So as promised, I said that part two would discuss a podcast that I have yet to find again online, but found in the catacombs of my harddrive. This podcast is titled The Loneliness of the Goalkeeper and was done by RadioLab. These guys have some pretty cool podcasts that range over a huge number of topics, however, the one that interested me the most was this one here. Strangely enough, it is also the perfect way to transition from a purely goalkeeper article to one that is mostly about chronic disease in our little three part series here.
I’m not going to transcribed the entire podcast. First of all, that just might be a bit of copyright infringement, but it would also be beyond the scope of what interested me in the podcast itself. The podcast talks about the goalkeeper, and more specifically, the uniqueness of the position. It begins talking about how the keeper is the only position that can play well for 99% of the game, but become the villain for slipping up in that last 1%, effectively losing the game. It is also the one position where you can never win a game, you can only lose it. You won’t see keepers scoring any goals, but you will see them letting them in. It goes further to try and describe the emotion behind it, but being completely honest, it is a thing that you must experience for yourself to truly understand.
All these things are fine and interesting but the story started to gather my attention when the RadioLab guys referred to the majority of goalkeepers as Loners or Mavericks. These people that are radiated towards the net are people that don’t want to be understood, they want to be different, or simply are different. They go on to say that the pattern of keepers is that they “show understanding that one is not as other people; that their job is not like the others.” And in a way they are right. Keepers are the only ones on the field with a different uniform than everyone else, and they are the only player on the field that can use their hands and have full possession and control of the ball. Yet, they also have the most drastic of consequences. Things get even more interesting when you take a deeper look at some of the people who have ever played as a Keeper.
Let’s take the examples from the RadioLabs podcast. Che Guavara was a goalkeeper. Yet he was one out of need. He had asthma and couldn’t keep up with the other players. Vladimir Nabokov was also a goalkeeper. He was a notorious outside and also nearly died as a child. Pope John Paul II also played as a keeper. As a child, he faced losing his mother at age 9 and his brother at age 12. I guess the pattern here is that these people faced some horrendous situations and for whatever reason it brought them to the world of the goalkeeper.
I guess what made me stop and think was that as someone who was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis, I found my home between the goal posts, doing something different from the other ten players on the field. I found solace that I was different than those other guys because at the end of the day, I was different. But different doesn’t always mean such a bad thing. For everytime the ball came down to our end of the field, those guys knew they could count on me to stop that shot. For once, I wasn’t the person depending on someone else for help, but I was the one providing the reassurance.
I don’t know. Maybe it’s a bit of pulling at strings at looking at this podcast and drawing similarities. Maybe I’m not summarizing the material very well. But I found it interesting that out of all the things I’ve done, and all the directions I could go after battling my disease, that I found comfort in a position that supposedly is the place for people who are different from the crowd. Who knows, maybe that’s ego seeping in to this article, but either way, if you can find the podcast, I suggest giving it a listen!
