Sitting in a bar with a frosty pint at 7:30 a.m., you tend to learn a thing or two. The heightened awareness that comes along with rising with the stark morning sun combined with ordering several foreign beers amidst a crowd chanting “U-S-A!, U-S-A!” opens you up to new experiences.

For me, it was the beauty that lies within America’s torrid love affair with soccer. (I’m not sure when we voted on this, but apparently we all decided that we were going to become soccer fans – if only for a month.)

The low-scoring nature of soccer has caused its fans to evolve, to move the goal line, so to speak. Sitting at a sticky counter, elbow to elbow with this guy, I learned that the joy in watching soccer isn’t in the goals, but in the chances your team has to score these evasive goals.

To make life easier, I’ve adopted this philosophy with the San Francisco Giants.

The shortcomings of the Giants offense has been well documented – honestly I’ve seen more scoring take place in line for a Star Wars movie. And the agony the lack of runs cause, seemingly on a night-in-night-out basis (see Dodgers 4, Giants 2), has spoiled too many opportunities to celebrate.

To amend this dire ineptitude of scoring, try this the next time you’re at the yard – third base is the new home.

A base runner that safely advances to third is the baseball equivalent to a “scoring chance” – and the Giants have a lot of these. So the next time you see Giant on third, stand up, cheer, raise your arms in victory, hug the nearest stranger next to you, and blow your Vuvuzelas. Honor the beauty, the physical poetry that is a near-run, and then imagine the bliss of an actual run.

Once we learn to re-frame the archaic goals we have had in place as baseball fans and look to the progressivism of soccer, the pesky runner stranded at third won’t seem like a missed opportunity, but instead it will stand as a time to cheer — at least until the next double play.

My World Cup is half empty – Schuepp’s Scoop

Fixed game in 1982 World Cup creates schedule change – Sports Climax

French World Cup team continues their circus act – Sports Climax

Re-printed with permission of the author.

Theo is a staff reporter and feature writer for the Marin Independent Journal where he covers local prep and college sports. As an Associate Production Manager for ESPN, he helped produce Sunday Night Baseball among other national ESPN and ABC Sports telecasts. In addition to his contributions to Sports Climax, he is a columnist for Examiner.com and is the play-by-play voice for Sonoma State University baseball and softball.

Copyright ©2010 Sports Climax, LLC

After further review, this ‘horn-hater’ has ruled the ruling on the field should stand and the obnoxious non-stop blowing of Vuvuzelas at the FIFA World Cup 2010 in Johannesburg, South Africa should be allowed to continue.

Okay, I admit it is the most obnoxious thing I have ever seen or heard at any sporting event, right up there with some fat inebriated guy with a dirty jersey shouting obscene-laced one-liners at some innocent opposing players. BUT, Americans need to step back and cool it with the criticism and grass root campaigns to ‘ban the horns’ and except it as a unique custom of our friends from Africa.

Like most Americans, this year I decided to jump on the fast-moving bandwagon of FIFA and tuned in to several games including the highly-hyped U.S. vs. England contest Saturday. And like most people in this country, media and fans alike, I acquired an instant dislike for the constant noise of the Vuvuzelas that at first I thought was a horrible overseas signal struggling to make its way from one satellite to another and through my cable to my television set.

While I was Tweeting “WTF is that!” and “Somebody make it stop!!” Skip Bayless from First and 10 was Tweeting “I had to turn my TV sound off, I couldn’t stand it.”

On the flip side of that NBA player Al Horford of the Atlanta Hawks welcomed the noise Tweeting several times throughout the tourney in support of the custom.

Examiner.com Sports Columnist Paula Duffy says in her column today, ”we have thunder sticks in baseball and NBA basketball, air horns in football and even cowbells when the Sacramento Kings want to drive Lakers coach Phil Jackson round the bend.”

Now before writing your favorite Congressman, ask yourself, how would you respond if citizens from India started a campaign in the U.S. to stop eating meat because cows are ‘sacred’ and the next time you’re hunkered over a steak at the local Outback Steakhouse, a group of them asked you to please drop to your knees and worship your 48-ounce sirloin instead of eating it?

In Russia, the fans join together creating an ear-piercing whistle when they are displeased while here in the states we boo. Should we ask Russia to ban whistling next time we play them in the Olympics on their soil? If they asked us to convert our booing to whistling to avoid confusion to their country, we would tell them the same thing we would tell the India folks who wanted us to praise our steak, “Shove it where objects are only supposed to exit.”

Africa’s business pertaining to sports is their business and if we are interested in jumping on board to take part in the FIFA activities and support Futbol, then we need to chill out and take a step back, way back.

The Vuvuzelas blowing is actually a really a cool tradition when you think about it. These fans are dedicated to spending hours, yes with a plural, pumping wind into these instruments non-stop. That’s more stamina then would have been required for any of the hell raising I did with my counterparts at raucous Olympia Stadium and Historic Tiger Stadium when I was a youngster growing up in Detroit and believe me, we blew the frickin’ roof off those places more than a few times.

Hats off to the people of Africa and the FIFA fans for introducing this unique custom to our country, and hopefully as I have done, many of you will get used to the African fans and their Vuvuzelas and welcome them with open arms.

Copyright © 2010 Sports Climax, LLC