Monday, July 5, 2010

The Underdog


Where were you when Uruguay got to the World Cup semifinals?

Well last time, as a child, I was on the apartment balcony in Montevideo. Not sure if the game was broadcast live on TV, but I listened to the game on a transistor radio I just built. A city balcony immerses you in a popular experience. Now it is me and the TV in American suburbia, plus I have become less of a balcony bonding person anyway.

The more things change the more they stay the same. In 1970 Uruguay was the underdog against Russia/USSR, a team from a continent pretty much. This time Uruguay went up against Ghana, the whole continent of Africa behind it.

The common wisdom that Everybody Loves an Underdog rings as false as Newton's physics did to Einstein. The Revised Theory should read:

In the Absence of Bias Everybody Loves an Underdog.

Now, you find me an unbiased person and I will find Einstein's Unified Field Theory.

She has been wearing that #10 celeste way before this World Cup, and far from futility, as the underdog she will always remember where she was that July 2010 when they went to PKs.