The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-10-02

exclusively by immigrants or
a business, leagues came and
according to economic condi-
tions, the excellence of the tour
ing teams, purely extraneous
factors. AS far as young people were
concerned, it was an outlandish dis
tortion Of football played with an
understood basketball by dark men
who wore Charlie Chaplin shoes ane
grunted weirdly when waiting for a
pass. Their shorts reached down to
their knees and they headed the ball
like vaudeville jugglers.
It's different now. Take a soccer
ball to Crotona Park any afternoon
give 1t a healthy boot upward and by
the time it falls there'll be somebody
under it, asking you for game Walk
down toward the goal and by the
time you reach it therell be a goalie
there. Shoot around while and
you,ll be able to choose sides, eleven
each.
A SOCCER bail costs five dollars
n Not everybody can afford one
You realize the tremendous demand
for them within a few minutes OF
your appearance with one at any one
of six or seven soccer centerS in New
York. Unemployed devotees saunter
around Jasper Oval or sit sanguinely
upon benches, awaiting the familiar
thud. According to tradition they
gather around and pitch Immediately
into the practice without asking per-
mission.
They don't have to know you.
You're soccer player, q brother.
can Think of no other game that
has developed this social habit.
Saturdays and Sundays you miss
this sociability at Crotona Park.
There Is one regulation field only
but many balls and swarms of play
ers. They swamp the two goals and
you're lucky to get shot every ten
minutes. There is much Ill feeling
and fights are frequent.
The Public School Athletic League
plays Saturdays and these boys are
the second, even third generation
whose fathers and grandfathers
played In Poland or Portugal. The
field is cleared for these high school
teams and the unattached retire into
the stands. The games are long
range affairs of a peculiar American
slam bang style. Last Saturday I saw
Stuyvesant play and they'd probably
stand up with some Of the European
secondary schools.
Half the spectators in those stands
would have played but for lack of q
field. As it is they're forced to spend
their only off-days in this vicarious
enjoyment. Some of them are finer
players than the high school boys and
it isn't easy. Wistful, nostalgia hus-
bands with perambulators stud the
outskirts, a distance off to protect
their charges. Now when they played
center forward for Aberdeen back
in.
WHY Not the Private Lots?
IT'S damn silly. There are thous-
! and empty lots around town suit
able for goal posts but they're pri-
vately owned and you can't use them.
You want to play soccer but you can't
because some guy who may be living
in the Biltmore chose to fence in the
lot across your street. Fruit-dumping
hasn't go anything on that.
Due to this shortage of fields even
the sixty teams of the Metropolitan
Workers Soccer League were forced
to delay their season until October 10.
After that they'll play on Sundays at
Crotona, jefferson or wherever the
municipal groundkeeper Is amenable
to reasoning and three bucks.
There are no paid referees in this
Labor Sports Union League and no
monetary fines. Referees volunteer,
and the league is run by an elected
representative leadership who operate
on q fraction of the dues demanded
by other leagues. They are planning
to introduce accident insurance and
free medical attention for injured
players. A great part Of their sue
cess Is dependent on their access to
fields and dressing rooms, but the city
administration seems dead ret against
It. Yet there is room for more posts
in van Cortlandt Park, Bronx Park
and innumerable private lots.
II the League fights hard enough
they'll get the municipal fields from
O'Brien or Mckee, but private ones
they'll get only from Bob Minor.