Consistency

Friday June 20, 2025

“I know you tried your best, but that guy’s dead, so you’re going to jail.”

Remember when my soccer team won a championship? Well, this session, we lost to the team we beat last time.

Adult recreational soccer can feel like a chore. It felt like a chore tonight when it was raining outside, I was comfortable on the couch, and my left Achilles’ tendon continued to remind me I played on Sunday and Monday, too. But it was a championship game, and you don’t miss championship games.

Unusually, it was a championship game with a lot of familiar faces. I’ve gone through several iterations of soccer teams since moving to Boston, but I’ve never played in consecutive leagues where my team (composed of mostly the same people) played the same team (composed of mostly the same people) in back-to-back session championships. This opposing team — Footie Pajamas — has become something of a rival. They beat us in last session’s regular season, we tied them in the second game, then beat them in the championship. This session, we beat them 3-1 in the regular season, but in the championship this week, they beat us in penalty kicks.

It was one of the most fun games I’ve played in a long time. We scored first, they got the next two, and we found an extra gear in the last six minutes to tie it up and nearly win if not for a late save by their keeper. Both teams combined to miss the first eight penalty kicks, and they finally scored on the ninth, as we missed the tenth. Thrillingly ugly 2-2 (1-0) win.

When you play a lot of soccer, you inevitably meet people you don’t like, or play teams that seem to have somehow attracted pure douchebags. It’s the kind of activity that makes you realize that strangers actually are bad, and you’re really not going to get along with everyone. Like, my brain literally casts us as good guys and these other people as actual evil. This is often odd for me because I’m a nice person. I don’t like everybody I meet, but I make an effort to coexist with everyone I meet. In adult rec league, nothing pisses me off more than people talking shit and taking cheap shots. But it’s also the kind of place where there are no consequences for calling someone a whiny little bitch to his face because there’s no chance he’d actually throw a punch and get himself permanently banned. Chippy games can really suck, especially if you lose them.

Fortunately, we get along almost weirdly well with Footie Pajamas. We’ve played each other five times in the last four months, and we’re 2-2-1 against each other. There should be plenty of animosity, but we’re able to play hard and be physical without getting on each other’s nerves. If we had seen any other team in the Boston area this many times, we would fucking hate them at this point and them us.

After the game, our team went to the bar and just so happened to run into them. They chose the table next to ours and we shot the shit with them and had a couple of beers.

Incidentally, current teammate Asher Vogel invited me to join a men’s team, and one of the guys on it plays for Footie Pajamas. I’ve had a long-standing rule against men’s leagues because they tend to be full of 20-somethings who have achieved nothing in life but still prioritize a pursuit of dominance over other men as an existential purpose, but Asher’s really good and figured he’d put together a quality team, so I said what the hell. Sure enough, our team is nasty and won our first game 7-1. Anyway, we were talking to Carlos, the Footie Pajamas guy, after the game and he said their team has been playing together for nine years.

Nine years is an eon in rec soccer. I’ve lived in Boston for about seven years and am on my fifth different group of teammates. In LA, the first soccer team I joined quickly became a very real friend group, but even that group only stuck together for about three years before life started drawing us in different directions. Asher probably put it in the best context: “Nine years ago, I was playing JV soccer.”

Consistency is hard, especially when it comes to wrangling people to show up to weekday soccer every week. It’s the thing that separates very good professional athletes from great ones. It’s the difference between uncles and fathers. It molds people from rageful little pissants on the soccer field into… well, less rageful little pissants and, eventually, in the extreme case of Footie Pajamas, good, respectable competitors.

We’ll get ‘em next time. Because there will be a next time in about eight weeks.

One Song: Bad Bad Hats - It Hurts

Man, I’m done trying to fit these into a theme. I love Bad Bad Hats, I listened to this on the way home from the bar Wednesday, and I think you should listen to these liberal arts hipsters bop right now.

One Quote: “Consistency is key.” - Evan Fournier

I had a couple of ideas for a consistency quote, and was starting to think through a section on “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” (which has an interesting Mandela Effect history, actually, if you look into it on your own) but a website included this as a legitimate, inspiration-worthy quote about consistency. Like, no shit consistency is key. What does that even mean? And why is it attributed to Evan Fournier, an NBA player whose biggest claim to fame is that you should never Google image search his last name?

One Hollywood: The Bear, Hulu

The Bear isn’t a secret by any means, but Season 4 comes out next week so good a time as any to get yourself caught up. We fell off for a while because Lindsay couldn’t deal with the sheer anxiety of the watching experience, but we’re starting to get caught up now that her school year is over. It’s a great love letter to Chicago and a giant red flag for anyone who has ever dreamed about opening a restaurant.

One Recipe: Creamy Chicken and Black Bean Enchiladas

These are a super easy meal prep, but they do take a little time to make since they need 40 minutes in the oven. But cheap, tasty, and minimal cutting. The biggest issue is that you really need extra large tortillas – the standard Trader Joe’s ones don’t fit all that much and you’ll wind up with a lot of excess filling.

One Team: Boston Red Sox

Genuinely, fuck the Red Sox. All they do is trade their homegrown superstars to save money. Fenway Sports Group is a plague.