t really believe but that you think you should say because everyone
tells you that you need to be positive.
Well, I was probably just being positive but WOW. I would have never imagined that Chris would have
10% of the goals that Taylor scored … much less more goals than Taylor
scored.
It might have been an amazing coincidence that in the very
first regular season game that the San Jose Earthquakes played after Chris made
the roster – they played New England at Spartan Stadium in San Jose. (Chris didn't score but Taylor did).
The other part of Sunday was catching up with another
amazing St. Louis soccer superstar. Brad
Davis has been Chris’ close friend ever since Chris entered the league. They have continued their very close
friendship – with wives and children – through a franchise relocation and a
couple of trades. One of the best
personal memories of the World Cup in Brazil for me was that Brad and Chris were both
on the team and we were able to spend a lot of time with the Davis family.
Last night we were able to catch up with Brad and there may
be no more underrated player in MLS history.
Chris is 4th in MLS in goals and I could not be prouder. But Brad is 3rd in MLS all time
for number of Assists. Brad has 122
assists – he is only 14 behind Landon Donovan for the most number of assists in
a career. Brad is very likely to be the
all-time MLS Assist Leader by the end of next year. On top of all that amazing passing – Brad has
56 goals. That offensive production puts
him among the all-time elites in Major League Soccer.
Brad and Chris (and Heather and Lindsey) have been friends
for many years. They owned homes across
the street from each other in Houston and Heather used to chase down and
retrieve Gattuso whenever he escaped (which was often). Seeing Chris and Brad together last night
made me feel good – that friendships transcend things like trying to trip each
other when you are both at work.
Pretty cool soccer dad weekend. Back in the day my soccer dad weekends
involved driving 5 hour round trips to tournaments in Fresno. I appreciate my new soccer dad weekends.
