To quote a well-known soccer commentator: "Gooooooooooooooooooooooooal! (Chomp, nibble, nibble!)" Or, you know, something like that.
Whatever possessed him, one wonders? I mean, I can understand being overcome with exhilarition or some such, but THAT? This is not the sort of thing that your average athlete does in public. (In private, of course, who knows?)
The commentary on the incident in various places is utterly hilarious. From the Seattle Times: "Like the sporting version of the Starship Enterprise, Francisco Gallardo has boldly gone where no man — Mike Tyson, Marv Albert, Conrad Dobler — has ever gone before." (The image of Mike Tyson even considering doing such a thing to Evander Holyfield is quite ... distracting. And given Tyson's propensity to actually taking a chunk out ... eww. Didn't need to go there. NO.) From the Irish Times: Our favourite bit of the yarn? Gallardo's comment that he was shocked that "it has grown and grown like this." Don't tempt us.
I just love that he'll be punished, if at all, for offending "sporting decorum and dignity." Because, you know, soccer is so decorous, what with the occasional kicking of the shins, running around celebrating wins by tearing off shirts and flinging them into stands, hugging and tackling people (or tackling then hugging, as the case may be) to celebrate goals, and so on, and so on. Apparently all that is fine, but actually taking a little nibble that nobody -- including the technical victim -- actually noticed until they saw the replay ... WELL. Some things clearly are Just Not Done.
(What truly amazes me is that the Arizona Republic, of all newspapers, printed a photograph of the incident. What are our conservative family newspapers coming to?)
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!