{"id":106295,"date":"2017-01-01T17:00:07","date_gmt":"2017-01-01T22:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=106295"},"modified":"2017-01-03T10:35:44","modified_gmt":"2017-01-03T15:35:44","slug":"play-by-play-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/01\/play-by-play-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Play-by-Play"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re away until January 3, but we\u2019re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2016. Enjoy your holiday!<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>

USA World Cup poster (detail), 1994.<\/p><\/div>\n

Trying to make it as a sports commentator.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The world\u2019s third-largest youth soccer tournament, Schwan\u2019s USA Cup, is held each summer on a vast stretch of converted farmland in Blaine, Minnesota. The complex comprises fifty-two full-size fields and an inadequate number of shade trees; it is a desert of grass. Throughout the week of play, parents huddled beneath umbrellas, protecting themselves from the sun, if not the heat. They shouted encouragement to their children and epithets at referees.<\/p>\n

On the final day of competition, John Hadden sat at a folding table beside field A-1. He\u2019d been hired by a local public-access channel to call play-by-play for a U-19 women\u2019s semifinals match. His pants were khaki; his loafers, shiny; his briefcase was leather with brass clasps\u2014his appearance and bearing resembled that of an accountant. He estimated that no more than two hundred viewers would tune into the broadcast. \u201cThere\u2019s an if-a-tree-falls-in-a-forest quality to gigs like this,\u201d he told me, \u201cwhich, if your aim is to reach people, isn\u2019t ideal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hadden\u2019s aim is to reach people. He wants to announce for Major League Baseball one day and has spent the last decade traveling the country to call games for farm clubs: the Idaho Falls Chukars, the Yakima Bears, the New Orleans Zephyrs. Every summer he lives somewhere else. Winters he returns to Minnesota, his home state, and picks up whatever commentary work he can get. He has called Pee Wee hockey tournaments. He has called high school gymnastics meets. While he admitted he was somewhat disappointed, at thirty-one, to be working youth soccer, he took his assignment seriously. Before the morning\u2019s game he\u2019d done three hours of prep work, he said, researching the teams and their previous results, the players\u2019 names, the facility, the weather forecast. Rain, for the first time all week, was predicted. The parents\u2019 umbrellas would be put to new use.<\/p>\n

Read More >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Hadden sat at a folding table. 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