In the Duluth area, we have hiking and biking and fishing and boating to call summer sports, plus some dirt-track auto racing augmenting the area’s slim baseball/softball scene that bolsters our Twins-from-afar interest. We also have weather watching, which has been at its most spectacular this particular year.
Sports aren’t the only spectator spectacles in these here parts. We also are blessed with a spectacular Fourth of July full of picnics, parades, and fireworks, plus a wonderful music scene. Last Saturday was a perfect example, with the band Trampled by Turtles headlining a four-band show at Bayfront Park. It was there that Mother Nature played some tricks. The thunderstorm that rolled in from the southwest featured a lightning show that would have made Fourth of July proud.
The lightning forced Trampled by Turtles to curtail their show after only three or four songs, but the decision followed to open Amsoil Arena to shelter the big crowd, and while we weren’t inside long enough to dry out, the show did resume -- in the rain -- and the TbT lads played hard until nearly 11:30 in a memorable show, for the fans and the band.
Concert-watching isn’t a sport, but it is a spectator event, and while there is no law that says concerts can’t be held in nice weather, it would be nice if it could happen.
My reason for mentioning spectator events is that we’re told that Slingbox, a device that allows fans to watch and control their tv sets by computers and smartphones, claims it can prove that World Cup soccer fans are more fanatical than fans of other mainstream sports in the U.S. The claim is that soccer fans are four times more fanatical than NBA fans, 21 times more fanatical than NHL fans, and 11 times more fanatical than golf fans. The flaw is that the 100,000 fans surveyed  showed 18.1 percent of soccer fans tuned in to World Cup play, while only 4.5 percent of basketball fans tuned into the NBA finals, 1.7 percent tuned into the U.S. Open, and only 0.9 percent of fans tuned in to the Stanley Cup finals.
The survey doesn’t tell us how intense any of these fans are. Maybe only the intense soccer fans got soccer on their Slingboxes, but maybe the intense fans in other sports found other ways to watch their favorite sports, such as on live tv.
We aren’t going to make such outrageous and easily disproved claims for soccer, but the sport has made important gains in our sensibilities. The World Cup is not over yet, it’s just over for the U.S., which makes it much more interesting to see how many U.S. sports fans tune in to watch the climactic part of the tournament now that the U.S. is not in the running.
There is no doubt that U.S. sports fans have watched soccer more than ever before, and the last two U.S. games were the most-watched soccer games in this country’s history.
If you watched any of the games, you had to come away completely impressed with the skill level of the world’s finest players. If you didn’t, then we can give you a brief test. You may think that, in your day, you were quite the baseball-football-basketball-hockey player. Pick one, and realize the importance of hand-to-eye coordination. If you were a decent baseball or basketball player, you could still go out and play a mean game of catch, or shoot a few hoops.
Now take a soccer ball out in the yard. You can be all alone. In fact, it might be preferable to be alone just for the sake of avoiding embarrassment. Start kicking the ball around, but do it with an objective, such as controlling the ball as you run from one end of your yard to the other. It’s a lot like stickhandling in hockey, with one important tradeoff: In hockey you use a stick on the puck but you have hand-to-eye coordination; in soccer you have no hand-to-eye coordination. None. You get to test your foot-to-eye coordination.
It won’t take long to realize how much more difficult a sport is when you can’t use your hands. In baseball or basketball, you use your hands to throw and catch, but in soccer you only get to use your feet. Oh, you can use the rest of your body too, but only when the ball inadvertently hits you and you block it ahead -- but not with your hands.
As you’re running back and forth across your yard, you might get so you can control the ball fairly well in, say, 15 or 20 minutes. Trouble is, you also realize how difficult it is to run and keep running for 15 or 20 minutes, never mind controlling the ball as well.
In baseball, unless you’re pitching or catching, you get to stand motionless for about 90 percent of the time you are in the field. In basketball, you can play as hard as you want, but you will be forced to stop and stand still every time there is a free throw to be shot, or every time you get to one end of the floor and have to wait to find someone to defend. Football, of course, has its 30 seconds of huddle for every 6 seconds of slamming into each other. Hockey is the closest thing to perpetual action, except that you get to go to the bench -- or penalty box -- for moments or minutes of rest.
In soccer, you can take a few seconds off to walk or patrol your position without running your hardest, but you have to be on call the whole time, ready to burst into full speed whenever the ball comes to you or a teammate, or to an opponent when you’re in the vicinity of defending.
The next layer up from being able to control the ball with your feet while running is to gain the skill to zig and zag around a defender, to be aware of where all your teammates are so you can pass to them, and then make that pass, hard and accurately -- possibly leading a running teammate, or passing ahead to a void, which is an unpopulated area that your teammate may get to first if you pass the ball there.
Of course, using your head in soccer is important in being a smart player, but using your head, physically, is also a key, because players blocking or redirecting passes with their heads is a pivotal part of playmaking and scoring.
When all of the skills and stamina are grouped together in a cohesive unit, soccer can be very fulfilling to watch. I found myself watching several games the last week or so, and I can’t even remember all the teams I saw play. I did see one great game that ended up 0-0, and it was filled with impressive plays and the occasional scoring chance, even though I was left with a haunting feeling that I had watched a couple hours of compelling television but nothing was accomplished.
That’s the problem with U.S. sports fans. We have luxuriated in so much instant gratification from goal-scoring bursts in hockey, from high-scoring games in football, baseball and basketball, that we can easily become bored with a 1-0 hockey game, a 7-3 football game, or a defense-oriented 64-60 basketball game. But we generally don’t admit it.
We do, however, grumble and complain if we have to watch a soccer game that might be 0-0 or 1-0 for being boring. Trouble is, that says more about our impatient need for instant gratification than it does about the skill level of two soccer teams that are as good at defense as they are at offense.
I heard a guy on the radio on Tuesday say that “If the U.S. keeps winning,” they’ll get more soccer fans than ever to become infatuated. Now, this guy should know better, but the U.S. wasn’t about to “keep winning.” The U.S. lost 2-1 to Belgium, with all the goals coming in extra time at the end of a regulation 0-0 draw and was eliminated in the first game of the final 16.
Before that, the U.S. lost 1-0 to Germany, tied Portugal 2-2, and beat Ghana 2-1. That victory over Ghana, then, was the only victory won by the U.S., and yet the competitiveness of the round-robin competition made so-called sports experts claim that the U.S. is winning, and might keep winning. One victory in four games is hardly reason to claim a dynasty, but there is no question soccer moved closer to the respect it has long deserved in the U.S.

John Gilbert has been writing sports for
over 30 years. He currently hosts a daily radio show on KDAL AM.