Richard II and Andrés Escobar

            In 1994, the US defeated Colombia 2-1, the first World Cup win for the US in 44 years. It helped the US to a glorious second round appearance in the first World Cup held on American soil.

            It was a marvelous victory. I was 16 when that game was played, and my soccer mania was at its apex. That day I had played soccer all afternoon at a camp run by a group of British players who were on the UW Green Bay Soccer team. And my dad and I were running clinics at elementary schools teaching basic soccer skills to kids aged 5-8 every morning, because we believed that American soccer could be better and we were doing everything we could to contribute. The next year Major League Soccer was launched in the US and expectations and execution by the men’s national soccer team has been on the rise ever since.

One of the goals in that match was an own goal accidentally knocked in by Andrés Escobar who was brutally murdered in Medellin after Colombia were eliminated in the first round, thanks to their loss to the US. Pele had previously predicted Colombia would win the entire tournament.

 

Lords, I protest my soul is full of woe

That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow. (5:6)

 

            In Richard II the King of England is deposed and murdered and there are 8 plays which chronicle the fallout of this deed.

            Bolingbroke (the future Henry IV) suspects that King Richard II was involved in the murder of his uncle, and he wants to get to the bottom of it. The play opens on his conflict with another nobleman, whom he accuses of being involved in the plot as well. The King – perhaps out of guilt – prevents these two nobles from satisfying their honor and dueling it out. Instead he banishes them.

            Bolingbroke’s father dies and predicts a lot of bad things in Richard’s future, and so Richard takes all of his property (which should pass to his banished son) and uses it to fund a war in Ireland. Richard is a terrible king, he is extravagant and wasteful and no one really likes him, but he’s the king, so what are you gonna do? Well, if you’re Bolingbroke, you raise an army and come back to England, and demand that he return your property and title and lift your banishment. And then you force him to abdicate the crown and you quietly have him murdered so that you can be king.

            Richard is put in a tough spot when he hears that Bolingbroke has returned with a big army, but his spinelessness is only matched by his eloquence when he turns on the pessimism:

 

No matter where – of comfort no man speak.

Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs,

Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes

Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.

Let’s choose executors and talk of wills. (3:2)

 

            But even though Richard sucks and no one is going to be sad that he’s no longer king, everyone seems to know that a king is anointed by God and deposing one treacherously is going to invite some divine reckoning. The Bishop of Carlisle prophesies:

 

The blood of English shall manure the ground,

And future ages groan for this foul act,

Peace shall go sleep with Turks and infidels,

And, in this seat of peace, tumultuous wars

Shall kin with kin, and kind with kind, confound. (4:1)

 

            This proves true as there is civil unrest for the next many generations. Fathers fight against sons, sons against fathers and brother betrays brother one after another. King Richard himself warns Bolingbroke that he’s inviting bad times on England:

 

And though you think that all, as you have done,

Have torn their souls by turning them from us,

And we are barren and bereft of friends,

Yet know my master, God omnipotent,

Is mustering in his clouds on our behalf

Armies of pestilence, and they shall strike

Your children yet unborn and unbegot,

That lift your vassal hands against my head,

And threat the glory of my precious crown. (3:3)

 

            But Bolingbroke goes ahead, has the king and his advisers killed and starts the snowball rolling. At the very end of the play he expresses some regret:

 

Lords, I protest my soul is full of woe

That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow. (5:6)

 

            Is he really full of woe? Probably. Every one wants to win honestly and to achieve a greatness that they deserve, but most of us will take victory however we can get it, which is dangerous.

            The universe finds a way to balance itself. And retributive discord is the weight of celestial choice.

The day Andrés Escobar was killed my family and I were going to Chicago to see the second round match between Germany and Belgium at Soldier’s Field when the news came over the radio.

There was a moment of silence before the game began, and later in the day my dad asked me: “If you could change it, so that the US loses that game, and Escobar doesn’t get shot, would you?” It seemed like a terribly unfair question, but I thought about it, and before I could answer, he said, “You shouldn’t have to think about it.”

            I used to have a T-shirt with a quote from Bill Shankly, a famous British Football manager that said: “Soccer isn’t a matter of life or death, it’s much more important than that.” Soccer players often say that a big game is a kind of war, and if they’re American they’re dutifully reprimanded for the insulting comparison. In other countries they’re more understanding of the extreme simile.

            We didn’t kill Andrés Escobar. I don’t think American soccer is under a curse or part of some cosmic balancing act as a result of what happened to him the way the usurping House of Lancaster is in the Shakespearean histories. So is it wrong to think that when the US does lose games that other innocent lives are saved? In the next World Cup we lost to Iran 2-1 in a brutal game in France. What might have happened if the result had gone the other way? Impossible to know.

A goal was stolen from us by bad officiating when we played Slovenia, but Slovenia is a tiny country. The repercussions of soccer victories there could be life-changing, nation-saving. If Colombia had won the World Cup in 1994, what could it have meant to the citizens of that troubled nation?

            Didier Drogba of the Ivory Coast, became the first African player to ever score a goal against Brazil in the World Cup yesterday. He is playing with a broken arm. It is said that he once prevented civil war in Ivory Coast by asking that an important match be played in the north, even though he is from the south of Ivory Coast. It is likely that he will one day run for president of his country much like George Weah of Liberia, 1995 World Footballer of the Year.

            Soccer is an important force in the world. At 16 I may have been reluctant to surrender the memory of Tab Ramos and Tom Dooley racing around the Rose Bowl with American flags draped over their shoulders for anything, even the life of someone I never met. But my dad helped me put that into perspective.

There are more important things than being kings of world soccer. If someone had taught Bolingbroke a parallel lesson, maybe England would have avoided a great bloody brouhaha for 86 years.

I guess no matter how hard we try, men have a tendency to take some things way too seriously.  

Andrés Escobar

Henry VI Part 1: Fathers, Sons and Soccer Practice

There’s a story my dad used to love to tell. He coached my first soccer team when I was six years-old. In the middle of a game the ball rolled up to me and I kicked it as hard as I could. It went sailing into the air and down the field, over other kids’ heads. I ran straight to the sidelines and said: “Dad! Did you see THAT?!”

When we were young it was impossible to go to a place in Kenosha where my dad was unrecognized. The grocery store, restaurants, the gas station, if we all went as a family to the high school track to run around or hit tennis balls off the backboard there was always some adult I’d never met who would say: “Hey, Ernie!” and my dad would say, hey Rick or Mike or Rusty or Booker. He was a firefighter and a softball player and such accomplishments are enough to cement a father’s heroism in his young son’s hopeful mind.

George Bush and George W. Will Smith and Jayden Smith. Henry V and Henry VI. Fathers often cast long shadows from which their sons struggle to escape. Check out this eulogizing by the Duke of Gloucester to the late great Henry V that opens Henry VI Part 1:

England ne’er had a king until his time.

Virtue he had, deserving to command;

His brandished sword did blind men with his beams;

His arms spread wider than dragon’s wings;

His sparkling eyes, replete with wrathful fire,

More dazzled and drove back his enemies

Than midday sun fierce bent against their faces.

What should I say? His deeds excel all speech.

He ne’er lift up his hand but conqueréd. (1:1)

A mere 20 lines later, Gloucester describes the young Henry VI: “an effeminate prince whom like a schoolboy you may overawe.” (1:1) Granted, Joan of Arc is one of the major characters in this play, so describing someone as effeminate might not carry the same derogatory meaning that such knights normally ascribe to it, but it ain’t like he’s talking dragon’s wings about the heir to the throne.

Shortly into the play the French rebel, the houses of York and Lancaster argue and pluck red and white roses to start the War of the Roses, and the great military hero of England, Talbot, is abandoned in battle because of the civil discord.

Talbot is the scourge of the French. And while fighting Joan la Pucelle (of Arc) he and his son, John Talbot, are killed. They had been separated for 7 years by war, but Talbot called his son to the battle to teach him the family business:

O young John Talbot, I did send for thee

To tutor thee in stratagems of war (4:5)

When he sees that they are badly outnumbered, he tries to send his son away, but John refuses to fly:

Is my name Talbot? And am I your son?

And shall I fly? O, if you love my mother,

Dishonor not her honorable name

To make a bastard and a slave of me! (4:5)

Before Talbot dies, his son’s body is brought to him:

And in that sea of blood, my boy did drench

His over-mounting spirit; and there died

My Icarus, my blossom, in his pride. (4:7)

Icarus is, of course, the average son of Daedalus from Greek mythology. They flew on waxen wings to escape Crete and foolish Icarus flew too close to the sun and fell into the sea where he drowned. A cautious tale of venturing from beneath your father’s shadow.

But there are also accounts within this play of the sons who outdo their fathers. Standing watch at Orleance is the Master Gunner, who leaves his son on the watch in his stead. And when the opportunity arises, the son fires on Talbot and Salisbury, and he kills Salisbury.

Later on in the battle of Roan, the dying Duke of Bedford mentions Pendragon:

Not to be gone from hence, for once I read

That stout Pendragon, in his litter sick,

Came to the field and vanquishéd his foes. (3:2)

If you don’t know who Pendragon is, that’s okay. It’s only really important that you know that his son was King Arthur. Another son who outshone his father.

The opportunity is there, but Henry VI’s cards have been dealt. The evil of the early imagery of the play bodes poorly for the young king. “Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!” (1:1) Day and night, like York and Lancaster, the warring factions of heaven.

What’s interesting is that this trio of plays was written before Henry IV parts 1 and 2 and Henry V. So, it's possible that for the audiences attending Henry VI that the legend of Henry V is as perfect in their minds as Richard the Lionheart and King Arthur. His father was not a human. He was a myth, a folk hero. A giant among kings.

Eventually, Shakespeare humanizes Henry V in those other histories. He shows his flirtations with criminals and drunkards in Henry IV parts 1 and 2. And even in Henry V after he conquers France, there’s the courtship of Catherine, when he bumbles through the French language in declaring his poor, soldier's love. It’s important that the legend of the father dissolve so that the son may achieve a unique success in life.

For my part, my father was humanized to me in two parts. The first of which relates to soccer.

My dad coached a soccer team with another woman before my parents got divorced. I was in college and I would sometimes come to practices and run little clinics on heading or shooting. There was a moment I observed between my dad and this woman when we were working on trapping. He was throwing the ball to her and she was trapping it while sixteen nine year-old girls ran around doing the same thing. Amidst all that giggling and the flying soccer balls. I saw my dad throwing the ball… but it wasn’t like watching my dad. It was like watching me. He was awkward and stumbling exactly the way I was around a girl I like, having no idea what to do. It was chemistry. I saw that connection and felt pangs of confusion. A strong want to combat the momentum of events. But I'm a midwestern boy, and despite my mother, I buried that confusion. Cause we hope ignoring such things makes them go away. But they don't. Eventually my parents got divorced and this woman became my stepmom.

My dad became a person entirely in my eyes soon after my parents were divorced. One day he had this weary look on his face. There was some superficial stressful thing that froze him for a moment. And he rubbed his eyes and scratched his head with both hands and said, “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing.” He wasn't really saying it to me. And he wasn't really saying it about this stressful thing that had happened. He was saying it about everything in the world. 

You can forgive a person for almost anything when they admit that. Because even though they don't know what they're doing, at least they're trying.

Fathers can overreach. They wrongfully conquer sovereign nations and leave the mess to their sons. They fall in love with other women. They believe they can fly. Sometimes their sons suffer for it. But sometimes they do the right thing and sacrifice their mythological legacy for mere humanity, and it's okay. We're still going to run to them on the sidelines after we send that ball flying through the air. They're still our fathers, even if they’re only men.