Sunday, November 22, 2009

MLS Cup Diaries: To the Emerald City!


In a series of events almost as unlikely as Real Salt Lake's, I am on my way to Seattle for MLS Cup 2009. It still doesn't seem real.

Once I calmed down after Nick Rimando's stonewalling performance during the shootout against Chicago, and Ned Grabavoy's decisive penalty found net I knew I had to find a way to Seattle.

That same excitement started, and got the best of me, that fantastic final night of the regular season when RSL took care of business against Colorado, and the other needed pieces were falling into place. Real was getting the job done against the Rapids in convincing fashion, and I was making friends with random strangers sitting next to me as I excitedly announced updates from the other MLS games.

"Kansas City just scored!" I reported while practically hugging the partly puzzled person next to me.

That euphoric night was followed by three more where RSL marched right through the playoffs leaving the defending champion Columbus Crew and Chicago Fire, with Blanco and McBride, in their wake.

The funds for making such a trip were available thanks to a recently cashed savings bond given to me when I entered this world - so we won't discuss how old the bond really was. Needless to say, the girl at the bank had never seen one of it's kind before.

JetBlue's last minute offer was good enough to skip a couple full days of driving through rumors of snow storms and mountain passes. Arriving at the Salt Lake airport, more than a few passengers were seen wearing their claret-and-cobalt. Probably 40% of our initial flight to Long Beach was dressed for the game.

The packed terminal in the LBC showed more MLS supporters heading up the coast to the Emerald City for the season's final game. Red far outnumbered Galaxy blue among the masses, but the excitement was unmistakable. Fans of each side communicated with knowing glances, smiles and nods.

While walking out to our plane that would take us to Seattle I struck up a conversation with a guy wearing an LA Riot Squad shirt, where we both lamented about the poor ticket distribution to each teams supporters. We couldn't help but to shoot verbal jabs at each other through the conversation, but all remained friendly. One thing was for certain. Everything was feeling very real now.

Game on.

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