Happiness, humiliation, and heart: real life as an underdog
#5: The 'keeper who conceded 31 goals, WW2 dog tag mysteries, Washington's pioneering cheerleaders, and baseball's KFC curse...
Tales from the fringes of sport and society…
The scrum-half’s eyes bulged in anticipation as he launched the ball back to his fly-half, who’d scan the crowd for the two most fulfilling seconds of his career. The two seconds that would see the clock tick past 80 minutes. Then he booted the ball towards buoyant heads. The referee’s whistle sparked gum-shield grins as athletic giants transformed into leaping infants. Tearful eyes suggested they knew what would soon await them. National hero status. Autographs in airports. A lifetime of free bar tabs.
This was the most joyful moment from a formidable Rugby World Cup in France just a couple of months ago, but it’s not - as you might have expected - a scene from the final. Nor from any of the epic knockout matches, as it happens.
It was Portugal securing their first-ever World Cup win over an accomplished Fiji side who’d still pip Australia to a quarter-final spot.
Portugal has a formidable pedigree in football but in rugby, they remain what sportswriters are contractually obliged to refer to as “minnows”. Put it this way, their captain earns his living as a dentist. This was only their second-ever World Cup appearance, having lost every match they played the last time around in 2007.
The unbridled elation of the underdog is infectious, and 2023 has been a generous year for spreading such joy. At the Women’s World Cup in the summer, co-hosts Australia and New Zealand were shocked by two sides - Nigeria and the Philippines - unaccustomed to success on the biggest stage. At the Cricket World Cup, a fearless Afghanistan side beat defending champions England while a much-fancied South African outfit was swatted away by a youthful Netherlands team brimming with Dutch vim.
And the underdog tag isn’t reserved for the young and inexperienced. In the States, Pittsburgh Pirates infielder Drew Maggi made his Major League Baseball debut, aged 33, after 13 years and over 1,000 games in the minor leagues. “It’s the best strikeout I ever had,” he said, after receiving a standing ovation despite his failure to add to the score. “Anything is possible. Never give up.”
Everyone loves an underdog story but it’s often a heavily edited, romanticised version of what happens in real life. We get the 1%. The fully-developed character arc with a Ryan Reynolds smile and a Hollywood happy ending. But the underdogs, they live the 100%. Their script comes with blooper reels, stilted dialogue, and unfinished scenes. Nobody shouts “That’s a wrap” at a convenient moment.
And so the other side of being the underdog is painful, unedifying, and humiliating. It’s New Zealand 108 Portugal 13 at the 2007 World Cup. It’s the Philippines women losing 21-0 to China. It’s Drew Maggi being demoted back to the Bush leagues two weeks after his MLB debut. For Gibraltar, seven years after celebrating their ascent to FIFA status, it’s suffering a record 14-0 loss to France just last month.
This month’s Off-Field features underdog stories from both sides of the narrative. Let’s call it the shit and the shine. Some who enjoyed their 1% moment, some who are still striving for it, and some whose glory never came.
Nicky Salapu: On the Record
We can all put together a list of our favourite films where David triumphs over Goliath. Mighty Ducks, Karate Kid, Erin Brockovich, Billy Elliot, Rocky. But films where Goliath beats David to a pulp? Less common. After all, no hotdog-munching cinema-goer wants to see Babe sobbing in the abattoir.
Kiwi director Taika Waititi thinks differently, and his new movie released this month, Next Goal Wins, tells the story of the American Samoa team that suffered international football’s heaviest-ever defeat. In a 2001 World Cup qualifying match against a callously ruthless Australian team (is there any other kind?), they lost 31-0. That averages to a goal every three minutes.
Now, 20 years on, not only is the record yet to be surpassed but Hollywood has turned up to transform the indignity into a silver-cannistered time capsule. What must it be like to be the poor soul who played in goal that day, and is now about to relive his hell all over again?
Well, to borrow a sentence straight from any movie scene involving bomb diffusals, there’s only one way to find out. For NPLH Magazine I tracked down that very man, and just about managed not to piss him off.
For it turns out that not only is Nicky Salapu willing to open up about his heartache after that defeat, but he’s still out for revenge…
2023: The Unsung Year In Review
With the year coming to a close, there’s something a little different for you in this rather frenetic episode of the Unsung podcast. In just 40 minutes we rattle through the sporting year from the perspective of its unsung heroes, beginning way back in January at a boisterous and disbelieving darts crowd in Ally Pally, before ending with a tenuous reference to the late Mystic Meg to review a sporting event from the future.
You’ll also discover the Augusta National golf legend you're unlikely to have heard of, find out why Phil Foden can’t stop eating salmon and soy, and discover a good reason to raid the drinks cabinet for the winter's first drop of snow.
It all makes for a whistlestop tour of 2023, and let’s face it, everyone loves an end-of-year clip show. Don’t they?
Hello?
Now come one. Park your cynicism to one side, it’s Christmas after all. And there’s plenty of snark within the episode for all the grinches out there. Among the sass, there are also old friends and new heroes. If you tune in and enjoy it, please consider leaving a review to help others discover it.
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Volley and Serve: From Wimbledon to the Front Lines
This two-part podcast from Wondery recounts the story of Sergiy Stakhovsky, a Ukrainian tennis pro who gained fame in 2013 when he defeated Roger Federer in four sets at Wimbledon, despite being ranked 116th in the world. After retiring in 2022, Stakhovsky risked everything - including his marriage and the happiness of his children - by heading to the frontlines to fight for his country following Russia’s invasion.
Reporter Tim Rohan does a sterling job of explaining the wider context around Stakhovsky's remarkable decision, and why it felt so natural for this underdog on the tennis court to become an underdog on the battlefield. At times bleak and unsettling, this podcast pulls no punches regarding the horrors of war, not to mention the painful consequences on those left behind at home. But it makes for a gripping listen and a determined Stakhovsky inspires much admiration.
‘It’s So the Young Players Can Have a Better Future’: Why Afghanistan’s Men Are on Strike
Given the decades-long turmoil witnessed in Afghanistan, it’s something of an achievement whenever the country's athletes manage to represent their nation on a global stage.
September's edition of Off-Field linked to a piece from Suzy Wrack about its exiled women's football team, and while their male peers face nowhere near the same level of barriers and prejudices, they too find themselves at odds with the enemy within.
Ranked 154th in the world, the men's side needs all the help they can get to compete. But, unfortunately, it turns out that the players are also underdogs within their own team. Earlier this month, 18 of their players refused to play in a World Cup qualifier, citing corruption and mistreatment, as reported by The Guardian.
The Untold Story of the Washington Football Team’s First Black Cheerleaders
It'll forever be a stain on the city of Washington DC that its American Football team were the last in the NFL to maintain an overtly all-whites policy. Until 1962, owner George Preston Marshall made no secret of his refusal to sign black players, saying he'd only do so “when the Harlem Globetrotters start signing whites.”
The eventual arrival of the team's first black players would finally set a more progressive tone, but while the pioneering exploits of Bobby Mitchell - the team’s first black star - have been widely lauded and documented, little has been written about another area of the franchise that was too slow to move with the winds of change.
It wasn't until 1968 that Laverne Johnson became Washington's first black cheerleader, a privilege that attracted unwanted attention, including an anonymous phone call threatening “If you walk out on that field, you’ll never walk again.” This superbly-researched Washingtonian article from Luke Mullins delves into Johnson's untold story, along with those of her fellow resolute black cheerleaders.
Long-Suffering Hanshin Tigers Win Japan Series, End ‘Curse of the KFC Colonel’
For staunch fans of sporting sides who are continually racking up loss after loss, it can be hard to come to terms with the simplest conclusion: your team is crap. For those who are really struggling with the realisation that they've planted their flag on the wrong hill, there is always another option. Claim your team is cursed.
The problem comes when your team sees an uptick in form. Hell, maybe even wins a trophy. Now those who bleated on about witchcraft, burial grounds, and voodoo can't simply attribute this unexpected success to an improved transfer strategy or a gem from the youth team. No, no: “The curse has been lifted”.
To see just how silly this can get, read about Japanese baseball side Hanshin Tigers and the 'Curse of the Colonel'. Yes, as in Colonel Sanders, he of KFC fame. To broken mirrors and solitary magpies, we can now add bobbing statues of bearded fried chicken merchants. You have been warned.
Secret History of Alan Alda's M*A*S*H Dog Tags
“There's an old saying among actors, they don't feel like the character until they put the character's shoes on,” says Alan Alda in the introduction to this wonderful piece from Andy Lewis.
After 11 years on the era-defining US TV show Mash, Alda kept the combat boots he wore on set, along with the dog tags he was also issued in his role as Hawkeye. It turned out that the tags weren't simply props, but genuine items that had belonged to two World War Two soldiers.
Intrigued by this fact but with little other info, Lewis investigates the background of both men and manages to provide Alda with answers to the questions he’d long had about the veterans he was indirectly honouring on screen.
Impossible Owls, Brian Phillips
“This was the paradox of Jay Baldwin: One of the most infectiously happy guys I've ever been around, his every waking moment was a kind of prolonged existential debrief. He was never not working on how to outwit the horrific eventualities he was forever expecting to befall him, and he was never not just extremely cheerful about this. Jay was a Vermont kid, raised in a small town, and there was a mordant New England pluck in the way he gazed into the abyss and said: "I see what you're trying to do there, abyss.”
What connects Alaskan dog mushing, tiger-sighting in India, sumo wrestling, and UFOs? Only the curious mind and generational talent of Brian Phillips, the Grantland and New Yorker writer whose book of essays covers the quirky realms of the above.
Phillips has a stylish ease to his writing and an enviable knack for finding the most unique yet perfect analogies to describe the peculiar situations he often finds himself in. He's Gonzo without the ego, with a self-deprecating nature that allows him to gently tease and challenge his subjects without appearing mean or condescending.
The opening story in particular, an artful write-up of his trip to Alaska for the annual Iditarod dog mushing challenge, with its teeth-chattering depiction of the snow-tinged wilderness, is a modern-day masterpiece of literary nonfiction.
Thanks for reading December’s edition of Off-Field. If you know of anyone who might like any of this month’s picks, why not forward them this newsletter or hit the share button below.
If there’s anything you read, listen to, or watch over the next month that you’d like to see in January’s newsletter, do let me know via alexisnjames@gmail.com.
Until then, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! See you in 2024.