America's Game

Tonight, we went to see professional lacrosse for the second time. Friends, let me tell you, whether you like sports or like watching guys hit each other with sticks just like guys in shorts with muscular legs, you gotta go to a game. Maybe there's a team near you.

The Colorado Mammoth defeated the Portland Lumberjax (yeah, I know), 15-12 to improve to 5-0 for the season.

As with my previous experience at an NLL game, I came away absolutely flabbergasted that this sport hasn't caught on huge in America. It's fucking awesome, I tell you. You know how people say they'd get more into hockey or soccer if there was more scoring? Well, I give you lacrosse. It's got a lot of the same rules and gameplay as hockey - except that cross-checking and other general whacking of opponents with your stick are considered perfectly legal and often a good idea. But instead of scores of 3-1 or 2-0, teams tend to score in the range of 10 to 15 goals a game. It's fast-paced, high scoring, and quite exciting. And, of course, more than baseball, more than football, more than anything, it's a truly American sport, invented in days of yore by the Iroquois.

There are some weird things about NLL games - they play music on the PA during gameplay, which is very odd. Occasionally, they do an on-floor interview with a player during a break in the action, which is also very odd. The halftime entertainment was, for some reason, a dodgeball game involving members of the local roller derby concern, the Denver RollerDolls. And the less said about "The Wild Bunch," the official Colorado Mammoth cheerleaders, the better.

Still, even with the weirdness, we had a great time. We shall return, for sure.