I've been meaning to throw this out there for a while now...and watching DC United and the MetroStars play on the NFL turf of Giants Stadium reminded me to do it. We owe Spartan Shops a big mahalo for taking the time and effort to paint over the gridball lines at Spartan Stadium to make the pitch look like a proper soccer ground. This time of year, the parks where the ground is shared with gridball take shortcuts in preparing their pitches for soccer (simply drawing yellow soccer lines on a regulation fooball gridiron). That shows that the landlords show a complete lack of respect for our game...and that includes the Krafts and the Hunts. I remember back in the days of the "multi-purpose" stadiums when baseball and football teams were ground sharing, football teams would refrain from painting their fields in full until after baseball season (they'd use chalk lines or faint paint markings that could easily be removed for baseball). The clubs groundsharing respected each other's needs. But soccer does not get that kind of respect...even from the "icons" of American soccer like Kraft and Hunt. We have vilified Spartan Shops over many things...but where else in MLS is the game of soccer respected more during gridball season than Spartan Stadium?
Gridball? The proper term is pointyball, or the newer term armpitball which is starting to grow on me. But gridball?
When Spartacus says something positive for Spartan Shops...I know that he's found a proprietor of the island's finest Maui-wowie and he's been sparking up.
Not quite...but I am a couple of mai-tais in and just a little more than an hour until kickoff between SJSU and UH.
We call it gridiron over here, to avoid all confusion. And our man in the PA booth is spot on here-- it's good that Spartan Shops has the foresight to respect what the field looks like for the event taking place, and further respect the game itself. (I've repped Spartacus for this viewpoint, by the way.) Believe me, it'll look great on TV for me tomorrow, even some 8,000 miles away.