El Sports Guy

Bill Simmons went to Mexico and managed to survive the experience. I know. I'm as surprised as the rest of you.

He was there to watch the U.S.-Mexico game, in order to write a column about it for ESPN.

In the column, he makes Mexico sound like a prematurely demilitarized zone. Unfortunately, it's kind of an accurate description. If Mexico had indeed lost the soccer match, then we could have upgraded Mexico City to an outright "war zone," a descriptor as apt for Mexico as "chaotic hellhole" is to Iran.

The column is worth a read, just for Simmons' explaining the differences between Mexican soccer fans and civilized people other sports fans. "Michael Vick could crash a PETA rally and get a friendlier reception than the Americans did at Azteca," is how he describes it. After the victory:

I will remember the reaction afterward: Complete and utter delirium. Everyone just threw whatever drink they had as far as they could. It was like watching a new Pixar movie called "A Snowstorm of Drinks" crossed with a full-fledged prison riot. Then and only then did we realize exactly how much that game meant to the Mexicans. As Hopper said right after the final whistle (Mexico 2, USA 1), "I guess the upside is that we're going to live."

He might be exaggerating just a tad. That said, I remember going to a soccer game when I was a kid where the referee blew a call and awarded a non-existent penalty kick. After the game, a couple dozen people found the official parking lot, literally tore a hole through the chain-link fence, found the referee's car, stripped it, and then torched the carcass. In the mob's defense, your honor, it was a really, really terrible call.

I must confess I also fall into hooligan mode whenever I watch one of these games. I cut out of work early on Wednesday to go watch the game. They scheduled the game at 4 p.m. on a Wednesday, officially so the Americans would suffer in the smog, haze, and oppressiveness of high-altitude Mexico. The real reason, I suspect, is because there's an easy answer to the question of who's more likely to skip work to see this game. Regardless, even if all the Mexicans in Boston get together, there's only like, one of them, and that poor schmuck, still in his suit and tie, has to sit at a bar by himself amidst a sea of Americans and try not to scream too much at the TV when no one else was screaming.

But I digress. Everyone went apeshit when Shane Victorino (I don't want to say deservedly, but damn that man and his ubiquitous glove) got himself doused with a beer at Wrigley Field last week. In Mexico City, in what should be considered par for the course, Landon Donovan was baptized to the point of drowning with beer, soda, and piss and vinegar. Literally. And I don't want to say deservedly, but it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

See, I hate Landon Donovan. He's a little bitch. Everyone in Mexico hates Landon Donovan because he's a little bitch. If I had been at the stadium, even I would have had a hard time answering the question, should I drink the rest of this beer or should I throw it at Donovan? I guess it would have depended on how warm the beer was.

Don't look at me that way. Everyone has an athlete they loathe. And I'm not talking A-Rod hate. I'm talking actual hate. If I saw A-Rod on the street, I'd probably just point and laugh. If I saw Donovan on the street, I'd follow him down the street calling him "little bitch" until he agreed to fight me. That is the difference between hate and hate.

I realize this post -- all of my sports-related posts, actually -- makes me sound like a lunatic, and that perhaps isn't far off the mark. Thank God we won that game or both Mexico and I would have exploded in a cluster bomb of drug wars, swine flu, and lawlessness.