Word: balled
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...needed a tie with Italy to get a chance at the title. Italy needed a win to go on to the final. The game mucked about inconclusively until, after 18 minutes, a tall and gawky defender named Erny Brandts tried to thwart an attack by lashing savagely at the ball in front of his own goal. He knocked it into the netting and in the bargain crippled his teammate, Goalie Pieter Schrijvers, who was carried off on a stretcher. The score was now Italy: one goal up, and Holland: one goalie down. That might have decided things; Italy...
...that the days of the clogged, cupping defense that had slowed down soccer in the '60s might be over. But in 1978, even the Dutch at times reverted to fortress tactics. Missing was the best of this simple and beautiful game-the artistry of magnificent athletes moving the ball forward on the attack...
...after all, is what is important. Soccer is not for theorists, or for FIFA, or for military juntas seeking wistfully to appear respectable. It is not for journalists, certainly, and perhaps it is not even for wondrously skilled professional players. Soccer's lovely simplicity started with children- a ball, a patch of ground, a few kids - and that is where its center remains...
...Dennis Martinez was the picture of ill will as his record dropped to 6-5. It started as early as the bottom of the first, when as with two outs Jim Rice smashed his ninth triple of the season to right field, and Ken Singleton chased and kicked the ball just long enough for Rice to comehome with an unearned...
...Butch Hobson's catch of a foul ball for the first out in the ninth summed up the Red Sox' play during the homestand better than any rally or one-two-three inning. Hobson snagged the foul pop while simultaneously running down the steps of the Oriole dugout, and eventually wound up somewhere near the coldcut platter in the Baltimore clubhouse. When he finally came back on to the playing field the ovation was the last and loudest from the throng that seems amazed but not surprised at anything this club does nowadays...