Iceland Handball Trumps Croatian Water Polo
What we thought before this game is just to do what our forefathers did. They at most endured, like, two or three days at home in peace, and then they had to destroy something. They had to go and fight war somewhere. They went with their boats and stuff like that, and we were just on our boats, destroying something. That's how we went to the game, just to enjoy those 60 minutes like our (unintelligible) in life. That's what you do. That's what you live for.
And on a related note:
Bonus question: What makes team handball the best sport to follow during the Summer Olympics?
A. For starters, Iceland is in the field. Iceland! But seriously, this might be the greatest sport in the world, certainly the greatest at which the United States sucks and shouldn't. To self-quote from a column I wrote at the 2004 Olympics, the idea is to wing a ball the size of a cantaloupe past a clearly insane goalie who guards a rectangle the size of a couple of refrigerators. The seven-on-seven indoor sport has the leaping, dribbling, passing, off-the-ball movement and shot-blocking of hoops (the ideal player is about 6-foot-5, 210 pounds; Germany had a 7-foot cross between Shawn Bradley and Randy Johnson); the hard throwing of baseball (shots fly up to 70 mph); and the body contact of hockey, soccer and lacrosse (defenders grab, push and slam the guy with the ball, who tries to shoot over, under or through a defensive fortress). Nonstop, fast-breaking, simple to understand, high-scoring. And excellent shoes! And Iceland! I beseech the Bog to make team handball this Olympics' curling.
And on a related note: I might speculate that it will be at least 2014 before a Chicago "sportswriter" comes up with anything nearly this entertaining, except that by 2014 Chicago won't have any "newspapers."
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